Environmental Humanities Center

“The Future,” melting away (more on this installation)

Climate Futures

This Changes Everything

In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois presciently suggested that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is [and sadly throughout the century would be] the problem of the color-line.” With each passing year, it becomes increasingly difficult to deny that the most pressing issue of the twenty-first century will be that of climate change, which is inescapably caught up with race, class, gender, and a range of additional social issues and power structures.

We take our title from—and in part build the year’s activities around—the publication of arguably the most significant book so far on climate change, Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything – Capitalism versus the Climate, a New York Times non-fiction bestseller and winner of the 2014 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

Climate Futures

This Changes Everything

In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois presciently suggested that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” With each passing year, it becomes increasingly difficult to deny that the most pressing issue of the twenty-first century will be that of climate change, which is inescapably caught up with race, class, gender, and a range of additional social issues and power structures.

We take our title from—and in part build the year’s activities around—the publication of arguably the most significant book so far on climate change, Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything – Capitalism versus the Climate, a New York Times bestseller and winner of the 2014 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

This year we will be screening, both on campus and online, the film inspired by Klein’s book. View the trailer (click to play, click to pause).

our goal

We want to engage the UCSB and wider Santa Barbara community in an exciting, year-long program to critically consider the ways in which climate change has irrevocably and dangerously altered the world we live in, arguing that we cannot shrink from the challenge it presents.

Our exploration of this “wicked” problem will feature compelling public lectures, campus-wide talks, panels and workshops, a film series, creative projects, and reading groups, and will culminate in a conference in the fall of 2016.

Along the way we will involve many – we hope hundreds and thousands – of students, faculty, staff, and community members – in this journey.

This Changes Everything

our goal

We want to engage the UCSB and wider Santa Barbara community in an exciting, year-long program to critically consider the ways in which climate change has irrevocably and dangerously altered the world we live in, arguing that we cannot shrink from the challenge it presents.

Our exploration of this “wicked” problem will feature compelling public lectures, campus-wide talks, panels and workshops, a film series, creative projects, and reading groups, and will culminate in a conference in the fall of 2016.

Along the way we will involve many – we hope hundreds and thousands – of students, faculty, staff, and community members in this journey.

our message

Although many climate futures are possible – and, as we are so often told, many of them are indeed pretty glum (not to say catastrophic) – we are imagining a future in which individuals, groups, and institutions across the globe have worked to help make it a better one – ecologically sustainable, more egalitarian, deeply democratic, and joyful.

Consequently, our series will focus on the little (and some big) things that individuals, communities, and movements of hope can do to help bring about such a future.

The goal of the EHI is to foster this work and interest in it.

our message

Although many climate futures are possible – and, as we are so often told, many of them are indeed pretty glum (not to say catastrophic) – we are imagining a future in which individuals, groups, and institutions across the globe have worked to help make it a better one – ecologically sustainable, more egalitarian, deeply democratic, and joyful..

Consequently, our series will focus on the little (and some big) things that individuals, communities, and movements of hope can do to help bring about such a future.