October 8th, 2010

Bina Agarwal "Gender and forest conservation". BINA AGARWAL is Director and Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University.  An economist with a keen interest in interdisciplinary and intercountry explorations, Bina Agarwal's publications include nine books and over seventy professional papers on a range of subjects: land, livelihoods and property rights; environment and development; the political economy of gender; poverty and inequality; law; and agriculture and technological change. Her most recent book, Gender and Green Governance , is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Among numerous other prizes and honors, her book A Field of One's Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia (Cambridge University Press, 1994) was awarded the A.K. Coomaraswamy Book Prize 1996; the Edgar Graham Book Prize 1996; and the K. H. Batheja Award 1995-96. Much of her work focuses on the lives of the most disadvantaged, and her writings have been used extensively in framing policy by governments, NGOs and international agencies.

August 27th, 2010

Dr. John Kessler"Envrionmental Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill" Dr. John Kessler (Texas A&M) is a chemical oceanographer who studies global climate change. His talk will focus on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the northern Gulf of Mexico. His work  has been recently covered by NPR, the Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Fox, AP, and others.

April 9th, 2010

Dr. Konrad Steffen "Greenland Icesheet and dynamic response to global warming". Dr. Steffen, (http://cires.colorado.edu/science/groups/steffen/) well-known Swiss scientist, is the Director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), at the University of Colorado,Boulder. For over three decades, he has led field expeditions to the Greenland ice sheet, Antarctica, and other Arctic regions to measure the dynamic response of ice masses under a warming climate. His work is responsible for a large part of the instrumentation that monitors changing conditions on the Greenland Ice Sheet. He has published over 80 research papers in peer-reviewed journals, and his research has been featured on television, radio, and in many popular magazines.

January 22nd, 2010

Dr. Pedro Alvarez "Impressions from Copenhagen". Dr. Alvarez, Chair of the Department of Civil and Evironmental Engineering at Rice University, discussed his impressions and inside view of the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit 2009. After his presentation, some of the students that accompanied him leaded a discussion panel.

November 20th, 2009

Zaida Amaral "The Transition Movement: Building Comunity Resilence". The Transition Movement is a vibrant, grassroots movement that seeks to build community resilience in the face of such challenges as peak oil, climate change and the economic crisis. It represents one of the most promising ways of engaging people in strengthening their communities against the effects of these challenges, resulting in a life that is more abundant, fulfilling, equitable and socially connected.  Originating in the UK in 2005, the Transition Movement has spread worldwide with some 660 "mulling" communities and 245 "official" initiatives in 27 countries so far.  Transition Houston is the 40th official initiative in the US and the 208th worldwide. 

Zaida Amaral provided a look at how communities around the world have responded to the intersecting waves of Climate Change, Peak Oil, and the economic and food crises, and how they are facing the actual state of the planet.  She discussed the Transition Movement as a system that supports the creation of Rapid Response Teams, empowers social networks and prepares for the Urgency of Acting.  Zaida explored how communities around the world are planning for the low-carbon transition, including some examples of Transition Initiative and University cooperation/partnership while building city Energy Descent Plans.

March 24th, 2009

Dr. Robert Bullard "Growing smarter: achieving environmental justice and livable communities". Dr. Robert Bullard, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, is widely acknoledged as a pioneer in environmental justice; since 1978 Bullard has worked in the field, has testified and served as expert witness in dozens of civil right cases over the past decade, and written fourteen books that address environmental justice, environmental racism, urban land use, facility permitting, community reinvestment, housing, transportation, suburban sprawl, and smart growth.

February 12th, 2009

Peter Bunyard "Climate, Life & the Amazon-the seriousness of the crisis". Peter Bunyard is recognized internationally as an expert on climate change and a world expert on the Amazon and rainforests. A founding editor of The Ecologist magazine and a Fellow of the Linnean Society, Peter studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and Harvard, and is adjunct faculty on the University of Boston Study Abroad Program. He regularly lectures in South America on the climatic importance of the Amazonian rainforest and has traveled through the Amazon basin in Colombia. And he doesn't cease from letting others know about the risks to global climate as a consequence of devastating the Amazon forests.

Peter Bunyard has received Master’s Degrees from Cambridge and Harvard. He helped found and currently serves as science editor of The Ecologist and helped launch the Industry and Environment Review of the United Nations Environment Program in Paris. He is the author of The Breakdown of Climate: Human Choices or Global Disaster, co-author of Imperiled Planet: The Politics of Self-Sufficiency, editor and author of The Green Alternative Guide to Good Living and Health Guide for the Nuclear Age, and editor of Gaia in Action: A Science of the Living Earth. At the request of the Indigenous Affairs Department of Colombia, he also carried out research into the impact of the 1992 Constitution on the affairs and responsibilities of indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon. Peter is currently lecturing in Colombia on the relationship between the Amazon and climate. His latest book, Extreme Weather, was published in the UK in October 2006 (Floris Books) and was published in 2008 (available through Barnes & Noble).

November 18th, 2008

Peggy F. Barlett. "The Sustainable Campus: Food, Policies, and Place". Higher education around the United States is responding rapidly to the challenges of sustainability, and campus food projects are a lively dimension of that effort, combining dining service operations, curriculum, research, and relations with surrounding communities. After reviewing common components of campus sustainable food projects, this talk will explore some of the critiques of the current industrial agri-food system embedded in rhetoric around sustainable agriculture. Grounded in the work of agricultural anthropologists and other social scientists over the last fifty years, issues emerge focusing on the environment, economy, social justice, and health. Adoption of specific buying guidelines and metrics of progress expands public awareness, marks a shift from rhetoric to market clout, and creates a safe space for the early stages of transformative political effort. Beyond critique, sustainable food initiatives foster ethical concerns, deepen bioregional awareness, and ground the goals of sustainability in daily choices and sensual pleasure. PANELISTS: Richard Johnson, Director of Sustainability, Rice University; and Jennifer Rudgers, Assistant Professor, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Rice University

October 24th, 2008

Dr. Adil Najam, an expert in international diplomacy and development, director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and professor at Boston University, will give a short talk on the climate and challenges faced by third world countries entitled "Globalization and Environment: 5 propositions"

Dr. Najam has served as a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), work for which the IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along with Al Gore. Prof. Najam has also taught at MIT, University of Massachusetts and at the Flecther School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts Univeristy. He has written over 100 scholarly papers and book chapters, he serves of the editorial boards of many scholarly journals, and his recent books include: Pakistanis in America: Portrait of a Giving Community (2006); Trade and Environment Negotiations: A Resource book (2006); Envisioning a Sustainable Development Agenda for Trade and Environment (2006); Environment, Development and Human Security: Perspectives from South Asia (2003); and Civic Entrepreneurship (2002). He is a past winner of MIT's Goodwin Medal for Effective Teaching, the Fletcher School Paddock Teaching Award, and the Stein Rokan Award of the International Political Science Association, the ARNOVA Emerging Scholar Award, and the Pakistan Television Medal for Outstanding Achievement. Prof. Najam is frequently interviewed by and writes for the popular media and is the founding editor of the blog Pakistaniat.com.

November 29th, 2007

William H. Calvin, Ph.D., a theoretical neurobiologist and Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle will be visiting Rice University on November 29 th as part of the President’s Lecture Series. Continuing the events focusing on the 2007-2008 common reading theme of man, nature and climate change, the CSES (Center for the Study of the Environment and Society) will be hosting a lunchtime colloquium featuring William Calvin at noon on November 29 th. He will give a short talk, followed by an opportunity for questions and discussions. Lunch will be provided, and the event is open to the entire Rice community. Please RSVP to cses@rice.edu by November 23rd.

"I talk a lot about ape-to-human evolution and all those abrupt climate changes along the way, even about civilization's vulnerabilities to abrupt shocks. But mostly I try to extend Darwin's intellectual revolution to brain mechanisms. What sort of Darwinian brain wiring allows us, in just a split second, to shape up a better thought?  To create quality from mere incoherence?" – William H. Calvin

WILLIAM H. CALVIN is the author of a dozen books, mostly for general readers, about brains and evolution. The latest is A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond.  Out in paperback is A Brain for All Seasons:  Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change, about paleoanthropology, paleoclimate, and considerations from neurobiology and evolutionary biology, which won the 2002 Phi Beta Kappa book award for science.  His book with Derek Bickerton,Lingua ex Machina: Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the Human Brain, is about the evolution of structured language.  His research interests include the recurrent excitatory circuitry of cerebral cortex used for split-second versions of the Darwinian bootstrapping of quality, the four-fold enlargement of the hominid brain during the ice ages, and the brain reorganization for language and planning during "The Mind's Big Bang" which occurred about 50,000 years ago, long after our brains had reached their current size.

Read about William Calvin's forthcoming book here.

And read William Calvin's recent inteveiw with Evolution Shift here.

April 19th, 2007

Joanie Kleypas is a Scientist II at NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research). She is a marine ecologist/geologist that specializes in the interactions between coral reef ecosystems and climate. She will give a short informal presentation at noon to precede her Thursday afternoon lecture. Please join us.

Ocean acidification is gaining recognition as an important environmental problem caused by fossil fuel burning. Oceanic uptake of atmospheric CO2 across the air-sea interface is changing the carbonate system in seawater to an unprecedented state. The main consequences are a lowering of both pH and carbonate ion concentration, and a lowering of the saturation states of the minerals calcite and aragonite (CaCO3), the main skeleton-forming minerals for many marine organisms. One of the demonstrated biological consequences of ocean acidification is a reduction in calcification rates of corals and other reef-building organisms. If laboratory experiments prove to be representative of corals in the field, then coral growth rates are likely to decrease in the future. Whether reduced calcification rates will affect the fitness of corals remains essentially unknown, but there is little doubt that the carbonate budgets on coral reefs will decline. This talk will outline the current state of knowledge as to what ocean acidification means for coral reef ecosystems, and will examine both modern-day analogs and geological record for clues as to whether coral reefs and the structures they build will constitute a measurable litmus test for ocean acidification.

Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Coral Reefs and Other Marine Calcifiers: A Guide for Future Research by Joanie Kleypas

A recent article published by the New Yorker on ocean acidification

February 28th, 2007
 
Eban Goodstein a professoor of economics at Lewis & Clark College and is the Director of Focus the Nation, a national global warming educational initiative, which is coordinating teams of faculty, students, and staff at over a thousand universities and high schools in the United States to participate is a nationwide, nonpartisan discussion on the theme of climate stabilization. The project will also include the participation of religious, civic, and business organizations, and will culminate on January 31, 2008, on a one-day symposium to be held simultaneously on campuses across the country. Focus the Nation could be a catalyzing event that could help turn the national conversation about global warming from fatalism to constructive engagement with the challenge of out generation. Please join us.

Read about this event at Rice News. 

November 3, 2005

James Howard Kunstler is the author of The Geography of Nowhere and The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times Sunday Magazine and Op-Ed page, where he has written on environmental and economic issues. He will give a presentation entitled: The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century.

October 17, 2005

Matthew Kahni, Professor of International Economics at Tufts University, gave a presentation entitled "Contrasting Approaches for Measuring Urban Sustainability" about the Environmental Kuznet's Curve as a tool for measuring the how "green" particular cities are or might become.

April 22, 2005
Goodbye to a Refuge?

Terrell Dixon, University of Houston English Professor, gave a presentation entitled "Goodbye to a Refuge?" about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Dr. Dixon discussed his recent trips to and upcoming book on ANWR as well as the political situation in which the refuge is now embroiled.

April 14, 2005

Jim Cahalan, Indiana University of Pennsylvania English Professor, gave a presentation entitled "From Home to Big Bend and Beyond: The Unusual" on the life of Edward Abbey. Cahalan's biography of Abbey, Edward Abbey: A Life received the Western Literature Association's Thomas J. Lyon Award in 2002 and earned Cahalan a reputation as one of the foremost authorities on Edward Abbey.

April 6, 2005

Lars Lerup, Rice University Dean of Architecture Lars Lerup spoke about his forthcoming book, Toxic Ecology: At the Limit of the Entrepreneurial City. Toxic Ecology examines Houston as a city which finds itself at the apex of its growth. Driven sheerly by capitalism and profit, Houston's suburbs have sprawled to the full extent of their potential while the environment within the metroplex has become toxic to its residents. Lerup examined how Houston should address growth and development from this point forward.

April 14, 2004

Global Forum on Water - This public forum brought together art and science. The major focus of the forum was to present new information and thinking about water from the perspectives of science, technology, ecology, economics, and ethics. The forum was designed to address the state of water in the world and new ways of understanding water. Its purpose was to provoke new ways of thinking about water and what water itself needs to perform its life-giving functions on earth.

The forum was planned by the Center for the Study of Society and the Environment, FotoFest, the Environmental and Engineering Systems Institute, and the Shell Center for Sustainability at Rice University. The conference brought together interdisciplinary perspectives on water with participation by resource economists, hydrologists, bio-engineers, ethicists and philosophers, legal experts, architects, and artists.

See the archived webcast here.

February 19, 2004

Observing Environmental Change: Why It Matters
Mitchell Thomashow - "Perhaps the most crucial challenge for environmental educators is how to make global environmental issues more tangible, so that they become an integral part of everyday awareness. Such awareness implies both ecological and spiritual attention, and at its core is a simple assumption: the best way to learn to perceive the biosphere is to pay close attention to our immediate surroundings. Through local natural history observations, imagination and memory, and spiritual contemplation, we develop a place-based view that can be expanded to encompass the biosphere."

Thomashow is Chairperson of the Environmental Studies Department at Antioch New England Graduate School. He is specifically interested in developing reflective, interdisciplinary pedagogy in environmental studies. For a complete biography, click here.

January 21, 2004

Filling a Vacuum: University as Designer

Friday, October 31, 2003

Observations of the Earth: Towards an Earth Information System

March 21, 2003

Antarctica: Climates of the past and implications for the future

January 22, 2003

Indonesia: The Most Biodiverse Place on Earth. Why Should We Care?

November 13, 2002

Biosphere 2 Information Session

October 30, 2002

Cleaning the Air, Jobs and Productivity: Lessons from Los Angeles

September 25, 2002

Valuing Nature in Texas: The Economics of Non-Market Environmental Amenities.

April 5, 2002

March 18, 2002

In Defense of Place: Texas Coastal Litigation

Fall 2001

Numbers and Nerves: Seeking a Discourse of Environmental Sensitivity in a World of Data