NOW! UBC

Dr. Bill Rees to moderate panel discussion

nowubc — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:11:04 +0000

Great news – Dr. Bill Rees, UBC’s own developer of the ecological footprint, will be moderating the “Voices for Change” panel on Thursday. Last minute excitement!

Sustainability Talks – The Speaker List!

nowubc — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:48:49 +0000

You’ve been waiting for it, here is the list of speakers for the Sustainability Talks session on FRIDAY! Each speaker will have approximately 10 minutes to give the “talk of their lives”.

1) Julie Johnston -Greening the Curriculum – Transformative Education for Sustainability

How can we create citizens for the 21st century if we’re still teaching a curriculum developed for the 20th century? Greening the curriculum means ensuring that graduates are capable of taking on the challenges of global warming and climate change, widening social inequities, unsustainable lifestyles, and the urgent need to switch to a renewable energy-based economy.
This talk will present a green school curriculum model and suggest some tools for transforming the education system without waiting for curriculum overhaul.
Julie Johnston is a teacher and consultant in transformative education for sustainability. As the Coordinator of Environment and Sustainability Programs at Toronto’s Upper Canada College, she developed a green school curriculum model to extend the many greening initiatives in our schools. She is currently the principal of GreenHeart Education (www.greenhearted.org), and lives and works on Pender Island.

2) Amelia Lukic – Kegel -4th Year Forestry Student – Pursuing a Sustainable Path After Graduation

This talk will outline Amelia’s ambitious plan to lead a group of about 16 people on a 4,800 kilometer (3,000 mile) bicycle tour of the northern United States (and part of Canada) examining the one of the most unifying thus powerful subjects of all: food. By using leg-power, Amelia and co will be visiting and staying on organic farms from coast to coast, and connecting up with local food initiatives along the way. They are partnered up with WWOOF-USA (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms- USA chapter) as well as the local social change catalysts Global Agents for Change.
Amelia is planning on showcasing how sustainable food production practices can alleviate many of the world’s worst environmental impacts (including climate change) by managing for the social componentry - It all relates back to food!

3) Dr. Dave Ng, Director of AMBL at the Michael Smith Laboratories, Terry Tales, ASIC – Phylomon Project

This talk will introdoce a new science literacy project launched in honour of the International Year of Biodiversity. The project, initiated by Dr. Ng, essentially aims to use crowd sourcing techniques to produce content for games where ecological and biodiversity literacy is broached.

4) Hunter Moyes, Chef of Burgoo Restaurant – You Are What You Eat

This talk will explore the relationship between the natural provider world and the new consumer – a classic relationship in need of a modern idealistic overhaul. It will first go over how and why the world of supply and demand can be easily seen from the standpoint of a Chef.
Hunter will go over the importance of intimately knowing one’s diet, then the true cost of the average diet, with a whole bunch of startling statistics.
Hunter will also explain how the average person can change the world by changing what they consume, and delve into the idea that the future depends on our understanding of our consumption – from diet to clothing to investment - specifically: breaking down the wall between self and world.
Bottom line: you are what you eat.

5) Spencer Rasmussen 3rd Year PoliSci and Econ Honours, UBC Senate, Common Energy Director – Sustainability Movement Building

This talk will explore what it means to build a movement and why this is important for climate action. Spencer’s talk will tackle topics such as the process of building social movements, and their possible effectiveness at instigating action on climate change. He will also examine what we can learn from previous movements and social movement theory.

6) Dr. Peter Carter - What would global climate change policy-making look like based on the Canadian health care model of universal health coverage and the medical ethics.

Dr. Peter Carter has been involved in the often frustrating work of developing environmental health policy for many years and, though shocked, is not surprised at the tragic failure of current global climate change policy-making.
This talk will explain that the obligation of his generation is not limited to trying to avoid dangerous climate change. It is to absolutely ensure greenhouse gas climate safety for the world’s children who are most vulnerable to all the impacts of climate change, for the generation of today’s youth, and for all future generations. To whatever degree the climate is allowed to change by today’s policies (or lack thereof), it will last for the next thousand years or more.

7) Claire Seaborn & Andrew Young –UBC Students & Engineers without Borders – Fair-Trade @ UBC

Does Fairtrade certification also ensure environmental standards?
This talk will explore the Fairtrade movement in the context of environmental sustainability on two levels: policies and regulations by the Fairtrade Labelling Organization and field-level experiences from a coffee cooperative in Malawi. The prominence of Fairtrade at UBC will also be discussed.

Schedule Available NOW!

nowubc — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:54:26 +0000

Interested in when things are happening during the conference? The agenda has now been released!

Click here to see it. Don’t know what’s happening in each event? Check out the descriptions in previous posts (see below).

Note: the conference is now from March 11th – March 12th during the day.

As always, you can register online here for March 11th, and here for March 12^th.

Sustainability Education Panel

nowubc — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:20:35 +0000

Time: Thursday, March 11th, 12:45 – 2:15 p.m.

The sustainability education panel will discuss a range of topics related to sustainability and higher education. The panel will challenge some of the fundamental assumptions in our current education systems, inform students about sustainability learning opportunities at UBC, highlight the importance of interdisciplinary and trans-academic education, and showcase how students can proactively green their curriculum.

Moderator:

Nicholas Coop, Professor & Co-chair, UBC Sustainability Academic Program

Panelists:

Jean Marcus, Project Manager, Advisory Committee on Academic Programs on Sustainability

Student Access to Sustainability Learning Opportunities at UBC

Kai Chan, Professor, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES)

Interdisciplinary Transacademic Education for Sustainability: Ecosystem Services as a Case Study

Tom Green, PhD Candidate, Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program

Introductory Economics Textbooks: Are They Failing the Earth?

Alexandre Hebert, Sustainability and Energy Manager, British Columbia Institute of Technology

Bottom Up or Top Down—Lessons Learned from Greening Curricula in Sauder School of Business

Tom Sullivan, Professor, Faculty of Land and Food Systems

Science and Ethic: Is Climate Change Movement a Friend or a Foe?

Voices for Change Panel

nowubc — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:58:01 +0000

Time: Thursday, March 11th, 10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

Despite the tremendous attention being given to climate change, much was left undone in Copenhagen, and public concern about global warming has been declining. Some placed great hope in the growth of low-carbon technologies, while others argued that without evolving our sense of values, this naïve hope for technofixes would only lead us further down the path of contempocentrism and anthropocentrism. This panel will sketch out the state of the climate change movement, examine the pros and cons of our current approaches, and explore what needs to be done to effectively mobilize collective change.

Moderator:

Bill Rees, Professor, School of Community and Regional Planning

Panelists:

David Beers, Founding Editor, The Tyee

The Tyee: Swim Against the Media Current

Candis Callison, Professor, School of Journalism

Translating Climate Change: Examining Meaning Making and Public Engagement

Kathryn Harrison, Professor, Department of Political Science

The Politics of Climate Policy

Emmanuel Prinet, Executive Director, One Earth Initiative

Rethinking the Good Life

Hypothetical Situation

nowubc — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:54:48 +0000

The natural scientists claim to have the ideal solutions to climate change. The economists think otherwise. The social scientists step in and disagree. Who are we to believe, and why is there so much separation and disagreement?

What if there was an opportunity to put their heads together, combine their knowledge and expertise, and analyze a hypothetical situation five, ten, twenty, fifty years from now? What can we expect based on the combination of knowledge and information that we have today?

Join us in a lively, interactive discussion with climate change experts from various backgrounds, where they share their range of perspectives on a particular hypothetical situation. This is a unique opportunity to understand how your area of study contributes to climate action.

The Hypothetical will be moderated by Stewart Cohen, Professor in the Department of Forest Resources Management, UBC. He is also a senior researcher with Environment Canada in Regional Assessments of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation.

Participating experts include:

Simon Donner, Professor, Department of Geography, UBC.

David Tindall, Professor, Department of Sociology and the Faculty of Forestry, UBC.

Jim Vercammen, Professor, Sauder School of Business and the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, UBC

Andrew Weaver, Professor, School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, UVIC.

Inter-University Videoconference

nowubc — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:52:55 +0000

Fond of the boxing kangaroo? Join LFS students March 10th @ 5 pm at the UBC Telestudios for a LIVE videoconference discussion with the University of Melbourne. It’s all about climate action, and is an excellent chance to find out what’s happening in the Land Down Under (apart from Vegemite sandwiches)!

Sociometry

nowubc — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:56:17 +0000

A continuation of our sneak peeks about NOW! Conference sessions.

Want to engage you in an informal dialogue with other conference participants about issues and debates surrounding sustainability and climate change? Check out the Sociometry session.

How it works:

A statement is made, and participants physically organize themselves in the room based on the spectrum (below), according to their current beliefs, and knowledge, of the issue. Participants may then explain why they have chosen to stand where they are. As dialogue continues, participants are free to move around if their opinion changes.

Sample statement: To replace fossil fuels, we should switch to the large-scale use of biofuels.

Spectrum

UNDERSTAND

AGREE —————–NEUTRAL—————–DISGAGREE

DON’T UNDERSTAND

Open Space Workshop: Cultivating a Community for Change

nowubc — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:17:03 +0000

Wondering what sessions are being held during NOW? Here’s a sneak peak:

Open Space Workshop: Cultivating a Community for Change

This closing session creates a space for participants of the NOW! conference to share their ideas and transform them in to tangible solutions. This session will use open space technology- an approach to collaboration that has four simple rules and only one law: move your feet! Come to this session to reflect on your learnings from the conference, meet others, and cultivate tangible solutions.

Want to Talk Sustainability?

nowubc — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:28:23 +0000

Have an idea about climate change or sustainability? Come share it at the NOW! UBC Climate Change Conference!

NOW! UBC Climate Change Conference is seeking inspirational and creative speakers for the talk of their life! Selected talks will be centered around sustainability or climate change ideas, innovations, or insights with the aim of promoting sustainable thinking and motivating students towards climate activism.

Talks will take place on March 12, 2010, specific time slot TBA shortly.

To apply:
Please send your name, contact info, one paragraph about yourself, and one paragraph outlining your talk idea (approx. 200 words each) to now.ubc(at)gmail.com. Applicants do not need to be UBC students. SFU, UVic & high school students as well as community members are encouraged to apply.

Deadline is February 28th, 2010.