Environment

CED 50th Anniversary – Visualizing the Future of Environmental Design: Biomimicry in the Built World: Consulting Nature as Model, Measure, and Mentor

Janine Benyus, President and Founder, Biomimicry Institute

Biomimicry is the science and practice of asking, How would nature solve this design challenge? Architects, city planners, and building engineers are at the forefront of this emerging discipline, inviting biologists to the design table to create dwellings that learn from the genius of the place. Native organisms become models for buildings that gather water from fog, capture sunlight with their skins, clean themselves with rainwater, and weather hurricanes with grace. Commercialized products include fans inspired by whale flippers, glues inspired by marine mussels, and solar cells based on the inner workings of leaves.

In one of the most exciting new fronts for biomimicry, planners are consulting nature as measure, setting the bar for city performance by quantifying the ecosystem services of native ecosystems. Biologists pull data on tons of carbon stored, gallons of water absorbed in a storm, degrees of summer cooling, millimeters of soil formed, etc., and these ecological performance standards become the new goal for cites. Working together, buildings, hardscapes, and landscapes must provide the same level of services as the ecosystem that would have naturally grown there. When our cities are functionally indistinguishable from the wildlands that surround them, says Janine Benyus, we will have learned to be a welcome species at home on this planet.

http://www.ced.berkeley.edu

Duration : 1:52:6

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California & The Future of Environmental Law & Policy

The Potential and Limitations of Litigation in Furthering Climate Change Policy

Ted Boutrous, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Los Angeles, CA

Kirsten Engel, Professor of Law, University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law, Tuscon, AZ

Tom Merrill, Professor of Law, Columbia University, School of Law, New York, NY

Ken Alex, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, California Department of Justice, Oakland, CA

http://ccelp.berkeley.edu

Duration : 1:33:3

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Environmental sustainability requires long-term political commitments to the protection of environmental resources. Yet most of the worlds countries, particularly in the developing world and post-communist states, are subject to chronic political and economic upheaval, making any effort at institution-building a daunting task. Professor Steinberg considers this practical challenge from the analytic vantage point of theories of policy change and mechanisms of institutional reproduction. The results carry important implications for environmental policy and for comparative politics research on institutional stability and change.

Paul Steinberg is an associate professor of Political Science and Environmental Policy at Harvey Mudd College and a visiting scholar at UC Berkeleys Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. His books include Environmental Leadership in Developing Countries (MIT Press, 2001) and Comparative Environmental Politics (MIT Press, forthcoming 2010). See http://www.hmc.edu/steinberg

http://clas.berkeley.edu/

Duration : 0:55:52

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This course is a seminar on the role of law in the management of international environmental problems. The course will begin with a brief introduction to public international law as it relates to the environment and a discussion of what international environmental law means. Participants in the course will study a range of environmental issues, legal sources, and institutions.

Duration : 1:47:14

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This course is a seminar on the role of law in the management of international environmental problems. The course will begin with a brief introduction to public international law as it relates to the environment and a discussion of what international environmental law means. Participants in the course will study a range of environmental issues, legal sources, and institutions.

Duration : 1:49:8

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This course is a seminar on the role of law in the management of international environmental problems. The course will begin with a brief introduction to public international law as it relates to the environment and a discussion of what international environmental law means. Participants in the course will study a range of environmental issues, legal sources, and institutions.

Duration : 1:45:18

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This course is a seminar on the role of law in the management of international environmental problems. The course will begin with a brief introduction to public international law as it relates to the environment and a discussion of what international environmental law means. Participants in the course will study a range of environmental issues, legal sources, and institutions.

Duration : 1:54:17

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This course is a seminar on the role of law in the management of international environmental problems. The course will begin with a brief introduction to public international law as it relates to the environment and a discussion of what international environmental law means. Participants in the course will study a range of environmental issues, legal sources, and institutions.

Duration : 1:36:28

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Morning Workshop: Common issues for labor and environmental justice groups

This was one of the morning workshops offered as part of the May 5th conference, Making Climate Change Policy Work in Difficult Economic Times. PowerPoint presentations by these and other conference speakers will be available at http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/greenjobs/climatechange.shtml

Moderator: Rachel Morello-Frosch, UC Berkeley

Speakers:
Lisa Hoyos, AFL-CIO
Nia Robinson, Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative
Erin Rogers, Union of Concerned Scientists
Miya Yoshitani, Asian Pacific Environmental Network

Sponsor details: This event was sponsored by the UC Berkeley Labor Center (http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu) with Apollo Alliance, California Labor Federation’s Workforce and Economic Development Program, California State Building and Construction Trades Council, Don Vial Center on Employment in the Green Economy, Energy Foundation, Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, and Western Climate Advocates Network (WeCAN). Funding was provided by the Energy Foundation, French American Charitable Trust, and Pacific Gas and Electric.

Duration : 1:11:39

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British Secretary of State for the Environment joins UC Berkeley’s Harry Kreisler for a discussion of the politics of environmental policy. Series: Conversations with History [Humanities] [Show ID: 7900]

Duration : 0:45:51

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