U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse ’82 To Give Talk on Climate Change Politics

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse ’82 of Rhode Island will address climate change politics in a speech April 5 at the University of Virginia School of Law.

He will deliver this year’s annual Lillian K. Stone Distinguished Lecture in Environmental Policy, titled “How We Win: The Path Forward in Congress on Climate Change,” at 11:30 a.m. in Caplin Pavilion.  

Whitehouse was first elected in 2006. He previously served as Rhode Island’s director of business regulation under Gov. Bruce Sundlun before being nominated by President Bill Clinton to be Rhode Island’s U.S. attorney in 1994. He was elected attorney general of Rhode Island in 1998, a position he held until 2003.

Whitehouse is a member of the Budget Committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee, the Judiciary Committee and the Finance Committee.

He has delivered a “Time To Wake Up” floor speech every week in the Senate chamber since April 2012, notching over 200 in total, “to deliver in-depth remarks on the science of man-made climate change, its effects felt throughout the country and around the globe, and the political forces that impede climate action in Congress.”

A Q&A and lunch will follow. The speech is co-sponsored by the UVA Schools of Architecture and Law.

The lecture, made possible through a gift from University of Virginia alumni Thatcher Stone (Law ’82) and Frank Kittredge (Architecture ’78), is hosted jointly by the Schools of Architecture and Law. The lectureship is intended to fulfill the intellectual and educational commitments of the two schools by creating an opportunity for students to be educated in environmental policy and the National Environmental Policy Act.