Students in CCL are influencing lawmakers, uniting their community on climate change, and taking action even during a pandemic. Learn what they are doing to embrace their own personal and political power.

Slide Deck & More #CCL2020 Presentations here.Join Citizen's Climate Lobby (CCL) here. 

Please join The Commonwealth Club of California and UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center for the Humanities for the second in a series of dialogues on catastrophe, storytelling and the present moment. In “Climate Change and Sacred Groves,” Townsend Center scholar Sugata Ray will meet with visual artist Ranu Mukherjee to investigate the relationship between the natural world and the sacred realm, especially as it has developed in India over the last several centuries of civilization and the rise of the Anthropocene era.

In his most recent book, Climate Change and the Art of Devotion, Sugata shows how a site-specific and ecologically grounded theology emerged in northern India in the wake of the Little Ice Age (ca. 1550–1850), an epoch marked by climatic catastrophes across the globe. His interests dovetail in unexpected and compelling ways with Ranu’s visionary and captivating recent work, which positions the banyan tree as a meeting point between ecology and culture. Their conversation will be an opportunity for viewers to contemplate and rethink the role of art as it relates to contemporary concerns around climate, disease, human flourishing and the sacred.

Sugata Ray is associate professor of South and Southeast Asian art in the History of Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley. His research and writing focus on climate change and the visual arts from the 1500s onward. Ray is the author of Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550–1850 (2019); Water Histories of South Asia: The Materiality of Liquescence (2019; coedited); and Ecologies, Aesthetics, and Histories of Art (forthcoming; coedited).

Ranu Mukherjee is a visual artist who makes paintings, animations and large-scale installations. Her current work focuses on shifting senses of ecology, non-human agency, diaspora, migration and transnational feminist experience. Her most recent installation was presented at the ecologically focused 2019 Karachi Biennale; she has exhibited solo at the San Jose Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Asian Art Museum, and the de Young Museum. She is an associate professor in graduate fine art at the California College of the Arts. Mukherjee is represented by Gallery Wendi Norris.

NOTES
Artwork from The Met (in public domain): "Krishna and Balarama by a River: Page from a Dispersed Bhagavata Purana (Ancient Stories of Lord Vishnu)"

Part one in this series, “The Book of Exodus,” can be viewed here


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For more about the Overview Effect and astronauts experiences please check out OVERVIEW (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDfEnKcHBSc) and PLANETARY, now available on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/planetary/id1058246189

The Association of Space Explorers reached out to their fellow astronauts to pass on a simple message of solidarity, hope and collaboration to combat climate change and reach our political leaders during such a crucial time.

Featuring:

Germany:
Astronaut Ernst Messerschmid, Ph.D – Space Shuttle

Japan:
Astronaut Soichi Noguchi – Space Shuttle, Soyuz, ISS
Astronaut Naoko Yamazaki – Space Shuttle

Netherlands:
Astronaut Wubbo Ockels, Ph.D – Space Shuttle, 1st Dutch Citizen in Space

US:
Astronaut Scott Kelly - Space Shuttle, Soyuz, ISS
Astronaut Kjell Lindgren, MD - Soyuz, ISS
Astronaut Piers Sellers, Ph.D – Space Shuttle, NASA Climate Scientist
Astronaut Greg Linteris, Ph.D – Space Shuttle
Astronaut Ron Garan – Space Shuttle, Soyuz, ISS
Astronaut Jerry Carr – Skylab
Astronaut Nicole Stott – Space Shuttle, ISS
Astronaut Loren Acton, Ph.D – Space Shuttle
Astronaut Mary Cleave, Ph.D – Space Shuttle
Astronaut Dan Barry, Ph.D – Space Shuttle
Astronaut Bobby Satcher, Ph.D, MD – Space Shuttle
Astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria – Space Shuttle, Soyuz, ISS, US Spacewalk Record Holder

India:
Cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma – Soyuz, 1st Indian Citizen in Space

Spain:
Astronaut Pedro Duque – Space Shuttle, Soyuz, 1st Spanish Citizen in Space

The video was produced by astronaut Ron Garan and Planetary Collective in association with Daria Lopez-Alegria of Space Bridges and edited by Steve Watts Kennedy. Planetary Collective is the award winning filmmaker behind the short film Overview, the groundbreaking full-length feature documentary Planetary, and the upcoming space documentary Orbital.

Special thanks to the Association of Space Explorers

Music by The Human Suits

Space footage from NASA and ESA

http://www.weareplanetary.com
#weareplanetary

Published on Oct 18, 2015

To order her book from Amazon click on the image or visit your local bookstore. Thank you.

Our planet is a beautiful and awesome place. In a new video, join NASA scientists on a 40-minute visual tour of Earth from space, presented at the IMAX Theater at National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. on September 10.

Pioneers Nitin Desai, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Bill Ford, Yolanda Kakabadse, Maurice Strong,  Jim MacNeill, and Achim Steiner , highlight the historic nature of the original Rio Earth Summit, while acknowledging its shortcomings. Rio+20 takes place in June 2012.