Friday, May 28, 2010

Conference: Environmental Justice and Green Economy

Environmental Justice, the Green Economy and the Transformation of the University Curriculum

June 4 @ 1:00-4:30pm

Bren Hall, Room 1424

The Center for Black Studies Research and the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management are sponsoring this one day mini-conference. The keynote speaker is Professor Carolyn Finney, Department of Environmental Science and Policy Management, University of California, Berkeley. Her talk will focus on the relation of African Americans to the environment and to environmental movements, organizations, and educational institutions.

Panelists as well as the audience will be asked to comment on the topic presented and on how students, faculty, and departments can integrate environmental justice and green economy concerns into the UCSB curriculum. The panelists include: Prof. Sarah Anderson, Bren School; Tiffany Mayville, EAB, Environmental Justice; Maricela Morales, CAUSE (Coastal Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy); and Prof. Clyde Woods, Center for Black Studies Research.

The panel will be followed by a reception on Decker's Deck.

This is the inaugural event for a year-long series of conversations on environmental justice, green economy, and curriculum transformation sponsored by the Center for Black Studies Research and the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management.

Co-sponsors: the Department of Black Studies, the Environmental Justice Coalition of the Environmental Advisory Board and Environmental Studies

For more information contact:
Assoc. Prof. Clyde Woods, Acting Director, Center for Black Studies Research, cwoods@blackstudies.ucsb.edu or Rori Cowan, the conference organizer, Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, Rori Cowan, rcowan@bren.ucsb.edu.

For more information on Prof. Carolyn Finney see http://ecnr.berkeley.edu/facPage/dispFP.php?I=1615

Thursday, May 27, 2010

GreenScreen Environmental Media Program

Speak out on behalf of our Planet
Participate in the GreenScreen Environmental Media Program


GreenScreen is an environmental media production program that brings together undergraduate and graduate students in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences to engage environmental issues in Santa Barbara through artistic production. The goal of the program is not only to increase awareness about the environment, but to expand the ways that these issues are represented and communicated. This involves working across disciplines, artistic genres, and developing a critical approach to environmental media production. The program is open to students from all majors.

Students interested in participating in GreenScreen during 2010-2011 are invited to enroll this Fall 2010 in Film and Media Studies 183, Films of the Natural and Human Environment (space allowing). In relation to documentary and fiction film screenings (CHINATOWN, NO IMPACT MAN, TROUBLE THE WATER, WALL-E, and more) and a multi-disciplinary array of approaches and issues, this course presents students with the conceptual tools to critically analyze environmental media works, and will offer an opportunity for students to develop their own environmental media projects in the course itself in an extra two-unit video production "lab section."

Students with video projects in development may apply for entrance into the anticipated Winter Quarter video production course, Film and Media Studies 118.

For more information, go to http://www.cftnm.ucsb.edu/Programs/EMI/Teaching/GS_splash.html,
or contact Dr. Cathy Boggs at cboggs@cftnm.ucsb.edu.

GreenScreen is a project of UC Santa Barbara's Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television, and New Media and the Department of Film and Media Studies.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Talk: Environmental Politics of a New Century: Understanding Climate Debates

Environmental Politics of a New Century: Understanding Climate Debates

Dr. Dana Fisher (Columbia University)

May 20 @ 5:00-6:15 pm
Buchanan Hall, Room 1910

Free and open to the public

Dr. Fisher is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, where she is also Director of the Environmental Stewardship Project, Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP). Dr. Fisher's book, National Governance and the Global Climate Change Regime, is one of the best analyses available about how and why climate issues play out so differently in the U.S. than in the rest of the world. Dr. Fisher is also the author of Activism, Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America.

For the New York Times article that features her work on Climate Change debates, see http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/11/02/02climatewire-coal-country-poses-the-biggest-obstacle-in-s-79147.html

Friday, May 14, 2010

TALK: Food Security and Farm Labor in California

Food Security and Farm Labor in California: A Case Study of Santa Barbara County

Monday, May 24 / 3:00 PM
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB

Presentations:
- Mexican Immigrant Farmers and Collaborate Networks in Santa Barbara County
Teresa Figueroa (Chicano/a Studies, UCSB)
- Organizing MILPA’s (Mexican Immigrant Labor and Producers’ Association) Association in Santa Maria
- Global studies and chicano/a studies undergraduates Erika Herrera, Julio Vera, Jocelyn Gutierrez, Zenaida Perez, and Brenda Navarro

Mexican immigrant families have been producing agricultural commodities in northern Santa Barbara County for almost three decades. Since the early 1980s, they have been farming multiple commodities by borrowing capital and leasing small plots from corporations. Mexican families then create sophisticated infrastructures to produce staple and luxury commodities. Mexican immigrant families turn their commodities to “culers” or shipping and distribution companies that market local commodities at global markets. The resulting poor rate of return bankrupts family farmers who, in turn, cannot pay their laborers or their loans. In the absence of regulated markets and public policy, Mexican immigrant families experience the social, economic, and legal consequences of farming luxury and staple commodities at great risk.
We have developed an applied research project to address the most pressing needs of the Latino immigrant farmers in Santa Maria by organizing an association of Mexican immigrant family farmers and small farmers and linking them with fair trade networks. We have been developing collaborative relationships with social justice organizations and educational institutions to address the social consequences of producing food in a globalized world. This project will present the opportunities and challenges encountered while addressing the multiple needs of disenfranchised farmers.

For more information: http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/food-security-and-farm-labor-in-california-a-case-study-of-santa-barbara-county/

Sponsored by IHC’s Food Studies RFG, Departments of Chicano/a Studies, Anthropology, Global Studies, Sociology, and History.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Talk: Bill Nye the Science Guy

Bill Nye the Science Guy

Wednesday, May 12, 2010 @ 8:00 PM
Campbell Hall

General public $17.00
UCSB Students $10.00

(Suitable for ages 15+)

Bill Nye the Science Guy knows just how cool science can be. His wit and enthusiasm for making science and technology entertaining and accessible is so out of this world that his PBS/syndicated series has garnered a remarkable 28 Emmy Awards. So get ready for a universe of amazing fun, from quarks and quasars, to the questions that scientists are still trying to figure out. Nye takes us on a wild ride through topics like the scientific method, matter, fundamental forces, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, waves, weather, and space – the whole family will have a blast!

For more information: https://artsandlectures.sa.ucsb.edu/Details.aspx?PerfNum=1754

Monday, May 3, 2010

Talk: Industrial Applications of Green Chemistry

Industrial Applications of Green Chemistry

Dr. Ingrid Merglesberg

Thursday, May 6th, 2010 @ 2-3pm
Bren 4016 (Env. Studies Conference Room)

FREE

Join Dr. Mergelsberg as she discusses Merck's vision of building in "Green Chemistry from the beginning of process development."

* Success stories from projects in different stages of development will be described, including "tools" and guidelines to achieve greener process design within Merck.

* The successful and sustained implementation of green chemistry solutions requires a change in behaviour and attitude across all functions.

* Several successful examples will be discussed including remaining opportunities to further increase the "greenness" of future projects.

Dr. Ingrid Mergelsberg received her PhD in organic chemistry from the University in Freiburg, Germany. She completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Rochester NY and at Hoffmann LaRoche in Basel, Switzerland. She worked for Parke Davis in Freiburg and then joined a Schering-Plough subsidiary in Lucerne, Switzerland. Her roles include chemical process development for early and late stage projects with a strong passion and dedication for green chemistry. Five years ago she relocated to NJ and now works for Merck as project lead for early process development for 3 European sites. She co-chairs the ACS Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) Pharmaceutical Roundtable since April 2009.

Co-Sponsored by: Laboratory Research and Technical Staff (LabRATS)' Green Chemistry Initiative, and The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF).

Talk: Sacred Waters: Arts and Ecologies of Mami Wata and Other Aquatic Divinities in Africa

Sacred Waters: Arts and Ecologies of Mami Wata and other Aquatic Divinities in Africa

Henry Drewal (Art History, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Thursday, May 20 / 4:00 PM
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB

Arts for sacred waters in Africa are ancient and widespread. They express deeply-held beliefs and practices about the sanctity and power of water. Mami Wata, Pidgin English for “Mother Water,” is the name of a widely worshiped deity, as well as the generic term for a vast “school” of water deities across much of the African continent. Mami Wata’s many attributes and roles are as fluid as water itself — only the frames of history and culture can give her specificity. This talk explores some of the faces and engagements of Mami Wata in selected environments — cultural and ecological.

Sponsored by the Idee Levitan IHC Endowed Lecture Series, IHC’s Oil+Water series and the Community Environmental Council.

For more information: http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/sacred-waters/

Movie: Plagues and Pleasures of the Salton Sea

Plagues and Pleasures of the Salton Sea

Introduction by Steve Witkowski (Film & Media Studies, UCSB)

Tuesday, May 18 / 3:00 PM
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB

Once known as the “California Riviera,” the Salton Sea is called one of America’s worst ecological disasters: a fetid, stagnant, salty lake, coughing up dead fish and birds by the thousands. Plagues and Pleasures of the Salton Sea covers the historical, economic, political, and environmental issues that face the sea, and it offers up an offbeat portrait of the eccentric and individualistic people who populate its shores. It is an epic western tale of fantastic real estate ventures and failed boomtowns, inner-city gangs fleeing to white small-town America, and the subjective notion of success and failure amidst the ruins of the past. Hair-raising and hilarious, part history lesson, part cautionary tale and part portrait of one of the strangest communities you’ve ever seen, this is the American Dream gone as stinky as a dead carp.

Sponsored by the IHC’s Oil+Water Series and the Community Environmental Council.

For more information: http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/plagues-and-pleasures-of-the-salton-sea/