Sunday, February 26, 2023

Energy (and Other) Events Monthly - March 2023

Conferences
Lecture Series
Events

These kinds of events below are happening all over the world every day and most of them, now, are webcast and archived, sometimes even with accurate transcripts. Would be good to have a place that helped people access them. 

This is a more global version of the local listings I did for about a decade (what I did and why I did it at http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2013/11/what-i-do-and-why-i-do-it.html) until September 2020 and earlier for a few years in the 1990s (https://theworld.com/~gmoke/AList.index.html).  

A more comprehensive global listing service could be developed if there were enough people interested in doing it, if it hasn’t already been done.  

If anyone knows of such a global listing of open energy, climate, and other events is available, please put me in contact.

Thanks for reading,

Solar IS Civil Defense,
George Mokray
gmoke@world.std.com

http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com - notes on lectures and books
http://solarray.blogspot.com - renewable energy and efficiency - zero net energy links list
http://cityag.blogspot.com - city agriculture links list
http://geometrylinks.blogspot.com - geometry links list
http://hubevents.blogspot.com - Energy (and Other) Events
http://www.dailykos.com/user/gmoke/history - articles, ideas, and screeds

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Tuesday, February 28

Powering the Mekong: Does “clean energy” mean more dams?
Tuesday, February 28
3am - 5am EST (15:00 - 16:00 BKK)
Online
RSVP at https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_56hHaxT_T-yZZpA7toeM6Q

This webinar will examine the region’s energy trends and the role of hydropower in the context of the global energy crisis. It will focus on the region’s overall energy outlook, policymakers’ perceptions of hydropower dams as “clean energy”, the role of local communities in adopting clean energy and the importance of a just transition in the region and beyond. SEI Asia’s Research Fellow, Stefan Bößner will present.

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Accelerating Climate Resilience Webinar: Resilience Hubs 
Tuesday, February 28
11 a.m. - 12 p.m.
Online
RSVP at https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAofuCpqjkvHdL9rWm6rCpxXQG9zctQQXJb

The Accelerating Climate Resilience 2023 Speaker Series is launching in partnership with the Equity in Clean Energy Webinar Series. Join us on February 28th from 11am to 12pm to learn more about resilience hubs, including different types of resilience hubs, their co-benefits, and their connection to climate resilience planning. During this virtual panel discussion, you’ll have a chance to hear from three practitioners who are currently working on building resilience hubs in communities around the country:

Penelope Funaiole, Prevention and Outreach Manager, City of Medford 
Aubrey Germ, Climate and Resilience Planner, City of Baltimore
Missy Stults, PhD.Sustainability and Innovations Director, City of Ann Arbor

You’ll also learn about the potential usage of clean energy in resilience hubs and about the benefits and opportunities of effectively establishing and promoting resilience hubs in your own community. 

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Dorceta Taylor: Untold Stories of the Conservation Movement: Race, Class and Environmental Protection
Tuesday, February 28
6:00pm
BC, Gasson Hall, 100 140 Commonwealth Ave., Chestnut Hill, MA

Dorceta E. Taylor is a professor of environmental justice and the Senior Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Yale School of the Environment. Dr. Taylor directs YSE's Environmental Fellows Program and the Yale Conservation Scholars Early Leadership Initiative. She is a leading expert in the field of institutional diversity and workforce dynamics in the environmental sector. In 2014 Taylor authored a landmark national report, The State of Diversity in Environmental Institutions: Mainstream NGOs, Foundations, and Government Agencies. Dorceta Taylor has also published several influential books including Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility (2014) and The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection (2016). 

Part of the Rewilding Planet Earth Series
Sponsored by Environmental Studies Program, African and African Diaspora Studies Program, Department of Sociology, and the Department of History 

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Wednesday, March 1

Biodiversity 8 Deepdive: Symbiosis is Challenging Survival of the Fittest
Wednesdays, March 1 – May 12
RSVP at https://bio4climate.org/course-offerings/biodiversity-8-deepdive-into-symbiosis/registration/

How has conventional interpretation of Darwin’s survival of the fittest shaped not only our understanding of science and extinction, but also economics and cultural values? Are we genetically doomed to compete with nature and with each other until our species joins the long list of other species headed for extinction?

It might surprise you to know that the theory of symbiosis in nature is as old as survival of the fittest. New discoveries showing how most species cooperate and communicate can give us a more hopeful view of the future. 

Join us for a 12 week deep dive into the science, history, and cultural implications of how we understand evolution and interspecies relationships.

Format
This is a 12 week course that meets every Wednesday, starting March 1 and running through May 12, 2023. Sessions will be held from 12 – 2pm ET and 7 – 9pm ET on Zoom to accommodate students’ schedules. 

Join a live class each week to discuss readings, enjoy expert presentations, and be challenged to do your own experiments.  Past classes have even included discussions with the authors!  You can also connect to the Biodiversity Deepdive community through an exclusive Google Groups forum. 

Your instructor
Jim Laurie discovered the magical power of nature in his work as a biologist in the chemical industry to clean  toxic wastewater with “living machines”.  His career turned to restoration biology and teaching.  You will enjoy his interactive and thought provoking style which makes science accessible, while still being comprehensive.

Course Description
In Biodiversity 7, we learned how to create Mini-Forests using the Miyawaki Method from author Hannah Lewis.  Tony Hiss, the writer of Rescuing the Planet also visited class, sharing his ideas to protect large areas in North America and connect them with wildlife corridors.  A third author, Kristin Ohlson, came to class and challenged us to look for connections and cooperation in nature.  

Competition is an important process in nature, but building relationships and sharing resources may be essential if a species wants to survive on a changing planet for millions of years.  Our human civilization is now facing a Climate Emergency and experiencing the 6th major extinction episode. Will humans survive another century with our present belief systems?  Kristin Ohlson declares, “We need better metaphors.”  

Biodiversity 8 Deepdive will explore recent discoveries in biology and the ancient wisdom of Indigenous observers in an effort to identify these better metaphors and weave together a more hopeful vision of the future than “survival of the fittest.”  For example, the microbiome in our human gut was not appreciated until early in this century.  Now we are finding that trees and mycorrhizal fungi work together in healthy soils to create a subsurface microbiome.  Must multicellular organisms like plants, animals, and fungi nurture healthy microbiomes to ensure their own survival?  Let’s find out. 

Another important area of discovery is the field of epigenetics.  It appears that much of our genetic code is acting like ‘switches’ which turn other genes on or off depending on environmental changes.  The genetic code doesn’t change, but the organism does, and these changes in the switching can be passed on to future generations.  Paleontologist Peter Ward believes this might explain how quickly biodiversity often returns after extinction episodes.  Life seems to be more resilient than is explained by random mutations alone.

Robin Wall Kimmerer dives into these new discoveries and weaves into the narrative the stories of her Potawatomi Tribe in the Western Great Lakes and Midwest.  Kimmerer asks us to listen to what the plants and animals are trying to teach us.  Appreciating the communication between often very different species was obvious to many Indigenous scientists long before it was recognized in our research universities.  Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass has been recommended by many students in my previous Biodiversity courses, and will join the focus of this course.

 Books used in the course:
1. Sweet in Tooth & Claw: Stories of Generosity & Cooperation in the Natural World – by Kristin Ohlson.  
2. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants – by Robin Wall Kimmerer 
3. LaMarck’s Revenge: How Epigenetics is Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Evolution’s Past & Present – by Peter Ward

Whether this is your first or eighth course, please join us if you are curious about nature and its power to restore ecosystems to abundance.  The veterans of previous classes will help you catch up in your learning.  We are developing into a “Symbiosis Team” to ameliorate or reverse the impacts of Global Warming.  Everyone has much to learn and share and there is much to be done.  We need and appreciate your enthusiasm on the team, and encourage people to join at the level that they are able to. Sliding scale pricing is available, as are scholarship options. To join us, register below!

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2030 solar and wind roadmap for Pakistan
Wednesday, March 1
5:30am EST [11:30 AM in Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna]
Online
RSVP at https://agora-energiewende-de.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_RXguv17OS0-84V-_4ZzlWQ

In this joint webinar between the Institute of Policy Studies and Agora Energiewende, learn how Pakistan can accelerate the development of wind and solar power while improving energy security, reducing reliance on fossil fuel, and lowering costs for consumers. Experts from Pakistan and Europe will discuss up-to-date analysis on integrating renewables into Pakistan’s grid, the role of potential electric vehicle markets, and distributed energy solutions.

The webinar will be held in English and include a Q & A session.

We will publish the presentation on the day of the webinar in order to make sure you can access it no matter the internet connection.

RECORDING
We are going to record the webinar to publish it on our website afterwards.

We look forward to your participation and a lively discussion!

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Energy Efficient Circuits Beyond what have been known as the Fundamental Limits: Power Converter, Analog Interface and Frequency Generation
Wednesday, March 1
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Grier Room, Building 34-401, 34 Vassar Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Taekwang Jang, ETH Zurich
Abstract: Circuit designers are entering an exciting new era where innovations in circuits are the key to reshaping the future. With the emerging trends in machine learning, IoE, brain-machine interface, 6G comm., quantum computing, and so on, we are required to make drastic improvements in performance. This talk introduces analog and mixed-signal circuit techniques that overcome what have been believed as the fundamental limits.

Bio: T. Jang received Ph.D. in EE from the U. Michigan, and worked at Samsung for 5 years on PLL designs. In 2018, he joined ETH Zürich as an assistant professor, leading the Energy-Efficient Circuits and IoT Systems group. He is the recipient of the 2021/2022 ISSCC Outstanding European Paper Award.

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Enhancing the Benefits of Human Mobility through Development Interventions
Wednesday, March 1
12:30pm to 2:00pm
MIT Building 9, 9-255 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
This is an in-person event with a virtual option. To join the Zoom Webinar, registration is required: https://bit.ly/BenefitsHumanMobility

About the speaker:
David Khoudour (he/him) is Global Human Mobility Adviser within the Recovery Solution and Human Mobility Team at the UNDP Crisis Bureau in New York City, where he coordinates UNDP work on migration and forced displacement. Prior to his current assignment, David worked as Regional Human Mobility Adviser at the UNDP Regional Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean in Panama and, before that, as Adviser for Migration and Development at the UNDP Colombia Office, supporting the Presidency of the Republic of Colombia in its response to the Venezuelan displacement crisis. He is also the co-chair of the KNOMAD Thematic Working Group (TWG) on Special Issues. Before joining UNDP in 2018, David was the Head of the Migration and Skills Unit at the OECD Development Centre, in Paris, and the chair of the KNOMAD TWG on Policy and Institutional Coherence. Until 2010, he was a researcher at the CEPII, a French economic think tank, and a lecturer at HEC Paris, the University Paris Nanterre and Sciences Po, from where he holds a PhD in Economics. David was also a Fulbright scholar at the University of California-Berkeley, as well as a professor of economics and the head of the Observatory on international migration at the Universidad Externado de Colombia in Bogota.

Free and open to the public.

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Reducing Child Poverty in the United States
Wednesday, March 1
1:00 – 3:00 p.m. ET 
The Brookings Institution, Falk Auditorium, 1775 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC
and Online

Ending child poverty remains an economic and moral imperative. Policy changes made during the COVID-19 pandemic caused dramatic reductions in child poverty and child food insecurity, but when the 2022 poverty and food insecurity numbers are released, we expect to see that much of these gains reversed.  

On Wednesday, March 1, 2023, The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution will convene leaders and experts to examine the economic impacts of child poverty and propose solutions to get back on track to a thriving American childhood. The event will feature a fireside chat between U.S. Senator Michael Bennet and Amna Nawaz of PBS NewsHour. 

The forum will also include two panel discussions featuring Lauren Bauer (Brookings), Wendy Edelberg (Brookings), Robert Greenstein (Brookings), Vince Hall (Feeding America),Bradley Hardy (Georgetown University), Grace B. Hou (Illinois Department of Human Services), Christine James-Brown (Child Welfare League of America), Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach (Northwestern University), and Eric Schwartz (76 West Holdings).  

The event coincides with the release of three essays focused on delivering in-kind nutrition benefits to children; addressing place-based poverty; and instating a partially refundable Child Tax Credit. 

For updates on the event, follow @HamiltonProj on Twitter and join the conversation using #ChildPoverty. 

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Sulfur and the organic carbon cycle
Wednesday, March 1
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 54, Room 209, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA 

Organic matter (OM) burial in sediments is fundamental to planetary habitability and stability on timescales ranging from billions of years to decades or less. OM burial is tightly linked with biogeochemical processes in the sulfur cycle, which can both respire OM and potentially preserve organic matter through the process of OM sulfurization. We are only beginning to understand the implications of these mechanisms for climate and atmospheric oxygenation. In this talk, I will highlight our recent results from both deep time and modern systems that provide fresh insights into the timescales and drivers of organic sulfur formation, and into the impacts of microbial sulfur cycling on sedimentary OM burial more broadly. In both Mesoproterozoic basins and modern marine O2 deficient zones, we find evidence that OM transformations are driven by microbial sulfur cycling, and that these processes may represent important feedbacks with global climate and redox state. These results have direct applications related to the urgent human need to address climate change and remove billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, and I will share some of our efforts to understand the risks and potential for CO2 removal (CDR) via biomass sequestration in anoxic settings.

About this Series: The Department Lecture Series at EAPS at MIT is a series of weekly talks given by leading thinkers in the areas of geology, geophysics, geobiology, geochemistry, atmospheric science, oceanography, climatology, and planetary science. For more information and Zoom password please contact Madelyn Musick: mmusick@mit.edu

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Psychology for a Safe Climate [PSC] In Conversation with Joelle Gergis: Humanity’s Moment
Wednesday, March 1
6:00 pm – 7:30 pm AEDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/psc-in-conversation-with-joelle-gergis-humanitys-moment-tickets-512564031817

This is the first event for 2023 in our online series titled PSC in Conversation. The series has been designed to invite deeper conversation in our community about the emotional and existential dimensions of climate change, looking at some of Australia's most interesting thinkers on this topic.

Dr Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer. She is an internationally recognised expert in Australian and Southern Hemisphere climate variability and change who has authored over 100 scientific publications. Joëlle is a lead author on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report — a global review of climate change science.

Joëlle will be talking with PSC's Charles Le Feuvre, about her latest book, Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope.

In Humanity’s Moment, Joëlle explains the science in the IPCC report with unflinching honesty, explaining what it means for our future, while sharing her personal reflections on bearing witness to the heartbreak of the climate emergency unfolding in real time. But this is not a lament for a lost world. It is an inspiring reminder that human history is an endless tug-of-war for social justice. We are each a part of an eternal evolutionary force that can transform our world. Joëlle shows us that the solutions we need to live sustainably already exist - we just need the social movement and political will to create a better world.

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Thursday, March 2

Tufts Energy Conference 2023
Thursday, March 2 – Friday, March 3
5:00 PM EST
Tufts University 419 Boston Avenue Medford, MA 02155

The 2023 Tufts Energy Conference, The Energy Sector of the Future: Innovation, Equity, and Infrastructure, will convene a diverse and international group of leaders to explore how equity can be incorporated in innovation systems and infrastructure investments to bring about a just and affordable energy transition for all.

The Tufts Energy Conference is open to students, experts, and the public - creating a space to discuss the critical energy issues of today.

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Systems Change for People and Planet: What You Need to Know
Thursday, March 2
10 a.m. EST (4 p.m. CET)
Online
RSVP at https://wri.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_du_IQb_QRVSAJAOnr9BvZg

Organiser: World Resources Institute (WRI)

To limit global temperature rise, conserve nature, and build a fairer economy that benefits everyone, we will need deep change across every aspect of our economies at a pace and scale we have not yet seen. Because our world is complex and interconnected — small changes in one system can have unforeseen consequences in others — spurring transformative action requires a systemic approach.

Join Systems Change Lab on March 2 at 10 a.m. EST (4 p.m. CET) to learn what you need to know about systems change. Systems Change Lab has identified more than 70 transformational shifts needed to protect both people and the planet, highlighting current action against climate, biodiversity and equity targets.

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A Clean Energy Workforce and the Path to Equity
Thursday, March 2
12:00PM - 1:30PM
Kleinman Energy Forum, Fisher Fine Arts Library, 220 S 34th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104
and Online

Speaker
NIKKI LUKE, Assistant Professor of Geography, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Moderator
SHELLEY WELTON, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Law and Energy Policy, Kleinman Center for Energy Policy

Visiting Scholar Nikki Luke chronicles how subsidized worker training programs in the South grew a workforce of laborers in utilities, energy efficiency, and solar panel manufacturing.

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Moakley Chair Webinar Series: When Will This War End? Unraveling The Russia-Ukraine Crisis
Thursday, March 2
4:00 PM
Online 
RSVP at https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ejm5jgr50d4a71e4&oseq=&c=&ch=

Speakers & Panelists 
General George W. Casey, Jr. served 41 years in the U.S. Army following his graduation from Georgetown University. He is an accomplished leader and an authority on strategic leadership. He led the Army from 2007-2011 and is widely credited with restoring balance to a war-weary Army and leading the transformation to keep it relevant in the 21st Century. He was a stalwart advocate for military families, wounded Soldiers, and survivors of the fallen, and took on the tough issues of suicide and reducing the stigma attached to combat stress. Prior to this, he commanded the Multi-National Force – Iraq, a coalition of more than 30 countries, where he guided the Iraq mission through its toughest days. In his 15 years as a general officer, he held numerous senior leadership positions in Europe, the Middle East and in the United States. He is currently lecturing on leadership at the SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University, and to leaders of national and multinational corporations. He also lectures on International Relations at the Korbel School, University of Denver. He serves as the Chairman, USO Board of Governors; and on the boards of Denver University, Leonardo DRS; ColtCZ North America; the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality; the Center for Global Development, and several other organizations that support our servicemen and women, our Veterans and their families. He has published two books, Strategic Reflections, Operation Iraqi Freedom, July 2004-2007, about his experiences in Iraq, and Supporting Veterans After 50 Years of the All-Volunteer Force, with Dr. Joel Kupersmith, and several articles on leadership, including, “Leading in a ‘VUCA’ World”, Fortune.
 
Ambassador Karl Eikenberry is a faculty member of Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, currently specializing in Middle East security affairs.  He is a former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and Lieutenant General, U.S. Army (retired). From 2011-2019 he was the Director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University.  He was also an affiliate with the Stanford University Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies' Center for International Security and Cooperation; Center for Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law; and The Europe Center. Prior to his arrival at Stanford, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 until 2011.  Before appointment as Chief of Mission in Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry had a thirty-five year career in the United States Army, retiring with the rank of lieutenant general.  His military operational posts included as commander and staff officer with mechanized, light, airborne, and ranger infantry units in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and as the Commander of the American-led Coalition forces in Afghanistan.  He held various policy and political-military positions, including Deputy Chairman of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium; Director for Strategic Planning and Policy for U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii; and Assistant Army and later Defense Attaché at the United States Embassy in Beijing. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, has earned master’s degrees from Harvard University in East Asian Studies and Stanford University in Political Science, and was a National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.  Ambassador Eikenberry earned an Interpreter’s Certificate in Mandarin Chinese from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office while studying at the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence Chinese Language School in Hong Kong and has an Advanced Degree in Chinese History from Nanjing University in the People’s Republic of China. His military awards include the Defense Distinguished and Superior Service Medals, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Ranger Tab, Combat and Expert Infantryman Badges, and master parachutist wings.  He has received the Department of State Distinguished, Superior, and Meritorious Honor Awards, and Director of Central Intelligence Award. His foreign and international decorations include the Canadian Meritorious Service Cross, and French Legion of Honor. Ambassador Eikenberry is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves on the Academy’s Committee on International Security Studies.  He belongs to the boards of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva, The Asia Foundation, American Councils for International Education, Asia Society of Northern California, National Bureau of Asian Research, and National Committee on American Foreign Policy. His articles and essays on U.S. and international security issues have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Washington Quarterly, The American Interest, American Foreign Policy Interests, Lawfare, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Lawfare, Foreign Policy, Survival, Dædalus, The Financial Times, Parameters, and Military Review.
 
Professor Padraig O’Malley is the John Joseph Moakley Distinguished Professor of Peace and Reconciliation at UMass Boston’s the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies and author on topics related to divided societies. Born in Dublin, Ireland, O’Malley is an award-winning author and expert on democratic transitions and divided societies, with special expertise on Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Iraq. His latest book, The Two-State Delusion: Israel and Palestine – A Tale of Two Narratives, was published by Viking/Penguin Press in July 2015.  His fifteen year documentation of the transition from Apartheid to democracy in South Africa, The Heart of Hope is available at the Nelson Mandela Foundation website.  His work is archived at the South Africa History Association, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa; the Robben Island Museum, University of the Western Cape, South Africa; and the University of Massachusetts Boston, USA. O’Malley is also the founding editor of the New England Journal of Public Policy, a publication of UMass Boston’s John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies. O'Mally has recently authored a new book, Perils and Prospects of a United Ireland, which presents a wide-ranging and unique study of the questions around the future of Northern Irish politics, including the idea of reunification.

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Climate Change and Muslim Societies: Examples from Africa and Asia
Thursday, March 2
4 – 5:30 p.m.
Harvard, Sackler Lecture Hall, 485 Broadway, Cambridge

Elfatih Eltahir, Professor Civil and Environmental Engineering and H.M. King Bhumibol Professor of Hydrology and Climate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Just like in other societies around the world, climate change will have significant impacts on Muslim societies. In this talk, Professor Eltahir will offer specific examples from Asia and Africa to illustrate how these impacts would affect, to varying degrees, important processes that shape economy, culture, and life. He will discuss case studies ranging from water availability in the Nile basin, transmission of malaria in villages of Niger, to heatwaves in crowded cities of South Asia, and outdoor conditions during the Muslim pilgrimage of Hajj. A common theme that emerges from these studies is how understanding natural phenomena as well as the current societal context is critical for accurately projecting future climate conditions at local scales.

CONTACT INFO islamicstudies@harvard.edu

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Climatetech Intern Fair 2023
Thursday, March 2
4:00 pm – 6:00 pm ET
Greentown Labs, 444 Somerville Avenue, Somerville, Massachusetts
RSVP at https://greentownlabs.com/event/climatetech-intern-fair-2023/

There’s a place for everyone in climatetech! Join us to connect with cutting edge startups looking for bright and eager talent.

Calling all students and soon-to-be graduates! Please join us for our annual Intern Fair, which focuses on connecting rockstar interns directly with Greentown Labs’ network of cutting-edge climatetech startups looking for bright and eager talent.

At this internship fair, students from Boston and beyond can connect with Greentown startups and learn more about opportunities at their companies. Attendees will be able to connect in person with the startups that are not only developing climatetech solutions, but building a climate workforce that is ready to harness the massive economic opportunities of the energy transition.

There’s a place for everyone in climatetech, whether they’ve previously worked in traditional energy, have experience tackling climate change, or are new to the climate and energy fields. The jobs are here. We just need you!

THE TYPES OF ROLES YOU’LL FIND AT THE FAIR:
Business Administration
Data
Engineering
Marketing
Operations
Sales
Software
And more!
You can view all job openings on our careers page at https://greentownlabs.com/careers/

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Design Activism: Border Ecologies and the Architecture of UN Missions
Thursday, March 2
6:00pm to 8:00pm
 Long Lounge, 7-429, 7-429 77 Massachusetts Ave Cambridge, MA 02139
and Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/malkit-shoshan-tickets-536285192447

In the past decade, the Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory (FAST), led by Malkit Shoshan, spearheaded several experimental projects at the intersection of design and activism. 

The lecture will explore if and how design can mobilize social and cultural change by making visible suppressed and hidden realities focusing on two case studies: The Silver Lion-winning presentation of Border Ecologies and the Gaza Strip at the Venice Architecture Biennale, which traces the daily struggle of a small community of farmers living along one of the most militarized borders in the world, and the project BLUE: The Architecture of UN Peacekeeping Missions (Actar, 2023), which examines the impacts of United Nations missions on cities, communities, and the environment. FAST's projects question the legitimacy and effectiveness of the institutions society put in place to support communities across the world in times of crisis. 

FAST's cross-disciplinary and multiscalar projects deploy various design, research, engagement, and advocacy strategies. As they share insights into the precarity of daily life and the struggle to confront entrenched bureaucracies, they question the goals and effectiveness of powerful institutions and ask, among others, if and how public institutions can be shaped to center social and environmental justice and care.

Lectures are free and open to the public. Lectures will be held Thursdays at 6 PM ET in 7-429 (Long Lounge) and streamed online unless otherwise noted. Registration required to attend in-person. Register here or watch the webcast on Youtube.

Malkit Shoshan is a designer, author, and educator. She is the founding director of the Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory (FAST), which initiates and develops projects at the intersection of architecture, urban planning and human rights. In her work, she uses spatial design tools to make visible systemic violence, engage with various publics to co-design alternatives that center social and environmental justice, and advocate for systemic change.

Shoshan is the area head of Art, Design, and the Public Domain Master in Design Studies, a design critic in Urban Planning at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, and a visiting scholar at NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge. She is the author and mapmaker of the award-winning book Atlas of the Conflict, Israel-Palestine (010 Publishers, 2011), the co-author of Village. One Land Two Systems and Platform Paradise (Damiani Editore, 2014), and the author and illustrator of BLUE: The Architecture of UN Peacekeeping Missions (Actar, 2023). Her additional publications include Zoo, or the letter Z, just after Zionism (NAiM, 2012), Drone (DPR-Barcelona, 2016), Spaces of Conflict (JapSam books, 2016), Greening Peacekeeping: The Environmental Impact of UN Peace Operations (IPI, 2018), and Retreat (DPR-Barcelona, 2020). Her work has been published and exhibited internationally. In 2021, she was awarded, together with FAST, the Silver Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale for their collaborative presentation Border Ecologies and the Gaza Strip.

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Friday, March 3

From Land Carbon Sink to Net Zero Emissions: How can Land be Part of the Climate Solution? 
Friday, March 3
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Parsons Laboratory , 48-316 15 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA

The land biosphere plays a major natural contribution to climate stability by removing around one third of anthropogenic CO2 emissions from the atmosphere each year. However, anthropogenic disturbances of the land biosphere such as reactive nitrogen enrichment have altered ecosystem carbon and nitrogen cycling, and the resulting increases in the emissions of non-CO2 greenhouse gases (CH4 and N2O) in particular can contribute to climate change. By integrating all three major GHGs (CO2, CH4 and N2O) together, our study shows that the cumulative warming capacity of concurrent biogenic CH4 and N2O is a factor of about two larger than the cooling effect resulting from the global land carbon sink. Land-use intensification using today’s practices to meet food and energy demands increases anthropogenic GHG emissions, which is not consistent with stabilizing the climate at low temperature scenarios. To achieve net-zero GHG emissions, it is essential to adopt climate-smart agriculture, forestry and land use practices to enhance carbon storage as well as reduce non-CO2 GHG emissions. The future role of the land biosphere on achieving Net-Zero emissions will depend on future land-use intensification pathways and on the evolution of the land carbon sink. Therefore, how we manage the global lands needs to become a central part in our strategy to mitigate climate change.

About the Presenter:
Dr. Hanqin Tian is Schiller Institute Professor of Global Sustainability and Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Boston College. Dr. Tian has worked across the disciplinary lines of earth system science, ecology, biogeochemistry, hydrology, earth system modeling, remote sensing and data science. His research on global carbon and nitrogen cycling and greenhouse gas emissions is at the leading edge of the field. His research has resulted in 360 peer-reviewed research articles published in most prestigious journals including over 30 papers in Nature, Science, PNAS and their sister journals. Dr. Tian is a Highly Cited Researcher ranked by Clarivate Web of Science. He was also ranked among the world’s most influential climate scientists by the Reuters List. Dr. Tian is a coordinating lead author for the International Nitrogen Assessment and a contributing author for IPCC AR6. He has served on the Steering Scientific Committee of Global Carbon Project (GCP) and Co-Chair of the International Scientific Committee for Global Nitrous Oxide Budget Assessment. Dr. Tian is elected Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Geophysical Union (AGU), and Ecological Society of America (ESA). He was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow (Brainy Award) in 2019.

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“Culturally-Minded Disaster Response,” Virtual Discussion
Friday, March 3
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Online 

Columbia Climate School Virtual Talk by Fatima Mann, J. D
In the presentation with respect to disaster relief response, Fatima will address what currently exists for relief efforts, what efforts have arisen since Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Harvey, what are the issues with the current infrastructure, policies that support the current infrastructure, policies that are being advocated to support more human-centered approaches, operational and policy recommendations for FEMA, and other relief programs.

Fatima Mann Fatima Mann’s life’s mission is to assist others experience the full joy of loving and accepting themselves. Fatima learned how to serve others through joining AmeriCorps Vista in 2013, which catapulted her into a life of service. Her personal experiences and continuous service in the heart of systematically oppressed communities molded her into a cultivator of social equity. Serving as an AmeriCorps Vista, pushed her to become involved in combating police brutality through co-founding the Austin Justice Coalition (AJC) an Austin based social justice organization. Her work with AJC allowed her to participate in the creation of the body wearing camera policy for the Austin Police Department. She eventually attended and graduated from Southern University Law Center (SULC) in 2018. As a full-time law student Fatima co-founded Counter Balance: ATX (CBATX) a Austin-based self-care and social justice organization. Fatima served as Executive and Policy Director of CBATX, receiving several awards, the 2018 National Association of Social Workers Public Citizen of the Year Award, 2018 Measure Austin Big Data & Community Policing Appreciation Award, and the 2017 Austin Community College Equity Activist Award.

Event Contact Information: Columbia Climate School
swalkes@climate.columbia.edu

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Sunday, March 5

Transformation Beyond the Climate-bubble: The Case for Building a Climate Majority
Sunday, March 5
2:00 PM – 3:15 PM EST
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/transformation-beyond-the-climate-bubble-tickets-544452541207

Dr. Rupert Read will set out succinctly the case for building what has come to be called a new mass ‘moderate’ flank in climate action: reaching well beyond the ‘ghetto’ of existing activism, to those who won’t in fact consider themselves activists at all. A key way in which this can be done is through the lens of (transformative) adaptation; which acts as a ‘truth-bomb’, waking people up in a raft of interconnected ways, essentially through making the crisis real and immediate to people.

Rupert Read is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, former spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion and co-director of the new Moderate Flank Incubator. He is the author of several books, including This Civilisation is Finished; Parents for a Future and Why Climate Breakdown Matters.

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Monday, March 6

TEDxBoston:  Countdown to Artificial General Intelligence
Monday, March 6
9:30am - 7pm
The 'Quin House in Back Bay, Boston, MA
Full schedule at https://drive.google.com/file/d/19uHE0X6n_WJ07q27PmWgBF7LZvJausBn/view

2022 was a breakthrough year for progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI). This year's advances in generative models include large language models like GPT-3.5 and ChatGPT, cross-modal models like DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion, and multi-modal models like Gato. The Metaculus community estimate for the arrival date of "Weak AGI" collapsed from 2042 to 2027.

In 2023, on the cusp of an inflection point in the capabilities of AI, we stand on the shoulders of these accelerating technologies, ready to influence every part of human society. Together, we gather to discuss what this future could look like -- overcoming outstanding challenges that exist in deep learning and AI, and unlocking new heights in our own human intelligence. We have curated ideas/visions of what this future could look like?

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The economic case for tackling climate change now
Monday, March 6
11:00 AM EST - 12:30 PM EST
Online only

Join the conversation on Twitter using #ClimateEcon
The dangers of global warming are increasingly evident—extreme weather, rising sea levels, wildfires, and melting glaciers—but there hasn’t been sufficient political will to take the steps needed to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, which scientists deem essential. 

To examine the economic case for moving sooner rather than later, the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy and the Center on Regulation and Markets at Brookings will convene a virtual conference on March 6 to discuss two recent papers. The first, by the IMF’s Tobias Adrian and coauthors, focuses on the benefits of phasing out coal as an energy source. Following the presentation, the World Bank’s Carolyn Fischer will react. The second, by Hutchins Nonresident Senior Fellow Glenn Rudebusch and coauthors, quantifies the inverse relationship between carbon prices and future temperatures, illustrating how climate policy choices determine climate outcomes. Following this presentation, Irene Monasterolo of EDHEC Business School will respond. Presenters and discussants. All four will then participate in a panel discussion on the broader implications of these issues.

Viewers may submit questions by emailing  events@brookings.edu, on Twitter using the hashtag #ClimateEcon, or at  sli.do  using the code #ClimateEcon. 

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A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend them Back
Monday, March 6
12:00pm to 1:15pm
WexG02 Seminar Room, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA
 and Online

You're invited to a book talk with Harvard Kennedy School's Bruce Schneier, author of "A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend them Back." Schneier will be joined in conversation by moderator Archon Fung, Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government. 

It’s not just computers—hacking is everywhere.

Legendary cybersecurity expert and New York Times best-selling author Bruce Schneier reveals how using a hacker’s mindset can change how you think about your life and the world.

A hack is any means of subverting a system’s rules in unintended ways. The tax code isn’t computer code, but a series of complex formulas. It has vulnerabilities; we call them “loopholes.” We call exploits “tax avoidance strategies.” And there is an entire industry of “black hat” hackers intent on finding exploitable loopholes in the tax code. We call them accountants and tax attorneys.

In A Hacker’s Mind, Bruce Schneier takes hacking out of the world of computing and uses it to analyze the systems that underpin our society: from tax laws to financial markets to democracy. He reveals an array of powerful actors whose hacks bend our economic, political, and legal systems to their advantage, at the expense of everyone else.

Once you learn how to notice hacks, you’ll start seeing them everywhere—and you’ll never look at the world the same way again. Almost all systems have loopholes, and this is by design. Because if you can take advantage of them, the rules no longer apply to you.

Unchecked, these hacks threaten to upend our financial markets, weaken our democracy, and even affect the way we think. And when artificial intelligence starts thinking like a hacker—at inhuman speed and scale—the results could be catastrophic.

But for those who would don the “white hat,” we can understand the hacking mindset and rebuild our economic, political, and legal systems to counter those who would exploit our society. And we can harness artificial intelligence to improve existing systems, predict and defend against hacks, and realize a more equitable world.

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Energy Policy Seminar: "Measuring Air Pollution Co-Benefits of Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage Technology"
Monday, March 6
12:00pm - 1:15pm
Harvard, Rubenstein Building - David T. Ellwood Democracy Lab, Room 414AB
and Online
RSVP at https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_MgJ1GX8zSQOkEnLI1XPnkw

Join us for an Energy Policy Seminar featuring Andrew Waxman, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Austin and Visiting Scholar at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Waxman will give a talk on "Measuring Air Pollution Co-Benefits of Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage Technology." Q&A to follow. Buffet-style lunch will be served.

Registration: No RSVP is required. Room capacity is limited and seating will be on a first come, first served basis. The seminar will also be streamed via Zoom. Virtual attendees should register using the button below; upon registering, attendees will receive a confirmation email with a Zoom link. 

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Climate Positive Design - Going Beyond Neutral
Monday, March 6
5:30pm
Online
RSVP at https://web.mit.edu/webcast/lcau/s23/lecture/3/

2023 Urbanism Spring Lecture Series: Pamela Conrad
Co-hosted by the City Design & Development Program (CDD), SMArchS Urbanism Program and Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT.

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Modelling Earth’s past and future climate: practices and possibilities
Monday, March 6
10pm EST [2:00 pm – 1:30 pm AEDT]
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/modelling-earths-past-and-future-climate-practices-and-possibilities-tickets-531269841397

This panel brings together researchers who use powerful tools to simulate past and future climates to discuss practices and possibilities.

Thanks to advances in climate science, supercomputing and modelling techniques over recent decades, we now have a robust scientific understanding of the drivers, scale and pace of climate change. However, we rarely see precisely how scientists model past and future climates.

In this panel discussion, we bring together scientists who model past and future climates using software enabled by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS): AuScope and ACCESS-NRI. This webinar represents a unique opportunity for both scientific and non-scientific communities to interact directly with the people who help us understand Earth’s climate better. Panellists, whose profiles are listed below, will discuss powerful collaborations that link past and future climate models and invite questions from the audience before (via this form) and during the session.

The event will be held online through Zoom and will be recorded, with the recording made publicly available on the ACCESS-NRI and Auscope YouTube channels after the event .

Panellists
Dr Romain Beucher (Facilitator)
Romain is the Leader of the ACCESS-NRI Model Evaluation and Diagnostics team. He is highly experienced in data exploration and analysis where he provides technical support, develops open-source software solutions and provides training to facilitate effective research and development of workflows. As a former researcher at AuScope and current Team leader at ACCESS-NRI, Romain will be guiding this discussion and drawing on his experience and the unique perspectives that AuScope and ACCESS-NRI bring to the discussion.

Dr Claire Carouge
Claire is the leader of the ACCESS-NRI Land modelling infrastructure team. She is responsible for delivering a modelling infrastructure for the land research in Australia. Claire will provide insights into the way research software engineers model different parts of the climate system from her extensive experience working on ocean, atmosphere, land and atmospheric chemistry models.

Professor Julie Arblaster
Julie is a professor in the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash University and a Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEX) Her research focuses on the global climate system and mechanisms of past, recent and future climate change. She is also a contributing author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Julie will give insights into the use of climate models in applications ranging from deep geologic time to the recovery of the ozone hole.

Professor Louis Moresi
Louis is a professor of geophysics and geodynamics at the Australian National University who studies the evolution of the deep Earth over geological time, how this evolution is recorded in the geological record, and how to build computation modelling tools to simulate the Earth. He leads the development of AuScope’s Simulation, Analysis & Modelling program and is a strong believer in building vibrant scientific communities through shared models and open software tools.

Dr Nicky Wright
Nicky is a Research Fellow in the School of Geosciences at The University of Sydney, where she works within Earthbyte, an AuScope enabled research group. She holds knowledge in marine geoscience and palaeoclimate, namely ancient seafloor and geography reconstruction, and is fascinated by the relationship and interaction between Earth’s geography and climate in the past and at different timescales.

Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi
Ben is a principal research scientist with the Australian Antarctic Division, under the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. As part of his role as the Ice Sheet Coordinating Scientist he leads the Ice Sheet and Sea Level Section focused on understanding how and why the Antarctic ice sheet will respond to climate change. His research focuses on integrating observations, theory and models. Ben sits on several international programs and panels of experts across the World Meteorological Organization, and the World Climate Research Programme, including the Climate and Cryosphere core project.

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The State of the Transport System
Tuesday, March 7
10:00 AM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Online
RSVP at https://wri.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_yBCLXeNqSOmw6uK12DEJHA

Transport accounts for 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions and is the world’s second fastest growing source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If we are to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees C, major action is needed to transform the transport system.  
 
Join Systems Change Lab and WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities on March 7 for a high-level discussion of the current state of play in the global transport system and the five critical shifts needed to achieve global climate goals:  
Guarantee reliable access to safe and modern mobility  
Reduce avoidable vehicle and air travel  
Shift to public, shared and non-motorized transport  
Transition to zero-carbon cars and trucks  
Transition to zero-carbon shipping and aviation  

Panelists will explore the shared importance of vehicle electrification and shifts to active mobility, the role of various actors in catalyzing new solutions for aviation and maritime shipping, the status of tipping points in driving exponential progress, and how a systems approach can help us reimagine transport as we know it.  

This session will set the stage ahead of Transforming Transportation 2023, organized by the World Bank and WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. 

Moderator and Host: 
Ani Dasgupta, President & CEO, World Resources Institute

Opening Remarks:
Felipe Ramírez, Urban Mobility Director, WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities 

Panelists: 
François Bausch, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Mobility and Public Works and Minister of Defence, Luxembourg 
Maruxa Cardama, Secretary General, SLOCAT Partnership on Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport 
Binyam Reja, Global Practice Manager for the Transport Practice in the Infrastructure Vice Presidency of the World Bank 
Sandra Roling, Director of Transport, The Climate Group 

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The Changing Geopolitics of Critical Minerals and the Future of the Clean Energy Transition
Thursday, March 9
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM ET
Online
RSVP at https://engage.wilsoncenter.org/a/changing-geopolitics-critical-minerals-and-future-clean-energy-transition-1

The relationship between China and the US is commonly portrayed in terms of geostrategic competition, often leading to pessimistic accounts of international cooperation. This, in turn, glosses over important institutional innovations and joint efforts around shared concerns on climate change and the clean energy transition. As the shift towards renewable energy accelerates demand for transition energy metals, such as lithium, nickel, and rare earths, how will resource consuming regions, including the United States, the European Union, Japan, and Korea, navigate their relationship with China and the larger developing world, which hold these mineral deposits and are likely to exercise sovereign control over natural resource management?

Political support for renewable energy has undoubtedly increased over the past 10 years, but this has yet to translate into concrete political solutions—not only because of technological limitations in switching to renewables, but also due to increasing conflicts around critical minerals. Not only do we see geopolitics and securitization of minerals as an obstacle, there are also issues on ecological justice and equitable distribution of environmental burdens that hamper cooperation between mineral producers and consumers.

Join us on March 9th to examine the challenges, policy options, and strategic diplomatic alliances needed to minimize confrontation in order to realize individual national commitments and climate emission reduction targets. The discussion will also focus on ways shifting geopolitical alliances are likely to impact prospects for cooperation and specific national initiatives to embrace clean energy.

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Productive Tension: Hands-On Steps to Fossil Fuel Abolition
Thursday, March 9
12-1 pm EST
Tufts, Curtis Hall Multipurpose Room, 474 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA
and Online 
RSVP at https://tufts.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hIwBShg7S_-lseQyYfrkAQ

No Coal No Gas (NCNG) is a region-wide network of people who share three campaign goals: building a community of dissidents, showing what is possible, and shutting down New England’s last large coal-fired power plant. NCNG’s progress has been deeply rooted in studying, creating, and being willing to live with productive tension—a force that both pulls together and pushes apart. In this talk, Kendra Ford and Isaac Petersen will discuss power, pressure, and culture as key components of that productive tension. They share how analysis of those components grows NCNG’s strategy and resilience, plus applications for the broader movement towards abolishing fossil fuels.

Isaac Brooke Petersen (he/they) is an activist, trainer, and poet. His first organizing experience was through his union as a graduate student at San Diego State University, where he earned his MFA in creative writing. Since 2018, he has lived on Massachusett land in Somerville, where he campaigned for trans rights and for drivers’ licenses for undocumented folks before throwing down with No Coal No Gas in late 2019. He makes a living as an axe-throwing coach and spends his free time with poetry and fiber arts.

In 2019, Kendra Ford received an email from 350NH inviting folks to a direct action training at the library, and became part of the campaign to close the last coal plant in New England. In 2022, Kendra left a twenty-year ministry with Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Exeter, NH to join the 350NH staff. She is a trained facilitator of Joanna Macy’s Work The Reconnects, a set of practices to support climate (and all) activists facing the hardest realities in our beautiful world, and has led groups for 350NH, at the public library, and for multiple congregations. She lives in Portsmouth, NH with her husband, their nine-year-old, a ridiculous number of houseplants.

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Wall Street Green Summit: Sustainable Energy
Tuesday, March 14
8:00 AM – 12:30 PM EDT
Online
Cost:  $10

12 expert speakers will share their knowledge on clean energy solutions, sustainable technology and cleantech including green ammonia and hydrogen.

Topics and Speakers include:
Session 1 Moderator: Rob Parker, Managing Partner, Hono Hoku Advisers
Unlocking Sustainable Solutions with Performance Insurance: Tad Dritz, Bioconversion and Hydrogen Led, Ariel Re
Implementing Climate Technologies: Alex More, TMX Technologies
Insights into the IRA (Climate Law): Dan Spitzer, Partner, Hodgson Russ
Hydrogen and Decarbonization Strategies: Gokce Mete, Senior Manager, Hydrogen & Industry Decarbonization, South Pole
New Technology in Energy Storage: Ron MacDonald, President and CEO, Zinc8 Energy Solutions
Decarbonizing Your Business Travel Through Sustainable Aviation Fuel: Kennedy Ricci, President, 4AIR

Session 2 Moderator: Nick Aster, Marketing Director, North America, South Pole
The Role of Waste to Energy in Advancing ClimateTech: Aviv Dekel, Vice President, Business Development & Marketing, Co-Energy
Can Artificial Intelligence Save the Planet? Alec Crawford, Author, Sustainability, Technology, AI and You
New Metrics for Green Investing: Shelley Goldberg, ESG Evangelist, The Green Impact Exchange
Energy Transition Innovation: Kristin Barbato, Co-Founder, Dynamo Energy Hub
Using Big Data and AI to Mitigate Energy Transition Risk: Antoine Halff, Founder, Kayrros
New Battery Materials: Terence Cryan, Executive Chairman, Westwater Resource, Inc.

Day 2 Morning Session of the Wall Street Green Summit 8:00am to 12:30 pm EST: Focus on Sustainable Energy Solutions and Technology

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Unlocking Clean Energy Deployment: A Conversation with Sen. Brian Schatz About the Future of Transmission Permitting Reform on Capitol Hill 
March 14
1:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Online
RSVP at https://wri.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CchWhyPmRte5Dvt6gPLlFg

With the influx of new clean energy incentives from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, CHIPS and Science Act, and Inflation Reduction Act, the importance of permitting reform to enable the deployment of clean energy infrastructure has become a key issue for legislators.  

Join World Resources Institute on March 14 for a conversation with Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, a champion for the clean energy future and committed advocate for climate-smart legislation in the U.S. Senate. The discussion will center around federal transmission permitting reform and the growing need to rapidly deploy clean energy infrastructure. 

Sen. Schatz, known as one the Senate’s “Three Climateers”, played an essential role in the negotiations which led to the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act. Schatz has vocalized his clear support for permitting reform legislation that will expedite the development of clean energy without undermining core environmental laws. 

The conversation with Sen. Schatz will be followed by a panel discussion of experts on transmission governance, prioritizing equity through the project siting and permitting process, and the overarching need to rapidly deploy clean energy infrastructure.
Time

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Scrubbing the Skies - Certifying soil carbon removals: A soil-focused assessment of the proposal for the European Framework for CDR
Tuesday, March 14
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/scrubbing-the-skies-certifying-soil-carbon-removals-tickets-558843344487

Join the Institute for Carbon Removal and Policy for the next event in its webinar series, “Scrubbing the Skies: The Role of Carbon Dioxide Removal in Combating Climate Change.” The series focuses on scientific, technological, legal, political, and justice-focused issues associated with carbon dioxide removal., and is hosted by Wil Burns, Co-Director of the Institute for Carbon Removal and Policy.

Our next webinar is titled: "Certifying soil carbon removals: A soil-focussed assessment of the proposal for the European Framework for Carbon Removal Certification."
The European Commission's recently proposed Framework for Carbon Removals Certification aims to incentivise carbon removal from the atmosphere – but is it well-suited to climate-friendly soil management?

In this webinar, two German-based researchers, Anne Siemons (Öko-Institut) and Hugh McDonald (Ecologic Institute) will introduce and critically assess the EU’s latest carbon removal policy proposal. In particular, they will evaluate whether the policy proposal will lead to high-quality soil carbon removals that are long-lasting, additional, robustly quantified, and sustainable. 

Panelists:
Anne Siemons, Senior Researcher Energy & Climate, Öko-Institut Postdoctoral Research 
Hugh McDonald, Fellow, Ecologic Insitute
Moderator:
Wil Burns, Co-Director of the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy

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Wednesday, March 15

Energy Transitions and Deindustrialization
Wednesday, March 15
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT
Online

Join DePOT for a roundtable examining the connection between energy, energy transitions, and deindustrialization

Current discussions around job losses in fossil fuel industries in North America and Europe and a just transition in response to climate change have called attention once again to the close relationship between deindustrialization, industrial transformation, and energy transitions. This panel will examine the role of energy in deindustrialization and industrial transformation processes, addressing both conceptual approaches and empirical case studies from various countries. Panelists will revisit past examples of deindustrialization, especially in coal mining, to reframe them as energy transitions and engage more explicitly with their energy histories and stories. Events in the 1970s, including but not limited to the multiple energy crises which have led to the emergence of the political concept of energy transition, serve as examples for the complex interplay between labour, environmentalism and energy production. Fifty years later, we still discuss energy transitions but do not necessarily agree on how it should be happening and how we support workers who will lose their jobs as a consequence of these major transformations of energy systems which are also always inherently social systems.

Please note: This online roundtable will be recorded and later uploaded to DePOT's YouTube channel. 
Speakers
Anna Bettini, University of Calgary
Petra Dolata, University of Calgary
William Gillies, Concordia University 
Jeff Manual, University of Southern Illinois Edwardsville, Fulbright Canada Research Chair, University of Calgary
Chad Montrie, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Fulbright Canada Research Chair, University of Calgary
Robert Suits, University of Edinburgh
Amber Ward, University of St. Andrews

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White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi
Wednesday, March 15 
3pm EST [6:00 PM PDT]
The Commonwealth Club of California, 110 The Embarcadero, Taube Family Auditorium, San Francisco, CA 
and Online
Cost:  $20 - $0 

If you are not a member yet, now is the time to join our community and receive the great benefits of membership. We are a group of people seeking truth, insight and wisdom about the issues we face as individuals and as a society. Please join! You can become a monthly sustaining member for just $10 a month.

Energy and infrastructure are taking center stage as President Biden’s team fans across the country touting his accomplishments and the benefits they bring to American families. Biden’s policy wins have secured vast amounts of funding, and that money is just beginning to flow, with new programs becoming available to everyday Americans. With hundreds of billions tagged for chip and battery plants, climate-smart agriculture, rail, modernizing the electric grid and tax incentives for citizens to run their homes and cars on electricity, ensuring these dollars and programs have real impact is now the name of the game.

White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi plays a leading role in coordinating the implementation of the biggest investments in clean energy the United States has ever made. Join Climate One Host Greg Dalton in person with Ali Zaidi as we navigate the complicated maze of industrial policy intended to grow the economy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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Geoengineering - An overview of potential earth cooling technologies
Wednesday, March 15
9am EST [12:00 PM – 1:00 PM PDT]
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/geoengineering-an-overview-of-potential-earth-cooling-technologies-tickets-549814779807

Learn about the Earth cooling technologies being researched and how they fit with other climate strategies with Dr. John Perona
Join us for the kickoff to Geoengineering Week with this overview of the geoengineering concept and the leading technologies being studied. Geoengineering describes technologies that cool the Earth by reflecting the sun's energy back into space or allowing heat from the Earth to escape the Earth's atmosphere. While not a substitute for carbon emissions reductions, or carbon sequestration, some researchers claim that these technologies could be critical to avoid the catastrophic consequences of global heating and climate change.

Because these techniques involve complex interactions with the Earth's energy balance, they are controversial and not yet well understood. Join us as we hear from Dr. John Perona on this important topic. He is author of  From Knowledge to Power, a comprehensive handbook for both established and aspiring climate advocates. We will cover the following questions and more:
What is the carbon cycle and how have man made emissions affected that cycle?
How have these changes affected the Earths energy balance?
How does geoengineering differ from carbon avoidance and carbon sequestration?
What are the main technologies being considered within geoengineering?
What are the potential benefits and risks of these technologies?

Panelist:
Dr. John Perona  PhD, JD, Professor at Portland State University. John holds degrees in chemical engineering, biochemistry, and law, and is author of over 100 peer-reviewed articles. He teaches classes in synthetic biology, structure-function biochemistry, and metabolism and works to integrate science, law and policy for sustainability. He is the author of From Knowledge to Power, which has been called "A one-stop shop for anyone who wants to understand the fine details of climate science, past and future energy sources, and U.S. policies and political action to address the climate crisis."

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Climate migration: solutions and opportunities
Thursday, March 16
7am EST [12:00 GMT]
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventsforce.net/nesta/frontend/reg/tRegisterEmailNew.csp?pageID=42525&eventID=158&mc=WEB1&tempPersonID=53011

The effects of climate change are being felt by people across the planet, but perhaps none more so than those from the global south. The relocation of millions of people leaving their homes as towns and cities become uninhabitable will have substantial economic, social and political consequences. How can we plan and prepare for this mass movement of people? And is there an opportunity for climate migration to reap unexpected benefits?

Gaia Vince, journalist, broadcaster and honorary senior research fellow at UCL, explores these opportunities in her new book, Nomad Century. She joins us on 16 March from 12:00-13:00 for a live online conversation to explore the often neglected issue of climate refugees, how their movement will shape human society in years to come and the innovative solutions we’ll need to respond to this seismic shift. Alongside Nesta’s Head of Foresight Research Laurie Smith, Gaia will also share insights on whether mass climate migration may offer opportunities for development such as a new migrant workforce able to revitalise ageing societies.

This event is for anyone interested in climate change and its broader implications, but particularly policymakers, academics and those working in organisations that support refugees and work in migration.

In this free online event, Gaia and Laurie will explore radical solutions to climate change and climate mass migration and question whether efforts to capitalise on climate refugees should be seen as simply ‘giving up’ on the important work of climate change mitigation.

Speakers
Gaia Vince
She/Her
Gaia Vince is a journalist, writer and broadcaster and an honorary senior research fellow at UCL. She writes for publications including The Observer and The Guardian and presents science programmes on BBC R4. She is the author of the groundbreaking work Adventures In The Anthropocene for which she spent 2.5 years travelling to over 50 countries to map the ways humans are changing the planet. She draws on her experiences of the state of the planet in her new book Nomad Century.

Laurie Smith
He/Him
Laurie leads on strategic foresight for Nesta. He oversees much of the organisation's research into emerging trends, novel technologies and promising interventions. Prior to joining Nesta he worked at the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of science, where he most recently led on emerging technologies and futures. Previously he worked at the Academy of Medical Sciences on policy around medical science, public health and international health.

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50 years on from "The Limits to Growth", how do we learn what we already know? with Carlos Alvarez Pereira, Vice President of the Club of Rome 
Thursday, March 16
10:30am EST [1:30pm to 3pm PST]
Mills Campus, Northeastern University Oakland, California Campus, GSB 101 at the Oakland California
and Online

The Club of Rome’s 1972 report, "The Limits to Growth,” was an early and influential attempt to use computer modelling to forecast the likely future of human societies. A rigorous challenge to the viability of endless material growth on a finite planet, the book sold millions of copies and strongly influenced the global environmental movements of the 1970s. In this lecture, Carlos Alvarez Pereira, Vice President of the Club of Rome and co-editor of the 50th Anniversary reappraisal of the Club of Rome’s original report—Limits and Beyond: 50 Years on from The Limits to Growth, what Did We Learn and What's Next?—offers a comprehensive perspective on the original intention of "The Limits to Growth,” its global reception, and Club of Rome’s current efforts to influence a debate which is now more alive than ever.  The Carlos Alvarez Pereira lecture will be followed by a half-day workshop to discuss questions related to the lecture’s guiding provocation


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Boston Metal: The Technology to Decarbonize the Steel Industry
Thursday, March 16
12 – 1PM
Tufts, Curtis Hall,474 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA (Please enter through the door off the brick patio on the south side of the building.)
and Online

Join the Chairman & CEO of Boston Metal, Tadeu Carneiro, for a lecture about how the company is developing a breakthrough technology with the potential to eliminate 10% of global carbon emissions. The company’s patented molten oxide electrolysis (MOE) platform releases zero carbon emissions during the steel-making process, only oxygen. Free pizza will be served! This event is part of Tufts Environmental Studies' weekly environmental lectures.

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SJN Climate Primer: Nature-based Carbon Removal Methods
Thursday, March 16
3:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Online
RSVP at https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2-o2jUt2Sr-zanjFhfupJQ

Solutions Journalism Network invites journalists covering climate change or clean energy to join our webinar training sessions on Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), an important area of climate mitigation to draw down the excess carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere. As part of its work to identify and examine promising responses to climate change, SJN is offering three one-hour sessions that will give you insight into the science of CDR, as well as some critical lenses to separate the solutions from the greenwashing. For those who aren’t familiar with solutions journalism, we’ll also have an optional 20-minute training after each panel where we’ll cover the basics of solutions reporting, and how to use it to deliver strong, impactful climate coverage. 

All three sessions will be moderated by Aman Azhar, a Washington, D.C.-based journalist who covers environmental justice for Inside Climate News, and who is also a 2022-23 Climate Solutions Fellow for SJN. Each webinar will feature carbon-removal experts and journalists discussing the science and the strategies for reporting on CDR. 

Nature-based Carbon Removal Methods 
Scoping the potential and limits of organic approaches

Confirmed panelists:
Paul West, Senior Scientist (Ecosystems), Project Drawdown
Yessenia Funes, Climate Director, Atmos
Katherine Hamilton, Conservation Finance and Policy Advisor

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How to Talk About Climate Change So People Will Listen... And Act
Thursday, March 16
5:00 pm to 6:15 pm
Online

Speaker Sarah Finnie Robinson
We know climate change is a critical issue... but how do we talk about it? Sarah Finnie Robinson, Senior Fellow of the BU Institute for Global Sustainability, is the Founding Director of the 51 Percent Project, a climate communication initiative. Join us on Zoom for a conversation about the barriers and accelerators to collective

Contact Name Sarah Champlin
Phone 2245957083
Contact Email smchamp@bu.edu

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Observatory Night: Monitoring Air Pollution from Space
Thursday, March 16
7 – 8 p.m.
Online
RSVP at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-UUo6Y7fP0N41Qw7KcKtcQ

SPEAKER(S)  Caroline Nowlan, Atmospheric physicist
This April, a Smithsonian and NASA-led instrument named TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) will be launched onboard a satellite into a geostationary orbit. From this vantage point, TEMPO will be able to monitor air quality over most of North America every hour, with unprecedented spatial resolution. In this presentation, atmospheric physicist Caroline Nowlan will talk about how we measure air pollution from space and how TEMPO promises to revolutionize our understanding of the air we breathe.

Caroline Nowlan is a physicist in the Atomic and Molecular Physics Division at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, where she works on remote sensing of the Earth’s atmosphere using satellite and aircraft instruments. She is a member of the team working on NASA’s next-generation air quality satellite mission, TEMPO, and is an investigator on projects examining urban air pollution in the U.S. and Korea using remote sensing of the atmosphere from aircraft.
Please note: This is a virtual event that will be streamed to the CfA's  Facebook and YouTube channels.

CONTACT INFO obsvnight@cfa.harvard.edu

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Saturday, March 18

MIT Climate Machine: The Image-in Session
Saturday, March 18
11:00am to 12:00pm
Online

The MIT Climate Machine, a program of the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, brings climate knowledge and engagement to arts experiences. After piloting its interactive exhibits at music festivals across the United States and Europe in 2022, the program is now seeking input on its products, strategy and future direction.

We all engage with climate change in our own ways. Your unique experiences in your neighborhood and hometown shape your vision for our climate's future. Join us for an hour-long workshop of music sharing, AI art, and sharing to envision the future of climate change.

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Sunday, March 19

TEDxBostonCollege:  Press Play
Sunday, March 19
2:00pm - 5:00pm EDT
Robsham Theater Arts Center, Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA
RSVP at tedxbostoncollege@gmail.com

What does “Press Play” mean to you? Before the internet arose, this term would have been nonsensical; now after technology, the term "press play" is commonplace in the English language, signifying the start of something. More than that, it implies a choice to begin, to take on a challenge, and to progress to another stage. We hope this open-ended phrase catalyzes an idea that you feel you must share. The point of our theme is not to dissuade speakers who feel that their talk does not exactly fit within our theme. Instead, we hope our theme can act as a point of connection between a myriad of talk topics that span many industries and focuses. As a way to show that across the stories told there is a unifying human element to all of them. We embrace your unique perspective and encourage your creativity.

Mabel Bassi, Student at Boston College
Mabel Bassi is a senior at Boston College, majoring in Neuroscience. She is from Huntington, Long Island. At school, she is involved with BC Campus Ministry as a Kairos Co-director and she is also a Thrive mentor in the Women's Center. Mainly, she is passionate about spirituality, self-reflection, and introspection. She will be delivering "How the Butterfly Effect and Mindfulness can Empower us and Fuel Change". She loves listening to Ted Talks because the Tedx platform gives people the ability to listen and learn from other people's experiences. People can feel connected to one another, even if there is no personal relationship with the speaker.

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Monday, March 20

"The Climate Implications of U.S. LNG Facilities"
Monday, March 20
12:00pm - 1:15pm
Harvard, Rubenstein Building - David T. Ellwood Democracy Lab, Room 414AB
and Online
RSVP at https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Ezt-rGeSTS2qCdST2IAhVQ

Join us for an Energy Policy Seminar featuring James Stock, Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability, Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and member of the faculty at Harvard Kennedy School. Stock will give a talk on "What’s Up with Natural Gas Prices? The Climate Implications of U.S. LNG Facilities." Q&A to follow. Buffet-style lunch will be served.

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ASC: Green Energy in Africa
Monday, March 20
2:30 pm to 2:00 pm
BU, African Studies Center, 232 Bay State Road (Conference Room 505), Boston, MA
and Online
RSVP at https://bostonu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIpfuurpjIvE9yTmTVJqV-EMkQWHAAnsxLz

Why does Sub-Saharan Africa continue to lag behind the rest of the world in infrastructure investment, and what can African governments do to attract investment?</p> 

Sub-Saharan Africa faces an energy trilemma: the majority of the African population does not have access to electricity, electricity is inequitably distributed on the continent and electricity generation for a number of African countries is derived from coal or fossil fuels - which presents an opportunity for Africa’s green energy development. As infrastructure challenges persist and the European Union’s carbon border adjustment mechanism poses a threat to economic growth, the transition to green energy is imperative.

The region has a natural resource abundance which is key to its green energy development. The recent discovery of lithium bodes well for the development of a battery storage manufacturing industry to support electricity generation. Further, funding to combat infrastructure challenges is available, but needs to be unlocked. A stable and predictable regulatory environment is also needed to attract further critical financing.

On Monday, March 20 from 12:30-2:00 PM EDT, join the Boston University African Studies Center and the Boston University Global Development Policy Center for a presentation from Tsitsi Musasike, sustainable development and project finance specialist, on green energy in Africa.

This talk is a part of the Spring 2023 Walter Rodney Seminar Series.

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Tuesday, March 21

The Transatlantic Energy Landscape—One Year After Russia's Invasion
Tuesday, March 21
9:00 AM – 11:00 AM EDT
Online

This event is a part of Energy Week at Penn, a week of energy-focused events across Penn’s campus. 
Browse and register for other Energy Week events: energyweek.penn.edu
Two panels look at Russia's strategy of wartime energy weaponization through the lens of its long-term trend of using energy as a weapon.

Since Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine commenced in February 2022, the Kremlin's long-term strategy of weaponizing energy resource and infrastructure dependence against western democratic norms has reached its apex. The Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin has notoriously used energy as a political weapon aimed at extracting geopolitical concessions from democracies across the European continent through real and threatened natural gas cutoffs for year. The Kremlin intentionally created a natural gas crisis in the year running up to its reinvasion of Ukraine to undermine EU foreign policy latitude. Over the past year, it has conducted more dramatic wartime energy weaponization, including major gas cutoffs across the European Union, and maritime activities near European offshore energy infrastructure that raised Transatlantic security concerns. Most distressing of all, for the past six months, the Russian military has conducted kinetic missile, rocket, and drone strikes against Ukrainian civil energy infrastructure aimed at exacerbating the wartime humanitarian crisis for Ukrainian civilians this winter. 

This set of two panels looks at Russia's current strategy of wartime energy weaponization through the lens of its long-term trend of using energy as a weapon against Europe. Both discussions explore new futures, with global powers countering Russian malign energy actions and influence.

Panel One: The End of the Russian Energy Era in Europe: What's Next for Moscow
MODERATOR: 
Dr. Anna Mikulska, Department of Russian and Eastern European Studies, University of Pennsylvania
SPEAKERS: Coming soon!
PANEL 2: Countering Russian Energy Weaponization from Lisbon to Kyiv: Sanctions, Export Controls, Physical Infrastructure Protection
MODERATOR: 
Dr. Benjamin L. Schmitt, Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, University of Pennsylvania

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Climate change – is there any hope?
Tuesday, March 21
2:30pm EST [19:30 – 20:30 GMT]
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/climate-change-is-there-any-hope-tickets-536169466307

Part of the Imagine! Belfast 2023 collection
Given everything that we know about climate change, is it possible to feel hopeful about the future?

Climate change, ecological breakdown, mass suffering - the barrage of bad news about our environment is relentless.

This evokes powerful emotions: Anger, despair, powerlessness, depression. Millions suffer from a worldwide epidemic of 'climate anxiety.' The super-rich make preparations for apocalypse, unsettling the rest of us.

The situation seems so bad that most of us would prefer not to think about it.

But despair is demotivating. Given everything that we know about climate change, is it possible to feel hopeful about the future? 

Is there a way off the path that we seem to be on? What can we do collectively to save ourselves? How do we feel hopeful and motivated about the future?

In an event designed to uplift, inspire and motivate, award-winning Belfast-born environmentalist Adam McGibbon will introduce the following panel of experts, writers and scientists to discuss whether there's hope to be found in a time of climate crisis.

Kendra Pierre-Louis is an award-winning climate reporter whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Popular Science and the Gimlet/Spotify podcast How to Save a Planet. She is also the author of the book, "Green Washed: Why We Can't Buy Our Way to a Green Planet.”

Jacquelyn Gill is a climate scientist, currently an Associate Professor of Paleoecology & Plant Ecology at the University of Maine. She hosts the climate podcast Warm Regards and has written extensively on climate hope. In 2017 she organized the March for Science in response to the election of Donald Trump, which resulted in 600 demonstrations on April 22, 2017 (Earth Day).

Assaad W. Razzouk is a clean energy entrepreneur, author and broadcaster. He co-founded and runs a clean energy company financing, building and operating renewable energy projects in Asia. He is the author of the book “Saving the Climate Without the Bullshit”. He is also a Board member of ClientEarth, the environmental charity using the power of the law to protect people and planet.

Adam McGibbon (Moderator) is an award-winning activist originally from Belfast. He has led campaigns that have derailed university fee increases, shut down government fossil fuel financing and elected climate-friendly politicians in the UK and Ireland. He is currently a Campaign Strategist with the climate group Oil Change International. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, The New Statesman and elsewhere.

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MIT Energy storage student slam
Tuesday, March 21
5:00pm to 6:30pm
MIT Welcome Center (E38) 292 Main Street Cambridge, MA
RSVP at https://calendar.mit.edu/event/energy_storage_student_slam#.Y_rwcC2ZOiI

Join us for the Energy storage student slam on Tuesday, March 21 at 5:00 pm ET. MIT undergraduate and graduate students will participate in a rapid-fire series of presentations on energy storage. Students have three minutes to present a project on energy storage they are currently conducting or have recently completed that will help fight the climate crisis. Undergraduate and graduate students will be judged in separate competitions, and both will include prizes for first, second, and third place.

More information is available on the event webpage.

Agenda
5:00 pm Welcome and competition framing
5:05 pm Graduate student slam presentations
5:50 pm Undergraduate student slam presentations

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Wednesday, March 22

Nuclear Weapons Today—peril and promise
Wednesday, March 22
8:00 pm - 9:00 pm EDT
Online
RSVP at https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMrdeyqqjkjG9ULZhHT_wi5BX_F4jI0ihCU

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds before midnight, but some have said that’s not even close enough. Indeed, with the US abandoning nuclear proliferation treaties, spending a trillion dollars in an upgrade of its nuclear arsenal, and conducting a proxy war with nuclear-armed Russia, we are staring a nuclear holocaust in the face.

This webinar will present an update on current US nuclear weapons plans, including the Biden Nuclear Posture Review, current modernization of production facilities and weapons systems, the FY23 & FY 24 nuclear weapons budgets, the US role in the global nuclear arms race, and the role of war profiteers.

It will also present an update on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, review the outcome of the First Meeting of States Parties and preview the Second Meeting of States Parties, and will discuss actions and opportunities for building grassroots support for the US to join the Treaty.

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Climate Change: Fundamentals and Regenerative Solutions (webinar)
Wednesday, March 22
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EDT
Online
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/climate-change-fundamentals-and-regenerative-solutions-webinar-registration-461873204187

This class introduces the history of climate change science and outlines inclusive and effective solutions going forward. It is inspired by the work of Project Regeneration, a solutions-focused approach to climate change that weaves justice, climate, biodiversity, and human dignity into a seamless tapestry of action, policy, and transformation that can end the climate crisis in one generation. In joining us for this 1-hour presentation, you’ll become more informed on the history of climate change science and successfully implemented solutions to slow and eventually stop the increase of greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. Participants will walk away with specific strategies they can implement in their own lives. Please register for this event ONLY at ufsarasotaext.eventbrite.com rather than any third party websites, as they are not affiliated with our classes and events. Once registered through Eventbrite, the system will send you a confirmation email.

For questions or further information, please call 941-861-5000 or email sarasota@ifas.ufl.edu. If you require special accommodations to attend one of our events, please contact us in advance at 941-861-5000 or sarasota@ifas.ufl.edu.

Part of the Program: Sustainability collection
This class introduces the history of climate change science and outlines inclusive and effective solutions going forward.

NOTE: Classes and events may be canceled at any time due to low registration or other circumstances, with full refunds issued for paid events. Similar classes or events often are offered on future dates.

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Reinvesting in Energy and Communities with the Inflation Reduction Act
Wednesday, March 22 
3:00 p.m. ET
Online

Join us for a webinar to learn about the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program (EIR), a federal loan program established to support the shift to cleaner energy and revitalize communities. The program offers a unique opportunity to invest in renewable energy sooner rather than later and drive long-term community economic development beyond the energy sector. 

Through the EIR, utilities can access low-cost loans to save money on financing and invest in clean energy. The program also offers the ability to pay off retiring energy infrastructure, lowering long-term energy costs for customers. The EIR can also be used to remediate environmental damage, which would improve the health outcomes of local communities and provide even more employment opportunities. 
The EIR offers a win-win scenario that can lower customer energy bills while allowing utilities to reinvest in clean energy and transmission upgrades. Register now to learn more about the potential of the EIR to revitalize communities. 

Presenter:  
Jeremy Richardson, RMI  
This event will take place via Zoom. An email confirmation will be sent containing the Zoom link to join.

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Thursday, March 23

How do corals adapt to rising temperatures?
Thursday, March 23
3:30pm
Harvard, Northwest Labs B101, 52 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA
Iliana Baums, Professor of Biology, Department of Biology, Pennsylvania State University

Abstract: Coarls build the three-dimensional structure of one of the most diverse ecosystems of the planet. Yet, their ecological role is threatened by climate change because small changes in ocean temperature cause coral holobiont dysbiosis. Despite sharp population declines, large standing genetic and phenotypic variation remains in even the most threatened reef builders. We now know that standing genetic diversity fuels coral adaptation. Therefore, a prominent goal of coral conservation is to protect genetic diversity. It is nevertheless tempting to breed only those coral hosts that are, for example, temperature stress resistant to hasten the process of adaptation. Selective breeding and conservation of standing genetic diversity are thus management strategies with conflicting goals. Further complicating the matter are recent insights that coral adaptation may proceed using unusual pathways. Over any organism’s lifetime, somatic genetic mutations accumulate. To limit damage from potentially deleterious somatic mutations, unitary animals generally do not pass them on to their offspring by segregating the germline from the soma early in development. It is commonly assumed that somatic mutations acquired during an animal’s lifetime are evolutionarily irrelevant because they cannot cross this barrier between the soma and germline (known as Weismann’s barrier), and thus cannot contribute to genetic variation of the next generation. Yet, somatic mutations can cross the Weismann barrier in some corals providing a path for adaptation. Advances in understanding coral adaptation underscore the need for broadly available, standardized methods to find stress resistant corals, to conserve genetic diversity, and to use these resources for restoration.

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Decarbonization Transformation in Chinese Cities: A Talk by Daizong Liu
Thursday, March 23
5:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building 9, 9-255, 105 MASSACHUSETTS AVE, Cambridge, MA 
Zoom option please register at https://mit.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwvcuqorDIiE9xj-UuqMsvKjPUII8AwpHXd

Urban Science (11-6) and Sustainable Urbanization Lab (SUL) at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning are hosting a talk by Daizong Liu (刘岱宗), China Director of World Resources Institute (WRI) Ross Center for Sustainable Cities.

Daizong has over 20 years of professional experience in Urban Sustainable Development Strategy, Planning and Design, and Zero Carbon City Roadmap and Inventories.  In his talk, Daizong will share his projects promoting sustainable cities in a number of cities in China, and discuss challenges and opportunities that China faces in achieving its decarbonization goals.

We welcome you to join in-person at 9-255. Please register if you intend to attend the event so we can plan food accordingly. https://forms.gle/fYuHdmSJK1kHSK986

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Daniel Urban Kiley Lecture: “Biospheric Urbanism”
Thursday, March 23
6:30PM – 08:00
Harvard, GSD, Gund Hall Piper Auditorium, Cambridge, MA

The climate crisis poses the urgent challenge to make our urban environment more resilient in the face of unprecedented atmospheric changes such as rising temperatures, intensified rainfall, and longer droughts.  

A city can be understood as a sequence of artificial microclimates. Buildings change wind patterns and sunlight exposure, while streetscapes modify soil permeability, runoff, and solar radiation. For each man-made microclimate, a comparable natural condition can be studied. Research on habitats and on the survival strategies of the organisms living within them permits the introduction of plants into artificial urban environments that have similar climatic conditions.  

Using the logic of nature, cities can be transformed into complex urban ecologies, blurring the boundaries between the artificial and the natural. Science-based research allows the conception of solution-based projects, revealing our built environment as a network of microclimates in which plants combine the absorption of carbon dioxide with the production of evaporative cooling, simultaneously reducing the source of the problem and mitigating its effects. 

The built environment thus becomes a hybrid living organism, lying at the interface between a changing meteorology and an underused geology. Biospheric Urbanism conceives the urban environment as the intersection connecting what lies above and what lies below, using the intelligence of plants. 

Speaker
Bas Smets (b. 1975) has a background in landscape architecture, civil engineering and architecture. He founded his firm in Brussels in 2007 and has since completed more than 50 projects in more than 12 countries with his team of 25 architects and landscape architects.  

His realised projects include the Parc des Ateliers in Arles, the park of Thurn & Taxis in Brussels, the Mandrake Hotel in London, and the Himara Waterfront in Albania. . In 2022 he won the international competition for public space around the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. 

Each of these projects is part of an interrelated research into the possible role and ambition of landscape projects. The aim is to invent ‘Augmented Landscapes’ by using the logics of nature. These augmented landscapes produce a new microclimate while providing new atmospheres. The collaboration with artists and scientists takes a central role in this research.   

A first monographic exhibition was presented in 2013 by deSingel International Arts Center in Antwerp and Arc-en-Reve centre for architecture in Bordeaux. Bas Smets has received numerous honours and awards, among which the Award for Urbanism and Public Space from the French Royal Academy of Architecture and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. 

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Monday, March 27

Energy Policy Seminar: Eyck Freymann on "Chinese Perspectives on Climate Geopolitics"
Monday, March 27
12:00pm - 1:15pm
Harvard, Rubenstein Building - David T. Ellwood Democracy Lab, Room 414AB
and Online
RSVP at https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_68BY5r5KTmCTSuQtDCneeg

Join us for an Energy Policy Seminar featuring Eyck Freymann, joint Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Belfer Center's Arctic Initiative and Columbia University. Freymann will give a talk on "Chinese Perspectives on Climate Geopolitics." Q&A to follow. Buffet-style lunch will be served.

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Our Fusion Future—Lawrence Livermore Director Kim Budil
Monday, March 27 
3pm EST [6:00 PM PDT]
The Commonwealth Club of California, 110 The Embarcadero, Taube Family Auditorium, San Francisco, CA
RSVP at https://commonwealthclub.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket/#/instances/a0F3j00001e61u8EAA
Cost:  $25 - $0

In late 2022, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory made a long-sought breakthrough, achieving self-sustaining “fusion ignition” for the first time and generating breakeven energy. Supporters see fusion as a game changer for production of unlimited clean energy that can help to address climate change globally. 

Please join us for a conversation with Dr. Kimberly Budil, director of Lawrence Livermore, about the significance of this achievement. Dr. Budil is the 13th director of Lawrence Livermore. A physicist, she is an expert on high-power, ultra-fast lasers. She has held previous positions at the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy. She is the first woman to serve as LLNL director, and is one of the leading female scientists in the United States.

We look forward to seeing you for an inspiring evening with one of the Bay Area’s key scientific leaders, discussing where Lawrence Livermore's fusion research could lead and how long it might take to positively impact our energy future.

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TEDxBoston:  Planetary Stewardship - Ocean Exploration
Monday, March 27
4pm - 8pm
The 'Quin House in Back Bay
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeScxdt-sSjq8swY2GuJGb_L8fIMekqXn2siHy1WJxTXVjT_A/viewform

Ocean health is intimately linked to climate heath yet much of the global focus on climate change has focused on land interventions (e.g. greener buildings, cleaner energy, electric vehicles). On a planet which is 70% ocean we are just starting to learn the mysteries of the water that surrounds us. Peter de Menocal, Director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute said at the TEDx Planetary Stewardship event in November that today for most of us “oceans are a black box.” Come hear what we are learning about the changing nature of oceans, what mysteries remain, and why the health of the oceans is so vital for our future. Speakers will share actionable ideas being developed from some of the leading innovation centers and experts.

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Tuesday, March 28

Northeast Sustainable Energy Association’s [NESEA] BuildingEnergy Boston Conference
Tuesday, March 28
8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
The Westin Boston Seaport District, 425 Summer Street, Boston, MA
RSVP at https://www.nesea.org/conference/buildingenergy-boston
Cost:  $50 - $650
 
BuildingEnergy Boston is a conference designed by and for practitioners in the fields of high-performance building and design, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. Conference sessions and showcase demos offer best practices and lessons learned, case studies and proven data, technical how-to’s, emerging technologies, and innovative policies and programs. If you are a professional in the built environment in any stage of your training and career, plan to immerse yourself in twio days of networking and intensive learning on March 28th and 29th. BuildingEnergy Boston 2023 anticipates offering credits for AIA, BPI, GBCI, PHIUS, and RESNET.

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Climate Tech: Why It Needs the Humanities and Social Sciences
Tuesday, March 28
4:15pm–6:00pm EDT
The Heyman Center, Second Floor Common Room, Columbia University, NYC

Climate tech — technologies to respond to climate change — gathered over $50 billion of startup funding in recent years and billions more in public support. Carbon tech is a subset of climate tech, denoting both technologies to suck carbon out of the atmosphere and use and store it as well as platforms to exchange abstractions of all this carbon. Successfully scaling some forms of climate tech and carbon tech will be critical for confronting climate change.

However, these technologies will fail to be deployed without incorporating theories and practices from both the humanities and social sciences. This is due to a lack of demand and public support, the scarcity of visions of alternative business or ownership models, a failure to understand factors that would enable individuals and institutions to adopt the tech, contestation around the infrastructure to support these technologies, poor governance, and more.

This talk makes a case for why humanities and social science practitioners should bother to engage with the development of these emerging technologies. Speakers will discuss what forms and methods generative engagement could take, how to avoid the pitfalls of instrumentalization by capital, and what's at stake if these fields continue to be on the sidelines of climate tech investment and debate.

Speaker
Holly Jean Buck is a geographer and environmental social scientist studying rural futures, the politics of platforms, and how emerging technologies can address environmental challenges. She works as an Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York, and has a Ph.D. in Development Sociology from Cornell University. She is the author of After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration and Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero Is Not Enough.

Moderator TBA 

Climate Futures/Climate Justice is an interdisciplinary event series exploring the relationship between climate justice, carbon tech, and climate futures. Climate scientists, engineers, anthropologists, geographers, science studies scholars, political ecologists, legal scholars, and historians connect to discuss justice-centered climate futures and engage defining issues of the carbon tech/climate justice nexus.

This event will be in person at the Heyman Center and live-streamed online.

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Wednesday, March 29

Helping Bend the Arc at the Hinges of History: A Conversation with Larry Brilliant
Wednesday, March 29
4:00pm to 6:00pm
Harvard, Memorial Church, 1 Harvard Yard, Cambridge, MA

Free and open to the public. No tickets required. Masking is encouraged. This event will be in person and streamed live on our YouTube channel. Please plan on being seated by 3:45 p.m. as the event will start promptly at 4:00 p.m.

American epidemiologist, technologist, philanthropist, and author Larry Brilliant embodies optimism like few others. A hippie doctor in the 1960s, he spent time at an ashram in India to find spirituality during a tumultuous time. As predicted by his guru, he and his team would change the world. Under the auspices of the World Health Organization they made millions of house calls in India with the goal to eradicate smallpox—and they succeeded.

Speaker
Dr. Larry Brilliant is a physician and epidemiologist, founder and CEO of Pandefense Advisory, senior counselor at the Skoll Foundation and a CNN medical analyst. Previously, he served on the board of the Skoll Foundation, was chair of the advisory board of the NGO Ending Pandemics, the president and CEO of the Skoll Global Threats Fund, vice president of Google, and the founding executive director of Google.org. He cofounded the Seva Foundation, an NGO whose programs have given back sight to more than five million blind people in two dozen countries. In addition, he cofounded The Well, a progenitor of today's social media platforms. 

Earlier in his career, Dr. Brilliant was an associate professor of epidemiology and international health planning at the University of Michigan. Dr. Brilliant lived in India for nearly a decade where he was a key member of the successful WHO Smallpox Eradication Programme for SE Asia as well as the WHO Polio Eradication Programme. He was the founding chairman of the National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee (NBAS), which was created by presidential directive of President George W. Bush; he was a member of the World Economic Forum's Agenda Council on Catastrophic Risk; and a "First Responder" for CDC's bioterrorism response effort. 

Recent awards include the TED Prize, Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People, "International Public Health Hero," and four honorary doctorates. He has lectured at Oxford, Harvard, Berkeley, and many other colleges; and spoken at the Royal Society, the Pentagon, NIH, the United Nations, and some of the largest companies and nonprofits all over the world. He has written for Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and other magazines and peer reviewed journals, and was part of the Global Business Network where he learned scenario planning. Dr. Brilliant is the author of Sometimes Brilliant, a memoir about working to eradicate smallpox; and a guide to managing vaccination programs entitled “The Management of Smallpox Eradication.” 

Moderator
Erez Manela, Acting Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, is a professor of history at Harvard University, where he teaches international history and the history of the United States in the world. 

Manela has published extensively on the history of World War I and its aftermath. His prize-winning book The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism showed how US attempts to recast international order in the wake of World War I helped spark upheavals across the colonial world in 1919 and beyond. He has also researched the history of international development, notably on the World Health Organization's global smallpox eradication program in the 1960s and 1970s and what it tells us about the intersection of superpower relations, international development, and international organizations in that era.

His current work examines the global discourse about World War II as a "race war" and how it shaped visions for the postwar international order. He also has a longstanding interest in the conceptual and methodological aspects of writing international history.

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Kim Stanley Robinson: “The Future of Climate, Technology, and Society” 
Wednesday, March 29
7:00pm
BC, Gasson Hall, 100, Gasson Hall, Chestnut Hill, MA

Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer. He is the author of more than twenty books, including the international bestselling Mars trilogy, and more recently New York 2140, Aurora, Shaman, Green Earth, and 2312, which was a New York Times bestseller nominated for all seven of the major science fiction awards—a first for any book. He was sent to the Antarctic by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers’ Program in 1995 and returned in their Antarctic media program in 2016. In 2008 he was named a “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine, and he works with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute, the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, and UC San Diego’s Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. His work has been translated into 25 languages, and won a dozen awards in five countries, including the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy awards. In 2016 he was given the Heinlein Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction, and asteroid 72432 was named “Kimrobinson.” In 2017, he was given the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society. A prolific writer and speaker, his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Nature, and Wired, among many others, and he has lectured at more than one hundred institutions over the last 25 years. His novel, The Ministry for the Future, was selected as one of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2020. His most recent book, The High Sierra: A Love Story (May 2022) is a non-fiction exploration of Robinson’s years spent hiking and camping in the Sierra Nevada mountains, one of the most compelling places on Earth. 

Cosponsored by the Boston College Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies Program, the Lynch School's Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics, and English Department

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Thursday, March 30

Fortifying the Truth: Human Rights, Generative AI, and Deepfakes
Thursday, March 30
4 – 5 p.m.
Online

Samuel Gregory
Towards Life 3.0: Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century is a talk series organized and facilitated by Dr. Mathias Risse, Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, and Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs, and Philosophy. Drawing inspiration from the title of Max Tegmark’s book, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, the series draws upon a range of scholars, technology leaders, and public interest technologists to address the ethical aspects of the long-term impact of artificial intelligence on society and human life.

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Wednesday, April 5

Reiki, Energy Medicine, and Post-Materialism: A Conversation with Research Scientist Dr. Natalie Dyer (T&T Gnoseologies Series)
Wednesday, April 5
1 – 2 p.m.
Online

Hilary Flores-Hebert, Events & Finance Assistant cswr@hds.harvard.edu
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. 
Please join Research Associate Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani in a conversation with Dr. Natalie Dyer. Dr. Dyer is a Research Scientist with Connor Whole Health at University Hospitals, the President of the Center for Reiki Research, and a practicing Reiki master. They will talk about the role of Reiki and energy healing in improving health and well-being, the possibility of a non-materialist scientific paradigm, and dr. Dyer’s latest research on universal love.
 
Dr. Dyer is a Research Scientist with Connor Whole Health at University Hospitals and the President of the Center for Reiki Research. A shamanic Reiki master, Dr. Dyer studies the effect of Reiki biofield therapy on physical and psychological health and lead efforts to educate Reiki practitioners and the public about Reiki research. Dr. Dyer’s research is primarily focused on mindbody and biofield therapies for improving psychological health and wellbeing. Dr. Dyer also conducts research on universal love and is the co-creator of the Universal Love Scale, a psychometrically validated measure for the embodiment/experience of universal love. 

Gnoseologies: Transcendence and Transformation Today
This online series focuses on ways of knowing that are often labeled as “non-rational.” Traditionally referred to as gnosis in Western philosophical and religious traditions, and often understood in contraposition to science (episteme), these ways of knowing are becoming more and more influential in contemporary societies, popular culture, and academic research. Going beyond dichotomies such as body and mind, ordinary and extraordinary, reason and experience, and matter and spirit, this series hosts scholars of different disciplines and practitioners interested in exploring and expanding the boundaries of what counts as “knowledge” today. 

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The EU’s Energy Policy after Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
Wednesday, April 5
2:00 pm to 3:15 pm
BU, Pardee School of Global Studies, 121 Bay State Road, Boston, MA

Join us for a lecture by Niels Fuglsang, Member of the European Parliament, elected for the Danish Social Democrats in 2019. Moderated by Cathie Jo Martin, Professor of Political Science, Boston University.

During the last two decades, the European economy has become ever more dependent on Russian gas and oil. However, since the 24th of February 2022, there is broad consensus in Brussels that the energy imports must stop since the EU is effectively financing Russia's war against Ukraine by paying for Russian energy, all the while Mr. Putin can use energy as an instrument to harm the EU. But how can Europe get rid of Russian energy and are there any realistic alternatives?

Niels Fuglsang serves in the Parliament's Industry- and Energy Committee and is the Parliament's rapporteur for the Energy Efficiency Directive, which is being negotiated in the spring of 2023. Niels holds a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen and a PhD from the Copenhagen Business School. While writing his PhD dissertation he was visiting researcher at Boston University in the fall of 2017.

Contact Name Elizabeth Amrien
Phone 617-358-0919
Contact Email edamrien@bu.edu

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Thursday, April 6

Canary Live Boston
Thursday, April 6
5:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
Greentown Labs 444 Somerville Ave Somerville, MA 02143
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/canary-live-boston-tickets-539295245597
Cost:  $49

Canary Media and Post Script Media — leaders in climate journalism — are hosting a live event at Greentown Labs in Somerville, Ma. on Thurs., April 6 from 5:00–9:00pm ET.
On stage: The leading voice in clean energy podcasting, Stephen Lacey, will record a live episode of The Carbon Copy with some very special guests. Then experienced New England reporters will dig into a discussion on the region's efforts to decarbonize.
Off stage: We'll be celebrating Canary's 2nd birthday! And you’ll have time for socializing and networking over food and drink. See the agenda and speakers below.

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