by Parke Wilde

The most recent in the wonderful series of online conferences in a “nearly carbon neutral” format starts today.

The title is, “Confronting the climate crisis with systemic alternatives in the age of coronavirus.”

This format of online video presentations with asynchronous text discussion, while preserving the sense of a time-limited event, has been developed and refined since 2016 by the Environmental Humanities Institute at the University of California Santa Barbara. This particular conference is sponsored by UCSB’s Environmental and Climate Justice Hub in cooperation with the Center for Climate Justice at UC Merced.

Joe Nevins, Peter Kalmus, and I participated in the first conference in this format, in 2016, for a session on flying less initiatives. Peter spoke about the inner lives of climate scientists.

In that 2016 session, Joe spoke about the false characterization of flying-less initiatives as “self-righteous, self-referential, ascetic bullshit.” And I introduced our approach to setting goals and measuring progress for flying less in academic communities.

I hope you enjoy the new UCSB conference this week.