RSS FeedUpcoming EventsWhy It’s Not Too Late: Rebecca Solnit and John King on the climate stories we tell, March 21https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/241302-why-its-not-too-late-rebecca-solnit-and-john-king

Join us for the first re-launched Herb Caen Lecture series, sponsored by Berkeley Journalism and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of twenty-five books on feminism, environmental and urban history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and catastrophe. She co-edited the 2023 anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility. Her other books include Orwell’s Roses; Recollections of My Nonexistence; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she writes regularly for the Guardian, serves on the board of the climate group Oil Change International, and in 2022 launched the climate project Not Too Late (nottoolateclimate.com).

John King is The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic, a post that touches on everything from the city’s changing skyline to the urgent need for the Bay Area to take a more proactive and thoughtful approach to adapting our shorelines to future sea level rise. A two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism, he also is the author of “Portal: San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities,” published in 2023 by W.W. Norton.

About the Herb Caen Lecture:

The Herb Caen/San Francisco Chronicle Lecture Fund was established in 1996 in honor of Herb Caen by the Chronicle Publishing Company. The Herb Caen Lecture features prominent speakers who have views on communications in America and their importance to our future. Speakers are drawn from diverse fields including journalism, the arts, the sciences, and business.

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The Latest in Public Health Research: Energy transitions, air pollution, and health equity in the US and Ghana, April 9https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/239130-the-latest-in-public-health-research-energy-transitio

Given the health implications of our energy systems and the social drivers of energy use, access, and burden, energy transitions have the potential to impact health outcomes and associated disparities in a context-dependent manner. In this talk, I will present research that has two objectives: 1) to evaluate the distribution of benefits from energy transitions in the United States and in Ghana; 2) to characterize health outcomes that are relevant to these transitions but are currently understudied. I will also introduce future research directions for my group.

Misbath Daouda is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Health Sciences whose interdisciplinary research focuses on the health equity implications of climate mitigation strategies in the US and in West Africa.

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ERG Annual Lecture - Peter Gleick, April 18https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/243459-erg-annual-lecture-peter-gleick

105 Stanley Hall. The Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley has, from its inception a half century ago, educated many of today’s experts and policymakers about the truly interdisciplinary nature of global challenges and solutions. Dr. Peter Gleick, a member of one of ERG’s early cohorts, especially took to heart the idea that the resource and environmental challenges we face are multifaceted.

In this year’s ERG Annual Lecture, Gleick will reflect on ERG and the part it has played in his thinking and life’s work, and he will describe the human history of water as laid out in his new book, The Three Ages of Water. He will discuss the ties between water, energy, food, climate, and security, tell stories of water, and present his vision of a sustainable future for water.

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New Directions In Latin American Structuralism: A Three-Gap Model Of Sustainable Development, April 23https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/242261-new-directions-in-latin-american-structuralism-a

Please register to join us on April 23, 2024 at 12:00pm for an online lecture by Camila Gramkow, Director A.I. Of The Economic Commission For Latin America And The Caribbean (ECLAC), Brazil Office.

 

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Abstract: Sustainable development implies reducing the gap in GDP per capita between center and periphery, increasing equality and protecting the environment. I present a simple model within the Structuralist tradition that combines these three dimensions of sustainable development. I define three rates of growth: the minimum required to reduce inequality and eradicate poverty; the maximum compatible with external equilibrium; and the maximum compatible with a global carbon budget. I argue that a combination of industrial and technological policies, along with a major effort at income redistribution, is necessary for a sustainable development path. I link this perspective to broader efforts in Brazil and Latin America to pursue a “Big Push” for sustainability.

Core reading: Gabriel Porcile,* José Eduardo Alatorre, Martín Cherkasky and Camila Gramkow. 2023. “New directions in Latin American Structuralism: a three-gap model of sustainable development.” European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 266–281. DOI: 10.4337/ejeep.2023.0105

Recommended reading: Camila Gramkow. 2020. “The Big Push for Sustainability.” NACLA Report on the Americas. Vol 52, No. 2, pp. 186-91. DOI: 10.1080/10714839.2020.1768742.

About The Speaker

Camila Gramkow Director a.i. of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Brazil Office, where she leads debates on climate and economic development policy in Brazil and across Latin America. She has experience with project management; having designed, implemented and evaluated international cooperation projects mainly on climate change mitigation under the International Climate Fund and the Prosperity Fund. She has a doctorate in the economics of climate change from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom and has worked in the area of sustainable development for over a decade.

About The BESI Climate Seminar

The Climate Seminar at the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI) brings leading scholars of the political economy of climate change to UC Berkeley for hybrid talks and conversations. The Seminar is co-sponsored by the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, or (SC)2, and organized by Daniel Aldana Cohen. In Spring 2024, we will have three events, all from 12:00-1:30pm PT. Each event will be moderated by Daniel Aldana Cohen, Assistant Professor of Sociology and the Director of (SC)2, UC Berkeley.

Learn more about the Seminar Series.

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2024 Distinguished Finishing Talk by a Graduate Student - Leke Hutchins, April 25https://events.berkeley.edu/ESPM/event/238313-2024-distinguished-finishing-talk-by-a-graduate-stude

Speaker: Leke Hutchins, ESPM.

This event will be held in 132 Mulford Hall and via Zoom. There will be a social hour afterwards from 4:30pm - 5:30pm in the Mulford Courtyard.

https://events.berkeley.edu/ESPM/event/238313-2024-distinguished-finishing-talk-by-a-graduate-stude
The National Investment Authority: An Institutional Blueprint And Implications For Climate Policy, April 30https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/242264-the-national-investment-authority-an-institutional

Please register to join us on April 30, 2024 at 12:00pm for an online lecture by Saule Omarova, Beth and Marc Goldberg Professor of Law, Cornell University.

 

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Abstract. Omarova will lay out an institutional design scheme for the proposed National Investment Authority (NIA), a federal entity to be charged with the financing and implementation of a long-term public investment strategy for the United States. And she will explain how this NIA, and other institutional proposals that she has developed, could transform industrial policy in general, and climate policy in particular, in the United States.

Core text: Saule Omarova. 2022. “The National Investment Authority: An Institutional Blueprint.” Berggruen Institute. Pp 112.

Recommended reading: Saule Omarova. 2024. “Finance as a Tool of Industrial Policy: A Taxonomy of Institutional Options.” In Industrial Policy 2025: Bringing the State Back In (Again). Roosevelt Institute. Pp. 98. https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/4013_RI_IndustrialPolicyReport_2025.pdf

About The Speaker

Saule Omarova specializes in regulation of financial institutions, banking law, international finance, and corporate finance. Before joining Cornell Law School in 2014, she was the George R. Ward Associate Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law. Prior to joining academia, Professor Omarova practiced law in the Financial Institutions Group of Davis, Polk, & Wardwell, a premier New York law firm, where she specialized in a wide variety of corporate transactions and advisory work in the area of financial regulation. In 2006-2007, she served at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a Special Advisor for Regulatory Policy to the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance.

About The BESI Climate Seminar

The Climate Seminar at the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI) brings leading scholars of the political economy of climate change to UC Berkeley for hybrid talks and conversations. The Seminar is co-sponsored by the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, or (SC)2, and organized by Daniel Aldana Cohen. In Spring 2024, we will have three events, all from 12:00-1:30pm PT. Each event will be moderated by Daniel Aldana Cohen, Assistant Professor of Sociology and the Director of (SC)2, UC Berkeley.

Learn more about the Seminar Series.

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ESPM Graduate Research Symposium: GradFest 2024, May 1https://events.berkeley.edu/ESPM/event/243491-espm-graduate-research-symposium-gradfest-2024

Join us for a symposium event featuring research talks from graduating PhD students from the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management! Full schedule and list of speakers coming soon.

This event will be livestreamed to our department YouTube channel: youtube.com/@ESPMBerkeley

https://events.berkeley.edu/ESPM/event/243491-espm-graduate-research-symposium-gradfest-2024