World Science Festival 2008: Exploring Green

The first annual World Science Festival kicks-off this week in New York City. Bringing together a dozen nobel laureates and Charlie Rose (how sweet is that?!) along with writers, artists and researchers for a four day city-wide celebration of science, the festival will play host to 40 unique events taking place around the city. On Saturday, I’ll host a program exploring the cutting-edge of green design. Joining me will be Mary Lou Jepsen, founding chief technology officer of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), and Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre, the hotshot co-founders of Ecovative Design. If you’re in town I hope you'll come on out to join us.

Details are at WorldScienceFestival.com

Here’s the full list of Environmental Programming:

• Celebrated Paleontologist and Conservationist Richard Leakey Sounds the Alarm– The Sixth Extinction (May 30, 8 PM, Columbia University Miller Theatre, $30, Students $12): Featuring presentations of sounds now extinct from the wild, as well as recent video footage from the Arctic, this astonishing and moving picture of the planet today presents in no uncertain terms what's at stake in the fight to preserve our planet's rich biodiversity.

• Designing Green– Greengenuity (May 31, 5:30 PM, NYU - Lecture Hall, $12): Join "Lazy Environmentalist" author Josh Dorfman and pioneering green innovators and inventors in an exploration of the ever-expanding marketplace of products and ideas that can help individuals reduce their carbon footprint and battle climate change.

• Join Environmental Reporter Andrew Revkin for an Electrified Town Hall – Powering the Planet (May 31, 7 PM, NYU - Kimmel Center for University Life, $25, Students $12): The shock of climate change has spurred a worldwide quest to power the entire planet with clean, renewable energy. But is this goal realistic, and if so, how fast can such a dramatic transformation be achieved? Scientists at the vanguard of clean power research and leading policy thinkers headline this forum.

• Sustainable Solutions, Radical Designs – Future Cities (May 30, 8 PM, NYU - The Kimmel Center for University Life, $25, Students $12): Urban Planners, Architects, Environmentalists and Microbiologists lay out radical blueprints and innovative solutions as they imagine housing, feeding, transporting and sustaining city dwellers of the not too distant future. Moderated by Walter Isaacson, noted journalist and president of the Aspen Institute.

-- Josh