It is a great honor to be part of this Convocation, welcoming all of you new students to UC San Diego. Most of you are still settling in, starting to make friends, and figuring out how to get around the campus. I can still remember the excitement that I felt, nine years ago when I was arriving here as a new faculty member, getting to know this youthful and dynamic campus- just like all of you! 

UC San Diego offers its undergraduate students a rare blend of academic excellence, hands-on research and public service. Whether you are here for two years, four years, or for even longer to get an advanced degree, take advantage of all the opportunities that you will only find here. The next few years will be the time you lay down the foundation for your chosen profession - whether you intend to become a scientist or politician, artist or historian, or anything in-between.  

While you are at UC San Diego, you can also play a role in tackling some of the great challenges facing our society. Today I want to focus on one of the most important and complex challenges--that of climate change or as President Obama's science adviser, John Holdren, calls it more accurately: "global climatic disruption." The countries of the world will be meeting in Copenhagen by the end of the year to craft a new set of global protocols to deal with the crises and our Congress is debating the so-called "Cap and Trade" bill on how to price carbon. You should all read Tom Friedman's book Hot, Flat, and Crowded to get a deeper understanding of the defining challenge of this century. 

There is no question that human activity is changing the Earth's atmosphere. The global scientific community is working on the climate change challenge on an unprecedented scale; over 3000 researchers from over 130 countries are publishing over 2000 papers a year, investigating the science and societal implications of global climate disruption.

Fifty years ago scientists at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography started measuring the level of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere. Their research reveals two key points: that over the last three decades the carbon dioxide level has been growing 100 times faster than the rate during the 6,000-year warming trend after the last ice age and that today's level of carbon dioxide is the highest in over two million years!

Even worse, according to an MIT report, if we don't do anything to fix the problem, by the end of this century carbon dioxide levels will more than double again - causing major disruption of the Earth's climate.

And here's the bottom line: even if carbon dioxide emissions were to stop tomorrow, which they won't, the climate change due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years. One thousand years! That means this challenge will probably be the defining issue for the rest of your lives and probably your grandchildren's grandchildren! This is why U.S. President Barack Obama said this morning at the UN that inaction on climate change could leave future generations with an "irreversible catastrophe."

The good news, though, is that each of you, and this university, can and must play an important role in minimizing the climate disruption caused by the buildup of greenhouse gas emissions. Namely, we all need to figure out ways we can slow down the rate at which we are adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The great thing about universities is that they help invent the future and at UC San Diego students are a key part of these innovations.

Now, you're probably asking yourself: how can I, as a student, really play a role in tackling a problem as huge as climate change?  Many of you have already begun to "think green" - making an effort to reduce your carbon footprint by riding a bicycle to the campus, or carpooling, or replacing your light bulbs at home. This sort of individual effort goes back a long way. I remember that when I was a first year graduate student at Stanford in 1970, I set up one of the first recycling deposit boxes on the campus.

But you can leverage that individual commitment to do something by joining teams here on campus. In the past year UC San Diego has made an across-the board commitment to sustainability and reducing its carbon footprint, and students have been front and center. If you haven't seen it yet, there is a terrific video on the Internet, created by and for students at UCSD. In it, students talk about the wide range of projects now underway to make this a vibrant "greener" campus as a model for the rest of society. It has inspired me to see our students get so engaged with the world around them! You can find it by googling videos for "uc san diego living laboratory." It's featured on the first search result.

Another example is the UC San Diego Green Campus Program which supports student interns and numerous student club members who collaborate with staff and administration to make UCSD more sustainable. The students are working in teams to make buildings more energy efficient, figuring how to convert our shuttle buses to low carbon fuels, planting native plants that require less water, and running contests to come up with the best student ideas for keeping UC San Diego in the lead as as one of the "greenest" universities in the U.S.

I'm sure you've seen those solar panels on top of UC San Diego's parking structures - they already produce over 1 megawatt of power, meaning that's 1 megawatt of electricity we are generating without the carbon fuels that create greenhouse gases. This is leadership, the kind you can be part of, as we all help meet the California law that by 2020, only 11 years from now, each of us must reduce by four tons per year the amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted to support our lifestyles.

Next year, UC San Diego will turn 50 years old, and you have arrived on the campus at a critical time in its history... and in the history of global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emission to counteract climate change. These are going to be some of the most important public-policy issues you'll face during your lifetime and universities have a major role to play. This is where new ideas can take hold... where new technologies can be developed and tested...where innovations will shape the future.

UC San Diego encourages undergraduates to participate in research from very early on, to understand how new ideas are created that can be used throughout our society. At Calit2, we just completed Year 9 of our Undergraduate Research Summer Scholars program. Two dozen students were awarded scholarships to spend the summer doing research with faculty advisors from 14 different departments. By working together, they expose each other to their own disciplines and often form cross-disciplinary teams. Many of the great challenges facing society today can only be overcome by getting researchers - and students - to work together on solutions.  In addition to the Summer Scholars program, Calit2 employs dozens of undergraduates year-round to work on different research projects, and it's not uncommon to have a political science major working alongside an electrical engineering undergrad as well as a biologist.

A final note: I was particularly happy to hear that one out of three incoming students to UC San Diego this year will be the first in their immediate family to go to college. My father's generation was the first in our family's history to graduate from college and I was the first in my family to get a Ph.D. Another third of you are transfer students. Well I was a transfer student twice and I remember how disorienting that was. But if you hang in there, you will find you can adjust in a surprisingly short time and come away with a great education. This blending together of students from many walks of life is one of the great, unsung success stories of the University of California in general, and of UC San Diego in particular.

To those of you who are the first in your family to go to college... to those of you who are transferring, or starting out as a freshman... welcome to UC San Diego, and no matter what your major is, remember: every one of us can play a part in solving the big problems facing society. Take advantage of the research and public-service opportunities before you as undergraduates... and be prepared to be amazed at how much you can accomplish. 

Thank you and on behalf of my fellow faculty members, welcome to the University of California, San Diego.