Please join The Commonwealth Club of California and UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center for the Humanities for the second in a series of dialogues on catastrophe, storytelling and the present moment. In “Climate Change and Sacred Groves,” Townsend Center scholar Sugata Ray will meet with visual artist Ranu Mukherjee to investigate the relationship between the natural world and the sacred realm, especially as it has developed in India over the last several centuries of civilization and the rise of the Anthropocene era.

In his most recent book, Climate Change and the Art of Devotion, Sugata shows how a site-specific and ecologically grounded theology emerged in northern India in the wake of the Little Ice Age (ca. 1550–1850), an epoch marked by climatic catastrophes across the globe. His interests dovetail in unexpected and compelling ways with Ranu’s visionary and captivating recent work, which positions the banyan tree as a meeting point between ecology and culture. Their conversation will be an opportunity for viewers to contemplate and rethink the role of art as it relates to contemporary concerns around climate, disease, human flourishing and the sacred.

Sugata Ray is associate professor of South and Southeast Asian art in the History of Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley. His research and writing focus on climate change and the visual arts from the 1500s onward. Ray is the author of Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550–1850 (2019); Water Histories of South Asia: The Materiality of Liquescence (2019; coedited); and Ecologies, Aesthetics, and Histories of Art (forthcoming; coedited).

Ranu Mukherjee is a visual artist who makes paintings, animations and large-scale installations. Her current work focuses on shifting senses of ecology, non-human agency, diaspora, migration and transnational feminist experience. Her most recent installation was presented at the ecologically focused 2019 Karachi Biennale; she has exhibited solo at the San Jose Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Asian Art Museum, and the de Young Museum. She is an associate professor in graduate fine art at the California College of the Arts. Mukherjee is represented by Gallery Wendi Norris.

NOTES
Artwork from The Met (in public domain): "Krishna and Balarama by a River: Page from a Dispersed Bhagavata Purana (Ancient Stories of Lord Vishnu)"

Part one in this series, “The Book of Exodus,” can be viewed here


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The Garrison Institute presents a live webinar with Jessica Morey.

During this interactive webinar, Jessica guided us through earth-based contemplative practices to connect us with our belonging to and love and grief for our world and all the beings with whom we share it. She invited us to reflect on what we might learn from this time of pandemic about how to respond to the even more devastating global climate crisis. We practiced together to build the inner resiliency, compassion, and embodied interconnection to thrive in the crucial work of advocating for a livable planet for all.

Jessica Morey is a lead teacher and co-founder of Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (www.iBme.com). She began practicing meditation at age 14 on teen retreats offered by the Insight Meditation Society. Before joining iBme, Jessica worked in clean energy and climate policy and finance at the World Bank, the Pew Center on Climate Change, and the Clean Energy States Alliance. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering from Dartmouth and a master's degree in Sustainable Development and International Affairs. Her published works range from the chapter “Ordinary Awakening” in Blue Jean Buddha to Conflict Resolution of the Boruca Hydro-Energy Project: Renewable Energy Production in Costa Rica. In 2014, Jessica brought her two life passions together to write about the potential of contemplative practice to heal our relationship with the natural world in a Shambhala Sun article.

Your support matters. Our vision for a more just, compassionate world has never felt more urgent.  If you have any questions about this event, please contact us here. .

Much like efforts to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, combatting climate change requires cooperation on a global scale. And yet the history of international climate negotiations shows just how difficult that cooperation can be.

At the same time, new technologies to alter the climate are emerging, posing their own challenges to multilateralism. What, if anything, can we learn from the global response to the pandemic that might aid us in governing new, climate-altering technologies? What functions and mechanisms are needed? How important is leadership in not only responding to, but anticipating and preparing for these global challenges? What role do ethics play in governance decisions?

These are challenges the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G) knows well. Their work is focused on catalyzing the creation of effective and inclusive governance for emerging technologies that would seek to deliberately alter the one atmosphere we all share. For the past three years, they've met with senior decision-makers around the world in national governments, the UN system and civil society, urging them to explore questions such as risk management and transparent global monitoring and reporting before events overtake.

Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G) Executive Director Janos Pasztor talks about Carbon Dioxide Removal and why it requires governance.

C2G seeks to catalyse the creation of effective governance for climate-altering technologies, in particular for Solar Radiation Modification and large-scale Carbon Dioxide Removal. C2G is impartial regarding the potential use of any proposed climate-altering technologies or interventions. These are choices for society to make.

To learn more, visit https://www.c2g2.net/carbon-dioxide-removal/

Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G) Executive Director Janos Pasztor talks about assessing the risks of climate-altering technologies, and particularly those related to Solar Radiation Modification.

C2G seeks to catalyse the creation of effective governance for climate-altering technologies, in particular for Solar Radiation Modification and large-scale Carbon Dioxide Removal. C2G is impartial regarding the potential use of any proposed climate-altering technologies or interventions. These are choices for society to make.

To learn more, visit https://www.c2g2.net

To tackle a problem as large as climate change, we need both science and Indigenous wisdom, says environmental activist Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim. In this engaging talk, she shares how her nomadic community in Chad is working closely with scientists to restore endangered ecosystems -- and offers lessons on how to create more resilient communities.

Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim is an environmental activist and geographer. She is the Coordinator of the Association of Peul Women and Autochthonous Peoples of Chad and served as the co-director of the pavilion of the World Indigenous Peoples’ Initiative and Pavilion at COP21, COP22 and COP23.

RSA Minimate: Climate Change and the Future of Humanity - David Wallace-Wells

Global warming is the existential challenge of our age. The time for denial and delay is over. The time for commitment and collective action is now. In this compelling new RSA Minimate, bestselling author David Wallace-Wells warns us of the grave dangers ahead if we continue our current course, and urges us to choose a new pathway for humanity.

Find out more about The Uninhabitable Earth in David Wallace-Wells’ RSA talk here.

The minds behind the award-winning RSA Animate series are back! RSA Minimates are super-short, information-packed animations for busy people. All audio excerpts are taken from live FREE events at the RSA’s HQ in London and animated by Cognitive. This animation was produced by Abi Stephenson and Mairi Ryan at the RSA.

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As we celebrate Earth Day 2020, we take a moment to reflect on our place in the natural world, and how our individual choices can ultimately affect our future & the future of the one place we all call home, planet Earth.

Ed Winters
Al Gore 
Katherine Wilkinson 
Zaria Forman  
Kris Tompkins 
Plastic Ocean 
Duncan Stewart 

On 4 December 2019 at UNFCCC COP25, C2G and leading experts argued for more urgency in global discussions to plug the governance gaps in CO2 removal. C2G Executive Director Janos Pasztor highlighted the governance challenges related to large-scale CO2 removal.

Learn more at https://www.c2g2.net/carbon-dioxide-removal/

Tune in to hear from award winning architect and environmentalist Duncan Stewart in this talk on the challenges posed by greenhouse gas emissions to Earth’s climate system, its impacts to our young generation’s future, along with impacts to biodiversity, and what we can do about it.

A pioneer of ecologically sustainable architecture, timber building design, renewable energy, energy efficient & nearly zero carbon buildings, Duncan is a director of the Irish Environmental Network, the Dublin Civic Trust, and a director & former chairperson of Green Foundation Ireland. He is also the producer & presenter of 'Eco Eye’ & ‘About the House’ TV series on RTE 1.

Duncan Stewart is a founder of Eco Ed 4 All - Developing Environmental Education for Schools in Ireland & CPD courses for teachers on Environmental themes. These include impacts and remedies to the following: Climate Change, Biodiversity, Land Use and Farming, Circular Economy, Air & Water Pollution, impacts to the Developing World and the UN Sustainable Development Goals to 2030.