Rocket Scientist Will Talk Earth's Preservation at Next Walden Forum

The below was submitted by organizers with the Walden Forum.

Join us for a discussion with Allan Klumpp about how we follow the example of our forefathers and take responsibility for posterity – how humanity can protect water supplies, reduce CO2, end global warming and continental glaciation, and prevent extinction-causing impacts with celestial bodies. Klumpp will speak at the Walden Forum on Tuesday, Jan. 15, at 7:30 p.m.  

After a 44-year career exploring the moon and planets, Klumpp resigned from Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2003 to devote his efforts full time to the more-important task of developing concepts for sustaining civilization indefinitely. The Walden Forum is held at the First Parish Meeting House, at the intersection of Routes 20 and 27 in Wayland, Mass.

Klumpp is responding to the second major crisis in his lifetime. The first, 1957’s launch of Sputnik, was the Soviet Union’s challenge to U.S. technical leadership. Today’s near-term threats are disappearance of the world’s fresh water,  depletion of finite sources of energy, and runaway population and atmospheric temperature. Near- and far-term threats endanger civilization. When approaching the end of a career that contributed to putting 12 men on the moon and robotic spacecraft on missions to five planets and the moon, Klumpp became increasingly concerned with whether humanity would endure challenges to its survival, which seemed easier to understand and mitigate than earlier challenges.