Each year, one of UNCG's social science departments hosts the Harriet Elliott Lecture Series (HELS), which is one of the College of Arts and Sciences premier academic events. Last year, the Department of History put on a wonderful event. As that wrapped up, it dawned on me that it was our (that is, the Department of Anthropology's) turn once again. It had, incredibly, been eight years since our last HELS event, which revolved around the theme, "Our Genetic Past and Genomic Future."
Early in the planning phase, the anthropology faculty decided on the theme, "The Human Dimension of Climate Change," which was both timely and matched up well with a student climate change summit organized in the spring of 2018 by my colleagues Art Murphy in anthropology and Steve Kroll-Smith in sociology and the theme of our department's fall 2018 senior capstone course. Art in fact kindly offered to chair our department's organizing committee for the 2018-2019 HELS. We decided to offer two separate events: a panel discussion entitled "Climate Change in Our Backyard," which focused on how climate change is affecting communities in North Carolina and across the southeastern United States, and a keynote lecture by renowned paleoanthropologist Rick Potts of the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian Institution. We originally had both events scheduled for early February, but the silly government shutdown forced us to postpone Rick's presentation until April.
The panel discussion, held on February 4th and attended by ~100 people, involved Dr. Pam Jenkins, a sociologist from the University of New Orleans, Dr. Adam Terando, a geographer and climate scientist with the USGS, and Dr. Ryan Emanuel, an environmental scientist from NC State, all three of whom were absolutely fantastic. Each panelist was given ~10 minutes to discuss the theme from their perspective, after which we opened it up for questions from the audience.
Pam spoke about her work in Louisiana with communities who are, quite literally, being cutoff from the mainland by rising sea levels. A particularly impactful photo showed the road that connected people with their local school: it literally disappeared during storm surges. She highlighted the decisions that people are forced to make in response to changing climates--should they stay in their communities or leave them? Much of this is related to place attachment theory, which holds that people form intimate emotional bonds with places.
Adam, who impressively compressed nearly 30 slides into his 10-minute window, provided a very compact primer on the (very clear) evidence for global warming over the past 50 years or so. He then talked about the southeastern United States in particular and how our reliance on cars has impacted the way we design urban areas. The ease with which we can move with cars has lead to segregated land use (that is, facilities and amenities being located far apart) and, thus, long distance trips. This is very different from, say, Barcelona, which, despite a population equivalent to that of Atlanta, is squeezed into a much smaller urban area and, thus, produces only about 9% the amount of carbon emissions. Our heavy reliance on frequent and long distance car trips will produce (or already has, to some extent, produced) what Adam referred to as the "Southern Megalopolis"--a nearly continuous strip of urban sprawl stretching from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Atlanta, Georgia.
Ryan wrapped things up for us by providing an indigenous perspective on climate change. These communities, of which there are several in North Carolina, often face a disproportionate share of the adverse affects of climate change. This is especially true for the Lumbee, which is not a federally recognized tribe. What is more, much of indigenous peoples' cultural identity is tied to landscapes and ecosystems whose very existence is in jeopardy due, at least in North Carolina, to climate-induced inconsistencies in streamflow in critical watersheds. (Place attachment theory also plays a significant role here.)
The Q&A was quite lively, and I'll report some of the more interesting questions here. Studies of human adaptation commonly refer to "resiliency," and Art asked about this in relation to the communities in Louisiana. Pam replied that we expect people--individuals, that is--to be resilient in the face of disasters (climate induced or not), and they often are. However, it's important to realize that people are not resilient alone: they rely on social networks and resiliency should thus be viewed as a community trait, perhaps even a societal trait, rather than an individual trait.
Ryan talked about the idea of "ecological grief" among Native American communities, which can be defined as grief related to "experienced or anticipated ecological loss...due to acute or chronic environmental change." My colleague in geography, Dr. Cory Johnson, had a very provocative question in response to this point: why not embrace, and believe in, our ability to adapt to environmental change? Should we continue, he went on, to yearn for some idealized, even romanticized, landscape that, however appealing, exists only temporarily on the surface of an ever-changing Earth? This is a very similar conundrum to the myth of the "pristine ecosystem." Humans, it turns out, have been transforming the Earth and its ecosystems for a long, long time--for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years.
Many audience members appeared to be galvanized by the presenters, who urged people to contact their local (that is, at the city level) representatives to enact environmentally responsible legislation.
Rick's keynote lecture, "The Past is All We Know of the Future: Will We Survive?," took place on April 4th. I was unable to attend, as I was in Spain conducting research, but by all accounts it was extremely interesting and well-attended (~300 people). Rick spoke about how past climate change can help inform our decisions about and reactions to contemporary climate changes. Importantly, Rick has argued that environmental instability is one of the key forces that lead to the evolution of humans' extreme adaptability.
Early in the planning phase, the anthropology faculty decided on the theme, "The Human Dimension of Climate Change," which was both timely and matched up well with a student climate change summit organized in the spring of 2018 by my colleagues Art Murphy in anthropology and Steve Kroll-Smith in sociology and the theme of our department's fall 2018 senior capstone course. Art in fact kindly offered to chair our department's organizing committee for the 2018-2019 HELS. We decided to offer two separate events: a panel discussion entitled "Climate Change in Our Backyard," which focused on how climate change is affecting communities in North Carolina and across the southeastern United States, and a keynote lecture by renowned paleoanthropologist Rick Potts of the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian Institution. We originally had both events scheduled for early February, but the silly government shutdown forced us to postpone Rick's presentation until April.
The panel discussion, held on February 4th and attended by ~100 people, involved Dr. Pam Jenkins, a sociologist from the University of New Orleans, Dr. Adam Terando, a geographer and climate scientist with the USGS, and Dr. Ryan Emanuel, an environmental scientist from NC State, all three of whom were absolutely fantastic. Each panelist was given ~10 minutes to discuss the theme from their perspective, after which we opened it up for questions from the audience.
Pam spoke about her work in Louisiana with communities who are, quite literally, being cutoff from the mainland by rising sea levels. A particularly impactful photo showed the road that connected people with their local school: it literally disappeared during storm surges. She highlighted the decisions that people are forced to make in response to changing climates--should they stay in their communities or leave them? Much of this is related to place attachment theory, which holds that people form intimate emotional bonds with places.
Adam, who impressively compressed nearly 30 slides into his 10-minute window, provided a very compact primer on the (very clear) evidence for global warming over the past 50 years or so. He then talked about the southeastern United States in particular and how our reliance on cars has impacted the way we design urban areas. The ease with which we can move with cars has lead to segregated land use (that is, facilities and amenities being located far apart) and, thus, long distance trips. This is very different from, say, Barcelona, which, despite a population equivalent to that of Atlanta, is squeezed into a much smaller urban area and, thus, produces only about 9% the amount of carbon emissions. Our heavy reliance on frequent and long distance car trips will produce (or already has, to some extent, produced) what Adam referred to as the "Southern Megalopolis"--a nearly continuous strip of urban sprawl stretching from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Atlanta, Georgia.
Ryan wrapped things up for us by providing an indigenous perspective on climate change. These communities, of which there are several in North Carolina, often face a disproportionate share of the adverse affects of climate change. This is especially true for the Lumbee, which is not a federally recognized tribe. What is more, much of indigenous peoples' cultural identity is tied to landscapes and ecosystems whose very existence is in jeopardy due, at least in North Carolina, to climate-induced inconsistencies in streamflow in critical watersheds. (Place attachment theory also plays a significant role here.)
The Q&A was quite lively, and I'll report some of the more interesting questions here. Studies of human adaptation commonly refer to "resiliency," and Art asked about this in relation to the communities in Louisiana. Pam replied that we expect people--individuals, that is--to be resilient in the face of disasters (climate induced or not), and they often are. However, it's important to realize that people are not resilient alone: they rely on social networks and resiliency should thus be viewed as a community trait, perhaps even a societal trait, rather than an individual trait.
Ryan talked about the idea of "ecological grief" among Native American communities, which can be defined as grief related to "experienced or anticipated ecological loss...due to acute or chronic environmental change." My colleague in geography, Dr. Cory Johnson, had a very provocative question in response to this point: why not embrace, and believe in, our ability to adapt to environmental change? Should we continue, he went on, to yearn for some idealized, even romanticized, landscape that, however appealing, exists only temporarily on the surface of an ever-changing Earth? This is a very similar conundrum to the myth of the "pristine ecosystem." Humans, it turns out, have been transforming the Earth and its ecosystems for a long, long time--for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years.
Many audience members appeared to be galvanized by the presenters, who urged people to contact their local (that is, at the city level) representatives to enact environmentally responsible legislation.
Rick's keynote lecture, "The Past is All We Know of the Future: Will We Survive?," took place on April 4th. I was unable to attend, as I was in Spain conducting research, but by all accounts it was extremely interesting and well-attended (~300 people). Rick spoke about how past climate change can help inform our decisions about and reactions to contemporary climate changes. Importantly, Rick has argued that environmental instability is one of the key forces that lead to the evolution of humans' extreme adaptability.
