EnviroThursday Fall 2018
Presentations take place at 12 noon, Olin-Rice Room 250
September 20, 2018
Harmon Room, Library
“Energy Issues in the Trump Administration”
Speaker: Alexandra B. Klass, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, University of Minnesota Law School
In this presentation, Professor Alexandra Klass will discuss recent developments in U.S. energy policy, economics, and technology. Although President Trump and his cabinet Secretaries, particularly at the Interior Department, Energy Department, and EPA, have announced dramatic policy shifts away from those pursued during the Obama Administration, the new administration’s ability to accomplish its goals is in some instances helped and in other instances hindered by existing federal and state laws as well as private sector technology and economic trends. Topics will include the shift away from the use of coal and toward natural gas and renewable energy in the electricity sector; the use of federal public lands to develop oil, natural gas, coal, wind, and solar energy; developments in technology and law associated with hydraulic fracturing; and controversies over new oil and gas pipelines such as the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines.
This EnviroThursday is co-sponsored by the Environmental Studies Department and the Legal Studies Program.
September 27, 2018
“How Ants Run the Planet”
Speaker: Alex Wild, Curator of Entomology at the University of Texas at Austin and 2018-2019 Olin-Rice Smail Gallery Artist
Ants are ubiquitous in most of our planet’s terrestrial ecosystems. Dr. Wild explores where ants came from, why they are so abundant, and how so many other species, including our own, have fallen into their ecological orbit.
Alex Wild holds a Ph.D. in Entomology from the University of California/Davis. A lifelong fascination with natural history has taken him on a varied career around the world. Dr. Wild has taught beekeeping with the Peace Corps in Paraguay, led tropical insect photography tours in Central and South America, and conducted academic research on the evolutionary relationships of beetles, wasps, and ants. Dr. Wild began photographing insects in 2002, early in the digital era, as an aesthetic complement to his scientific work. His photographs appear in numerous natural history museums, books, television programs, and other media.
This EnviroThursday is co-sponsored by the Environmental Studies and Biology Departments.
September 28, 2018 – EnviroFriday
12-1 p.m.
Davis Court, Kofi Annan IGC
“African Food Systems in Transition and the Triple Burden of Malnutrition”
Speaker: Jane Battersby, African Centre for Cities and Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, University of Cape Town, South Africa
While the challenge of food insecurity in Africa is largely still viewed by policy makers at the national and global scales to be one of rural hunger, food insecurity is increasingly an urban issue which manifests in the form of the coincidence of undernutrion and micro-nutrition deficiency with increasing rates of obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases. The policy landscape is ill-suited to respond to these complex challenges. This lecture uses the case studies from South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya to argue that current policy approaches are playing a role in accelerating this transition. It argues that urban planning, agricultural policy, trade policy, and health policy are ill-attuned to respond to the lived food systems of African Cities, and that there is urgent need to reconsider the role of the private sector’s framing by global development agencies as a “partner in development.”
This event is co-sponsored by Dept. of Geography; Dept. of Environmental Studies; Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship; Food, Agriculture and Society Concentration; Study Abroad Office; International Development Concentration; Urban Studies Concentration; and Community and Global Health Concentration.
October 4, 2018
“Conservation in Serengeti Tanzania: Using Economic Principles to Understand Complex Conservation Issues”
Speaker: Amy Damon, Associate Professor of Economics and Latin American Studies, Macalester College
Prof. Amy Damon will use basic economic concepts to understand some of the multidimensional problems surrounding conservation in Serengeti National Park. She will present results of past work and discuss a current project looking at the interaction of food security, nutrition, agriculture and wildlife conservation.
Prof. Damon is a Development Economist specializing in rural poverty and agricultural household issues. She has worked on projects in the Tanzania for the past 9 years and also has projects in Mexico and Central America. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of Vermont, an M.S. in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University, and a PhD in Agriculture and Natural Resource Economics from the University of Minnesota.
This EnviroThursday is co-sponsored by the Environmental Studies and Economics Departments.
October 11, 2018
The 2018 International Roundtable on the topic “Beyond Blood and Skin: The Global Production and Consequences of Race and Racisms” will be held October 11-13, 2018.
October 18, 2018
“An Hour with Gary Snyder – Reflections on Nature and the Wild”
Speaker: Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder, author of 20 books of poetry and prose, is also a Zen Buddhist, environmentalist activist, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the Ruth Lilly & Bollingen Prize for Poetry, the John Hay Award for Nature Writing, and the American Book Award.
Open to the Macalester Community Only
Public can attend the free event on October 17 at 7:30 p.m.
October 25, 2018
No EnviroThursday – Fall Break
November 1, 2018
Olin-Rice 243
“Fairphone Workshop”
Speakers: Ari Lutze-Jahiel ’19 and Betsy Schein ’19
Be an e-steward by joining us to take apart and recycle old cell phones.
Lunch provided. RSVP to [email protected].
This EnviroThursday is co-sponsored by the Environmental Studies Department and the Idea Lab.
November 8, 2018
“Intro to Infodesign: Visual Stories Inspire Sustainability”
Speaker: Arlene Birt, Founder and Chief Visual Storyteller at Background Stories
Dataviz, infographics and visual storytelling are a powerful concoction to inform and engage on sustainability. Because graphics are an important method of showing complex systems, visuals can be a useful tool to help audiences relate to and connect with environmental data. Arlene Birt will discuss techniques to communicate sustainability messages and data to a variety of audiences – based on how humans actually interpret visual information. She’ll also look at what type of graph to use in which scenario to visually present info in a way that is relevant to audiences.
Arlene Birt is founder and chief visual storyteller at Background Stories—an information design consultancy that works with organizations in the US, EU and UK—that translates complex ideas, systems and metrics into clear visuals that help people (especially non-experts) understand sustainability. She is also a public artist and professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, teaching courses on infodesign, data visualization and sustainability since 2008.
November 15, 2018
“Viva La Vulva: A Story of Mice, Women and the Things That Get Under Our Skin”
Speaker: Devavani Chatterjea, Professor of Biology, Macalester
Devavani Chatterjea is an immunologist with a current research focus on the environmental immuno-toxicology of chronic pain. She uses bench science, art, movement and metaphor to understand the nature and outcomes of inflammation – why, when and how we respond to the world and how the stories of those encounters get written into our individual and collective bodies. She will share her group’s recent work exploring how a common household preservative may be the key to understanding the origins of unexplained chronic pain.
This EnviroThursday is co-sponsored by the Environmental Studies and Biology Departments.