Going to the keynote presentation was different than anything I imagined. Initially, when I walked in the “Raging Grammies of Eugene” were performing a skit about protesting various projects like the keystone pipeline. While I was caught off guard by the style of this presentation, I was interested to see what it was like to attend an environmental conference. The general vibe in the room was positive and everybody was thoroughly interested in whatever the people were speaking or singing about. What I was most interested in; however, were the concepts professed in Gary Paul Nabhan’s keynote about the importance of collaboration and agriculture.
I was a little disappointed when Bill Mckibben came on, as I was hoping to be able to see him live and listen to what he had to say. Paired with the lagging video stream and the speakers, many of what he said was inaudible to me or simply blended together with everything else he was saying. That being said it was still a very cool experience to be able to see him and listen to his wise words about climate change
The second speaker, Gary Paul Nabhan, was very interesting to listen to. His emphasis on a collaborate spirit was not only uplifting, but it fell in line with many of the concepts we have talked about all term. Personally, the concept I have been preaching in my blog posts and journal entries is that we need global awareness and emotional attachment to climate change in order to attain this collaborative spirit. I think that this is a very important aspect of attaining a group effort because in order to have the emotion behind the support, you need to create ties that link people to climate change. This can come in the form of physically seeing the glaciers melt or sea levels rise, or it can be achieved through graphic novels, short stories, pictures, or futuristic voicemails. This is what I think is great about the genre of cli-fi, that is unrestrained medium allows for creativity by the authors. Not only does this help spread awareness, but it reaches out to different demographics and has a wider web of connections. Additionally, in his presentation, Nabhan mentioned agriculture and the importance of farming and re-nourishing the Earth. This is also very important, but we have to make a collaborative effort now. If global warming continues to get worse, then it will get too hot for plants to grow and regenerate. This is a major issue that we need to address by creating and expanding our collaborative effort.
I agreed with many of Nabhan’s points, but I think that there is a larger hurry than was conveyed. I think that time is now a factor and we need to act. Instead of eliminating climate change completely, our goal as now shifted to—how can we minimize the affects of climate change? This illustrates that we will see changes in our ecosystem, and the world is going to be very different. We need to be more conscious of our carbon footprint, along with how we contribute to climate change. While this may seem like a very daunting task, the first thing we need to do is create a collaborative effort and start to make a positive change.
I too was disappointed not to see Bill McKibben live, but I wonder whether part of why he wasn’t there was because of how much greenhouse gas flying produces — more than any other form of transportation (http://www.davidsuzuki.org/issues/climate-change/science/climate-change-basics/air-travel-and-climate-change/). Thus, there’s something a bit weird about Bill McKibben flying across the country to talk about climate change.
I agree with you that Nabhan’s talk was incredibly interesting. I wonder whether there is a tension in that we need action quickly but that we also need action that is collaborative. Collaboration often takes a lot of time, and we don’t have that much time when it comes to mitigating climate change to avoid the worst impacts. Thus, I suppose it’ll take some sort of middle ground between acting quickly and finding common ground.