CONFRONTING THE CLIMATE CRISIS WITH SYSTEMIC ALTERNATIVES IN THE AGE OF CORONAVIRUS
A NEARLY CARBON-NEUTRAL CONFERENCE
#EHIClimateCOVID
HOSTED BY THE EJ/CJ HUB AT UCSB’S ORFALEA CENTER FOR GLOBAL & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE CENTER FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE AT UC MERCED
Air travel to conferences, talks, and meetings can account for a third or more of the carbon footprint for a typical scholar or university. This event employed a nearly carbon-neutral (NCN) conference approach that reduced greenhouse gas emissions by a factor of 100. For more on “academia’s biggest dirty little secret” and the rationale behind this conference model, as well as details on how to coordinate online events of this sort, see our Overview / Practical Guide.
The UC Santa Barbara Environmental and Climate Justice Hub invites you to take part in a nearly carbon-neutral online conference of pre-recorded talks that will collectively explore the range of environmental and climate justice initiatives ideas, visions, movements, strategic orientations, and on the ground alternatives that resist extinction by confronting the current crisis in every kind of way.
In 2018 and 2019, the state of play in the climate crisis seemed to shift, with urgent climate reports, the rise of new social movements and tactics, especially among young people, and a pluriverse of proposals and projects for more life-affirming ways of being on this Earth.
Now, well into 2020, the world is beset by a global pandemic that is devastating lives and livelihoods and a climate crisis that worsens intensifying inequalities, fraying political systems, and cultures of violence everywhere, from police brutality to authoritarian governments to U.S. militarism.
While people have celebrated reduced CO2 emissions due to economic stoppage, communities at the margins of the world are faced with even stronger extractivism (of fossil fuels, mining, agro-industries, etc.). They are similarly identifying the interconnectedness of the health crisis and the systems at the source of climate injustices – capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy.
Collective social forces of and for climate justice and systemic alternatives are confronting this renewed crisis with imagination, new forms of online organizing, and hard work.
In this conference, we invite papers that engage with these global drivers of environmental and climate crisis and investigate their deep structures and histories. Likewise, contributions may analyze alternatives and the possibilities of more just climate futures. We also welcome other forms of participation that seek to bridge the academic, social movement, and policy domains.
This online conference will take place from Monday, October 19 to Monday, November 16. We hope to create spaces for real-time discussion and analysis of the U.S. election on November 3, the People’s Assemblies to prepare for COP 26, the current state of the pandemic, and the unforeseeable events that will occur everywhere between now and then.
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
Click the Panel Titles to view videos and participate in the discussion. Click the Stream Headers to see Abstracts and Presenter Bios.
Register for the conference to participate in Q & A by clicking here, or by following the links at the bottom of the Panel Pages.
CONFERENCE WELCOME AND INTRODUCTIONS
John Foran and Tracey Osborne
FINAL CONVERSATION — ZOOM MEETING AND ONLINE DISCUSSION
Monday, October 16, 8-10am, and in the online forum on page
STREAM 1: Emergent Politics of the COVID Pandemic
Panel 1.1: What COVID is Teaching Us About the Fight for Climate Justice (Marlene Hale, Tasnim Rekik, Kristen Perry, and Jen Gobby)
Panel 1.2: Climate Justice Movement Strategy During the United Nations Climate Conference, the COVID-19 Pandemic, and Racial Justice Uprisings (Brigid Mark, Corrie Grosse, Theo Lequesne, and Sam Grant)
Panel 1.3: Confronting COVID-19 (John Foran, Ashish Kothari, Shrishtee Bajpai, Giorgos Kallis, and Alfredo Saad-Filo)
Panel 1.4: Indigenous Resistance and Responses to COVID-19 (Oswando Nenquimo, Alianza Ceibo, Alianza Minga, ann-elise lewallen, Jane E. Warjri, Anagha Uppal, Erica Goto, Sacha Samay, and Sylvia Cifuentes)
Panel 1.5: Labor in the COVID-Era (Vicky Johnson, Danielle Falzon and Laura Bahlman)
Panel 1.6: Media Justice and Socio-environmental Struggles During COVID-19 Times: Experiences from Mexico (Ana Salgado, Mónica Montalvo, Ximena Torres, and Jéssica Coyotecatl)
Panel 1.7: Course Correction: A Just Transition From Ecodisruption to Regenertion (Movement Generation)
STREAM 2: Communities of Resistance/Resilience
Panel 2.1: Climate Refugee Stories: Building an Archive of Resistance (Tina Shull, Tanaya Dutta Gupta, Christine Wheatley, Emma Crow-Willard, and Sienna Leis)
Panel 2.2: An Intergenerational Panel: Personal and Collective Resistance in Times of Uncertainty (Tianna Arredondo, Gabi Jubran, Mila Aliana, and Celia Alario)
Panel 2.3: Climate Justice and Indigenous Communities (Melina Smith, and Shea Cheatham)
Panel 2.4: Abolition Ecology (DSA Santa Cruz Ecosocialist working group, represented by Martabel Wasserman, Laurie Palmer, and T. J. Demos)
Panel 2.5: Climate Justice and Renewal I: Fossil Fuels, False Climate Solutions, and Popular Responses (Brian Tokar, Marcelo Calazans, Nnimmo Bassey, and Patrick Bond)
Panel 2.6: Climate Justice and Renewal II: The Politics and Promise of Local Alternatives (Brian Tokar, Georges F. Félix, Terran Giacomini, Karl-Ludwig Schibel, and Kelly Roache)
STREAM 3: Climate Justice Education, Politics, and Movements
Panel 3.1: Curating Climate: New Projects in the Environmental Arts and Humanities (Persephone Pearl, Nicole Seymour, Min Hyoung Song, and Alison Sperling)
Panel 3.2: The Politics of Climate Activism (Ariel Salleh, Clara Weibel, Dana James, Trevor Mack, Tom Charles Osher, AJ Reed, and Benjamin Weinger)
Panel 3.3: Applying a Decolonial Lens to the Green New Deal (David Cobb and Mel Figueroa)
Panel 3.4: The Price of Carbon Fantasies: Understanding, Resisting, and Seeking Justice Beyond Neoliberal Climate Policy Delusions (Richard Widick, Patrick Bond, Tracey Osborne, Larry Lohmann, and Tamra Gilbertson)
Panel 3.5: Climate Finance Justice: International Perspectives on Climate Policy, Social Justice, and Capital (Lauren Gifford, Chris Knudson, and Laura Sauls)
Panel 3.6: Transforming Education to Confront the Climate Crisis (Vasna Ramasar, Manolo Callahan, Alessandra Pomarico, Udi Mandel, Andy Szasz, Mithika Mwenda, Daniel Fernandez, Mark Stemen, John Foran, and Richard Widick)
STREAM 4: Alternative Futures, Technological and Political
Panel 4.1: Project MEER: ReflEction: the Path to Sustainability Amongst Catastrophic Climate Change (Team members of Project MEER:ReflEction)
Panel 4.2: Project MEER: Closing Biogeochemical through Solar Thermal Valorization of Discarded Resources (Team members of Project MEER:ReflEction)
Panel 4.3: Systemic Alternatives: Transition Towns Movement (Don Hall, Jessica Alvarez Parfrey, Anna Willow, and John Foran)
Panel 4.4: Anthropocene Media (Leslie Sklair and Gabi Jubran)