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Winter 2021 Term

Welcome to the Winter 2021 ESS Lecture Series and Film Fest! We are excited to screen several wonderful films tackling difficult sustainability topics: endangered right whales, indigenous food sovereignty, community resilience and the climate crisis. These are not easy issues so we have decided to launch the semester with a realistic discussion about the experience of eco-anxiety or eco-grief and how we can cope with the challenges of our times.

Watch the lecture each week on the College’s Vimeo channel or screen the film at the private link provided (usually active 7-10 days before the Thursday night Q&A on Zoom).

Members of the public are welcome to watch the films/lectures on the College Vimeo channel and to participate in the Zoom question and answer sessions. Send an email to sustlife@dal.ca to get the links!

WINTER 2021 ESS LECTURE SERIES SCHEDULE

 

Week 1 - Understanding Grief and Loss in the Climate Change Era  

ESS student Zinta Upitis and SRES student Sara Boyd

Zinta Upitis is a scholarship student at Dalhousie University, currently completing a BA in Sustainability and Urban Design. Zinta grew up in Kingston, Ontario, where she was continually influenced by, and exposed to, the outdoors. Her mother started an off-grid wilderness centre called Wintergreen Studios, located in the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve, where Zinta spent most of her time contemplating sustainable systems thinking. A love for the outdoors became a value that she implemented into her eco-anxiety research, which includes the psychological impacts of climate change and understanding grief during the climate change era. Zinta believes the outdoors, in combination with positive coping mechanisms and community can offer solace and creativity, elements that can help pave a path for a sustainable future.

Sara Boyd is pursuing a Masters of Resource and Environmental Management at Dalhousie University. Her master’s project, supervised by Dr. Melanie Zurba, focused on developing a typology of rituals and vocabularies for expressing and processing grief associated with climate change in Canada. This project also looked at the relationship between wellbeing and climate change policy. Having lived in different provinces across Canada, Sara is passionate about understanding the complex history of the land and people across this country. She aspires to work bridging government and local communities to grow towards a climate resilient society.

 

Week 2 - Film: Entangled (2020)

A film by David Abel & Andy Laub

  • Watch the trailer
  • Private screening link for film will be provided
  • After watching the film, attend a Zoom Q&A session Thursday 21 January with David Able (Boston Globe) and Boris Worm (Dal Biology)
  • **Members of the public can view the film and attend the Q&A session by emailing sustlife@dal.ca for the links
ENTANGLED is an award-winning, feature-length film about how climate change has accelerated a collision between the nation’s most valuable fishery, one of the world's most endangered species, and a federal agency mandated to protect both. The film chronicles the efforts to protect North Atlantic right whales from extinction, the impacts of those efforts on the lobster industry, and how the National Marine Fisheries Service has struggled to balance the vying interests. Entangled, from the makers of Lobster War and Sacred Cod, won a 2020 Jackson Wild award, known as the Oscars of nature films. It also won Best Conservation Film at the Mystic Film Festival.
 
David Abel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who covers fisheries and environmental issues for The Boston Globe. Abel’s work has also won an Edward R. Murrow Award, the Ernie Pyle Award from the Scripps Howard Foundation, and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Feature Reporting. He co-directed and produced “Sacred Cod,” a film about the collapse of the iconic cod fishery in New England, which was broadcast by the Discovery Channel in the spring of 2017. He also directed and produced two films about the Boston Marathon bombings, which were broadcast to national and international audiences, on BBC World News, Discovery Life, and Pivot. His other films include “Lobster War” and “Gladesmen: The Last of the Sawgrass Cowboys.” “Lobster War,” which is being distributed by Gravitas Ventures, won the 2018 award for “Best New England Film” at the Mystic Film Festival and was runner-up for the Grand Prize for Best Feature Film at the 2018 International Maritime Film Festival. “Gladesmen” won the 2018 Made in Miami Award at the Miami Film Festival. Both of those films are also being distributed by Bullfrog Films. Abel, who began learning to make films as a Nieman fellow at Harvard University, is the film’s director, producer, writer, and director of photography.
 

Rest of Schedule Coming Soon!

 

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For more information contact:

College of Sustainability Reception Desk            
902-220-3029      sustainability@dal.ca

Debra Ross                                                     
Manager of Outreach and Partnerships
902-494-7805      cos.comm@dal.ca