Counterpoising Consumerism: The Seven Rs to Salvage our Society

Ryan Alaniz

There is growing public recognition that our consumerist lifestyle in the Global North is a major and ongoing cause of climate change. Yet, for most citizens the buying and throwing away of an ever-increasing amount of goods continues unabated.  Others, however, have found innovative ways to counteract this trend through their lifestyle choices.  The burgeoning counter-culture such as the degrowth movement, minimalism (tiny homes, zero waste), locavorism (eating locally grown foods, urban gardens, homesteading), and simplifying (KonMarie Method, reducing one’s carbon footprint, mindfulness), are providing individuals practical opportunities to address climate change in the immediate and question the underlying promises of capitalism—more stuff means more happiness.  This module provides readers with resources to learn about, critically teach, and implement these strategies.

Ryan Alaniz is an associate professor of sociology at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo.  Dr. Alaniz is currently affiliated with the United Nations University-Institute for Environment and Human Security and the Resilient Communities Research Institute.   In 2017 he published a book “From Strangers to Neighbors: Post-Disaster Resettlement and Community Building in Honduras (University of Texas Press 2017) and in 2016 he directed the “Disaster by Drought” Summit, which brought together United Nations scholars and West Coast academics and practitioners to discuss the impacts of water scarcity.  His research interests include: resilience, disaster recovery, community building, and subaltern (prisoner) pedagogy.

Website:www.ryanalaniz.com

Take it Outside:  Eating for the Ecosystem

Sherrilyn M. Billger and Andrew F. Smith

Most of us have strong (occasionally clashing) opinions about to best redress climate change. Whether we debate as polite discourse, lively classroom discussion, or proverbial bar-room brawls, we need to step back and take it outside. To wit, this collaboration between philosopher and entrepreneur presents strategies for enhanced learning by taking students outside.

The philosopher’s pedagogical methods in the comfort of the classroom encourage students to engage with climate issues intellectually. They obtain an essential foundation, understanding theoretical issues, scientific underpinnings, and cultural context, but are unsure about how to translate what they learn into what they can do. This frequently leads to depressive overwhelm that can fortunately be alleviated through interactions with living communities in local ecosystems. Such outings provide experiential learning about interdependence, soil health, social justice, invasive species, storm water, plant tending, etc. To be clear, what is needed is not vocational training per se, but a link between the theoretical and the practicable.

Climate change isn’t just happening out there, in the rainforests, low-lying islands, and Arctic ice sheets. It’s happening down the block where the storm drains overflow, in the park overgrown by invasive vines, and among the street trees outside the classroom window. This presentation will lay out essential elements for connecting theoretical foundations to experiential learning. We will include footage from our out-of-the-classroom activities.

This is a companion piece to “The Philosopher and the Entrepreneur” (Smith and Billger).

Sherrilyn M. Billger (PhD) is a labor economics professor turned entrepreneur and plant justice activist. Drawing upon decades of academic experience and a lifetime of plant tending, she now focuses on cultivating people–plant relationships through eco-landscaping, active education, consulting, and applied research. Current initiatives include native woodland restoration, foraging forest stewardship, community engagement, and analyzing the changing demographics of landscaping and arboriculture as they relate to environmentally sustainable business practices.

Cli-Fi, Interdisciplinary Archives, and Digital Exhibits: Strategies for Teaching Climate Change in the Literature and Composition Classroom

Danielle Crawford

Anthropogenic climate change is intimately tied to the human experience, and yet it is often regarded the terrain of environmental sciences in the college classroom. In this paper, I argue that a humanities-based approach to climate change pedagogy allows us to better understand how climate change is shaped by human interactions, imaginings, and deeply embedded social inequalities. Drawing from my own teaching experiences, I explore three different strategies for teaching climate change in college literature and composition courses: the use of cli-fi alongside non-fiction narratives, the incorporation of an interdisciplinary archive of reading materials, and the construction of digital exhibits.

For the first strategy, I argue that analyzing works of cli-fi alongside non-fiction narratives of climate change creates a productive tension with a decolonizing potential, one that allows students to address disparities between imaginings of the climate crisis, often centered in the global North, and their lived reality in the global South. For the second strategy, I note that using an interdisciplinary archive of materials, ranging from scientific articles to experimental poetry, places the science of climate change in direct conversation with its literary representations. Lastly, assigning public-facing projects, such as digital exhibits, gives students the opportunity to explore environmental issues through a multimodal platform, all while conveying the urgency of these issues to a larger audience. When taken together, it is my hope that these three strategies can help to create a more expansive, interdisciplinary climate change pedagogy that connects with students from vastly different fields of study.

Danielle Crawford is a Ph.D. candidate in the Literature Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz with a Designated Emphasis in Environmental Studies. Her research focuses on environmental disasters and the socio-ecological impact of U.S. militarization. More specifically, Danielle’s dissertation examines the relationship between weather disasters and U.S. military operations in Asia and the Pacific during the 20th and 21st centuries. Danielle has taught several undergraduate courses based in the environmental humanities, ranging from a class on literature and global climate change to a composition course on writing and place. She has also published a book chapter, featured in the collection Eco Culture: Disaster, Narrative, Discourse, which examines the relationship between U.S. empire and Super Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines.

The Role of Philosophers in Climate Change

Eugene Chislenko

The climate crisis presents what Stephen Gardiner called a “perfect moral storm,” combining major disasters, unequal vulnerabilities, and complex ethical crises concerning future generations, nonhuman animals, and the rest of nature. Philosophers have contributed to thinking through these problems. But we think much less about our own role as philosophers. What should that role be?

One answer centers on contributions to theoretical progress. But this focus leaves non-environmental philosophers little to do, and ignores our role as teachers, administrators, and citizens.

Philosophers might instead focus on lifestyle changes and political activity. But this again ignores our skills and power as teachers and administrators, and even as theorists. It compartmentalizes our work and life, instead of integrating them.

I argue that philosophers should focus on finding ways to use our distinctive training. I offer a series of practical proposals for contributions that focus on assessing arguments, drawing connections between seemingly disparate topics, facilitating group discussion, and articulating rationales. Philosophers can: (1) integrate environmental issues into a wide range of seemingly unrelated courses, which students who are not yet interested in the environment will take; (2) hold discussions, events, and reading groups for our city or neighborhood; (3) encourage campus organizations, and help climate organizations get access to our campuses; (4) advocate for sustainability in national and international organizations, as well as departments and campuses; and (5) collect and share relevant resources. Environmental ethicists, I argue, should take the lead in organizing other philosophers to have a larger impact in these ways.

Eugene Chislenko is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Temple University, specializing in ethics and moral psychology. He is a volunteer for 350.org and The Sunrise Movement, and a co-founder of Philosophers for Sustainability.

Transformative Education for Climate Action: a focus on degrowth

Laurent Cilia

“The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation.” Albert Einstein

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” Noam Chomsky

Most of the “solutions” that have been offered to address climate change remain confined, limited in their scope and methods by the hegemonic dogma of economic growth. Yet, as social and natural scientists have pointed out, economic growth is the root cause of the climate crisis, along with greater social inequality and multiple environmental issues.

We all struggle to imagine life outside capitalist logics because we’ve been told for too long that it is the best, natural, normal, and only way to organize the exchange of goods and to interact with one another. In order to design more sustainable projects we need to first envision them. In this talk I will discuss the way I introduce in the last four weeks of my course “Environment and Society” key concepts and ideas that allow the class to start thinking outside the box. Some of the key topics I address:

• Eco-social failures of capitalism
• Degrowth and steady-state economy
• The social construction of happiness
• Voluntary simplicity
• Intentional living communities
• Alternative forms of goods and service exchange

In the presentation I will list resources I use, activities, authors and concepts that I find useful to foster new ways of thinking, being, and acting in order to tackle the climate crisis and other environmental problems through an eco-social justice perspective.

I am a graduate student at CU Boulder. Formally a school teacher and long-time “environmentalist,” my graduate training focuses on environmental sociology and environmental justice. My dissertation is a qualitative study of the plight of honey bees. I interviewed large- scale beekeepers and scientists to understand how they make sense of the phenomenon initially coined CCD and what do about it. I look at the problems of honeybees as illustrative of broader issues with industrial agriculture, animal farming, and the collapse of biodiversity.

Hot Potato, Hot Potato, Hot Potato Planet: Games and Non-Formal Education for Teaching Climate Justice

Noa Cykman

In the educational process, the pedagogical form and the covered content have mutual implication. To speak of nature and environmental justice in an educational model created in the image of modernity is a contradiction a priori. The modern form of education, present in most Western educational institutions, carries the inheritance of the Industrial Revolution and of the Enlightenment in its hierarchical, regularizing, disciplinary, fragmentary, objectivist format. This approach is expressed both in the treatment of students and in the treatment of knowledge. By emphasizing separation at the expense of connection, mechanics at the expense of affection, and seriousness (or its theater) rather than amusement, this formatting opposes environmental education in multiple levels: it diminishes the ability to see and establish connections; it stifles students’ creativity and taste; it minimizes or ignores sensitivity; it cultivates an epistemological paradigm that aims at knowledge in order to dominate nature.

On the other hand, “alternative” educational foundations resonate with new and different forms of knowing nature and experiencing it. From my experience in the field of non-formal education (that which occurs in unofficial educational institutions; in my case, a youth movement), I propose an analysis of the use of non-conventional methodologies to address the theme of environmental justice, in particular, the use of games. Thanks to interactive and playful activities, the group exercises in unity the construction of knowledge and the practice of values ​​in question – interaction, cooperation, responsibility, sincerity, affection, creativity, imagination. Two activities (already developed and used) will serve as examples to narrate possibilities and inspire others.

Noa Cykman has a BA in Social Sciences with emphasis on teaching, and an MA in Political Sociology, from the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. She has developed research and work in alternative educational methods, bridging from non-formal strategies for high school and for the university.

Community Engaged Research for Local Climate Action through a Campus-Community Partnership

Victoria Derr, Nancy Faulstich, Ana Gonzalez, Abigail Melchor-Aguila, Kianni Ledezma, and Sergio Guzman

Community engaged research can take many forms, including research within community settings and courses that focus on community engaged learning. The heart of community engaged research is actively involving local people in decisions that affect them. Participatory practices shift the emphasis from government action and decision-making to democratic engagement, where all members of a community have expertise on the places where they live and can meaningfully contribute to shaping their physical structure and policies. Partnerships between communities and universities can provide rich spaces for critical inquiry, challenging inequitable structures and allowing students and communities to foreground issues of central importance to them.

In this presentation we will share a case example of community engaged research that began with a community-based non-profit called Regeneración: Pajaro Valley Climate Action in the central coast of California. Regeneración initially worked with community members, volunteers, and San Jose State University to develop and conduct a survey about how residents experienced changes in their environment related to pollution and climate change, and to identify priorities for local action. In a second phase, Regeneración partnered with faculty and students at the California State University Monterey Bay’s Environmental Studies program to complete additional analysis of this data, teasing out variations among farmworkers and other residents, ethnicities and languages, gender, age, and home ownership. Some students partnered with Regeneración in service learning roles as well. Through this presentation we will highlight the value of this process from community, faculty, and student perspectives.

Dr. Victoria Derr is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB). She partnered with Regeneración in the teaching of the Environmental Studies Research Methods course in the Fall of 2018 and continues to support students in this partnership through independent research.

 Nancy Faulstich is the Executive Director of Regeneración: Pájaro Valley Climate Action, whose vision is “a community that has achieved climate justice so all people in the Pájaro Valley can live in harmony with the natural world.”

Ana Gonzalez is an Environmental Studies major and Chicanx Studies minor at CSUMB and participated in the research methods course and as a service learner.

Abigail Melchor-Aguila grew up in the Pájaro Valley and is an Environmental Studies major who also participated in the research methods course and as a service learner.

Kianni Ledezma is an Environmental Studies major who was a service learner with Regeneración; in addition to outreach events, Kianni conducted California-based policy analysis on climate justice for farmworkers.

Sergio Guzman immigrated to the United States from Oaxaca, Mexico in 1986 and has worked as a farm worker and in various positions with the United Farm Workers Union for more than 20 years. He is currently employed as a community organizer with Regeneración.

What Fosters Inclusive Environmental Identities? A Panel Discussion of “Insider” and “Outsider” Experiences

Isabel Romo-Hernandez, Victoria Derr, Amanda Baugh, and Ana Gonzalez

The overwhelming nature of the climate crisis can lead students to feel powerless and to think that climate change is a problem for other people (e.g., experts and politicians) to solve. A sense of powerlessness to make a difference can be compounded for students who come from under represented backgrounds or are the first in their families to attend college, because extant teaching resources can often perpetuate the myth that environmentalism is a movement for white elites. Yet courses that deliberately explore identities can help students construct culture- and life-affirming views of themselves that are aligned with a wide range of ways of being in and supporting actions for the environment.

The purpose of this round-table presentation is to share our own approaches for helping students reflect on their own cultural values and histories in order to identify their own culturally relevant, but previously underappreciated, eco-friendly values and behaviors. The presentation consists of a recorded Zoom conversation among four panelists: two professors and two students. In the first half of the presentation, each panelist will offer a brief, 2-3 minute response to the question: “What are times when you felt like an “insider” or an “outsider” to environmentalism?”“ In the second half of the roundtable discussion, the panelists will engage in dialogue with each other in order in order to identify challenges and opportunities for cultivating environmental identities in college classrooms and communities.

Amanda Baugh is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at California State University, Northridge, and director of CSUN’s Program in Civic and Community Engagement. She specializes in the study of religion, race, and environmental values among diverse American groups.

Isabel Romo-Hernandez graduated from California State University, Northridge with a double-major in Religious Studies and Psychology. She is currently completing a Master of Social Work at California State University Dominguez Hills. Her MSW capstone project, “Youth Participatory Action Research and Environmental Justice” utilizes youth participatory action research to explore youth engagement in environmental justice.

Victoria Derr is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at California State University, Monterey Bay. She focuses on the intersections between sustainable communities, place-based environmental education, and social justice, particularly in under-represented communities.

Ana Gonzalez is an Environmental Studies major and Chicanx Studies minor at California State University, Monterey Bay. She is interested in environmental and social justice, policy formation and advocacy, and playing an active role in shaping a more sustainable future.

Applying Systems Thinking to Address the Climate Crisis

Daniel Fernandez

As someone who has joined the growing, yet still relatively nascent, field of systems thinking, I can attest to the mind-opening connections that participation in this practical, yet scholarly, area of teaching, research, and praxis enables.  Systems thinking involves consideration of multiple factors that affect a phenomenon of interest.  At its best, it engenders a holistic view of factors that influence given phenomena, issues, or situations.  

One of the unique features of systems thinking is its inherently interdisciplinary outlook.  That is, influencing factors are not disciplinarily silo-ed, so the ability to integrate considerations outside of traditional boxes is key to effective systems thinking.  

Systems thinking is a means of helping to sort out and distinguish the complex array of physical, chemical, biological, ecological, social, political, and cultural factors that can influence a given problem or issue.  Through the development of a conceptual model that can later be fleshed out into a more formalized physical model (known as a stock-and-flow model), we have the opportunity to analyze the impact of different factors on the issue in an integrative (rather than solely in an independent, discrete) fashion.

Furthermore, the stock-and-flow conceptual and/or quantitative models applied in most systems thinking contexts tend to be quite ubiquitous in the sense that this paradigm can be applied to most (if not all fields) to derive greater insight and understanding into the cross-disciplinary similarities and differences between them. Examples abound.  This presentation will further clarify systems thinking and will describe examples of systems thinking approaches that can be applied in various disciplinary contexts, including the world climate

Teaching Climate Justice Movements and Systemic Alternatives

John Foran

The study and practice of climate justice involves communicating ideas, actions, and visions of the future, which means that the climate justice movement is an integral part of climate justice studies.

This movement is best understood as a network of many movements – global in scope, diverse in nature, and a topic that most students already (or soon enough will) perceive as highly relevant to their lives.

Because teaching and studying climate change (really, the climate crisis) can understandably provoke anxiety, I have found it indispensable to emphasize the climate justice movement(s) in my courses – for the sheer sense of empowerment, capacity, courage, and excitement this generates among students.

For this reason, familiarity with the climate justice movement should be in all scholars’ and students’ toolkits.

Equally important, in addition to showing how today’s powerful intersectional climate justice movements are helping halt and reverse the process of fossil fuel- and industrial agriculture-based capitalism, our students need to discover and explore the many alternatives that exist for a different way of life.

For me, the most hopeful systemic alternatives include the Transition Town and ecovillage movements, ecosocialism and ecofeminism, the Latin American cosmovision of buen vivirand the Rights of Mother Earth along with other alternatives – often indigenous in origin – from the global South, and the Northern concept and movement for degrowth.

Finally, I suggest ways to make these movements and ideas tangible by introducing my students’ desire to turn nearby Isla Vista into “Eco Vista,” and design a model that other college students might want to apply.

John Foran teaches classes on “Earth in Crisis,” “Climate Justice,” “Activism,” and “The World in 2050” in Sociology and Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  He likes to connect his teaching with his research and activism within the global climate justice movement, and advocates that in view of the climate crisis, teachers need to become activists, publish their work in open access format, and address their students and the general public rather than a handful of academics in their fields.  Care for our current and future students demands this of us, and is a higher calling than academia itself.

Deepening our Understanding of Climate Adaptation and Resilience

Summer Gray

As climate change wreaks havoc on communities near and far, much attention has been paid to mitigation, or curbing carbon emissions (and for good reason). However, in direct response to changes in the environment, projects of adaptation are being played out in the real world, in real time, garnering far less attention and scrutiny. Meanwhile, the language of “adaptation” and “resilience” has signaled a seemingly hopeful turn in the climate change discourse. Yet some argue that policies touting these terms can tend towards conservative politics, avoiding questions concerning what is being sustained, and for whom, while shifting responsibility away from state agencies and the wealthy.

This presentation offers an introduction to critical climate adaptation as a pathway for understanding processes of vulnerability in the context of global environmental change. It draws on insights from literature on resilience, including early resilience and climate adaptation framings and critiques, stressing the importance of inclusive and just climate adaptation planning. It asks how a critical climate adaptation framework might build upon climate and environmental justice frameworks to better serve those who are undergoing processes of vulnerability.

Using the case of the Maldives as an example, I analyze how tropes of climate adaptation may serve to legitimate lesser known environmental injustices through the proliferation of seawalls and land reclamation projects. Finally, I explore how a critical climate adaptation framework might build on insights from others, including those who advocate for “deep adaptation.”

Summer Gray is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at UC Santa Barbara, where she teaches courses on infrastructure, adaptation, and the environment. She is also a founding member of the Climate Justice Project at UC Santa Barbara and a DIY filmmaker. Summer’s research is focused on connecting practices of shoreline stabilization with the emerging and uneven geographies of sea change, especially in low-lying countries and island nations. Her work highlights the lived experiences of coastal communities throughout the world facing the threat of sea change and the unintended consequences of coastal development and sand mining.

Resilience and Renewal in the Marshall Islands:  A Place Based Analysis of Climate Change Response

Laura M. Hartman

The Republic of the Marshall Islands, a low-lying island nation in the Pacific Ocean, sees the effects of climate change daily. Well-established trees are falling over due to coastal erosion; ancient graveyards are flooded by rising tides; inhabitants may have to evacuate in coming decades.

In this presentation, I use a new theoretical framework – the Emplacement Framework (Barron et al., forthcoming) – to analyze the response to climate change on the Marshall Islands. I note the rhetoric of resistance to outside solutions: Marshallese, while deeply dependent on foreign aid, seek to address the threat of rising seas through greater self-sufficiency. They have instituted ambitious solar energy projects and seek to reinvent import-dependent diets through a renaissance of urban gardening. I explore these projects as responses to historic displacement and misplacement, and discuss efforts toward replacement and emplacement. Finally, I analyze the threats to Marshallese graveyards as an example of displacement in place (Nixon 2011). The eroding graveyards bring into stark focus the question of relocation, on which the Marshallese are (mostly) adamant: In the words of Marshallese poet Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner: “But most importantly you tell them / we don’t want to leave / we’ve never wanted to leave / and that we / are nothing / without our islands” (2017).

Marshall Islanders know the threat of climate change is real but are choosing neither displacement nor misplacement: they are choosing their own type of emplacement, which involves revitalizing local agriculture, investing in technologies of self-sufficiency, and renewing cultural ties.

Dr. Laura M. Hartman teaches environmental humanities at Roanoke College (VA). Her training is in religious ethics and she has interests in transportation ethics, environmental justice, climate engineering, consumption/consumerism, and interreligious dialogue.

Climate Change: Who should be Teaching It? To whom should We be Teaching It? How should we be Teaching It?

Ken Hiltner

A number of individuals, ranging from theorist Tim Morton to the authors of Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming (a principal text denying anthropogenic climate change, published by the Heartland Institute), have speculated that climate change is simply too large an issue for any one person to grasp. While this has all sorts of far-reaching implications, what in particular does it mean for teaching? In other words, since scholars from scores of disciplines are studying the issue, who among them should teach climate change? Of course, in various ways we all should. However, if a broad, introductory course were to be offered, who should teach it? And to whom should we be teaching it? To our students, of course, but should we also, given the urgency of the issue, be directing ourselves to the public as well? If so, then how should we be teaching climate change both within academia and out? These are not idle questions for me, as I am in the process of preparing a new large lecture introducing climate change that is equally meant for our students and the public.

Ken Hiltner is a professor in the English and Environmental Studies Departments at UC Santa Barbara.  He has written a number of books and articles, mostly on ecocriticism. Prior to becoming a professor, he made his living as a furniture maker.

Vegan Studies: Modeling Adaptive & Sustainable Pathways Forward

Jessica Holmes

This presentation explores the potential of an interdisciplinary “vegan studies” curriculum in helping to cultivate a “Next Earth.” While environmentally focused teaching and scholarship intermittently include mention of animal agriculture’s carbon footprint and fields of thought in animal studies contemplate ethical questions regarding the use and treatment of animals, the connection between animal exploitation and widespread issues of sustainability and justice has and continues to be overlooked in higher education. This is due to a variety of reasons, not least of which is the pervasive entanglement between food and identity.

My presentation makes an argument for the inclusion of vegan studies in collegiate institutions as vital to cultivating a regenerative, resilient and sustainable future society. I will draw on the work of Laura Wright in order to outline the inescapable intersections between vegan studies and fields such as ecocriticism, feminism, posthumanism and the environmental humanities and to underscore not only the value, but the necessity of delineating and implementing this new area of study in our classrooms.

I will then briefly explore several models for a curricular framework in vegan studies, placing particular focus on how this area of study might support students in navigating the multifarious social, cultural and affectively fraught narratives of the present moment and equip them with tools with which to rewrite those narratives themselves, in search of more ethical, equitable and sustainable modes of living.

The objective of a vegan studies curriculum, I argue, is not just to examine the ethical and environmental dimensions of a particular lifestyle or diet, but moreover to productively contemplate the underlying capitalist structures of what Kathryn Gillespie calls “a fundamentally extractive system reliant on social relations that extract labor and energy from the humans and animals on whom the system relies, as well as their very bodies.”

I argue that the substantial overlap between environmental sustainability, social justice issues and animal rights which a vegan studies seeks to critically illuminate productively informs our increasingly interdisciplinary teaching frameworks and classroom discussions; the inclusion of vegan studies in higher education curricula would expand our capacity for functional adaptation and practical strategies, as we seek out new modes of critical thinking, advocacy and change both inside and outside the classroom.

Jessica Holmes is a PhD candidate in English Language and Literature at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, where she also teaches in the English department. Her specialties include contemporary poetry, environmental humanities, and animal studies. She received a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from the University of Washington (2015) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in English from Lewis & Clark College (2011). Her creative and critical work has been published in Auto/Biography Studies, TRANSverse Journaland the West Trade Review. Jessica serves as the Assistant Director for the University of Washington in the High School program and co-founded the Teaching Workshop on Environment at the University of Washington. In her spare time, she participates in public-facing environmental and animal rights advocacy both online and in the Seattle area. She was born in Norwich, England.

What’s Cookin? American Teens & Sustainable Food Systems

Grace A. Lavin and Sophie Christman

How can American teenagers help curb climate change?

In the US, children aged 0-18 represent a quarter of the overall population and therefore represent a transformative force for US climate change remediation (Kaiser Family Foundation). Our presentation for “Next Earth” Teaching Climate Change Across the Disciplines” offers a practical youth-led solution that responds to the UN Millennium Development Goal #12: Responsible Consumption and Production. We work from the premise that American teenagers are sophisticated food consumers whose daily dining choices are largely unsustainable. As panel moderators, our goal is to prompt American youth to contribute sustainability solutions by becoming aware of the central role that food consumption plays in climate change. For instance, according to the BCFN Foundation, “a meatless menu cuts an individual’s ‘water footprint’ by nearly half, at a time when water scarcity is increasing around the world” (Tweet, Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition, 3/22/19, 7:47am).

Our panel will be moderated by a university educator and a teenage vegetarian. Our video presentation will first provide a theoretical overview of the needs for sustainable food consumption, and then raise awareness of plant-based diets with teen testimonials on vegetarianism, followed by an instructional sequence highlighting vegan cooking methods, and we will conclude by interviewing a staff member from The Impossible Burger. We will publicize our panel to high school students in all fifty states in order to engage in lively and youth-led conversations, questions, and ideas. Our Q & A session will focus on three questions: how can we individually exercise sustainable food choices in our daily lives? How can we democratically intervene to change food systems in our schools? How can we exercise civic duty by becoming lifelong sustainable eaters?

Grace Lavin is a rising high school senior who has practiced vegetarianism for five years. Her research interests focus on sustainable food systems and race, gender, and sexuality studies. As a Green Teen activist, she is an active participant in her school’s sustainability club and has participated in numerous climate initiatives such as The Climate March and Go Green. 

Sophie Christman is a professor, editor, and writer whose researcher interests include environmental humanities, ecocinema studies, and political and cultural ecologies. Her scholarship and reviews have been in Adaptation, Dickens Studies Annual: Essays in Victorian Fiction, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, The Journal of Ecocriticism, the Journal of International Comparative Literature, Kritika Kultura and The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. She has been the principal and co-principal investigator on numerous federal, state, and local grants. She is currently at work on a monograph entitled “The Sustainable Citizen.” Visit her website at: drsophiechristman.net.

Teaching and Learning Climate Change in the Humanities at Michigan Technological University

Emma Lozon

This proposed talk would address experiences of teaching and learning climate change in the humanities, situated within literature on ecocomposition and environmental humanities such as Paul Lynch’s discussion of an “apocalyptic turn” in composition and Derek Owens’s pedagogical concept of sustainability. I would speak briefly to my experiences taking graduate-level courses in climate change communication and climate change policy, taught respectively by an environmental rhetorician and an atmospheric chemist. The latter course was especially interdisciplinary in its scope, with a disciplinarily diverse class as well as invited speakers from various fields. Taking these courses shaped my academic scholarship and led me to become a mediator of change in my own classroom as a graduate teaching instructor.

Since technical communication includes communicating about specialized topics, climate change was incorporated as a structuring theme for the technical and professional communication course I that taught. Following calls to engage with service learning in technical communication courses, the class worked with a local climate change advocacy group to produce climate-change-related documents such as flyers and webpages. While the service learning component could be further strengthened in the future to produce additional usable documents, many of the students reacted positively to the project. The focus on climate change communication, in its complexity and contingency, foregrounded engagement with critical literacy alongside rhetorical and technological literacies.

Emma Lozon is a PhD student in Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture at Michigan Technological University. Her research interests include climate change communication and ecological rhetoric. She has taught first-year composition, technical communication, and worked in writing center administration.

The Ecopoesis Project: Advocating Logics of Future Coexistence

Adam Marcus, Leslie Carol Roberts, and Chris Falliers

The practice of ecological storytelling by writers, designers, and artists produces texts, objects, and speculative representations often towards a polemic and often in isolation by discipline. The history of ecological storytelling, from Paleolithic cave paintings to utopian promises and dystopian warnings, illustrates an evolving sense of human relational identity to nature. As our everyday lives are increasingly suffused by the impacts of climate change and climate chaos, we must craft new narratives that critically reframe the language, syntax, diction, form, media, and representation of ecologies.

This paper presents the Ecopoesis Project at California College of the Arts (CCA), an interdisciplinary curricular initiative situated within this shifting philosophical and ontological context, committed to investigating ecological storytelling at the intersection of the arts, humanities, and design. This project generates humanistic knowledge, new narratives, and interdisciplinary forms of practice and pedagogy around questions of ecologies that challenge disciplinary norms.

The Ecopoesis Project is a collaboration of CCA’s MFA Writing Program and the Architectural Ecologies Lab (AEL), offering a platform for interdisciplinary discussion of ecologies as form and language. The project is a multi-year cycle of spring symposia/workshops followed by a fall publication of the collaborative output in 11.11, CCA’s literary journal. The inaugural workshop will take place in April 2019 and will include thirty participants from across disciplines of art, design, science, policy, and philosophy. The event is framed around the work of ecological philosopher Timothy Morton, and will conclude with a keynote by Morton discussing his work and the output of the workshop.

The paper will discuss the genesis of the project, its synthesis of creative practices adapted from literature and architectural pedagogies, and the results of this April’s first collaborative workshop, which will produce a series of collective drawings exploring new narrative approaches to ecological change.

Adam Marcus is an architect and educator whose work explores ways in which emerging technologies of design and fabrication can interface with new modes of ecological performance. He directs Variable Projects, an award-winning design and research studio that operates at the intersection of architecture, computation, and fabrication. Marcus is an Associate Professor of Architecture at CCA, where he teaches design studios in computational ecology and digital fabrication, co-directs CCA’s Architectural Ecologies Lab, and collaborates with CCA’s Digital Craft Lab. From 2011 to 2013, Marcus was the Cass Gilbert Design Fellow at University of Minnesota School of Architecture. Marcus currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture. Marcus is a graduate of Brown University, where he studied art and architectural history, and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

Leslie Carol Roberts, MFA, MA, is a writer and research scholar whose research is aimed at understanding ecologies through the lens of the humanities; her work focuses on Antarctic and Pacific Rim ecologies. She is the author two peer-reviewed books, The Entire Earth and Sky: Views on Antarctica(University of Nebraska Press, 2008; Bison Books, 2012) and Here Is Where I Walk: Episodes from a Life in the Forest(University of Nevada Press, 2019.) Roberts was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and was in residence at Gateway Antarctica International Research Center in Christchurch, New Zealand. She has taught at the University of Iowa and as Distinguished Visiting Writer at St. Mary’s College of Moraga; over the last ten years, she has held administrative leadership positions at CCA.

Christopher Falliers’ professional and academic practice engages in architecture, public art, architectural design, and urban/architectural research. Falliers practices as an architect for individual clients, in a design partnership focused on public, temporary architectures, and works collaboratively with artists in the public sphere. Academically, Falliers teaches architectural design and advanced seminars on design method, urbanism, and public art/architectural interfaces. Falliers’ research focuses on parametric design tools engaging theme and variation within the simultaneous control of architectural and urban formation, and on the underlying political social, and design mechanisms producing public space. Falliers is a graduate of the University of Colorado and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the chair of the inaugural 2019 Ecopoesisworkshop, and has structured the workshop to interface with his concurrent graduate seminar “Cloud Cities.”

Centering Indigenous Perspectives on Climatic Change

Beth Rose Middleton and Chris Adlam

A focus on Indigenous framing of climate change issues, and Indigenous leadership in responding to, adapting to, and mitigating climate change can transform non-Indigenous ways of conceptualizing, teaching about, and collaborating and mobilizing in response to climate change. Framing may be thought of in at least two ways: first, Indigenous traditional knowledge and long-term stewardship of places results in detailed Indigenous knowledge of changes over time that may expand, support, and/or challenge Western scientific observations; secondly, Indigenous experience with forced relocation, seizure and mismanagement of homelands and waters results in assessments of climatic change and its driving and mitigating factors that are deeply socio-political and spur work for justice. Indigenous leadership in adapting to and mitigating climatic change includes diverse strategies including Native land trusts and other conservation initiatives, advocacy for dam removal, re-integration of traditional burning into landscape stewardship, and even modification of carbon offsets. Drawing on Dr. Daniel Wildcat’s notion of Indigeneuity (“Indigenous ingenuity”), this paper highlights diverse Indigenous approaches to understanding and addressing climatic change, juxtaposes these with mainstream approaches, and offers suggestions for more justice-oriented, place-based, collaborative and respectful work to prepare for, mitigate, and respond to climate change in ways that center Indigenous rights and epistemologies.

Beth Rose Middleton is Associate Professor and Chair, Dept. of Native American Studies, University of California, Davis.  Her research centers on Native environmental policy and Native activism for site protection using conservation tools, and her broader research interests include rural environmental justice, federal Indian law, Afro-Indigeneity, Indigenous analysis of climate change, and qualitative GIS. Her books Trust in the Land: New Directions in Tribal Conservation(UA Press 2011) and Upstream(UA Press 2018) focus on Native applications of conservation easements, and on the history of Indian allotment lands at the headwaters of the California State Water Project, respectively. Beth Rose’s current projects focus on tribal participation in the carbon market, Indigenous legal history in California, and intersecting Afro- and Indigenous Caribbean histories.Beth Rose is passionate about increasing under-represented perspectives, especially Indigenous perspectives, in academia and in environmental policy and planning.

Why Should We Reduce Our Own Emissions? 

Howard Nye

Why should we reduce our GHG emissions if our individual reductions seem almost certain to make no difference? Such worries about the causal efficacy of a given party reducing its emissions have been used as excuses for individuals to live high carbon lifestyles and wait for governments to address climate change. But exactly similar concerns about the efficacy of individual contributions are also used as excuses for individuals to refrain from participating in political action to address climate change, and indeed for governments themselves to ignore the issue. For instance, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration defended its fuel efficiency rollbacks on the grounds that other actors’ GHG emissions will cause harmful climate change regardless of what the NHTSA does.

According to the expected consequences approach, these causal inefficacy arguments are misguided. We should reduce our emissions because they have small risks of causing great harm, which outweigh the expected benefits of our emitting. The expected consequences approach has recently been challenged by Benward Gesang’s contention that it may be genuinely impossible for our emissions to make a difference. In this paper I defend the expected consequences approach. I argue that Gesang has shown at most that our emissions could have indeterministic effects that lack precise objective chances. I contend, moreover, that the expected consequences approach can draw upon existing extensions to cases of indeterminism and imprecise probabilities to successfully explain the moral responsibilities of governments, political actors, and individual emitters to do what they can to reduce GHG emissions.

Howard Nye is an Associate Professor, Associate Chair, Undergraduate Studies, and Honours Advisor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Alberta. He works primarily in the areas of normative ethics, practical ethics, and metaethics, and has related interests in political philosophy, the philosophy of mind, and decision theory. His recent publications include “Well-Being, Self-Regarding Reasons, and Morality,” “NonConsequentialism Demystified,” “Directly Plausible Principles,” and “The Wrong Kind of Reasons.” Much of Howard’s current research investigates challenges to the common assumption that life is less of a morally important benefit to beings who lack the intellectual abilities of typical human adults.

The Perceptual Experience of Nature in Digital Media: Researching Tools for Environmental Education

Perla Carrillo Quiroga

Although globally the need to preserve the environment is recognized, environmental education still has to find creative and innovative ways to get its message across. The concern for climate change has become one of the dominant discourses in social media and popular culture worldwide. Media technologies offer the potential to engage global audiences through increasingly interactive and immersive interfaces. My research explores the ways in which digital technologies such as 360 video and virtual reality are used in environmental education to provoke a deeper sense of affective empathy by providing a perceptual experience that is increasingly subject-based and embodied. It concerns an interdisciplinary approach to the study of perception, using key concepts from phenomenology, cognitive studies and neuroscience to understand the perceptual processes that occur during the experience of environmental media. The hypothesis behind this study is that immersive media generate a more intense sensation of spatial presence, that is, the sensation of being inside a virtual environment. Creating the necessary conditions for an increase in the experience of spatial presence can be key to raise the persuasive power of environmental messages and in this way positively impact attitudes and behaviours towards environmental problems. This research proposes a correlational hypothesis that links immersive media with a long-term positive impact on environmental education. The intensification of spatial presence involved in the use of immersive media, increases an empathic response in the user towards specific contents and problems, achieving a greater understanding of locally specific problems and a greater degree of empathy towards the individuals and communities involved.

Perla Carrillo Quiroga is a full-time professor and researcher at the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences at Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas in México. She studied a master’s degree in Global Media at the University of East London, a postgraduate certificate in Assistance Learning and a PhD in Film Studies at the University of Westminster in London, UK.She is a member of the National System of Researchers in Mexico and has published about embodiment and perception in documentary film studies and practice-based research in different countries. She currently produces the TV series ‘Ciencia Para Niños’at TVUAT, Department of Television at the Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas.

Teaching the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Garth Sabo

In Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Rob Nixon cites a need “to engage a different form of violence, a violence that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales.” This form of violence is evident in responses to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It captured the public imagination when it was imagined as a vast island of floating trash the size of Texas. When subsequent study revealed the gyre to be substantially less visible but no less disastrous, the reaction changed. An editorial in the March 2011 edition of the trade publication Canadian Plastics even portrayed the plastics industry as the victims of fake news, claiming the story “finally sprang a fatal leak, as it almost always does.”

The stories we tell about ecological crises affect the responses they receive. Responding to Nixon’s call for representations across a range of scales, I draw from texts across several genres to capture slow violence in the accumulation of perspectives on the same disaster. The preliminary syllabus my project suggests includes graphic texts (Harris and Morazzo’s Great Pacific, Rachel Hope Allison’s I’m Not a Plastic Bag), literary novels (Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being), and experimental music (James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual), and concludes with Laura Parker’s National Geographicarticle reporting the discovery of microplastics within human stool to show how, without proper action, the Garbage Patch will come to us.

Garth Sabo is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at Michigan State University. His research explores intersections between contemporary literature, material ecocriticism, and the medical humanities. His dissertation project proposes new ways of theorizing human waste in light of new discoveries in the human microbiome and ecological embeddedness.

What You See Isn’t Always What You Get: Embodied Cognition and the Prospect of Climate Change Education through Computer Gaming and Simulation

Gui Sanches de Oliveira

Climate change is a complex spatiotemporally-extended phenomenon that cannot be directly observed: rather, scientific knowledge of climate change is largely dependent upon advanced computational techniques for data analysis, modeling and simulation. Philosophers of science have written about the epistemological challenges associated with computational climate modeling, including the question of how the “uncertainties” inherent to the models can yield certainty about climate change itself (e.g., Lloyd 2010, Parker 2011). Here I extend on these philosophical analyses to consider the pedagogical challenges posed by computer-mediated knowledge of climate change.

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the use of computer tools to support education about climate change, from interactive visualizations and simulations to virtual role-playing games (see, e.g., Eisenack and Reckien 2013a,b; Wu and Lee 2015). I draw from theories in embodied cognitive science to assess the promise and perils of this approach.

Embodied cognition, broadly construed, is the view that thinking and problem solving are not abstract processes that go on inside a person’s head, but rather are constituted by how we use our bodies and interact with the environment (see, e.g., Chemero 2009; Noe 2004, 2009; Gallagher 2017). Embodied cognitive science thus generally lends support to active-learning and computer-aided climate change education. Yet, I argue that embodied cognitive science also suggests that the pedagogical efficacy of computational tools will depend on the tools’ affordances (and their relation to affordances of real-life situation), which I illustrate with examples of current games and simulations.

Gui Sanches de Oliveira is a PhD candidate in philosophy and MA candidate in experimental psychology at the University of Cincinnati. His research combines theoretical and empirical resources to understand problem solving (especially in science) as an embodied phenomenon. Of special interest are issues arising at the intersection of ecological psychology, environmental ethics, and environmental science. In his free time, Gui works with his wife on their backyard farm that includes miniature goats, rabbits, chickens, and a vegetable garden.

Contemporary Cli-Fi and Indigenous Futurisms

Nicole Seymour and Briggetta Pierrot

While contemporary Cli-Fi imagines futures drastically distorted by climate change, it often does so through the lens of a white male protagonist. If the protagonist is not white or male, then perhaps it uses Western cities as a focal point for illustrating the toll of climate change. Often times contemporary cli-fi uses both frameworks in the same storyline and, as a result, the focus on solving, adapting to, or navigating climate change is notably skewed toward Western ideals. Within this Western, white context of Cli-Fi, representations of Indigenous culture can be found, but these are often appropriative or ignore Indigenous contributions to modern environmental literature and theory.

As part of an independent study, we examined four contemporary Cli-Fi works (Nathaniel Rich’s 2013 novel Odds Against Tomorrow; the 2013 film adaptation by Bong Joon-ho of the graphic novel series Snowpiercer—originally created by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette in 1982; Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2017 novel New York 2140; Rita Indiana’s novel Tentacle—originally published in 2015 and translated into English in 2019). We used the concept of Indigenous Futurisms and Dr. Grace Dillon’s (Anishinaabe) idea of “vibrant Indigenous presence” as reference points, examining to what extent these works represent, or fail to represent, such presence.

Briggetta Pierrot is an undergraduate student at Cal State Fullerton with an interest in literature and the environment. She is currently taking an independent study course with Nicole Seymour, a faculty member at Cal State Fullerton who works on cli-fi, queer ecologies, and environmental justice.

Future STEM Teacher Readiness toward Inquiry-based Learning for All Students through a Collaborative Community of Practice with a Focus on Ocean Acidification

Corin Slown

Global temperature rise and rapid acidification of the oceans signal climate change threatening a number of marine ecosystems. Engaging the next generation of advocates begins in our local communities. Leveraging STEM inquiry around critical issues in climate change learning experiences, such as ocean acidification, increases student engagement and achievement to advocate and empower conservation. By positioning future teachers of STEM students to access prior knowledge, develop conceptual frameworks, and engage in metacognition in an authentic context working with middle school students (6th grade), early teaching experiences incorporate targeted STEM practices coupled with instructional coaching to help students engage in addressing climate change.  The use of three strategies increases the quality of STEM instruction 1) a Next Generation Science Standards aligned STEM lesson, 2) a valid and reliable STEM-focused teaching tool, such as our STEM Implementation Rubric, and 3) a Community of Practice with feedback can become the impetus for STEM teacher empowerment, classroom innovation, and larger systems change. Future teachers set goals aligned with the California Environmental Principles and Concepts (EP&Cs), plan and develop pedagogy aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards, then they implement their prepared lessons in an authentic context with students. Increased aptitude with STEM in these areas is an indicator of a teacher’s readiness toward providing inquiry-based learning experiences for all students with the attention to pivotal climate change lessons, positioning the teacher to promote empowerment and action toward addressing climate change. 

Corin Slown is an Assistant Professor of Science Education in the College of Science at CSUMB. She obtained a B.S. in Chemistry from Tale University and a PhD in Organic Synthetic Chemistry from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI). She currently teaches general and organic chemistry at CSUMB while learning how to better prepare future STEM teachers.

The Philosopher and the Entrepreneur: The Pedagogical Significance of a Symbiotic Relationship

Andrew F. Smith and Sherrilyn M. Billger

How many environmental philosophers do you know who’ve had the opportunity to develop a symbiotic relationship with an entrepreneur? In our case, the entrepreneur—a specialist in restorative landscaping and forestry—opened the philosopher’s eyes to one important way in which care for the needs and interests of urban and suburban landbases provides a tangible inroad into addressing climate change. This has had a marked effect on both his scholarship and his teaching. Reciprocally, the philosopher offered a theoretical framework to the entrepreneur, rooted in a defense of plant sentience and our embeddedness in the living community. This gave birth to the name of her business. It’s also informed how she advertises it to draw attention to the ecological and climatological importance of cultivating people–plantrelationships.

In this presentation, we tell the story of the pedagogical significance of this symbiotic relationship. The philosopher offers insights into how the entrepreneur’s hands-on work aimed at restoring ecosystems inspired a book project that’s influenced his teaching inside and outside the classroom. This has proven particularly beneficial when focusing on steps students can take to work with our distant green relatives to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. In turn, the entrepreneur has found the philosopher’s theoretical framework invaluable for teaching clients and employees how to be nurturers of the land.

This is a companion piece to “Take It Outside” (Billger and Smith).

Andrew F. Smith, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Drexel University, is currently working on a book on the intertwining roots of ecological, social, and personal wellbeing. His prior books include A Critique of the Moral Defense of Vegetarianism(2016) and The Deliberative Impulse: Motivating Discourse in Divided Societies(2011). He has published broadly on environmentalism and cultural transformation, sustainable eating practices, plant sentience, deliberative democracy, religion in the public sphere, homelessness, and food deserts.

A Climate Change Module for Introduction to Sociology Classes

Andrew Szasz

From its beginnings, Sociology has been centrally concerned with the most important problems of modernity.  Today, climate change looms as the greatest of such problems.  Students now starting college will live the rest of their lives in the shadow of this, the most profound, threat to global human society.

Showing students how Sociological analysis can deepen understanding of climate change demonstrates to them the relevance and the power of Sociological thought, and helps them better understand one of the defining issues of our time.

In the US, each year 800,000 or more undergraduates take an “Introduction to Sociology” course, a far larger number than the number of Sociology BAs each year — in recent years that number has been somewhere between 32,000 and 37,000.

Introduction to Sociology courses are, then, one of the most promising academic sites where American undergraduatescould begin to learn about climate change, its causes, its likely societal and ecological impacts, how the public and how political systems have dealt (or have failed to deal) with the threat. My analysis of today’s bestselling Introduction to Sociology textbooks found, however, that climate change is largely missing from the bestselling textbooks.   (https://szasz.sites.ucsc.edu/climate-change-is-largely-missing-from-best-selling-intro-to-sociology-textbooks-104amng/)

In this presentation, I display and explain a teaching module that I created for professors and instructors who may wish to add climate change content to their Intro to Sociology courses.  The teaching module is on line at:  https://szasz.sites.ucsc.edu/

Andrew Szasz received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1982.  He has taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz since 1986, first as professor of Sociology, then as professor of Environmental Studies. He has published several works on the sociology of climate change, including Beth Shaefer Caniglia, Robert J. Brulle and Andrew Szasz, “Civil Society, Social Movements and Climate Change,” Chapter 8 in Riley E. Dunlap and Robert J. Brulle, eds., Society and Climate Change: Sociological Perspectives, Oxford University Press, 2015.

Implementing Environmental Ethnomusicology curriculum in Music Department Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife Nigeria

Olusegun Stephen Titus

The study and teaching of African music has tended to draw attention to its interest in teaching and preserving traditional values. In the process, inadequate attention has been paid to the teaching of the use and the involvement of music in environmental sustainability. Furthermore in the Department of Music Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife, I started the teaching and supervision of undergraduate and postgraduate students specialising in what we called Environmental Musicology/Ecomusicollogy two years ago. Though courses on environmental musicology are not yet imbued in the curriculum except in project/dissertation classes. I am proud to say that we have started well. Currently I have supervised two undergraduate students who specialises in flood disaster and another on animal narratives from musical perspectives in Nigeria. Currently I have two Master students working on plastic degradation and birds and environmental issues. Teaching environmental issues from musical point of few seems still very strange in this side of the world. And there is urgent need to really fuse it into the curriculum which should be from elementary to higher institutions of learning.

Olusegun Stephen Titus is a University lecturer at Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. His work now focuses on environmental Musicology because musical narratives on water, air and land issues give better socio-cultural explanation on the environmental degradation and offers the best way of speeding up awareness in the developing world. Before coming to Obafemi Awolowo University, Olusegun taught at Federal College of Education, Okene, Kogi State, Nigeria, and while there, he started the environmental sustainability campaign through the TAO community radio. In 2014, he received the A. G. Leventis Postdoctoral Fellowship at SOAS, UK, 

He has published some articles on this area of specialization. Such as popular music on flood in Ibadan, oil spillage and Atlantic Ocean degradation in the Niger Delta. He is currently working on musical narratives on Plastic in the Pacific Ocean and Drought in Lake Chad. Olusegun earned a doctorate degree in ethnomusicology from University of Ibadan, Nigeria in 2013.

Changing Climates, Crossing Cultures: Introducing Environmental Humanities to General Education Students in Peru

Lowell Wyse

As an English professor at an international center for an American community college in Lima, Peru, I frequently ask myself: To what extent am I obligated to teach climate change when the core subject matter may be only tangentially related? While I often discuss environmental issues in my composition and literature courses, I generally stop short of making climate change a major component. In my Introduction to the Environmental Humanities course, however, I am compelled to dig a little deeper. I bill this interdisciplinary Honors course as an invitation to think about the connections between real-world environmental issues—especially climate change—and the stories we tell about them. Although the scope is broad—ranging from literary texts like Walden, to introductory pieces on environmental history, to contemporary films—the course urges students to contemplate “the choices we make in a world we have changed,” as the podcast Terrestrial puts it. We debate the effectiveness of rhetorical approaches in recent pieces of climate journalism like David Wallace-Wells’ “The Uninhabitable Earth,” asking whether alarmist storytelling is necessary for advancing awareness of climate change’s challenges. The course then culminates with portrayals of environmental justice activism, a theme that seems to resonate well in the Peruvian context. The results have been overwhelmingly positive and occasionally transformative, with many students incorporating environmental thinking into their academic and career plans. Join me as I discuss some positive outcomes and lessons learned while introducing climate change and environmental humanities to general education students in South America.

Lowell Wyse teaches courses in literature, composition, and environmental humanities for Broward College (Florida) at the Center for Global Education in Lima, Peru. He holds a Ph.D. in English from Loyola University Chicago’s Modern Literature and Culture program, with a specialization in 20th-century U.S. literature, geography, and the environment.

Literature for Change: Shaping K-12 Education to Prepare Youth for Climate Challenges

Rebecca L. Young

Let this be the beginning of us, rising.” Poet Eunice Andrada concludes her performance of “Pacific Salt” with this plea—a call to action that earned her a Spoken Word for the World award in 2015, when she was eighteen years old. 

On Friday, March 15th, 2019, thousands of students in this country joined many more around the world to take up such a call to action in the Youth Climate Strike. On the list of demands from these young activists is “compulsory comprehensive education on climate change and its impacts throughout grades K-8,” which speaks broadly to the crux of the problem: we desperately need a citizenry prepared to confront climate challenges because they understand the consequences of not doing so.

In this talk I’ll address the ways literature can serve as a lens in shaping the kind of public education our youth are asking us to deliver. As I discuss in Confronting Climate Crises: Reading Our Way Forward,two important questions can help educators drive the large-scale reform we need one classroom at a time:

• How do we provide context to the scientific data so that facts feel personally and culturally relevant?
• To what extent can we promote a learning environment that transforms apathy and hopelessness about these facts into engaged, prosocial action?

I hope you’ll join me.

Rebecca L. Young is a language and literature content specialist for the Measured Progress and International Baccalaureate organizations. She also serves as an environmental education consultant with a focus on how interdisciplinary curricula and assessments can shape an ecocritical pedagogy that positions educating young people for a climate challenged world at the center of public education’s mission. Her work has been published in the Critical Insights series and she contributed to Teaching Climate Change to Adolescents: Reading, Writing, and Making a Difference. She is currently compiling a follow-up instructional resource to her recently published Confronting Climate Crises: Reading Our Way Forward. Young grew up in the New York Catskills and currently lives in Southern Maine.