Tag Archives: Environment

Scholars’ Circle – Emigrants effect on Democracy -/- Climate Change affect on Human Fertility -/- Mapping a way to slow climate change – Aug. 26th, 2018

First, how emigration could lead to greater democratization in the world. [ dur: 12 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

Then, climate change is here. How does climate change affect conception? [ dur: 15 mins. ]

Finally, one Stanford University scientist maps out the way to slow down climate change and even reverse some of the damage. [ dur: 30 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

This program is produced with contributions from the following volunteers: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Scholars’ Circle – Plastics choking Oceans eco-system -/- The Anti-Govenment movement and US Constitution – Aug. 19th, 2018

First, tons of discarded plastic are choking off the ocean, killing wildlife, and building islands of garbage. How bad has it become and what can be done about it? [ dur: 19 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

Then, how is the anti-government movement a type of constitutional coup? How does civil service provide a check on presidential power? [ dur: 39 mins. ]

  • Jon Michaels is a Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. He is the author of Constitutional Coup: Privatization’s Threat to the American Republic.

This program is produced with contributions from the following volunteers: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Scholars’ Circle – Stressed Oceans – May 20, 2018

Ocean life is under threat by multiple stressors: climate change, acidification, plastics, pollution, overfishing, overexploitation. We spend the hour with four experts of the seas. We discuss the realities facing our oceans and strides we’re making to protect, recover, and restore our oceans.[ dur: 58 mins. ]

Find book authored by our guest scholars on this Book Shelf .

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Scholars’ Circle – Future of Food – May 6, 2018

Today’s program was recorded in front of a live audience. In this symposium about the future of food, we look at food insecurity, food shortages, food justice and sovereignty. We explore the threats to long term availability of health food: climate change, chemical contamination, soil depletion, loss of land, power politics, mass death of pollinators and host of big business practices. We look at solutions and the changes we need to make to be sure of system is just, sustainable and resilient. [ dur: 58 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

  • Ann Elizabeth Bartos is a Lecturer in the School of Environment at the University of Auckland. She has authored book chapters including ‘Food sovereignty and the possibilities for an equitable, just and sustainable food system”’in Eating, Drinking, Surviving: The international year of global understanding – IYGU and journal articles including ‘The body eating its food politics: reflections on relationalities and embodied ways of knowing’ in Gender, Place and Culture.
  • Gerhard Benjamin McDonald Sundborn is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Population Health at the University of Auckland. His has coauthored journal articles including ‘Low sugar nutrition policies and dental caries: A study of primary schools in South Auckland’ in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health and ‘Sugar, dental caries and the incidence of acute rheumatic fever: A cohort study of Māori and Pacific children’ in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
  • Daniel Carl Henare Hikuroa is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Māori Studies and Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland. He coedited the book Ara Mai he Tetekura: Visioning Our Futures: New and Emerging Pathways of Maori Academic Leadership and has coauthored journal articles including ‘Ensuring objectivity by applying the Mauri Model to assess the post-disaster affected environments of the 2011 MV Rena disaster in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand’ in Ecological Indicators.
  • Mike Joy is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Agriculture and Environment at Massey University. He authored the book Polluted Inheritance: New Zealand’s freshwater crisis; authored book chapters including ‘Our deadly nitrogen addiction’ in The New Zealand Land & Food Annual; as well as coauthored journal articles including ‘New Zealand dairy farming: milking our environment for all its worth’ in Environmental Management.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Scholars’ Circle – Insight into Water Crisis: reasons, effect on population and policy issues. – March 18, 2018

The world is facing a water crisis. In a new report the World Bank and the United Nations have reported that some 40 percent of the world’s population is effected by water scarcity, two billion people rely on unsafe water, and some 700 million people are at risk of being displaced by water scarcity. We spend the hour with four experts on water and water governance. [ dur: 58 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

  • Robert Glennon is a Regents’ Professor and Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy in the Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona. He is the author of the books Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What To Do About It, Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters. and the report Shopping for Water: How the Market Can Mitigate Water Shortages in the American West.
  • Thomas A Perreault is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Geography at Syracuse University. He is the editor of Water Justice and The Handbook of Political Ecology, and many book chapters and journal articles on mining, development and ecological issues in Latin America).
  • Aimee Craft is Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba, Canada. She is the author of Breathing Life Into the Stone Fort Treaty. She directs the Anishinaabe water law. project.
  • Madison Condon is Legal Fellow at Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. Her publications include The Integration of Environmental Law into International Investment Treaties and Trade Agreements: Negotiation Process and the Legalization of Commitments, Mixing and Transport in the Stockton Deep Water Ship Channel, and Pesticide Risk Indicators: Unidentified Inert Ingredients Compromise Their Integrity and Utility.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Scholars’ Circle – Water Rights, Scarcity and Water use in Perspective – February 4, 2018

While water is a basic human right, some 3 billion people face water scarcity and some countries are running out of water. We’ll explore the realities of water. [ dur: 34 mins. ]

  • Barbara Cosens is a Professor with the University of Idaho College of Law and the Waters of the West Graduate Program. She is the author of Indigenous Water Justice, The Adaptive Water Governance Project: Assessing Law, Resilience and Governance in Regional Socio-Ecological Water Systems Facing a Changing Climate, and Truth or Consequences: Settling Water Disputes in the Face of Uncertainty.
  • Rick Hogeboom is Executive Director of The Water Footprint Network. He is a Ph. D. candidate at the University of Twente in Netherland.

Then, how much water is in the jeans we wear or the meals we eat? How our everyday decisions can alleviate the water crisis. Thomas Kostigan discusses his book, the Green Blue Book. [ dur: 22 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

  • Thomas Kostigen is an author, journalist, and environmentalist. He is the author of The Green Blue Book: The Simple Water-Savings Guide to Everything in Your Life, The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time and The Big Handout

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Scholars’ Circle – Analysis of Ideology, Propaganda and Race -/- Rapid Rate of Extinction, why and what can be done – December 10, 2017

First, an analysis of ideology, propaganda and race. [ dur: 17 mins. ]

  • David Livingstone Smith is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England. He is the author of Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War, How Biology Shapes Philosophy and Why We Lie: Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind.

Then, what are the causes of the rapid rate of species extinction and what can be done. [ dur: 41 mins. ]

  • Anthony Barnosky is Executive Director of Stanford University’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, and an Emeritus Professor of Integrative Biology at University of California Berkeley. He is the author of Dodging Extinction—Power, Food, Money and the Future of Life on Earth and co-author of Tipping Point for Planet Earth—How Close Are We To The Edge (with Elizabeth Hadly).
  • Stuart Pimm is Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University. He is the author of A Scientist Audits the Earth, The Balance of Nature? Ecological Issues in the Conservation of Species and Communities, and Patterns in Nature: The Analysis of Species Co-Occurences.
  • David Wilkie is Director of Conservation Measures for the Wildlife Conservation Society. He is the author of Hunting for consensus: reconciling bushmeat harvest, conservation, and development policy in West and Central Africa, Valuation of consumption and sale of forest goods from a Central American rain forest, and Impacts of protected areas on local livelihoods in Cambodia.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Scholars’ Circle – Oceans Rising -/- Designing Peace – November 12, 2017

First, climate change, receding glaciers and melting ice sheets are causing the oceans to rise dramatically. What does that mean for the world’s coastal cities? [ dur: 15 mins. ]

Then, designing peace in divided societies. How do you make peace after fatal conflicts and loss of lands? What is the role of identity in conflict and peacemaking? [ dur: 43 mins. ]

  • Neophytos Loizides is Professor and Chair in International Conflict Analysis in the School of Politics & International Relations (POLIR) at the University of Kent. He is the author of The Politics of Majority Nationalism: Framing Peace, Stalemates, and Crises and Designing Peace: Cyprus and Institutional Innovations in Divided Societies. He is also the co-editor (with Oded Haklai) of Settlers in Contested Lands: Territorial Disputes and Ethnic Conflicts.
  • Dr. Madura Rasaratnam is a Lecturer in Comparative Politics in the Department of International Politics at City University of London. She is the author of Tamils and the Nation: India and Sri Lanka Compared.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Scholars’ Circle – Assassination of Journalist Chauncey Bailey -/- How to survive Climate Change Event – October 22, 2017

Chauncey Bailey was the first journalist killed in the US doing his job since the 1970’s. We’ll look at the reasons behind his assassination. [ dur: 24 mins. ]

  • Thomas Peele is the author of Kill the Messenger: A Story of Radical Faith, Racism’s Backlash and the Assassination of a Journalist.

Then, scientists say we still have time to address climate change and we’ve made headway, but we still have a long way to go. We speak with renowned climate scientist Michael Mann. [ dur: 33 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

  • Professor Michael Mann is a climatologist and a geophysicist. He’s the director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. He was one of the lead authors of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC. He is the author of The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Scholars’ Circle – Predatory Humans affect ecology -/- Current Problems with Health care delivery – October 15, 2017

First, is humanity the most damaging predator on earth? Our guests say yes, and that its predatory practices may be disrupting evolution. [ dur: 23mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

  • Chris Darimont, is a Professor at the Department of Geography at University of Victoria, Victoria, BC. He has a PhD in Evolution and Ecology from the Biology Department at the University of Victoria.
  • Dr. Tom Reimchen, is a Professor at the Department of Geography at University of Victoria, Victoria, BC. Canada. Please visit the Evolutionary Studies Lab at University of Victoria, Victoria BC, Canada where you will find additional studies on this subject.
  • Heather Bryan is a postdoctoral fellow in the Applied Conservation Science lab at the University of Victoria BC, Canada. She studies the physiological mechanisms by which wildlife responds to environmental change.

Together they are the authors of the research paper The unique ecology of human predators you can view on the Science site.

Then, on the Scholars’ Circle panel, many observers argue, that the economic forces are corrupting medical care and eroding the trust between patients and their doctors. The problems in health care delivery have wide implications related to how health care should function particularly when there are limited resources. We examine the ethics of medicine and healthcare, and the modern day issues that complicate them.[ dur: 37 mins. ]

  • Thomas Pogge is the Director of the Global Justice Program and Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University and King’s College. His books include World Poverty and Human Rights, Freedom from Poverty: Who Owes What to the Very Poor? and World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms.
  • Martin Wilkinson is Professor of Political Studies and Deputy Head of Department of Politics & International Relns at the University of Auckland. His books include Freedom, Efficiency and Equality and Ethics and the Acquisition of Organs.
  • Richard Cookson is a Reader and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York. His books include The Humble Economist: Tony Culyer on Health, Health Care and Social Decision Making and Jonathan Bradshaw on Social Policy: Selected Writings 1972-2011.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.