Beyond THIRST: Community Discussion

 

Our esteemed panelists will discuss how artists, scientists, writers, and other change agents can help educate and modify behavior in response to climate change. Together we will discuss how we use the arts to command the attention of the public. How do we make complex ideas more understandable?

Lucia Athens–Chief Sustainability Officer with the City of Austin
Juli Berwald Ph.D –Science Writer
Laura Huffman—State Director of the Nature Conservancy
Bruce Melton—Engineer, researcher, and filmmaker

Join us on Thursday, January 16 at 7pm for a panel discussion. We will examine how the arts can be a powerful agent for change. Women & Their Work is proud to present this lively discussion and we welcome audience involvement.

Admission is free at Women & Their Work Gallery, 1710 Lavaca St. Austin 78701, 512-477-1064

Lucia Athens:

Lucia Athens is the Chief Sustainability Officer for the City of Austin. She is a licensed landscape architect as well as author of the book, “Building an Emerald City: A Guide to Creating Green Building Policies,” published in 2010 by Island Press. She began her career in green building in the early 1990’s, working on the development team for the City of Austin’s Green Builder program. Previous to her current role, Ms. Athens spent a decade leading the City of Seattle’s award-winning green building program. READ MORE…

Juli Berwald:

Science Writer, Juli Berwald, began her life-long love for the ocean decades ago while working on her Ph.D  at the  University of Southern California.  She studied the interaction of light and plankton and developed mathematical models to calculate photosynthesis in the ocean. She continues to publish about oceanographic research for Oceanus Magazine, a semi-annual report on research at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which is the largest independent research institution of its kind in the United States. She also writes science textbooks and publications for the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas as well as articles for National Geographic and Wired magazine. READ MORE…

Laura Huffman:

As state director of The Nature Conservancy in Texas, Laura Huffman heads a statewide team of scientists, conservation experts and support staff whose work supports the Conservancy’s 37 statewide preserves and touches every corner of Texas. She has authored a number of articles and op-ed pieces on a variety of conservation topics, including drought, water scarcity and Gulf of Mexico protection, and emerged as a national thought leader in the wake of the disastrous Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. She advocated tirelessly for passage of the RESTORE Act and succeeded in connecting a diverse coalition of stakeholders around a central idea: that a healthy Gulf of Mexico is vital to America’s success and Texas can be an incubator for best practices in marine science. READ MORE…

Bruce Melton:

Bruce Melton is a professional engineer, environmental researcher and outreach specialist. While doing storm-water research at the Lower Colorado River Authority in the early 1990s, he became aware of the disconnection between climate science and public knowledge of climate change. He decided to try to bridge this gap through writing and later decided that to be more effective he would also create films. Dealing directly with academic science and scientific institutions, he reviews new discoveries and attempts to interpret scientific findings into easily understood language. He’s working on 2 books and has created films including one about rapidly increasing sea levels as a result of the abrupt climate change in Greenland. READ MORE…