Packing for Denver - the Inaugural National Adaptation Forum

I'm very pleased to be heading to Denver tomorrow for the inaugural National Adaptation Forum from April 2-4, where I'll see many colleagues from around the country. Unfortunately (and confusingly), I won't see my colleagues working for the federal U.S. government, thanks to the sequester. (Read the March 1, 2013, Environmental News Service article on some of the environmental costs of the sequester.) Way to shoot yourselves in the collective foot, Congress. When one of the key people working on adaptation through the landscape conservation cooperatives here in California said she couldn't go to the NAF because of the sequester, an NGO offered to help pay for her trip, and she said she couldn't even be SEEN there, presumably because there are regulations preventing her from accepting the funding to send her there. Our federal employees are not just not being funded to go, they aren't allowed to go! Luckily, conference organizers say, there was time to find replacement speakers for most of the victims of the sequester.

Those of you who will be there, look for me on Tuesday (Day 1) during breaks and between 5 PM and 7 PM by my poster on scenarios for natural resource adaptation planning that I put together for last year's international adaptation conference in Tucson.

I would list the sessions that I'm looking forward to attending, but there really are too many to list. I'm choosing between appealing options in every session. Here's the agenda as of March 29, 2013.

Now, back to watching the astonishing take-down that Louisville's women's basketball team is presently executing on the legendary Baylor team.