Midwest Climate Summit to Accelerate Climate Action for Midwest Region
If the 12 Midwest states were a country, it would be the fifth-largest greenhouse gas-emitting nation on the planet. The Midwest Climate Summit, hosted by Ohio State and Washington University: St. Louis with support from the Bloomberg Foundation, kicks off its Fall 2020 Think Tank program on Oct. 2 at 11 a.m. EDT, featuring Robert Bullard, the Father of Environmental Justice. The Think Tank continues with additional sessions Oct. 9, 23, Nov. 6, 20 and plans are being developed for a large spring event. Join us as experts from Ohio State and across the Midwest accelerate climate action, develop a Midwestern response and plan the next steps in solving our climate crisis. About the summit: https://midwestclimatesummit.wustl.edu/
Each virtual session will have a unique theme and discussion goals, so join us for all sessions or the sessions most important to your interests. You can find detailed information, session themes and Summit schedules at midwestclimatesummit.wustl.edu. All sessions are free and open to the public but registration is required to gain entrance.
How can we hack ‘business as usual’ for our campuses and communities to face our current crises better and together? Join us via Zoom for a virtual series of sessions grappling with global warming, including the critical matters of racial equity and climate justice.
Ana Baptista | Environmental urban planner; Chair, Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management Graduate Program, The New School for Social Research
Sabre Bee | Co-founder, Newark Water Coalition
Kristi Pullen Fedinick | Biologist and Director, Science and Data, Natural Resources Defense Council
Roderick Ferguson | race, sexuality and critical studies, Yale University
Yvette Jordan | Educator, Newark Public Schools; Founding member, Newark Education Workers Caucus
Winona LaDuke | (Anishinaabekwe) Organizer and eco-economist, Founder, Honor the Earth
Helena D. Lewis | Poet, Playwright, and Doctor of Social Work, New Jersey
Max Liboiron | (Métis) Science and technology studies and Co-founder, Civic Lab for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), Memorial University at Newfoundland
Michaeline Picaro Mann | Traditional healer, nurse, and historical researcher, Turtle Clan Mother of the Ramapough Lenape Nation
Vincent Mann | Water protector and community organizer, Turtle Clan Chief of the Ramapough Lenape Nation
Morgan L. Ridgway | (Nanticoke-Lenape) Historian, PhD ABD, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Ohio Wesleyan, City of Delaware, Ohio EPA Hosting Free Three-Day Speaker Series
OWU and the City of Delaware will collaborate with the Ohio EPA for an upcoming grant-supported speaker series on water management careers.
DELAWARE, Ohio – Designed for high school and college students, you’re invited to participate in a three-day, online “Careers in Water Management Speaker Series.”
The free event will be held Oct. 5-7 and provide information about careers in stormwater, wastewater, watershed, and drinking water management, among other fields.
The Delaware Run winds through the City of Delaware and Ohio Wesleyan campus. (Photo by Cole Hatcher)
The event is supported by a grant from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and presented by the OEPA in collaboration with Ohio Wesleyan University and the City of Delaware Public Utilities Department.
The speaker series will include panelists from both the public and private sector, and each session will conclude with a question-and-answer session.
Organizations confirmed to speak during the series include:
City of Delaware Public Utilities
Del-Co Water Co.
Delaware Soil and Water Conservation District
Ohio Clean Marinas
Ohio Department of Natural Resources: Scenic Rivers
Ohio Sea Grant/OSU Extension
Phoenix Environmental
The sessions – also part of the OWU classes Introduction to Environment and Sustainability 100.1 and Conversations Toward a Sustainable Future 100.2/400.1 – are scheduled for the following dates and times:
9:30 a.m. to 10:20 a.m. Oct. 5
6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Oct. 6
11:50 a.m. to 12:40 p.m. Oct. 7
For access to the online Zoom sessions, email Caroline Cicerchi, Delaware’s watershed and sustainability coordinator, at ccicerchi@delawareohio.net. Learn more about Ohio Wesleyan’s Environment and Sustainability Program at owu.edu/environment.
At our first Sustainability Task Force (STF) Meeting for the Fall of 2020, we heard from Jess Wilber of the Citizens Climate Lobby. Jess provided us with some “homework” to do in the next month, nicely summarized on the graphic included in this post. Click on the image for a PDF file of the document.
If you missed the meeting, it was recorded and you can watch it here.
Efforts include joining the OWU and national CCL group, registering to vote, getting involved in calling campaigns (they work!), getting involved in letter-writing campaigns (they work too), and registering for climate-related events.
OWU’s student chapter is already hard at work on these efforts. The student chapter of CCL meets every 1st and third Sunday at 4-4:30ish for an hour or so, and has additional events planned for the Fall semester. Please contact us if you want to attend these Zoom meetings.
For our next STF meeting, Tuesday, Oct. 13 (6:30-7:30 pm, Zoom) Jess will rejoin us to see how we are doing, and we can talk about and plan more efforts for the 2020-21 academic year.
Above left: mysterious Olentangy River object, near OWU Campus Above right: possibly less mysterious, but still really interesting: Jess Wilber, STF guest from Citizens Climate Lobby; Jess is Great Lakes Regional Fellow International Outreach Intern
Join us for the first Sustainability Task Force (STF) meeting of the Fall 2020 semester: Tuesday, September 8 at 6:30-7:30 pm on Zoom.
For the Fall semester of 2020, we are focusing on work with the Citizens Climate Lobby – our OWU student group and the national organization.
We plan to set short and longer-term goals during the meeting. You will be part of those goals.
Joining us is Jess Wilber: a fourth-year student at Oberlin College with a double-major in Environmental Studies and East Asian Studies, a double-minor in Politics and History, and a concentration in International Affairs. She has spent the last two and a half years working for Citizens’ Climate Lobby, an international grassroots non-profit, non-partisan organization that empowers everyday people to work together on effective climate change solutions. She helped to pioneer their current programs for students in Higher Education. She was among the first members of the Campus Leaders Program, which seeks to educate and empower students to become effective climate advocates and organizers in their communities. As part of that program, she founded the Oberlin College CCL Chapter, or OCEAL, and worked with the local CCL chapter to get the Oberlin City Council to pass a resolution endorsing Carbon Fee and Dividend. She also got the same endorsement from the Oberlin College Sustainability Committee and President Carmen Ambar later that year. She was then hired as the organization’s first Regional Fellow, working to expand CCL’s Higher Ed Action Team and directly overseeing its growth. She has also held various internship positions with CCL, including Higher Education Outreach, Volunteer Education & Engagement, and International Outreach.
ROAR is a central Ohio group of climate and environmental activists. Their latest event is on Zoom, featuring some great speakers on contemporary politics and the environment.
We’d welcome your presence at ROAR’s next NEXT WORLD CONVERSATION on DEMOCRACY UNCHAINED… with David Orr from the Oberlin Project and Joel Wainwright, co-author of CLIMATE LEVIATHAN. How can we rebuild our democracy to significantly address the interlocking crises of Covid, Climate Change and our dysfunctional political system? Please join us–and spread the word!
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 8:00 pm: DEMOCRACY UNCHAINED
David W. Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics and Special Assistant to the President of Oberlin College. The Oberlin Project was formed out of David Orr’s vision of full-spectrum sustainability: an all-encompassing joint venture by the town and College to create a thriving, sustainable and environmentally friendly community in Oberlin. He is the recipient of six honorary degrees and other awards including The Millennium Leadership Award from Global Green, the Bioneers Award, the National Wildlife Federation Leadership Award, a Lyndhurst Prize acknowledging “persons of exceptional moral character, vision, and energy.” He has been a scholar in residence at Ball State University, the University of Washington, and other universities. He has lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S. and Europe. He has served as a Trustee for many organizations including the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Aldo Leopold Foundation, and the Bioneers. He has been a Trustee and/or advisor to ten foundations.
Joel Wainwright is Professor in the Department of Geography at Ohio State University, where he studies political economy, social theory, and environmental change. He is author of Decolonizing Development (2008), Geopiracy (2013), and, with Geoff Mann, Climate Leviathan (2018).
OWU’s Dr. Anderson, the second nicest professor on campus, has been awarded a NSF grant!
The National Science Foundation is awarding Ohio Wesleyan University a one-year, $86,735 grant to oversee the creation of online teaching tools that advance field ecology and data science.
Laurel J. Anderson, Ph.D., OWU’s Morris Family Professor of Natural Sciences, is the principal investigator on the federal grant. She also is president of the Board of Directors for the Ecological Research as Education Network (EREN), a consortium of colleges and universities that will work together to create the new teaching tools. Dr. Anderson will partner with Dr. Tim McCay from Colgate University to administer the project.
“The pandemic has created an urgent need to reimagine our teaching of field ecology, which is usually done with in-person field trips,” said Dr. Anderson, who helped to found EREN in 2010.
“However, field ecologists also use computer technology extensively to explore natural patterns at large scales,” she continued. “These projects allow us to meet our need to socially distance and have students collecting data wherever they happen to be. Then, we use online tools and datasets to see how their data fits into large-scale patterns.”
The National Science Foundation (NSF) grant will support four projects developed by teams of faculty-researchers at schools across the nation. The projects are:
Backyard Pollinator Surveys led by Dr. Kaitlin Stack Whitney at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Plants in the Human-Altered Environment led by Drs. Jason Kilgore at Washington & Jefferson College and Karen Kuers at The University of the South.
Mosquito Surveys along Anthropogenic Impact Gradients led by Dr. Allison T. Parker at Northern Kentucky University.
Lichens in Diverse Landscapes led by Drs. Danielle Garneau at SUNY Plattsburgh, Matthew Heard at Belmont University, and Mary Beth Kolozsvary at Siena College.
The teaching tools being created will use data from the National Ecological Observatory Network(NEON) to show students how local data connects to ecological patterns at a continental scale.
NEON is a continental-scale ecological observation facility fully funded by the NSF and operated by Columbus, Ohio-based Battelle. NEON provides open data from 81 field sites nationwide to document how ecosystems are changing. The information is used to better understand how human activities affect ecology and how society can more effectively address critical ecological issues.
In the overwhelming crush of media about the COVID 19 pandemic we don’t want to lose sight of the profound importance of the environment.
#OWUENVS is a collective effort to push environmental news and ideas and advocacy and creative efforts out through social media and other media by students, faculty, and staff in the Environment & Sustainability Program at Ohio Wesleyan University.
Find or create relevant stuff. Anything having to do with the environment anywhere. Links, ideas, videos, maps, photos, music, data, artwork, etc. Focus on the stuff you care about.
Put it out there: use the hashtag or tag #OWUENVS so we can track the effort. Focus on the media you use. On social media, video sites, music sites, whatever. Be creative.
Thursday, January 30 at 4:10 p.m.
Science Center 163
Dr. Nathan Amador Rowley Assistant Professor of Geology & Geography, Ohio Wesleyan University
“It’s Getting Hot In Here: Assessing Greenland’s Melt Behavior Driven by Wind Events”
Over the past few decades, the acceleration of meltwater production along the periphery of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) is driving the observed increase in global sea level. During the summer months, surface meltwater is driven by air temperature above the melting point and solar radiation receipt at the surface – melting accumulated wintertime snow. The orographic nature of the GrIS has shown to significantly influence wind patterns at automated weather stations in the melt zone, near the fast-flowing Sermeq Kujalleq (formerly known as Jakobshavn Isbræ) Glacier. I have identified a particular set of synoptic conditions, known as piteraq events, that are surface winds that bring adiabatically-warmed air from the interior of the ice sheet. Piteraq winds, through compressional heating, warm the ablation (or melt) zone and thus enhance melt; beyond what would be done by solar radiation alone. Commonly mislabeled as katabatic winds, piteraq winds resemble the Föhn winds of the Alps, or Chinook winds of the Rockies. During the 2011 and 2012 summer months, a series of piteraq events in the Sermeq Kujalleq Ablation Region, or SKAR, lead surface temperature at nearby weather stations to be nearly 2°C higher than the 1980-2010 mean.
Please mark your calendars for Wednesday, October 30th at 12–1pm in the GIS Lab (Science Center Room 207), if you are interested in learning more about legislative political action, climate advocacy, and citizen lobbying from the Field Development Director of Citizens’ Climate Lobby, Elli Sparks. (There will be food!)
Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) is an international nonprofit focused on building support in Congress for a national bipartisan solution to climate change and increasing civic engagement. They have recently:
Successfully worked with Congress to introduce (H.R. 763) The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2019. CCL supports this bill, and is working towards its re-introduction in the Senate, and its passage through Congress.
Instrumental in establishing the House Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan group in the US House of Representatives which will explore policy options that address the impacts, causes, and challenges of our changing climate.
Partnered with California state legislature to pass a resolution calling on the federal government to enact Carbon Fee and Dividend nationwide.
Elli is committed to the success of CCL volunteers working to start new chapters in communities across the United States. She hosts CCL’s weekly Introductory Calls and trains volunteers around the world to lead Climate Advocate Training Workshop; she also works closely with volunteers in coal and agricultural communities, ensuring that all voices find a place at the solutions table–a passion founded on her own family roots in Appalachia and rural Maryland.
Elli’s work is informed by her fifteen years in nonprofit management and by her founding and leadership of Virginia’s first CCL chapter, where she gained experience in nearly every volunteer role. She lives on a family farm in rural Virginia, where she rotates her cattle through the pasture to store carbon in soil and plants.
Please do try to come! It’s a great opportunity to find your voice and political will for climate solutions. We also have a chapter at OWU if you want to stay involved!
