More dates for your calendar

Going to the Extremes -- from the Blue Holes of the Bahamas to Parasitic Ecosystems to Edge of the Universe -- at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History

Santa Barbara, CA -- Explore the extremes through the eyes of scientific explorers at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. This lecture series brings Dr. Kenneth Broad (environmental anthropologist), Dr. Kevin Lafferty (ecologist) and Dr. Lynn Rothschild (evolutionary biologist/astrobiologist) who will share their compelling and inspiring tales about the frontiers of science -- from the Blue Holes of the Bahamas to parasitic ecosystems to the edge of the universe. All presentations will be held in Fleischman Auditorium and will conclude with a lively conversation between speaker and audience, as well as an opportunity to meet the scientist. The lectures are weekly on Thursdays (March 10, 17 and 24) and each lecture begins at 7:30 PM. Tickets are available online at www.sbnature.org/tickets or at the door (Museum Members $8; Non-members $10). Parking is free. For more information call 805-682-4711 ext. 170.

EXTREME EXPLORER

Blue Holes of the Bahamas: Caves, Climate, and Cognition

by Dr. Kenneth Broad

Thursday, March 10

7:30 PM

Largely unexplored, and considered among the most hazardous places to dive, the flooded caves, or "blue holes" of the Bahamas, are a potential treasure trove of scientific knowledge. Dr. Broad will speak on the findings of his recent cave diving expeditions to the Blue Holes of the Bahamas which were featured on the cover of the August 2010 issue of National Geographic. Discoveries from the Blue Holes are significant to the fields of microbiology, paleontology and climate science. He will also discuss cave exploration in terms of risk perception.

To quote National Geographic, "Inland blue holes are the scientific equivalent of Tut's tomb. From a diver's perspective, they're on par with Everest or K2, requiring highly specialized training, equipment, and experience. Even more than high-altitude mountaineers, cave divers work under tremendous time pressure. When something goes wrong, if they don't solve the problem and make it back to the cave entrance before their gas runs out, they're doomed."

Dr. Broad is an environmental anthropologist who studies the relationship between humans and their environment. Kenny has led or participated in extreme expeditions around the globe - from dangerous urban slums to the deepest caves on the planet - to gather information and samples that shed light on little known environmental and cultural subjects. He is an associate professor at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and is Director of the University of Miami's Abess Center for Ecosystem Science. He also Co-directs the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University. Broad received the 2006 Emerging Explorer Award and was elected a Fellow National of the Explorers Club in 2009. He received his PhD in anthropology from Columbia University in 1999.


EXTREME PASSENGERS

Parasites Rule! Castration, Mind Control, and Human Culture

by Dr. Kevin Lafferty

Thursday, March 17

7:30 PM

Parasitism is the most popular lifestyle on earth and parasites have evolved insidious and fascinating ways to complete their life cycles.  Dr. Lafferty will discuss how parasites quietly affect entire ecosystems and human culture, noting that parasites are normal part of a functioning food web.

Dr. Kevin Lafferty is an ecologist with the US Geological Survey and adjunct faculty at UCSB, specializing in parasites.  He's lived in Santa Barbara for 30 years and travelled the world in search of the parasites he admires.  He and his wife, Cristina Sandoval, the director of Coal Oil Point Reserve, are actively engaged in local conservation issues.


EXTREME ENVIRONMENTS

Life at the Edge: Life in Extreme Environments on Earth and the Search for Life in the Universe

by Dr. Lynn Rothschild

Thursday, March 24

7:30 PM

Lynn Rothschild has gone from the Bolivian Andes to the Rift Valley of Kenya searching for the hardiest of organisms in the most extreme environments for life. By getting to know life forms on Earth that can occupy the most hostile niches, we can begin to understand the survival requirements for life in general. She describes her quest for "life at the edge" and how such discoveries will shape our search for life in the Solar System and beyond.

Dr. Lynn Rothschild is an evolutionary biologist/astrobiologist at NASA Ames, and Professor at Stanford and Brown University, where she teaches Astrobiology and Space Exploration.  She has broad training in biology, with degrees from Yale, Indiana University, and a Ph.D. from Brown University in Molecular and Cell Biology. Since arriving at Ames in 1987, her research has focused on how life, particularly microbes, has evolved in the context of the physical environment, both here and potentially elsewhere. Field sites range from Australia to Africa to the Andes, from the ocean to 100,000 feet on a balloon. In the last few years Rothschild has brought her expertise in extremophiles and evolutionary biology to the field of synthetic biology, addressing on how synthetic biology can enhance NASA's missions. Rothschild is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, the California Academy of Sciences and the Explorers Club.

Save the date

The Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at  UCSB cordially invites all faculty, staff and students to attend:
MORSE SYMPOSIUM
Honoring Dan Morse and his ongoing contributions to the UCSB campus and the at-large research community

Friday, April 15, 2011
100 PM - 530 PM
Loma Pelona Center, UCSB Campus

DRAFT SCHEDULE (speakers confirmed):
100 PM -- coffee/tea/cookies
115 PM -- Opening Remarks hosted by Dr. Joel Rothman, Chair, MCD Biology
130 PM -- Talk #1 (Dr. Bernie Degnan)
230 PM -- Talk #2 (Dr. Jen Cha)
315PM -- BREAK (refreshments)
330 PM -- Talk #3 (Dr. Angela Belcher - Giving Life to Materials for Energy, the Environment and Medicine)
415 PM -- Closing Remarks
430-530 PM -- RECEPTION (libations, hors d'ouevres)

A final schedule will be posted on the MCDB website
(http://www.lifesci.ucsb.edu/mcdb/ ).


Angela Belcher is one of CCS Bio's more famous alumni, director of the Biomolecular Materials Group at MIT and a 2004 MacArthur Fellow (aka the Genius award).

Oh that's what it was...

Even though you didn't see them I added the slides from today's class so you can work out what my scribbles meant. This material is also well covered in chapters 34-36 in your textbook which has some excellent illustrations.

On an unrelated note next Monday's EEMB seminar is by Professor Mary Power of UC Berkeley. Her title is still listed as TBA but Mary works on food webs in rivers and their watersheds. She has been the president of the Ecological Society of America and usually gives a pretty enthusiastic talk.

Deciphering Local Diversity

Next quarter CCBER will present a series of talks on local biodiversity with a focus on developing observational and identification skills.You can take this as a class or simply attend any talks you are interested in.

CCBER Conservation and Restoration Seminar (RE 188/288) - Deciphering Local Diversity

Monday evenings, 6-7pm, Rm 1013 Harder South

• March 28th – Introduction – Lisa Stratton
• April 4th – Dan Fontaine – Interpreting animals signs
• April 11th – Mark Holmgren – Raptor ID and Behavior
• April 18th – John Bleck – Differentiating Succulents
• April 25th – Mary Carroll – Differentiating Sedges
• May 2nd – Marc Kummel – The story behind local Oak Galls
• May 9th – Mary Carroll – Learning the key to Grass Identification
• May 16th – Lisa Stratton – Local vernal pool hydrology and flora
• May 23rd – Scott Cooper – Below the surface of Vernal Pools: Invertebrate lifecycles

Contact Lisa Stratton if you have questions.

Debating Darwin

I only just heard about this conference which is going on next weekend right here ar UCSB. It's free to attend but they do request that you register: http://www.philosophy.ucsb.edu/conferences/

UC Santa Barbara Department of Philosophy Announcesa Steven Humphrey Fund for Excellence in Philosophy ConferenceDebating Darwin: Philosophical Issues in Evolution and Natural Selection
February 18-20, 2011

Friday, February 18

5:00 - 7:00 PM Peter Godfrey-Smith (Harvard), "Origin Explanations" 
7:00 - 9:00 PM Reception/Buffet, UCSB Faculty Club

Saturday, February 19

9:30 - 11:30 AM Elisabeth Lloyd (Indiana), "Adaptationism in Action"
11:30 - 1:00 PM Lunch, Graduate Student Association Lounge
1:00 - 3:00 PM Paul Griffiths (Sydney), "How Evolution Tracks Truth"
3:00 - 3:15 PM Break
3:15 - 5:15 PM Jerry Fodor (Rutgers), "From the Darwin Wars"

Sunday, February 20

9:30 - 11:30 AM Mohan Matthen (Toronto), TBA
11:30 - 1:00 PM Lunch, UCSB Faculty Club
1:00 - 3:00 PM Richard Boyd (Cornell), "Evolutionary Theory as Methodological Anesthesia: Methodological and Philosophical Lessons from Evolutionary Psychology"
3:00 - 3:15 PM Break
3:15 - 5:15 PM Alex Rosenberg (Duke), "How Jerry Fodor Slid Down the Slippery Slope to Anti-Darwinism, and How We Can Avoid the Same Fate"
Location: All talks will be in Theater & Dance 1701

EEMB grad student symposium

Much as I would like to continue posting cute animal videos I shall reluctantly move on. (Oh okay, check out this picture if you want one more invertebrate smile).

Several of the departments on campus now organize mini-conferences around presentations by the grad students and/or faculty. EEMB has a faculty symposium in the Fall and a Grad student symposium in the Winter. This is coming up soon, Saturday Feb 12, and although it is free they do ask for people to register so they know how much coffee etc. to get (and you have to pay for dinner if you want feeding). Since I'm very keen that they have sufficient coffee I encourage you to register if you intend going.

This can be a great way to find out a lot about the research going on in a department. You really get a good sense of what graduate students do and you get to watch, and critique, a lot of talks in a short time. The agenda and abstracts are on the website but note that they do ask for you to sign up by the 1st Feb, Tuesday, tomorrow. It is certainly appropriate for undergraduates to go to this and there's usually a few CCS students there.

Ecology Seminars

I'm not posting as many seminar announcements this quarter but you should still keep an eye on them and try to attend one or two a quarter that look particularly interesting to you. I tend to notice the more ecology oriented ones (that's my background) and there are a couple from fairly distinguished mid-career ecologists coming up that should be well worth attending.


The first is the EEMB seminar this coming Monday 1/24/2011 @ 4pm in the MSRB auditorium (the MSI building)
Gary Mittelbach, Michigan State University
Biodiversity gradients from the small to the large

Harmful algal bloom seminar class

This is something a bit different - 

There will be an organizational meeting  for EEMB 595FF and EEMB 194Q, "Primary production and Harmful Algal Blooms", on Monday January 10 at 1:00 PM in Noble Hall, Conference Room 2221. This seminar is an official course for grad students in any department and undergrads in biological sciences. If you are interested, please let me know prior to organization meeting; contact at prezelin@lifesci.ucsb.edu.

Harmful algal blooms occur worldwide and with seemingly increased frequency, with devastating effects on marine life and associated consequences for coastal soicieties.  This seminar/lecture  will explore the distribution, causes and effects of a variety of harmful bloom categories.  Please read the following links prior to the organizational meeting, as they will be part of opening discussion

http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/academy/courses/algal/uab_ppt.pdf
http://www.sccoos.org/data/habs/about.php (and sections under Harmful algae and Red tides)

Sanford-Burnham

Learn about Sanford-Burnham's Core facilities: THURSDAY, Dec 2, 3:30-4:30pm, Rathmann Auditorium (ie 1001LSB)

This week's MCDB seminar is a departure from our normal form and represents a unique opportunity to learn more about the Core facilities and research resources of the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute.  The purpose is to provide faculty, staff, and students with information on what these facilities are and how they can access them in supporting research projects here at UCSB.  The speaker is Dr. Craig Hauser, the VP for Scientific Resources at SBMRI.  

Dr. Hauser is of the UC system, having done his undergraduate studies at UC Davis, Ph.D. at UC Irvine, and postdoctoral studies at UC Berkeley.  He was then recruited to the Sanford-Burnham faculty in La Jolla in 1989.   His research has centered on the interplay between the regulation of gene expression and oncogenic transformation, focusing on the Ets family of transcription factors.  In 2005, he became an adjunct faculty member and assumed a full-time administrative position, currently serving as Vice President for Scientific Resources.   His responsibilities include overseeing the operations of the Institute’s Shared Resources (cores), scientific equipment, and scientific regulatory compliance.

Dr. Hauser will present some background on the other two Sanford-Burnham sites (La Jolla, California and Orlando, Florida) and describe the somewhat unique philosophy and operations of the Institute’s many core facilities at these sites.   In addition to presenting the capabilities of these cores, he will describe how Sanford-Burnham’s partners, such as UCSB, can access the core services.  

Monday's EEMB seminar

Today's EEMB seminar speaker is Mike Ryan from the University of Texas.

Mike integrates behavioral ecology, physiology and biogeography within a phylogenetic approach to study mate signaling and sexual selection in túngara frogs and swordtail fishes.  Please join us at 4pm in the MSRB auditorium for his talk, "Sexual Selection and Communication in Tungara Frogs: Brian, Behavior & Evolution".  Refreshments will be served prior to the talk.

Friday seminar

This talk should be more accessible to undergraduates than most modelling talks. The photograph above is from one of Cherie's field sites and was taken by Joel Sartore, a National Geographic photographer. It recently won a prize in the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards.

Nov 12 @ 1:00pm, 1132 HFH - Harold Frank Hall also known as Engineering I
Professor Cherie Briggs,
"Models of host-pathogen dynamics"
A recently discovered chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), is having devastating effects on amphibian populations in the California Sierra Nevada, and throughout the world. In the Sierra Nevada, Bd has led to hundreds of local extinctions of frog populations, but a few populations are persisting with Bd. Efforts are currently underway, both in the Sierra Nevada and worldwide, to attempt to control this pathogen and/or limit its impact on amphibian populations. Herpetologists and ecologists are actively seeking the advice of modelers and theoreticians about what control strategies are likely to be most effective against this pathogen. In this talk, I will describe our efforts to date to develop models of the Bd/frog system, which involve models that differ from standard microparasite disease models because of the unique biology of Bd. I will discuss mechanisms by which control strategies might be effective, and areas in which further modeling work is needed.

EEMB Seminar time and location change

NOTE: Today's EEMB seminar is at 3:30 PM in the third floor conference room of the MSI building- 3322 MSRB

Mark Vellend, an ecologist from the University of British Columbia will be giving the EEMB departmental seminar today, "Integrating ecology and genetics: patterns, experiments, and ideas."  Mark is an interactive and broad thinking population and community ecologist, who focuses on plants.  His website is: http://www.botany.ubc.ca/vellend/

EEMB seminar

Today's EEMB seminar should be of interest to those with an interest in marine biology, ecology or global change

Dr. Jonathan Shurin from UCSD will be giving this Monday's EEMB seminar. Dr. Shurin works in aquatic ecosystems investigating local and regional controls of species diversity, consumer-resource dynamics and food web energetics. The title of his talk is "Plankton ecosystem dynamics in a warmer, wilder world"

Seeing is believing

I know at least one of you mentioned an interest in stem cells. The MCDB seminar looks like it might be of interest:

MCDB Seminar
Speaker: Pete Coffey
Head of Ocular Biology & Therapeutics
Professor, Cellular Therapy and Visual Sciences
Director, London Project to Cure Blindness

Title: "Stemming Vision Loss Using Stem Cells - Seeing Is Believing"
Location: Rathmann Auditorium, LSB 1001
Thursday October 7th 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Biomechanics

We don't get a lot of biomechanics talks here so I'll highlight this one. There was a nice article about this work at ScienceDaily recently.

Swimming and filtration in the ocean by jet-propelled salps
Dr. Kelly R. Sutherland
Postdoctoral Scholar in Bioengineering, California Institute of Technology

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING SEMINAR
Engineering Sciences Building, ESB 1001
Thursday, October 4th, 4.00 p.m.

Salps are barrel-shaped marine organisms that are common in the open ocean and swim using a pulsed jet.  Among salp species, there are a variety of body shapes and swimming styles that correspond to differences in ecological function.  Dye visualization via bluewater SCUBA techniques and laboratory Digital Particle Image Velocimetry (DPIV) were used to describe jet wake structure and swimming performance variables including thrust, drag and propulsive efficiency among three salp species (Pegea confoederata, Weelia (Salpa) cylindrica, Cyclosalpa sp.).  Locomotion by each species was achieved using vortex ring ring propulsion.   Different combinations of swimming speed and hydrodynamic efficiency were observed and can be considered in light of metabolic constraints and ecological roles.  Though nature does not strive for optimality, this work shows the value of a comparative approach for understanding how underlying structure and mechanism influence performance.     

During swimming, the same fluid that propels the salp forward also contains food particles, which are captured on a mucous mesh as fluid passes through the mostly hollow body.  Though salps are centimeters in length and swim at speeds of ~1-10 cm s-1, filtration occurs on a fine, mucous mesh (fiber diameter ~0.1 μm) at low velocity (1.6 cm s−1) and is thus a low Reynolds number (Re ~10−3) process.  A model of particle capture efficiency by a rectangular mesh was used to estimate particle capture rates on the salp filtering mesh based on realistic oceanic particle concentrations.  Particle feeding experiments using 0.5, 1 and 3 µm fluorescent polystyrene microspheres were then performed to test the theoretical model.  Results from both the model and from experiments showed that smaller particles are captured at considerably higher rates than larger particles.  Though particles smaller than mesh openings (1.4 µm) are expected to supply substantially less carbon than larger particles, they can still completely satisfy salp energetic needs.  By removing different sized particles with nonuniform efficiency and packaging them into fast-sinking fecal pellets, salps have the potential to structure oceanic particle size spectra.

From Silent Spring to Silent Night

Advance notice on this one. Tyrone is an excellent speaker and his work is very interesting. As a side note, Tyrone works with a huge number of undergraduates and if he was at UCSB I'm sure he'd be a favorite with CCS students.

Tyrone Hayes,  Professor, UC Berkeley

"From Silent Spring to Silent Night: What happens if our canary stops singing?"
Hosted by Bren Professor Patricia Holden as part of the Seminar in Ecotoxicology

Friday, Oct. 8, 2010
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Bren Hall 1414 

Abstract

The herbicide atrazine is a potent endocrine disrupter that chemically castrates and feminizes exposed male amphibians. Further, when combined with other pesticides, exposure results in a hormonal stress response that leads to retarded growth and development, and immuno-suppression. The immuno-suppression results in increased disease rates and mortality. Though many factors likely contribute to amphibian declines, pesticides likely play an important role even in populations that appear to decline for other reasons, such as disease. Pesticides like atrazine are ubiquitous, persistent contaminants. Effects of exposure have been shown in every vertebrate class examined (fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals) via common mechanisms. These observations demonstrate the critical impact that pesticides have on environmental health. Furthermore, reproductive cancers and birth defects associated with exposure to many of these same chemicals (e.g. atrazine) via identical mechanisms demonstrate that the impact on environmental health is an indicator of a negative impact on public health. Many of these mechanisms are being revealed only now in the scientific literature and agencies (such as the Environmental Protection Agency) are ill-equipped to deal with this emergent science and translate it efficiently into health-protective policies. Given the importance of this science and relevance to public health, there is a strong need to translate this information and provide public access to this knowledge. In particular, minority populations, more likely to be exposed to these chemicals, more likely to suffer health effects associated with exposure, less likely to have access to adequate health care and less likely to have access to this information, need to be informed. It is especially incumbent upon research scientists to make accurate accounts of these data available when industry and agency representatives (e.g. the EPA) provide inaccurate information to the public.

CCS distinguished lecturer

The first CCS Distinguished Lecturer for 2010 - 2011 will be Mary Roach, author of "Stiff", "Spook" and "Bonk' and now "Packing for Mars".

This will be of interest to CCS Literature and Science students, as Mary writes about science, particularly biology  - "Stiff" looks into "the curious lives of human cadavers",  "Spook" into claims of the afterlife and "Bonk"  into the somewhat whackier aspects of the physiology of sex (see reviews).

She will be available to talk with CCS students in the Gallery on Monday October 4th at 4:00 PM and will be giving an arts & lectures address in Campbell Hall at 8:00 that evening. (General $10, Students $6)

This is an opportunity to converse with a successful and off-the-beaten track author who is noted for a combination of insight & humor.  Be sure to visit her website  and read her biography.

Biodiversity: The Spice of Life ... or Life Support?

T H E 52nd A N N U A L
H A R O L D J. P L O U S A W A R D L E C T U R E

Bradley Cardinale
Biodiversity: The Spice of Life ... or Life Support?

Wednesday, May 19, 2010 / 4:00 PM / FREE
Donald Bren School of Environmental Science& Management / Room 1414

The world is currently in the midst of one of the greatest waves of species extinction that has ever occurred in the history of life. But even as rates of species extinction are approaching those of prior mass extinctions, we know little about the different roles that species play in natural environments. We know even less about how the well-being of our own species might be linked to the great variety of life that is the most striking feature of our planet.

In this lecture, I will evaluate the evidence for a classic ecological hypothesis that Earth's life-support systems depend critically on the variety of species that inhabit our planet. The idea that biological diversity regulates the production of food, the cleanliness of air and water, and outbreaks of pests and disease, has been around since the time of Darwin. But while these 'services' of natural ecosystems are often touted by environmentalists to justify conservation, they have been highly controversial among scientists. Until the 1990's there was very little evidence that could establish any clear link between biological diversity and the rates of biologically essential processes. I will review the explosion of new research that has accumulated on this topic over the last two decades, and I'll begin to ask the difficult, but crucial question of how many species our planet needs to support higher life.

Bradley Cardinale is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at the University of California - Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Maryland in 2002, and completed his postdoctoral research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Cardinale's research is aimed at understanding how human alteration of the environment impacts the biological diversity of communities and, in turn, how diversity loss can affect ecological processes that are important to humanity. He has published nearly 60 scientific papers that help guide our efforts to conserve and restore natural ecosystems.

The Harold J. Plous Memorial Award was established in 1957 to honor Harold J. Plous, Assistant Professor of Economics. The award is given annually to a faculty member of the rank of Assistant Professor or Instructor who has demonstrated outstanding performance by creative action or contribution to the intellectual life of the college community.

Geology talks

Bruce informs me that Geology will be having two good talks in the next two weeks:

Wednesday, May 5th, 3:30 1100 Webb Hall - Revisiting the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary Event in North America. Kirk Johnson, Sr. Scientist & Vice President, Denver Museum of Natural History

Wednesday May 12th, 3:30, 1100 Webb Hall. The Devonian Fish of Gogo, Australia (Home of the evidence for the oldest evidence for live birth in a vertebrate). John Long, Vice President of Research and Collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Our Planet our Problem

OUR PLANET, OUR PROBLEM: APPROACHES TO A CLIMATE SOLUTION FRIDAY, APRIL 9TH, 2010 CORWIN PAVILION, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA

This conference will bring influential members in the climate change arena to UCSB in order to provoke critical thought about the dilemma at hand. This full day event, featuring three panels addressing grassroots, business, and legislative solutions, respectively, comes in the wake of the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The event has been organized by students, and was conceived by a group of 23 undergraduates who were inspired to bring change to their campus community after attending the UN summit in December of 2009. By integrating grassroots, business, and government efforts, the event will empower the nation's youth to seek a greener future.

THE EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Sponsored by the Associated Students Environmental Affairs Board, UCSB Environmental Studies Program, the College of Letters & Sciences Critical Issues in America series, the Institute for Energy Efficiency, Campus Progress / Center for American Progress, the League of Women Voters of Santa Barbara, the Community Environmental Council, Office of the Chancellor, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Collegiate Panhellenic Council, Office of the External Vice President for Local Affairs, and the Green Campus Program

10:00AM - 12:00PM
Global Climate, Local Change
Corwin Pavilion

Presenter/Speaker Info
Dave Davis, CEO & Executive Director, Community Environmental Council
Jason Mark, Author, Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots; Director, Alemany Farm
Kandi Mosset, Tribal Campus Organizer, Indigenous Environmental Network
Alec Loorz, Founder, Kids vs. Global Warming
Moderator: Natasha Joyce Weidner, Sustainable Foods Chair, Environmental Affairs Board

Panel Description
This panel will demonstrate the power of individuals to tackle climate issues in their communities at the grassroots level. Unique approaches on a local level are a crucial element to achieving a climate solution. The passionate work of average citizens around the United States continues to build even when the government and business fail to act. We invite members of the Santa Barbara community to come learn what is being done now to reduce our climate impact.

Refreshments served

12:00 - 1:30 PM
Student Film Screening: Navigating Copenhagen
Corwin Pavilion

Movie Description: 23 UCSB students attended the 2009 United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. This film catalogues their experiences and perspectives on the international deliberations as well as the grassroots activism outside of the official conference.

Presenter/Speaker Info
Filmmakers
Students from UCSB Copenhagen delegation
Moderator: Corie Radka, External Affairs Chair, Environmental Affairs Board

1:30 - 3:30 PM
The Green Economy: Moving Beyond Business as Usual
Corwin Pavilion

Presenter/Speaker Info
Jim Dehlsen, Founder & Chairman, Clipper Windpower
Brent Constantz, CEO, Calera Corp.
John Fielder, President, Southern California Edison
Moderator: David Auston, Associate Director, Institute for Energy Efficiency

Panel Description
This panel will highlight the integral role of business innovation in reconciling society and climate. For global capitalism to function properly in the 21st century, new solutions must take hold that minimize our impact on the environment. Science, technology, and industry are mobilizing to advance a new, green economy. It will take forward-thinking ideas to reshape society, create jobs, and usher in a new era of sustainability.

4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
The Power of Politics: Legislative Measures that Work
Corwin Pavilion

Presenter/Speaker Info
Fran Pavley, California State Senator
Mary Nichols, CA Air Resources Board Chairman
Moderator: Robert Wilkinson, Professor, Environmental Studies

Panel Description
This panel will explore legislative solutions to climate change at the international, domestic, and sub-national levels, with particular emphasis on measures that work. Panelists will address the audience with a focus on solutions, and will speak to the potential of youth and activists to effect change in the policy arena.

6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Reception in the MultiCultural Center