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John Foran

John Foran is Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at UCSB, teaching courses on climate change and climate justice, activism and movements for radical social change, and issues of alternatives to development and globalization beyond capitalism. His research and activism are now centered within the global climate justice movement.

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0:00 okay welcome everyone
0:03 I’m John foreign I’m co-organizer at
0:05 this virtual conference here at UC Santa
0:09 Barbara the world and 2050 imagining and
0:12 creating just climate futures with can
0:15 help net and I do think of us as a
0:19 community least a community in the
0:21 making
0:22 who aren’t involved in this wonderful
0:24 experiment together and i look forward
0:29 to our interaction during the three
0:32 weeks that the conference is open for
0:35 comments and Beyond who knows what’s
0:38 going to happen i make immensely excited
0:40 about the possibilities the virtual
0:43 conference aspect is hugely important to
0:46 us in here i want to give full credit to
0:49 my partner and co-organizer can Hiltner
0:53 who is really architect of the virtual
0:57 conference in an academic setting who
1:00 conceived it and overcame many a
1:03 technical issue to make it possible to
1:05do this and to open it to the world and
1:08indeed this is the second such
1:10conference to our knowledge ever done in
1:13this way you can think of me as the
1:17chief cheerleader of this revolutionary
1:20concept the idea that we would actually
1:23as academics who work on issues related
1:26to climate change and environment that
1:29we would actually walk the talk of the
1:31realities of climate change and that we
1:34would model this and offer it freely to
1:37others as the conference introduction
1:42says we believe that a conference that
1:44takes up the issue of climate change
1:46while simultaneously contributing to the
1:48problem to such a degree through airfare
1:51through aviation and airfare because it
1:56costs a great deal of money that most
1:58people don’t have to organize such a
2:00conference is simply unconscionable the
2:04team the world in 2050 imagining and
2:07creating just climate futures matters a
2:10lot to us
2:11it comes from our critical issues
2:13America program for twenty fifteen and
2:16sixteen this larger program of which
2:19this conference is the culmination it is
2:22on the theme of climate futures this
2:25changes everything and Ken and I with
2:28many others here at UCSB faculty
2:31graduate students undergraduates
2:33undertook this about a year ago because
2:37we think there’s no more critical issue
2:39faced by the world by humanity let alone
2:42America then our climate future when
2:47both Ken and I have devoted the last
2:49half decade or more to signaling this
2:52across the humanities and the social
2:54sciences and as far as possible
2:57beyond them again to read from the south
3:03introduction to this conference the most
3:06pressing existential issue of the 21st
3:09century for Humanity as a whole is the
3:12increasingly grim reality of climate
3:14change and our entry into a new era in
3:17the history of humans on the planet
3:19well signified by the term the answer
3:22passing the changing conditions of life
3:25on Earth lie at the center of a storm of
3:28interconnected prices which include
3:31among others the precarity and the great
3:34inequality that the global economy
3:36drives a widening deficit of political
3:40legitimacy which one you look no further
3:42than the current American election
3:45season of 2016 and cultures scarred by
3:49violence from the most intimate
3:51interpersonal interactions to the most
3:54global realities of war making but we’ve
3:58gone to say
3:59unlike either the justifiable
4:00pessimistic critical discussions or the
4:04unrealistically optimistic policy
4:06approaches that increasingly confront or
4:09indeed ignore each other around the
4:11climate crisis this conference will
4:14depart from our present ground 0 by
4:17asking participants to experiment with
4:20perspectives on the multiple possible
4:22states of the world in mid-century and
4:25to work back
4:26toward the present in an attempt to
4:29imagine envision ultimately enable and
4:34to collaboratively find or create some
4:36of the pathways to a more just for just
4:40less worse outcome for humanity by 2050
4:45so what’s going to happen at this
4:47conference
4:48actually I don’t know so much is up to
4:51you to all of us and to many others you
4:54the audience traditionally speaking are
4:57more than that your direct participants
5:00in the conversations that we hope these
5:02talks will start so please involve
5:06yourself with all the passion and
5:08imagination and creativity and loving
5:11activism that you can bring to this
5:13making it fun as well as serious there
5:18some 50 talks organized into 17 panels
5:22covering such topics as oceans life I
5:26climate fiction cities agriculture and
5:30food technology climate action climate
5:34justice and many others often
5:37intersecting since this changes
5:39everything means that everything affects
5:42everything else and part of the
5:44challenges to figure out how and to use
5:47that knowledge strategically to change
5:49ways to change things in ways that
5:52ripple outward long and slow or sudden
5:56and flashing Lee who create a new word
5:59there is far from enough diversity and
6:03no doubt that is our fault in this
6:06conference and the early stages of doing
6:08this kind of conference in ways that
6:10permit full activation of its deeply
6:13Democratic potential and I feel this we
6:17do someone pointed out have speakers
6:20from six continents and with any luck
6:24we’ll have participants from all seven
6:26if not also from the nonhuman world
6:29which is our partner in this adventure
6:30we do have sponsorships from all major
6:33plant and animal groups by the way we
6:38have some great keynote speakers and I
6:39want to thank
6:40each of them bill mckibben I’m not going
6:44to try to introduce each of these people
6:46they’re all extremely significant to me
6:49and I hope you’ll enjoy what they have
6:52to say bill mckibben Margaret klein
6:56Solomon Eric sadorian Patrick bond when
7:01Stephenson all of them have had a major
7:03impact on me as a scholar as an activist
7:06as a person of thinking and feeling
7:09person we also have two featured panels
7:13one that can is put together on this
7:17very topic of the movement toward
7:20getting academics to fly less and one
7:24that I’ve put together on the idea that
7:26we need something again to a wartime
7:29mobilization effort at this point in the
7:32climate crisis so let the discussion
7:35begin and may it unfold far and wide and
7:39deeply we look forward to hearing from
7:42you and I feel immense gratitude that
7:45you’ve joined us so that we may inspire
7:47and learn from each other and ultimately
7:50acts together to imagine and create the
7:54world we want
7:56thank you again and welcome

Ken Hiltner

Ken Hiltner is a Professor of the environmental humanities at UCSB. The Director of the Environmental Humanities Initiative (EHI), Hiltner has appointments in English and Environmental Studies.  He has served as Director of UCSB’s Literature & Environment Center and as the Barron Visiting Professor in the Environment and Humanities at Princeton University.

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0:00 Coming soon