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Events at Smith

ES&P Lunchbag:
December 1, 2009
Professor Susan Sayre, Assistant Professor of Economics, will discuss her research on politically viable solutions to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta crisis in California. She will use this crisis as a springboard to discuss why she believes political viability is critical to measure, the challenges inherent in measuring political viability, and general approaches to meeting these challenges. Lunch provided.
Bass Hall 102
12:15 pm

Meeting: SC Committee on Sustainability
December 3, 2009
Join us during the lunch hour as we work on sustainability issues for the campus. Open to all members of the Smith College Community.
Campus Center 102
12:00 pm

Events at Smith

Meeting: Green Team
December 10, 2009
Join us for our last meeting of the Fall semester as we wrap up and start planning for Spring 2010!
Campus Center 102
12:00 pm

Events Off Campus

The Geopolitical Implications of Climate Change
December 4, 2009
presented by Dr. Alexander B. Murphy, Professor of Geography, University of Oregon, former President of the Association of American Geographers (AAG)and current Chair of the Committee on Strategic Directions in the Geographical Sciences for the National Research Council (NRC) Part of the Graduate Lecture Series (GLS)sponsored by the UMASS Department of Geosciences
Isenberg School of Mgmt 133, University of Massachusetts
3:30 pm

Film screenings: King Corn and Big River
December 10, 2009
Aaron Woolf, Director and Producer of the Peabody winning documentary King Corn, will speak about his films, introducing King Corn follow up Big River. * The talk will be followed by screenings of King Corn and Big River. * * In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat-and how we farm. * * In Big River, they have returned to Iowa with a new mission: to investigate the environmental impact their acre of corn has sent to the people and places downstream. In a journey that spans from the heartland to the Gulf of Mexico, Ian and Curt trade their combine for a canoe--and set out to see the big world their little acre of corn has touched. Half of Iowa's topsoil, they learn, has been washed out to sea. Fertilizer runoff has spawned a hypoxic "dead zone" in the Gulf. And back at their acre, the herbicides they used are blamed for a cancer cluster that reaches all to close to home. * * Sponsored by the Green Amherst Project and the Department of Environmental Studies at Amherst College
Cole Assembly Room, Converse Hall, Amherst College
7:00 pm

Events at Smith

Candlight Vigil for Climate Solutions
December 11, 2009
Join members of the Smith College community this Friday, December 8, from 7:30 to 8:30 on Chapin lawn for a candlelight vigil held as part of the 350.org campaign for climate change. Come by at any point, light a candle (candles will be provided) and write your thoughts about how we can make climate change happen here at Smith on a banner to be hung in the campus center. Here is a description of the event from the 350 website, that explains it the best: As part of a weekend of climate action organized with our partners at TckTckTck people all over the world will gather at iconic and strategic locations in their communities. Together, we will light candles of hope to stand in solemn solidarity with the citizens of the nations whose very survival is threatened by the climate crisis. These nations are calling for a “survival pact” for commitments by the developed world to cut emissions enough to get the atmospheric concentration of CO2 back to 350. They know the simple, mathematical truth of global warming: 350 = Survival.
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Chapin Lawn
7:30 pm

Meeting: SC Committee on Sustainability
December 17, 2009
Join us as we discuss sustainability policy for the campus. Open to all members of the Smith College Community.
Campus Center, Room 204
12:00 pm

Events Off Campus

Candlelight vigil for Climate Safety
December 11, 2009
A community coalition of civic and church organizations are hosting a vigil. Leading climate scientists report that the pace of global warming and climate destabilization is increasing much faster than their most negative predictions. They warn that the world is reaching a "tipping point" where "runaway warming" could cause devastating loss, hardship, and deaths around the world, and the extinction of many species, unless strong action is taken in the next years. "We are calling on our leaders to act strongly and quickly to avert climate crisis", said Jenny Fleming-Ives, one of the organizers of the vigil. "Even the U.S. Army is warning of climate catastrophe if our leaders don't take much stronger action." People interested in helping to ask our elected officials to shift laws and tax dollars from polluting energy sources to clean, safe, renewable energy and a modernized, energy-efficient economy are invited to join the Climate 350 Campaign at the link below. For more information: Jenny Fleming-Ives, 586-4006
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In the plaza in front of First Churches Northampton, 129 Main St.
5:30 pm