In 1995 UCI professor F. Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina were awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry for their discovery that chlorofluorocarbons contribute to ozone depletion. Dr. Molina was a postdoctoral researcher with professor Rowland during the 70’s when they conducted their groundbreaking research. On October 28, 2015 Dr. Molina returned to UCI to give a talk on climate change to a packed audience at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

Dr. Molina ended the talk with several suggestions that can be used to reduce our carbon emissions and limit global temperature change. “The risk is 1 in 5 that we’ll have a huge disaster on our hands if there is no change,” says Dr. Molina. “Climate change will cost more than we can measure in dollars, and beyond that are the ethics of leaving a planet to future generations in which it’s harder to get to the same standard of living we have now.”

Dr. Molina left UCI in 1979 and subsequently went to work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Currently, he holds the Distinguished Professor title in the department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at UC San Diego, and serves on President Barack Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology. Dr. Molina also founded the Mario Molina Center for Strategic Studies in Energy and Environment in Mexico City in 2004 to help promote practical solutions to climate challenges worldwide.