UCLA Sustainability

Sustainival - Environmental Justice is Social Justice is Economic Justice
2020-10-13 17:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sustainability has been a field and movement with a history of exclusion and white supremacy. Oftentimes the sustainability narrative centers the importance of resource conservation and environmental health but lacks the critical component of social justice. These five (5) speakers are dedicating their careers to uplifting the concept of intersectional environmentalism through media and content creation. Join us for an interactive talk with incredible climate justice advocates that are making environmentalism a whole lot more equitable and a whole lot more fun!
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Speaker Info
ADITI MAYER

Biography
Aditi Mayer [she/hers] is a sustainable fashion blogger, photojournalist, and labor rights activist whose work explores the intersections of style, sustainability, and social justice. Seeing fashion’s disproportionate effects on communities of color globally, she began her blog, ADIMAY.com, after the Bangladesh Rana Plaza factory in 2014. Her platform looks at the fashion industry through a lens of decolonization and intersectional feminism, created in order to bring inclusivity to the sustainable fashion movement.
Aditi’s Motivation for Climate Justice Work
I am motivated by the desire to make the ties between social and environmental injustices explicit, and interrogate the systems that dually hurt both people and the planet. All of this is inspired by my own background as a South Asian woman, being the daughter of immigrants, and the granddaughter of farmers.

KRISTY DRUTMAN

Biography
Kristy Drutman (she/her) is a Filipina environmentalist and digital strategist based on Ohlone Land (aka the Bay Area) who wants to educate the world one post at a time about environmental justice through her podcast and media series, Brown Girl Green. She interviews environmental leaders and advocates about diversity and inclusion as well as creative solutions to the climate crisis. Kristy believes that culturally-nuanced storytelling is critical in building collective power and resilience within our communities, and aims to create content that empowers people to find their own voice in the fight for an environmentally just future.
Kristy’s Motivation for Climate Justice Work
I am motivated to do this work because there are environmental land defenders from countries across the global south being killed protecting and fighting for climate justice. As someone with privilege, a platform, and passion, I feel responsible to provide space, resources, and inspiration to people around the world to take action on climate change. As more lives and communities are at stake, it is imperative for those of us with the means and networks necessary to mobilize and empower people around us to act.

ISAIAS HERNANDEZ

Biography
Isaias Hernandez is the creator of Queer Brown Vegan where he makes accessible environmental education content. As a Queer, Brown, and Vegan environmentalist, he seeks to provide a safe space for other like-minded environmentalists to engage in the discourse of the current climate crisis.
Isaias’ Motivation for Climate Justice Work
Doing environmental work has always been my passion because as someone who grew up living in a community that experienced environmental injustice, I had so much fear, sadness, confusion, and anger built inside me that it was hard to navigate. I’ve always believed that environmental knowledge should never be privatized and it should be available to everyone who seeks this information.

PATTIE GONIA

Biography
Pattie Gonia (she/her/hers) is an environmental advocate, outdoor community voice, and backpacking drag queen (and yes, Pattie really hikes in heels.) Our community exists to uplift LGBTQ people and allies in the outdoors and to exist as a platform to give other voices and organizations all the shine in the world. The Pattie Gonia team carries out this mission by creating uplifting and ethical social media content, hosting community events, and fundraising for non profit organizations ($150,000 raised last year LGBTQ and outdoor nonprofits, $125,000 for Black and BIPOC led organizations to date in 2020).
Outside of heels Wyn Wiley (he/him), a 28 year old born and raised Nebraskan, has worked as a photographer, speaker, teacher, and creative director for brands including Adidas, Red Bull and Disney as well as a number of non-profits around the world. Last year, on a weeklong backtracking trip in Colorado, Wyn put on high heels and strutted for the first time as Pattie Gonia, her first video garnering more than 100 million views across platforms.
Since the birth of Pattie Gonia, Wyn/Pattie have focused their efforts on their personal journey of using drag as a way to explore self identity, sexuality, and the natural world. And so, the journey of Pattie is both extremely personal and also exists as a social and environmental justice platform.
Pattie Gonia’s Motivation for Climate Justice Work
What motivates me to do this work is knowing that this is the only planet with a Beyoncé on it. We should probably get to work to save her and mother nature, too.

LAUREN RITCHIE

Biography
Lauren Ritchie is a 19-year-old climate activist, writer, model, podcast host, and student from The Bahamas studying Sustainable Development and Political Science at Columbia University. She is the creator of The Eco Gal a digital platform that educates on global climate justice, promotes intersectional climate action, and seeks to make sustainable living more accessible and inclusive by amplifying the voices of marginalized communities. She is also a writer and content strategist for Brown Girl Green, a Youth Ambassador for Plastic Pollution Coalition, an ambassador for the Global Wildlife Conservation, and the co-host of the podcast Black Girl Blueprint, a platform to center the voices and celebrate the accomplishments of young Black women in a vast array of fields.
Lauren’s Motivation for Climate Justice Work
I was born on a small island in The Bahamas. Although the focus of my work lies within promoting global climate and social justice, the true motivation for my work is to protect my island and my country at large. Grand Bahama Island has borne the brunt of climate impacts in the form of extreme natural disasters for the past four years and will continue to be susceptible to shifts in the climate for many years to come without the resources to appropriately adapt. The reason why I, and so many other environmentalists of color, continue to expend our time and energy into a field that often feels like it wasn’t made for our voices and stories is that we are fighting for the survival of our communities and our loved ones.

City of Los Angeles' Wildlife Pilot Study
2020-10-13 19:00 - 20:00
SAVE THE DATE
Presented by Kat Superfisky, Urban Ecologist, City of Los Angeles, and Lena Mik, City Planning Associate, City of Los Angeles – a virtual presentation via Zoom – login info will be sent at a later date.

Sustainival - No-Waste, Plant-Based Brunch!
2020-10-14 10:30 - 11:30
Yeah, we get it, cooking can be rough sometimes 🥺 Between classes, zoom socials, work, parenting, another zoom social, trying to fight climate change, and animal crossing we have our plates full. Thankfully, Max La Manna is here to give us two SUPER easy recipes that are not only good for the environment/people/economy, but are also pretty darn tasty as well. He’s gonna show us how to do a no-waste strawberry + mint smoothie and banana peel pancakes (we know, we don’t understand how either). Tune in for a fun sesh and get ready for some brunch!
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Presented by Max La Manna
Low-Waste Chef, Author, Host on BBC Earth
Max La Manna is a no-waste vegan chef, award-winning author and presenter for BBC Earth.
His debut cookbook More Plants Less Waste was voted the world’s 2nd Most Sustainable Cookbook by Gourmand in 2020. Max’s mission is to re-frame how we view the leftovers and scraps that are typically thrown away to prevent them from going to landfill. Max uses social media to draw light to climate issues and de-stigmatise the waste we create in our kitchens by creating simple, innovative and exciting recipes.

Climate Justice = Social Justice, Leah Thomas and X Martinez
2020-10-14 12:00 - 13:00
For the first time ever, partners from across the CSU are collaborating to host October Sustainability Month virtual events meant to educate, empower and activate students, faculty and staff to join the movement for environmental, social and racial justice and get out the vote this November! Events will be free and open to all 23 CSU campuses. Live captioning will be provided at both events for accessibility.
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Live Panel Discussion and Q & A with Young Leaders of the Movement
Join intersectional environmental activist “Green Girl” Leah Thomas and indigenous climate activist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez for a discussion moderated by CSU Chico AS President Breanna “Bre” Holbert.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
LEAH THOMAS (Panelist)
Leah Thomas is an intersectional environmental activist and eco-communicator based in Southern California. She’s passionate about advocating for and exploring the relationship between social justice and environmentalism and identifying the ways in which injustices happening to marginalized communities and the earth are interconnected. You could say Leah’s trying to make the world a little more equal for everyone and a little nicer to our home planet! She graduated from Chapman University in 2017 with a B.S. in Environmental Science and Policy with a cluster in Comparative World Religions. Leah remains committed to sparking conversation and mobilizing the environmental community to be anti-racist and not complicit, and encouraging and inspiring all members of our planet to explore new places, live more sustainably, and practice radical self-acceptance. In 2020, Leah launched Intersectional Environmentalist, a platform for resources, information and action steps to support intersectional environmentalism and dismantle systems of oppression in the environmental movement.
XIUHTEZCATL MARTINEZ (Panelist)
Earth Guardians Youth Director Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, (pronounced ‘Shoe-Tez-Caht’) is a 20-year-old indigenous climate activist, hip-hop artist, and powerful voice of a global youth-led environmental movement. At the age of six Xiuhtezcatl began speaking globally, from the United Nations Summit in Rio, to addressing the General Assembly at the United Nations in New York. He is currently a plaintiff in a youth-led lawsuit against the federal government for the government’s inaction around the climate crisis and its failure to protect their essential public trust resources. Xiuhtezcatl‘s book “We Rise” was published by Rodale in 2017, and his second book “Imaginary Boarders” was published and released by Penguin in the spring of 2020. As a musical artist, Xiuhtezcatl also has multiple EP and full length album credits to his name.In addition to serving as the Youth Director for Earth Guardians, Xiuhtezcatl is the co-Founder of a company called NOW which is mobilizing humanity to reverse the climate crisis through planting a trillion trees and scaling on the ground carbon drawdown technologies.
BRE HOLBERT ( Moderator)
Bre Holbert hales from Lodi, California where her love for agriculture took root. Bre was heavily involved in the National FFA Organization, and served in various capacities that aimed to share the story of the agriculture industry with various stakeholders of Agricultural Education across the nation and world. She currently serves as the CSU, Chico Associated Students President and was recently awarded the CSU Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Achievement Trustee Emeritus Ali C. Razi Scholar. She attends California State University of Chico where she plans to pursue a career as a high school Agricultural Educator. Her goal is to teach in an urban/inter-city setting to shed light on the agriculture industry to students in ethnic minority identifying communities and aid them in reclaiming their stories in Agriculture.
Hosted by CSU Fullerton

Sustainival - Leading the Way: Student Sustainability Activism Panel
2020-10-14 17:00 - 18:00
Now more than ever, we have seen the fight for climate change break into mainstream narratives and witnessed how young people, such as Greta Thunberg, are the leading faces of this movement. We have gathered five (5) student-activists from different University of California campuses to share their experiences in creating social change. Join us for a panel to learn more about their journeys and how you can begin or further your activism journey!
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SPEAKER INFO
Sithara Menon
University of California, Los Angeles
Sithara is a 4th year Biology major at UCLA! She got started in activism working with the UCLA chapter of CALPIRG Students her freshman year, working to secure commitments from the state of California and the UC system for 100% clean electricity. Since then, she worked to turn out the youth vote (increasing UCLA’s turnout by almost 500%), ran the Zero Hunger campaign to fight food insecurity and food waste on campus, and worked on UCLA’s commitment to phasing out single use plastics!

Jed Lee
University of California, Berkeley
Jed Lee is a Taiwanese and Chinese-Filipino American student activist and artist. As a fourth year at UC Berkeley, Jed is pursuing a major and two minors relating to environmental, climate, and development justice. Jed strongly believes that we can always look to nature to find inspiration for our interpersonal relationships, collective movements, and personal healing, and that there is always love, life and hope in this world. Jed loves hanging out, being outdoors, gardening, and exploring new food places! Jed also holds a major love for the ocean, sociology, writing, and hearing about other people’s stories.

Diana Garcia
University of California, Santa Barbara
Diana Garcia is a 4th year student at UCSB majoring in Environmental Studies with a minor in Latin American Studies. Her passion for environmental justice grew as she broke away from the false dichotomy that separates humans from Mother Earth. She is currently the Co-Chair for Environmental Justice Alliance (EJA) advocating for an inclusion of social justice in the environmental field to make a safer space for Black and brown students to speak on their experiences.

Lindsey Tavares-Sabido
University of California, Santa Cruz
Lindsey Tavares-Sabido will graduate from the University of California, Santa Cruz as a Legal Studies major with a minor in Politics in Fall of 2020. She is a first-generation American, first-generation college student, and an adult child of a formerly incarcerated parent. Lindsey’s passions are at the intersection of social and environmental justice with particular interest in food sovereignty, global health, human rights and international law.
She has served as the Political and Cultural chair for the UCSC Black Student Union from 2019 to 2020. Through her deep dialogue and engagement with the issues marginalized communities face on campus, Lindsey and other Black student leaders co-created the Pan African Research Fellowship pilot program at UCSC to ensure student advocacy leads to equitable, sustainable change. As a research fellow, Lindsey explores the relationship between housing and academic success for ABC students at UCSC.
Lindsey is the founder and director of the BIPOC Liberation Collective in Santa Cruz, CA. After graduation, she hopes to continue organizing and building intersectional solidarity amongst Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) by reclaiming space and making political education and cultural arts accessible to all BIPOC people. Lindsey plans to broaden her experience in the nonprofit and public sectors before applying for her PhD. In her free time, Lindsey enjoys going to the beach, hiking, biking, gardening, cooking, painting, & dancing.

Gabrielle Christina Ambayec
University of California, Berkeley
Gabrielle Christina Ambayec (she/they) is a third-year undergraduate who currently works as the Environmental Justice Associate at the Student Environmental Resource Center (SERC) at UC Berkeley. She aims to introduce and amplify the work of grassroots organizers in the East Bay through various events open to the general campus community at Berkeley. Her specific work prompts her to create events and resources with the intent of educating the campus community on matters including environmental racism, food justice, and community care.”

Nisha Bansal
Moderator
Nisha Bansal (she/hers) is a recent UCLA graduate with a degree in Environmental Science. She previously worked in the LA Mayor’s Office and as a Sustainability Assistant with UCLA Housing to put on cool sustainability events like this one! In addition to being a sustainability advocate, Nisha is a writer, performer, Survivor fanatic, and enthusiastic consumer of dumplings.

Clean Water for All
2020-10-15 14:00 - 15:00
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Presenters:
Ray Hiemstra, Associate Director of Programs, Orange County Coastkeeper
Enrique Valencia, Project Director, Orange County Environmental Justice
Keila Villegas – Community Organizer, Orange County Environmental Justice
Sarah Rae, Manager, Water Conservation, Liberty Utilities

Join us for a live presentation to discuss how water awareness and community action can improve water quality. This event will bring together local organizations to discuss water quality and conservation practices in Southern California.
Hosted by CSU Fullerton

Where Have All the Good Fires Gone? An Indigenous Perspective on the Fire Relationship
2020-10-15 16:30 - 17:45
Join the Humanities Studio at Pomona College on Thurs, Oct 15, for “Where Have All the Good Fires Gone? An Indigenous Perspective on the Fire Relationship” with Michael Connolly Miskwish (Kumeyaay) and Pomona’s own Char Miller.

We’re often told that today’s Southern California residents have a lot to learn about living in this wildfire-prone landscape from the area’s Native Nations. What exactly are those lessons? Join San Diego State lecturer in American Indian Studies Michael Connolly Miskwish (Kumeyaay) and Pomona College Professor of Environmental Analysis Char Miller for a rich discussion of historical fire usage by California tribes; the Kumeyaah’s reintroduction of managed fire on its Campo; and the carrying capacity of this fire-prone terrain—among many other related topics.
The event is free and open to the public.

To participate, visit The Humanities Studio Zoom Lounge (https://pomonacollege.zoom.us/j/85324465980) on Thursday, October 15, at 4:30 p.m. PT. (If the link above does not take you directly to the registration page for the presentation, visit zoom.us and enter Meeting ID: 853 2446 5980 when prompted.)

2020-10-16 13:00 - 14:00
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California Air Resources Board Chair Mary D. Nichols and UCLA law professor Ann E. Carlson will discuss the productive but fraught relationship between cities, states and national environmental decisions-makers, with a focus on the important strides made to improve air quality in California over the past several decades.
The event is the second in the “PLACE and Power” series of virtual conversations exploring connections between human place-based relationships and the law and politics of environmental governance.
Sponsored by the Program in Law, Communities and the Environment (PLACE); the Virginia Environmental Law Forum; and the Virginia Environmental Law Journal.

Confronting Urgent Threats to Human Health & Society: COVID-19 and Climate Change
2020-10-19 07:00 - 14:30
Keynote Address: Crises, Fast & Slow
Bill Gates
Bill Gates is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Along with co-chair Melinda Gates, he shapes and approves grantmaking strategies, advocates for the foundation’s issues, and helps set the overall direction of the organization.
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The state of the COVID-19 pandemic: Virus emergence, the impact of the pandemic, & US and global preparedness and response
Session keynote: Anthony S. Fauci, MD
Dr. Fauci was appointed director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984, and oversees an extensive portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emerging diseases such as Ebola and Zika.

Moderator: Sanjay Gupta, MD, FACS
Dr. Gupta is an associate professor of neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine and associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital. In his role at CNN — where he has won multiple Emmy Awards as chief medical correspondent — Dr. Gupta covers important health stories in the United States and around the world.

Panelists:
Chikwe Ihekweazu, FFPH
Dr. Ihekweazu, now Director General at the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, trained as an infectious disease epidemiologist and has over 20 years’ experience working in senior public health and leadership positions in several national public health institutes.

Nicole Lurie, MD, MSPH
Dr. Lurie, now Strategic Advisor to the CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, is a physician, professor of medicine, and public health official. During the administration of President Barack Obama, she was Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

Susan R. Weiss, PhD
Dr. Weiss is a microbiologist and a Professor of Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research considers the biology of coronaviruses, including SARS, MERS and SARS-CoV-2.
Climate change and human health: Navigating environmental, societal, and individual impacts
Session keynote: Sir Andrew Haines, MBBS, MD, FRCGP, FFPHM, FRCP, FMedSci
Sir Andrew Haines is a Professor of Environmental Change and Public Health with a joint appointment in the Department of Public Health, Environments and Society and in the Department of Population Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Moderator: Richard J. Jackson, MD, MPH
Dr. Jackson is Professor emeritus at the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. For nine years he was Director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health.

Panelists:

Georges C. Benjamin, MD
Dr. Benjamin is a public health official who has served as Executive Director of the American Public Health Association since 2002, and previously as Secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Jane Lubchenco, PhD
The Honorable Dr. Jane Lubchenco is a Distinguished University Professor and Marine Studies Advisor to the President at Oregon State University. She is a marine ecologist and environmental scientist by training, with expertise in oceans, climate change, and interactions between the environment and human well-being.

Jacqueline Patterson, MSW, MPH
Jacqueline Patterson, now Senior Director of the Environmental and Climate Justice Program at the NAACP, has worked as a researcher, program manager, coordinator, advocate and activist working on women‘s rights, violence against women, HIV&AIDS, racial justice, economic justice, and environmental and climate justice.
President’s Forum:
Responding to global crises: Future directions in science and policymaking to address complex threats to society
Welcoming Remarks: Victor Dzau, MD

Session keynote: Ursula von der Leyen
Ursula von der Leyen is the President of the European Commission, where she has led the way in introducing a European Green Deal and led efforts to fight the COVID-19 crisis, launching Europe’s recovery and shaping the global response to the pandemic.
Moderator:

Judith Rodin, PhD
Dr. Rodin was the first female leader of an Ivy League Institution. A research psychologist by training, she was one of the pioneers of the behavioral medicine and health psychology movements.

Panelists:
Sir Jeremy J. Farrar, MBBS, DPhil
Jeremy Farrar is Director of the Wellcome Trust – a politically and financially independent global charitable foundation that exists to improve health by helping big ideas to thrive.

Niall Ferguson, MA, DPhil
Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard.

Adrienne L. Hollis, PhD, JD
Adrienne Hollis is the Senior Climate Justice and Health Scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists. In that role, she leads the development, design, and implementation of methods for accessing and documenting the health impacts of climate change on communities of color and other traditionally disenfranchised groups.

Jim Yong Kim, MD, PhD
Jim Yong Kim is Vice Chairman and Partner at Global Infrastructure Partners, a fund that invests in infrastructure projects across several sectors around the world. From July 2012 to February 2019, Kim served as the 12th President of the World Bank Group.

Congresswoman Donna E. Shalala, PhD
Congresswoman Shalala is the longest-serving Secretary of Health and Human Services in U.S. history, and now serves Florida’s 27th District as an advocate for women’s rights, civil rights, increased access to healthcare, better education and public schools, and a clean and sustainable environment.

The Future of Energy
2020-10-20 12:00 - 13:00
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Presenters:
Janet Purchase, Energy & Utility Analyst, CSUF Office of Sustainability
Brendan O’Donnell, Director, Public Sector, Southwest, ChargePoint
Lynniece Warren, Energy & Sustainability Manager, Facilities Services

In this presentation, discover how critical energy challenges of today are shaping the future. Energy leaders will discuss insights to help shape a more sustainable future.
Hosted by CSU Fullerton

Why Your Vote Matters Virtual Q&A
2020-10-20 13:30 - 14:45
U.S. Senator and 2020 presidential candidate Cory Booker will share his perspective on the role our students can play in creating a just and sustainable society through civic and community engagement in the final stretch before the November elections and beyond.
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla will educate attendees about the steps that are being taken across the state to make sure all of our votes will be counted and our voices heard during these unprecedented times.
California State University, Long Beach alum and Legislative Manager for the California League of Conservation Voters Melissa Romero will educate students about 2020 ballot initiatives that will have an impact on the environment and our communities.

Can a Story Save the Planet?
2020-10-20 17:00 - 18:30
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Celebrated writers Scott Z. Burns, Amitav Ghosh, and Elizabeth Kolbert discuss how the art of storytelling has failed to take on the climate crisis and its attendant catastrophes—and how that might change. Burns is the screenwriter of the 2011 film Contagion, a prescient depiction of a pandemic that highlighted many of the institutional failures seen during the current coronavirus outbreak, and produced the climate-focused documentaries An Inconvenient Truth and its sequel. The recipient of literary awards internationally, Ghosh focused his most recent fiction and non-fiction books, Gun Island and The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, on climate change and its devastating effects. A staff writer for The New Yorker, Kolbert’s most recent book, The Sixth Extinction, details the current extinction crisis and received the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 2015.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Scott Z. Burns is the screenwriter of the 2011 film Contagion, an eerily prescient depiction of a pandemic that highlighted many of the same institutional failures seen during the current coronavirus outbreak. He also wrote The Report, about the CIA’s coverup of the use of torture after 9/11, and The Laundromat, which focuses on the story behind the Panama Papers. He also produced the climate-focused documentaries An Inconvenient Truth and An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.
Amitav Ghosh’s most recent book of fiction Gun Island drew on climate change and the resulting stories of human migration. Prior to that, his non-fiction book The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable focused on modern literature’s failure to address climate change, also the subject of many of the author’s newspaper and magazine opinion pieces. Ghosh has won awards internationally for both fiction and non-fiction, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Jnanpith award, making him the first Indian writer in English to receive the prestigious Indian literary award.
Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her most recent book The Sixth Extinction received the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 2015. She is a two-time National Magazine Award winner, and has received a Heinz Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Academies communications award. Kolbert is a visiting fellow at the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams College.

Daring Democracy in 2020
2020-10-23 16:00 - 17:00
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Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen will be joined by author David Daley to apply their book Daring Democracy to Decision 2020. They will discuss the ways individuals can cohere and strengthen the core tenets of Democracy as well as tie the book’s lessons in time for the November election.
About Daring Democracy
An optimistic book for Americans who are asking, in the wake of Trump’s victory, “What do we do now?” The answer: We need to organize and fight to protect and expand our democracy.
Americans are distraught as tightly held economic and political power drowns out their voices and values. Legendary Diet for a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lappé and organizer-scholar Adam Eichen offer a fresh, surprising response to this core crisis. This intergenerational duo opens with an essential truth: It’s not the magnitude of a challenge that crushes the human spirit. It’s feeling powerless–in this case, fearing that to stand up for democracy is futile. It’s not, Lappé and Eichen argue. With riveting stories and little-known evidence, they demystify how we got here, exposing the well-orchestrated effort that has robbed Americans of their rightful power. But at the heart of this unique book are solutions.
Even in this divisive time, Americans are uniting across causes and ideologies to create a “canopy of hope” the authors call the Democracy Movement. In this invigorating “movement of movements,” millions of Americans are leaving despair behind as they push for and achieve historic change. The movement and democracy itself are vital to us as citizens and fulfill human needs–for power, meaning, and connection–essential to our thriving. In this timely and necessary book, Lappé and Eichen offer proof that courage is contagious in the daring fight for democracy.
About the Panelists
Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen are the authors of Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want.

Frances Moore Lappé is the author or co-author of 19 books about world hunger, living democracy, and the environment, beginning with the three-million copy Diet for a Small Planet in 1971. She is also a contributing editor at Yes! Magazine and Solutions Journal. She is the cofounder of three organizations, including Oakland based think tank Food First, and more recently, the Small Planet Institute, which she leads with her daughter, Anna Lappé. Frances and her daughter have also cofounded the Small Planet Fund, which channels resources to democratic social movements worldwide.

Adam Eichen is a writer, researcher, and organizer. He serves as Campaigns Manager for Equal Citizens, a non-partisan pro-democracy organization founded by Lawrence Lessig., and is also a member of the Democracy Matters board of directors. Over the past several years, his research has focused on campaign finance, voting rights, and comparative election policy.

David Daley is a senior fellow for FairVote and the author of Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy, which helped spark the recent drive to reform gerrymandering. David’s new book, Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy, chronicles the victories and defeats in state efforts to reform elections and uphold voting rights. When writing for the Hartford Courant, he helped identify Mark Felt as the “Deep Throat” source for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

This event is free and open to the public.

Zero Waste Youth Convergence
2020-10-24 10:00 - 14:30
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As most of you are aware, due to COVID-19, Zero Waste Youth USA, in partnership with NCRA, has decided to go virtual for the 8th Annual Zero Waste Youth Convergence!
The mission of Zero Waste Youth USA is to empower the next generation to create a zero waste future. Inspired by our peers in Brazil, Sweden, and the Philippines, the Annual Zero Waste Youth USA Convergence is dedicated to high school students, college students & young professionals to learn and collaborate for a zero waste future.
Our focus this year is “All Hand On Deck”. Hear from inspiring students, young professionals, and community leaders on critical zero waste issues and solutions. The conference will be packed with keynote speakers, workshops, raffles, and more! Check out the sessions and speaker bios here: http://www.zerowasteyouthusa.org/program–speakers.html

Circular Cities Week
2020-10-26 - 2020-11-01
Last fall, the Circular Economy Club (CEC) celebrated its inaugural “Circular Cities Week” global event (Oct. 28-Nov. 3, 2019). The goal: to push, with a united voice, for the design and implementation of circular economy strategies in cities worldwide. This year, more than ever, we need to work towards building resilient cities that recover from environmental, social and health crisis. We believe in the circular economy as a model that will help cities to become more resilient. The Circular Cities Week will take place on Oct. 26-Nov. 1, 2020), again alongside the UN World Cities Day.

What is the #CircularCities Week

“Circular Cities Week” is an annual, decentralized global event. In 2019, over 80 CEC Chapters signed up to organize workshops to identify opportunities and next steps to encourage implementation of the circular economy in their cities. Around 30 CEC Chapters organized the workshop and the findings can be found in this the Circular Cities Week REPORT. This process included bringing in stakeholders from city governments, private and nonprofit sectors, and academia—and providing a multi-stakeholder call to action. This year, we are moving to an online format.

Why the #CircularCities Week
The CEC envisions a world in which every city in every country functions and prospers through circularity, ending the age of waste. An ambitious goal such as this requires clarity and clearly defined deadlines. “Circular Cities Week” provides this critical framework.

The condensed timeframe of “Circular Cities Week” encourages a sense of urgency and purpose designed to help stakeholders identify opportunities, challenges and next steps for supporting the development of circularity at the city government level. The objectives of the week are two-fold;

Raise awareness about the potential for the circular economy framework to build more resilient cities, considering the current COVID-19 pandemic; and
Engage citizens to design and implement a circular city and gather suggestions to create a global report gathering the top suggestions.

Trash Talk: Creating a Circular Economy
2020-10-28 12:00 - 13:00
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Presenters:
Danny Miranda Jr., Sustainable Waste Management Specialist, CSUF Office of Sustainability
Michelle Jaureguy Major Account Manager, Recycling and Commodities, Republic Services
Dylan Layfield, Senior Manager, Material Solutions, TerraCycle Inc.

Join this session to learn more about campus recycling programs and beyond. Professionals will discuss waste reduction, recycling, food waste, composting and material solutions.
Hosted by CSU Fullerton

Transforming Social Impact + Sustainability Work by Measuring What Matters
2020-10-29 09:00 - 16:30
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Come join us for the corporate social responsibility conference that will deep dive into how purpose-led companies are doing what they do best and understand how CFOs and institutional investors are measuring purpose and walk away with methods and tools to elevate your work to a visible priority within your company.

Resiliency: Adapting Sustainability Under Pandemic Conditions
2020-10-29 16:00 - 17:30
REGISTER HERE
The IoES Corporate Partners Program is hosting a panel discussion on sustainability planning amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our lives have changed significantly in the last few months as the COVID-19 pandemic shifted how we work, live, and interact with the world around us. At this event, we will explore how organizations are adapting their sustainability programs under pandemic conditions. Topics of discussion may include whether sustainability priorities have shifted, how sustainability programs will allow us to ‘build back better’, and what the long term impacts of the pandemic could be on sustainability commitments. Our speakers span the technology, building, and transportation sectors.
Featured Speakers

Susanna Kass —Data Center Advisor for the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Ben Stapleton —Executive Director, U.S. Green Business Council Los Angeles Chapter
Eva Moir —Transportation Planning Manager, LA Metro

Moderated by IoES Alum Gregory Lopez, Social & Environmental Impact Consultant.
The event will conclude with a ‘reception’ where audience members can opt into rooms to chat directly with the speakers.
For more background on our panelists, see the visit our website.

High Impact Tea with John Fisher, MD, MBA ('09) on Health, Leadership and Equity
2020-11-05 11:30 - 12:30
REGISTER HERE
Dr. John Fisher has more than 15 years serving as a practicing emergency room physician and is an expert in the implementation of systems to streamline and modernize the coordination and delivery of quality healthcare. As the CMO, Dr. Fisher works closely with the administrative team and medical staff to further the hospital’s mission by establishing quality standards, providing strategic direction, and facilitating communication. He is also responsible for aligning physician performance and clinical care with the hospital’s goals and objectives so that patients receive the highest quality care and have the best possible patient experience.
Throughout his career as a medical administrator, Dr. Fisher continued in clinical practice as a board-certified and active emergency medicine physician. He has supervised and mentored multidisciplinary clinical staff at multiple hospitals and outpatient facilities, including two Kaiser Permanente-owned facilities in Southern California, Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank and Lancaster Community Hospital.
Most recently, Dr. Fisher was chief medical officer of Kern Health Systems in Bakersfield, California, a not-for-profit managed care organization that serves more than 140,000 Medi-Cal beneficiaries. His responsibilities included ensuring the access to, quality of, and proper use of clinical resources for the plan’s members. During his tenure, he established programs that increased patient access to primary care and specialty physician services while simultaneously implementing significant cost-saving measures.
Prior to this, Dr. Fisher was a physician adviser with Executive Health Resources reviewing clinical cases for Medicare, Medicaid, and managed care compliance for numerous hospitals throughout the country. He also served as medical director for a critical care transport service and associate medical director of a hospital emergency department.

U. Michigan Prof. of Environment & Sustainability Kyle Whyte presents "Against Crisis Epistemology"
2020-11-05 16:30 - 17:30
People who perpetrate colonialism often defend their actions as necessary responses to real or perceived crises. Epistemologies of crisis involve knowing the world in such a way that a certain present is experienced as new. In this talk, Whyte will discuss newness in terms of the presumptions of unprecedentedness and urgency. According to Whyte, these presumptions often depend on an unquestioned linear conception of time. In contradistinction to an epistemology of crisis, he suggests that one interpretation of certain Indigenous intellectual traditions emphasizes what he calls an epistemology of coordination. Different from crisis, coordination refers to ways of knowing the world that emphasize the importance of moral bonds—or kinship relationships—for generating the (responsible) capacity to respond to constant change. Epistemologies of coordination are conducive to responding to expected and drastic changes without validating harm or violence.

Kyle Whyte is Professor of Environment and Sustainability and George Willis Pack Professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, serving as a faculty member of the environmental justice specialization. Previously, Whyte was Professor and Timnick Chair in the Department of Philosophy and Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University. Whyte’s research addresses moral and political issues concerning climate policy and Indigenous peoples, the ethics of cooperative relationships between Indigenous peoples and science organizations, and problems of Indigenous justice in public and academic discussions of food sovereignty, environmental justice, and the anthropocene. He is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and has partnered with numerous Tribes, First Nations and inter-Indigenous organizations in the Great Lakes region and beyond on climate change planning, education and policy. He is involved in a number of projects and organizations that advance Indigenous research methodologies, including the Climate and Traditional Knowledges Workgroup, Sustainable Development Institute of the College of Menominee Nation, Tribal Climate Camp, and Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga. He has served as an author on reports by the U.S. Global Change Research Program and is a former member of the U.S. Federal Advisory Committee on Climate Change and Natural Resource Science and the Michigan Environmental Justice Work Group. Whyte’s work has received the Bunyan Bryant Award for Academic Excellence from Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice and MSU’s Distinguished Partnership and Engaged Scholarship awards, and grants from the National Science Foundation.

The event is free and open to the public.

To participate, visit The Humanities Studio Zoom Lounge (https://pomonacollege.zoom.us/j/97855796517) on Thursday, November 5, at 4:30 p.m. PT. (If the link above does not take you directly to the registration page for the presentation, visit zoom.us and enter Meeting ID: 978 5579 6517 when prompted.)

For more information and updates on upcoming Humanities Studio events, including the Indigeneities Speakers Series, visit the Humanities Studio events page:
https://www.pomona.edu/administr…/humanities-studio/events

7th Annual UC Davis One Health Symposium Registration
2020-11-07 09:00 - 17:00
REGISTER HERE
The 7th Annual One Health Symposium is coming up on Saturday, November 7th. This is a great event that brings together veterinarians, physicians, public health officials, scientists, students and staff for discussions on current research projects and issues facing the health of animals, people, plants and the environment.
Exciting new things this year! The symposium is going virtual and is FREE.
Spend a Saturday learning about bugs, the amazing world of aquaculture, COVID-19 in food systems, and see what students around the world are currently researching!

Greenbuild Virtual International Conference + Expo
2020-11-10 - 2020-11-12
New for 2020: Greenbuild Goes Virtual
The industry’s leading green building event now offers three virtual summits in lead up to International Conference & Expo virtual event.
Safe, secure, sustainable. Connections without geographic boundaries. Expanded education courses available in real time or any time. Interactive supplier sourcing and peer networking forums. This is Greenbuild’s next chapter. Join us!

The Event Dedicated to Sustainability in the Built Environment
Greenbuild International Conference and Expo is the largest annual event for green building professionals worldwide to learn and source cutting edge solutions to improve resilience, sustainability, and quality of life in our buildings, cities, and communities.
As we turn this new chapter, Greenbuild – now more than ever before – is where inspiration ignites, relationships cultivate, knowledge transfers and the leaders developing the next generation of standards, policies, and partnerships gather to turn the promise of a higher living standard into a reality for all.
REGISTER

Princeton Energy Conference 2020
2020-11-13 05:45 - 2020-11-14 13:30
REGISTER HERE
Our virtual fall conference 2020 brings together industry professionals, researchers, academics, investors, analysts, students, and other community members that are spirited about the future of the energy industry and new technologies. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic challenges, and social injustices, this conference will emphasize how we will change the energy landscape and drive ourselves forward to a clean, equitable future for everyone.
Some of our keynote speakers include:

Dr. Daniel Kammen (Professor of Energy at UC-Berkeley & Chair Goldman School of Public Policy)
Colette Honorable, Esq. (Partner at ReedSmith, Former Commissioner at FERC)
Kelly Speakes-Backman (CEO of U.S. Energy Storage Association)

Additionally, our conference will feature panels on a wide variety of topics including energy policy, carbon dioxide removal, “out-there” technologies, and renewable business and investment. To see the schedule and full list of keynotes and panels, check out our website.
We will additionally be hosting a resume drop with our sponsors, small group and personalized discussions with panelists, and networking sessions for young professionals and college students. Register to stay updated on this information. Please reach out to puea@princeton.edu with any questions or concerns. Hope to see you soon!
Let’s shape a cleaner and equitable energy landscape together.

Healthy Buildings and Healthy Homes: Could Indoor Spaces Be Making You Sick?
2020-11-13 11:30 - 12:30
REGISTER HERE
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the average American spends approximately 90% of their life indoors. Accordingly, the physical structures in which we work and live—our homes, schools, offices, public buildings—directly impact health outcomes. By improving the performance of buildings, in both design and construction, our health and well-being benefit greatly, while also reducing health care costs. Expanding on the progress established by the green building industry, the next stage is to advance the complementary practice of healthy building and wellness. This panel brings together leading experts in the fields of healthy buildings and wellness for an informative and timely discussion regarding human health and its direct correlation to the built environment, and the tools and technologies that deliver healthier indoor environments in which we can flourish.
Moderator:
Maggie Delmas
Professor of Management, UCLA Anderson School of Management and the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability; and Faculty Director, Impact@Anderson
Keynote:
Bill Hayward
CEO and Chief Sustainability Officer, Hayward Lumber; and Founder and CEO, Hayward Score
Panelists:
Jennifer Berthelot-Jelovic
President and CEO, A Sustainable Production, LLC
Angela Spangler
Director, International Well Building Institute
Ben Stapleton
Executive Director, US Green Building Council – Los Angeles

Maintaining Momentum to COP26 for the Net-Zero Transition
2020-11-16 05:00 - 2020-11-20 08:00
COP26 has been delayed.
Environmental diplomacy put on hold.
We cannot postpone the climate emergency.
Momentum on climate action must be maintained.
2020 was meant to usher in a decade of action in our fight against the climate crisis. Governments and businesses were poised to raise their ambition but instead have been fighting a difference crisis – the global pandemic.
As economies begin to rebuild, sectors reopen and society returns the decisions governments and businesses make today and the industries we support will decide the future we create.
Event Overview
Over the past decade the Sustainable Innovation Forum has been used as a platform by the United Nations, Heads of State, Government Ministers, Climate Experts and Chief Executives, to communicate leadership, raise ambition and forge stronger relationships between the public and private sectors.
Climate Action has curated a thoroughly researched and validated programme aligned to the key trends and challenges we face in our collective fight against climate change. The programme is design to build momentum on climate action ahead of COP26 in 2021.
REGISTER HERE

2020 Biodiversity Symposium
2020-11-16 15:00 - 2020-11-20 17:00
APLD & LASAN present the 2020 Biodiversity Symposium
REGISTER HERE
Biodiversity hotspots are home to unique flora and fauna, many of which are endemic to a particular environment. Our City of Los Angeles is fortunate to be one of only 36 Biodiversity Hotspots on the planet.
This designation also means that biodiversity here is threatened, and we need to come up with protective strategies to safeguard our area’s resilience and sustainability. Our symposium, which will unfold over the course of the week, will illustrate the vital importance of an integrated ecosystem of natural biodiversity and sustainable urban landscapes.
We are looking to provide a forum for leading area scientists to inform landscape designers and architects, builders, nurseries, growers, and homeowners on the significance of biodiversity in the Los Angeles area, which is severely threatened by urban development. We hope this forum will aid in building an understanding of how we can affect a change in practices and achieve the goal of “a no-net-loss” biodiversity strategy.
Our well-being fundamentally depends on nature. We must act quickly to take action with protective strategies to safeguard this unique area that we live in. We can make a difference. Join this community and symposium to protect our biodiversity hotspot.
Please join us and help spread the word. Garden by garden, and park by park, we can take the steps to change the narrative of environmental degradation.
We are happy to be in partnership with LASAN for this important endeavor.
“The survival and well-being of the City’s residents also depend on ecosystem services provided by biodiversity, including air pollution reduction, strongly and rapidly mitigating and adapting to climate change, mental health and educational opportunities, water cleansing, and aesthetic benefits. These services are built directly from an integrated ecosystem of natural biodiversity and sustainable urban landscapes.” — LA Sanitation & Environment

Webinar One: Park Equity and Life Expectancy Research Findings
2020-11-18 10:00 - 11:30
New research about the relationship between parks and life expectancy reveals that increasing park acreage in areas that face park deficits and lack trees could lead to significant population-level increases in life expectancy. It also shows that targeted investments in park infrastructure would significantly benefit the health of Latino and Black community members.
In this webinar series, you’ll hear from the UCLA professor who conducted the research and representatives of community-based organizations that will use its results to push for park equity. The project was based in Los Angeles County, but it provides insights for cities across the country.
Webinar One: Park Equity and Life Expectancy Research Findings
Wednesday, November 18, 2020, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM Pacific Time
Learn about the life expectancy predictive model research process, methodology, findings, and possible replication. Register here.
Speakers:

Manal J. Aboelata, Deputy Executive Director, Prevention Institute
Dr. Richard J. Jackson, Professor Emeritus, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health Sciences
Dr. Michael Jerrett, Professor, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health Sciences
Elva Yañez, Health Equity Director, Prevention Institute

Fueling The Intersectional Environmental Movement with Debra Gore-Mann
2020-11-18 17:00 - 18:00
REGISTER HERE
Climate action and racial justice are inextricably linked. However, while the worst effects of climate change have disproportionately harmed communities of color, the historical faces of climate action have predominantly been white. The discussion will cover the environmental justice movement, its progress and challenges, and how corporations should get involved.
Debra Gore-Mann is President and CEO of the Greenlining Institute. With an engineering degree and an M.B.A. from Stanford (where she was the only African American woman in a class of 300 graduate students), her work has spanned across the private, public and political sectors in uplifting low opportunity communities with funding, team building and financial and people resources. Most recently, she led the San Francisco Conservation Corps, America’s first urban municipal youth corps.
As Greenlining’s President and CEO, Debra guides the organization’s growth and direction and serves as the unifying voice for multifaceted policy work, bringing her unique, intersectional perspective to bear. She works with the board to oversee the organization’s finances, management and governance and partners with staff and board to develop programs and policy strategies to advance racial and economic justice and to strengthen ties with The Greenlining Coalition.

MAI Alumni Panel: Sustainability in Medicine and The Pre-Health Journey
2020-11-19 18:00 - 19:00
Join Medical Aid Initiative (MAI) on Thursday, November 19th at 6 PM for our alumni panel: Sustainability in Medicine and The Pre-Health Journey. A team of medical students and pre-health undergraduates will provide insight into their unique undergraduate journeys at UCLA! Along with discussing the significance of medical sustainability, panelists will share their undergraduate experiences, give tips on how to balance academics and personal well being, and describe how their opportunities at UCLA have influenced their career aspirations and prepared them for medical school, graduate school, and more. At the end of the session, each panelist will host a separate breakout room where participants will be able to ask personalized questions to the individual they resonate with most. RSVP here (https://forms.gle/MZz6ZyHV4B2cAgQs7) to receive the Zoom link, submit any questions you would like to see answered, and to review each panelist’s bio. Thank you and please feel free to reach out with any questions and concerns, as well as share this event with anyone you know who may be interested!

Carbon-Capture Symposium
2020-11-30 08:00 - 2020-12-01 17:30
Please join us for a virtual webinar we are planning for November 30 and December 1 on carbon-capture. This webinar will include leading researchers from UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, MIT, Carnegie-Mellon University, Georgia Tech, Ohio State University, Arizona State University, HY-TEK Bio, Verdox, and Mosaic Materials. Several presentations will focus on carbon-capture technologies that are now at the point where scaling-up to mid-scale demonstration projects is the next developmental stage on the path to utility-scale solutions. As such, some of the innovations that will be presented may benefit from a CO2 exhaust stream, for example from a co-generation plant, in a research university setting where the facilities engineers and faculty researchers can play a role in monitoring and evaluating a CC demonstration project. I expect that a number of webinar participants will be from universities with CHP plants and an interest in helping to advance carbon-capture solutions that hopefully will prove scalable.

You may be curious about our interest in exploring and fostering carbon-capture technologies. Many leading climate scientists believe that carbon-capture as well as energy de-carbonization may be essential to avoid 2 degree C. overshoot. Moreover, we believe that speeding up, as well as attaining, carbon-free energy will not be a single-path solution, but rather a mosaic of technology and infrastructure solutions that work in synergy to provide resilience and grid stability that will be increasingly critical as weather and seasonal extremes exacerbate the path to carbon-free energy.
In the spirit of bi-coastal collaboration on climate solutions, this virtual colloquium will be co-sponsored by the University of Maryland and the University of California, Irvine. Presenters will include:

Shota Atsumi, Professor of Chemistry, UC Davis
Jack Brouwer, Professor of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Environmental Engineering and Director of the UC Irvine Advanced Power and Energy Program and National Fuel Research Center
Liang-Shih Fan, Distinguished University Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The Ohio State University
Christopher W. Jones, William R. McLain Chair and Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Tech
Klaus Lackner, Professor, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University and Director of Center for Negative Carbon Emissions
Jeffrey R. Long, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley and Co-Founder, Mosaic Materials
Robert “Bob” Mroz, Founder/CEO of HY-TEK Bio, a Baltimore tech startup that is operating a demonstration facility of Bob’s algae-based carbon-capture system
Edward S. Rubin, Alumni Chair Professor of Environmental Engineering and Science; Professor of Engineering & Public Policy and Mechanical Engineering; Senior Fellow, Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, Carnegie Mellon University
Gaurav Sant, Professor of Engineering at UCLA
Sahag Voskian, Chemistry Department, MIT, and Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Verdox
Jenny Yang, UC Irvine Professor of Chemistry

We plan to allot ample time for Q&A (more than has been commonplace in recent webinars where one or two questions are possible per speaker). If you are interested in registering for this virtual colloquium, please use this link:
https://uci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4SyXG5nwTT-OIVteh6Iy3w
