Panel I: Communicating Climate Change: Science, Advocacy, and Media
Climate change has become one of this century’s most important global environmental challenges. It has also been one of the most divisive issues confronting science and society in the US, providing a rich site for understanding the difficulties of communicating complex scientific issues and the challenges of mobilizing and engaging the American public in the face of politically-charged debate. This panel brings together some of the most visible journalists, activists, scientists, and scholars who have been working to elucidate US climate debates by presenting evidence of scientific consensus, the experiences of people living in island nations, and new scientific research exploring the worldwide effect of climate change.
Panelists
One of America’s best-known science writers, Andrew Revkin has spent two decades covering a variety of subjects–from the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia to research on the floating ice cap at the North Pole and the political clash over global warming. Revkin, a reporter at The New York Times since 1995, is the author of The Burning Season, Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast, and The North Pole Was Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World.
Kerry Emanuel is Professor of Tropical Meteorology and Climate at MIT. His current research focuses on the prediction of hurricane intensity by isolating the essential physics of hurricanes, that includes the thermodynamic state of the atmosphere and upper ocean and the wind structure of the surrounding atmosphere. He is the author of Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 People Who Shape Our World in 2006.
Naomi Oreskes is Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on the historical development of scientific knowledge, methods, and practices in the earth and environmental sciences, and on understanding scientific consensus and dissent. Oreskes is the author of The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science, and the forthcoming Science on a Mission: American Oceanography in the Cold War and Beyond. Her 2004 essay, The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change in Science, resulted in much coverage in many of America’s major newspapers.
Kevin Conrad is the Ambassador of Environment and Climate Change for Papua New Guinea. He is also the Executive Director of the 30-strong Coalition for Rainforest Nations, a part of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. Conrad has earned MBAs from Columbia and the London School of Business. He has advised domestic and international companies as well as academic institutions in global strategy and strategic alliances. Conrad also has extensive business investment and operational experience within developing nations and has advised governments in Africa, Latin America and the Pacific.
Moderator:
Boyce Rensberger is the director of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at MIT. He has been a science writer or science editor for more than 32 years beginning with The Detroit Free Press, and subsequently at The New York Times, the PBS science series for children, “3-2-1- Contact!”, the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s “Science 81-Science 84,” and The Washington Post. Rensberger has twice won the AAAS top award for science writing. He has written four science books, most recently Life Itself: Exploring the Realm of the Living Cell.
Panel II: Industrial Bodies: Connecting Fossil Fuels and Petrochemicals to Human Health and Industrial Environments
The act of making energy, as well as the ways in which the energy and petrochemical industries transform physical, social, political and economic landscapes is extremely complex. Whether the results of such industrial activities are endocrine disruption or climate change, the relationships between the act of making energy and the places and people it affects are understudied. In order to begin examining these complex relationships this panel brings together academics studying the energy industry and endocrine disruption, environmental activists living in regions of energy development, and authors who have written extensively on questions surrounding toxics and our most intimate biology. This panel seeks to help bridge the gaps resulting from environmental issues being discussed as discrete phenomena. It does so by linking seemingly disparate issues such as endocrine disruption and climate change via a focus on energy issues as well as by raising broader questions regarding the relationship between human bodies and industrialized environments.
Panelists
Laura Amos is a landowner and outspoken critic of natural gas development in Colorado. After developing a rare adrenal cancer in conjunction with a gas development project taking place on her property, Amos became involved in contesting and drawing attention to the health, safety and legal issues surrounding natural gas development. Her story has been covered by numerous news organizations and she has testified before state legislature on these issues. Not only can Amos speak first hand to the impacts of gas development on the environmental, social and economic landscape of the region, but she can also shed light on the experience of becoming a spokesperson for environmental justice. Amos remind us that health and environmental consequences of energy development continue to be issues within the United States.
Theo Colborn, PhD, is one of the world’s leading authorities on endocrine disrupting chemicals in the environment. In 1996 she co-authored Our Stolen Future with Dianne Dumanoski and John Peter Meyers. She received her Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Wisconsin and is currently a professor of Zoology at the University of Florida, Gainesville. In June 2000, Dr. Colborn was awarded the Blue Planet Prize in recognitition of her outstanding scientific contributions to global environmental conservation. In 2004 she received the second annual Rachel Carson Award for Integrity in Science by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. She currently lives and works in Paonia, Colorado as founder and president of The Endocrine Disruption Exchande (TEDX), a non-profit company that provides scientific data on endocrine disruption to activists, scientists and policy makers. TEDX recently began a project examining the potential health effects of chemicals used in Natural Gas Development. Previously she was the senior scientist and director of the Wildlife and Contaminants project at the World Wildlife Fund.
Michael Dorsey, PhD, is an assistant Professor in Environmental Studies at Darmouth College. Known for his work as an activist and academic, Dorsey studies environmental and economic justice issues both nationally and internationally. He has served as a director of the Sierra Club, was a founding member of San Francisco’s Center for Health and the Environment, served as the Special Senior Advisor on International Affairs and Policy at the Center for Genetics and Society and the Clinton Administration’s Task Force on Sustainable Development. Dorsey’s work with the Friends of the Earth in Ecuador on the environmental and social impacts of extractive industries particular the oil industry brings a necessary international perspective to this discussion.
Catherine Clabby is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. In 2006 she was part of a team at the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. that investigated lead contamination in drinking water. The resulting award-winning series, “N.C. Water: Safe to Drink?”, exposed lax state oversight of water utilities. It also changed how North Carolina public health officials investigate lead poisoning in children.
Moderator:
Kim Fortun is Associate Dean for the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and an associate professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her book, Advocacy After Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders, is a study of the social, environmental and legal transformations consequent to the 1984 Bhopal disaster. Her participant observation and thoughtful scholarship on regional environmental justice movements challenged the boundary between academic approaches and activism. Her current work on toxicogenomics examines the problems of relating individual health questions to larger environmental issues. Fortun’s work on the long term social, economic and legal impacts of the Bhopal disaster promises to link environmental transformation wrought by our dependence on oil and gas as both an energy source to the synthetic chemical industry and its influence on our bodies and environments. Her work on the boundary between scholarship and activism also brings to the fore another interesting angle of inquiry: the relationships between science, scholarship, journalism and personal experience.
Panel III: Toxic Worlds: Politics of Risk, Knowledge and Environmental Health
This panel builds upon the discussion of the relationship between environmental toxicities and human health begun in the previous panel and considers how we come to understand and negotiate spaces assumed to be toxic. Recognizing that environmental risks are unevenly distributed across the human landscape, it asks how health risks are perceived and quantified in our communities and considers whose knowledge counts in evaluating such risks and in what settings. This panel seeks to find common ground for discussion and collaboration among scientists, social scientists and activists that can contribute both to creating better science and to expanding democratic participation in science-making.
Panelists
Jason Corburn is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of City and Regional Planning at UC-Berkeley. Between 1996-98, he was a senior environmental planner with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. He is the author of Street Science: Community Knowledge and Environmental Justice.
Devra Davis is an epidemiologist with a Ph.D. in science studies. She has been a leading figure in the public and scientific debates over the environmental causes of cancer. Davis is currently the director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Her book When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution won a National Book.
Cheryl Johnson is a representative of People for Community Recovery. PCR was founded in 1979 in the Altgeld Gardens Chicago Housing Authority development on Chicago’s South Side. PCR has been dedicated to combating urban environmental pollution and raising awareness about pollution-related health risks in low income and minority communities. PCR was honored in 1997 by President Bill Clinton as one of the country’s top 100 environmental organizations.
Kimberly Thompson is Associate Professor ofRisk Analysis and Decision Science and Director of the Kids Risk Project at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her research interests and teaching focus on the issues related to developing and applying quantitative methods for risk assessment and risk management. She created and directs the Kids Risk Project, which aims to empower kids, parents, policy makers, and others to make better decisions when manging children’s risk. She is a Fellow and past President of the Society for Risk Analysis and an author of over 70 peer-reviewed papers and the book Risk In Perspective: Insight and Humor in the Age of Risk Management.
Moderator:
Pete Spotts is a science and technology reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. He is a former Knight Science Journalism Fellow as well as an Ocean Science Journalism Fellow. He has won the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Science Journalism Award.Â
Panel IV: Restoration and Change: Questions on the Nature of Environmental Solutions
In this panel, the speakers turn their attention from the identification and communication of environmental issues to the goal of creating positive social and ecological change. The panel brings together an environmental historian and farmer based in Concord, MA; an activist working with urban youth to restore the American Great Plains ecosystem; an ecologist involved in remediation and restoration of wetland ecosystems for The Nature Conservancy, and an artist whose current work in the Atlantic Forest of Brasil is part of a worldwide project to explore the links between UNESCO-designed World Heritage sites, ecological change, and social/environmental justice. The speakers will consider the ideas behind various restoration efforts and their successes and failures, as well as how they have worked to create support for environmental change in a variety of contexts, from agriculture and resource management to urban poverty and environmental health. With both contemporary and historical examples, the speakers address issues such as the ways in which environmental perception affects one’s choices for action, the relationship between environmental improvement and social justice, uneven access to natural resources, and the equity (or inequity) of restoration and remediation projects.
Panelists
Brian Donahue is Associate Professor of American Environmental Studies at Brandeis University and is author two multi-prize-winning booksthe Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town and The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord. He is also founder and past-director of Land Sake’s in a farm in the Boston suburb of Weston, which practices and advocates for sustainable land stewardship, local food production, and environmental education.
Jarid Manos is Founder, Executive Director and Board member of the Great Plains Restoration Council. He has a background in activism, health and trauma recovery, prairie dog rescue, and more. The Great Plains Restoration Council is a non-profit “multiracial, multicultural environmental health non-profit organization building the Buffalo Commons step-by-step by bringing indigenous prairies back and restoring healthy, sustainable communities to the Great Plains. From the Indian reservation to the prairie inner city to the High Plains outback and beyond, GPRC brings people together to establish creative, effective solutions that enhance and respect our natural environment, native wildlife, and the health and dignity of all people.†“Prairie/Plains youth of the inner cities and Indian reservations face many of the same harsh social challenges, including HIV/AIDS, diabetes, drug and alcohol abuse, gang and school violence, pollution, ecological problems, depression, and more, but rarely interact. GPRC’s three-phase youth leadership development program brings youth together to assess and address issues that are critical to the health of self, community, and our unique Prairie/Plains environment.†See http://www.gprc.org
Kathryn Morgan is a wetland ecologist and restoration scientist. She is the acting director of the Skagit Valley River Delta ecological preserve in Washington State and works on a variety of restoration projects on behalf of the Washington Nature Conservancy.
Jae Rhim Lee received a Master of Science in Visual Studies from the MIT Visual Arts Program in 2006, where she is currently a Visiting Lecturer. She co-organizes, with Ute Meta Bauer and Amber Frid-Jimenez, the Zones of Emergency Lecture Series in the MIT Visual Arts Program/Department of Architecture, a series which examines the complexity of disasters and emergencies by bringing together artists, scholars, and practitioners. Just prior to returning to MIT to teach, Jae Rhim Lee worked to develop a city-wide remediation program and urban food security initiative as a Research Fellow in the Infrastructure and Environmental Planning Department of the City of New Orleans Office of Recovery Management. She continues to work for the City of New Orleans as a consultant and Facilitator for the Technical Advisory Committee.
Jae Rhim Lee’s visual work proposes, via tools and systems customized for her body, alternative relationships between the mind/body/self and the built and natural environment. These technologies of the self, or self-interventions, are informed by her interests in ecopsychology, terror management theory, Buddhism, disasters, and environmental sustainability.
Moderator:
Dale Joachim is a visiting faculty member at the Media Lab. He was previously a member of the electrical engineering faculty at Tulane University, principal engineer at Lockheed Martin, and hardware design engineer at Zenith Data Systems. He currently focuses on democratic methods for observing natural environments.