Environmentally Resourceful: Global Climate Action

Industrial and technological developments increasingly threaten Earth’s precious resources, necessitating creative solutions that urgently address the current and potential damage being inflicted on our planet and our communities. Environmental law expert Ann Carlson provides a stirring success story in Smog and Sunshine, an account of the policy fights led by scientists, lawyers, community members, and public officials that transformed Los Angeles from a city known for lead poisoning in the 1980s to one with clean air. In times of unprecedented climate change and skepticism about government and science, examples like these remind us that lasting change is possible when all levels of community work together, and these principles can be applied to broader issues affecting other environmental resources. Award-winning journalist Vince Beiser’s Power Metal details the powerful ways the metals needed to fuel technology and energy are spawning environmental havoc, political upheaval, and rising violence. Around the world, businesses and governments are scrambling in an intensifying competition to find and extract minerals essential for the internet and renewable energy, at enormous cost to people and the planet. Moderated by TBD, this rousing panel raises concern and conversation about how we can minimize damage as we build this disturbing yet potentially promising new world.