Sessions
Barbara Goldstein and Bob Sain
Public Art, Social Change and the New Urbanity
Over the last twenty years, artists have been using museums and public spaces as a forum for exploring social, community, cultural and environmental issues. Barbara Goldstein and Bob Sain will discuss temporary and permanent public art projects in the United States that have drawn from these issues to create artworks that have affected public space.
Dr. Robert Gifford
Changing Behavior: Closing the Feedback Loop
The Ten Dragons of Unsustainability, and How to Slay Them.
What are the barriers to increasing our pro-environmental behavior? Ultimately, no matter which policies are implemented at the macro level, climate change and related environmental problems can only be ameliorated one person (or one organization) at a time: each person on the planet makes daily choices, and it is the aggregation of these billions of choices that will determine many environmental outcomes. Generally, the focus has been on “10 things you can do.” However, because so many people are not doing as much as they might, the important question to answer first is, “Why are you not doing what you could do?” This talk will describe the “ten dragons of unsustainability” and offer some ways to overcome them, so we can actually get to “what you really can do.”
Dr. Saul Griffith
The Game Plan—Making Climate Protection Personal
The average American uses 11,400 Watts of power continuously. This is the equivalent of burning 114 ×100 Watt light bulbs, all the time. The average person globally uses 2,255 Watts of power, or a little less than 23 ×100 Watt light bulbs. What are the consequences of us all using this much power? What is the implied challenge of global warming in terms of how we produce power? What are the things we do as individuals in terms of using power that we might change? Wattzon.org hosts a document that gives us a framework for thinking about these challenges, and how we might change our behaviors as individuals as well as our collective behavior as societies and global citizens, if we are to meet the great challenge of the 21st century—how to live in a world where we increasingly understand the resources to be finite, and the consequences of our actions complex and intertwined. What temperature do we set climate change at? What CO2 concentration does this imply we need to aim at? How much power can we get from fossil fuels while still meeting this goal? How much power do we need to install and produce from non-carbon technologies? What does this mean for countries, corporations, and individuals?
Dr. Peter Brewer and Dr. Jim Barry
The Realities of Climate Change
Climate change associated with rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are beginning to have noticeable and significant effects on the Earth system and its marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Effects include rising temperatures on land and in the ocean, contraction of ice sheets, changes in the distribution of rainfall, increased frequency and intensity of storms, acidification of ocean waters by the absorption of excess carbon dioxide, and expansion and intensification of low-oxygen zones of the oceans. Terrestrial and marine ecosystems are responding to changing climate in several ways, such as the migration of species ranges, including human pathogens, shifts in biological productivity on land and in the oceans, and widespread bleaching and loss of coral reefs. While most assume that climate change occurs mostly on land, the oceans actually play a pivotal and dominant role in the climate system, both stabilizing climate by absorbing much (50%) of the CO2 emitted to the atmosphere as well as most (80%) of the excess heat. We provide an overview of changes in the CO2 content of the atmosphere, linkages with global climate and ocean chemistry, then discuss the real and potential consequences of ongoing and future climate change on terrestrial and marine ecosystems and society.
Dr. James Bellingham, Dr. Bette Otto-Bliesner and Dr. Marc Fischer
The Data Challenge
This panel will review the challenges associated with collecting information that unambiguously and honestly portrays the changing climate of our planet. Lessons learned from collecting climate data over the last several decades, during which time scientists have worked to separate the small but important climate signal from a background of large natural variability, will be discussed. The challenges of predicting climate will be introduced, explaining why current models have difficulty making predictions about specific consequences of warming such as changes in precipitation. Finally, the highly interconnected nature of the climate system will be discussed; explaining why changes in remote and hostile locations such as the Arctic Ocean have consequences for the entire planet.
Steve Bishop
Sustainable Design: Lessons Learned
IDEO shares what’s been learned (so far) about the intersection of sustainability and design thinking. Through examples and research, this presentation highlights opportunities to design desire for sustainable offerings that are often overlooked in favor of more tangible supply-side efficiencies.
Eric Paulos and Steve Landau
The Challenge of New Technologies
As scientists we struggle to understand, test and envision scenarios of our technological future. But as humans we have a collective higher calling—an ethical responsibility to acknowledge, address and improve our own health, the health of our environment, and promote more sustainable lifestyles. There exists both synergy and tension between the progress of technology and environmental concerns. There is little doubt that technology is able to play a vital role in the positive environmental transformation. But as scientists and citizens in this evolving field of environmental awareness and sustainability, we find more questions than answers. What are the big challenges? Are there standard approaches we can share? What will really matter? And what role will technology play? In this panel we explore the limits, potentials and consequences of new empowering technologies and real environmental change.