Featured speakers will explore a range of climate solutions and recommendations as they discuss critical topics like Green Recovery and a Just Transition. Each speaker will discuss 1 climate change issue and share 1 key step for climate action!
We have an incredible lineup of speakers (speaker bios below) including: Dr. Sarah Burch, Dr. Angela Carter, Tova Davidson, Dr. Roydon Fraser, Jordan Lin, and Mary Jane Patterson.
Speaker topics
Dr. Angela Carter: How you can join the effort to keep fossil fuels in the ground—a promising new approach to solving the climate crisis.
Tova Davidson & Mary Jane Patterson: How Waterloo Region plans to meet its 80 by 50 (80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050) target and other climate goals.
Dr. Roydon Fraser: How to use energy storage to promote energy systems that can include large amounts of solar and wind power.
Jordan Lin: We are running out of time and need to take action now – how to develop action-based habits and engage more deeply with climate issues.
#MakeClimateAClass
This webinar is part of the Solve Climate By 2030 series led Bard College in the US. The series is an international movement educating university and high school students about how an ambitious Green Recovery based in local action can put us on the way to solving climate change by 2030.
UWaterloo's webinar is one of many happening around the globe starting on April 6th, 2021. The goal of these webinars is to launch a global dialogue and bring local climate justice issues into classrooms. Attend the 2021 webinars and use them to #MakeClimateAClass.
Participant Bios
Dr. Burch holds a Canada Research Chair in Sustainability Governance and Innovation, and is an Associate Professor in the department of Geography and Environmental Management at UWaterloo. She is an expert in transformative responses to climate change at the community scale, innovative strategies for making progress on sustainability, and the unique contributions that small businesses can make to this solving this complex challenge. She leads the international partnership-based research project
TRANSFORM: Accelerating sustainability entrepreneurship experiments in local spaces, and is the Director of the Sustainability Policy Research on Urban Transformations (SPROUT) Lab.
Dr. Carter is an Associate Professor in the department of Political Science at UWaterloo. Her research has focused on environmental policy and politics surrounding oil extraction in Canada’s major oil producing provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland & Labrador). She has analyzed how environmental policy is developed and contested, emphasizing tensions between environmental/community impacts and economic imperatives. Carter is now extending this work in an international comparative project on supply-side climate policy, focused on political conditions necessary to wind down fossil fuel extraction in developed-world states. She is particularly intrigued by the rise of “keep it in the ground” movements and legislation.
Tova Davidson is the Executive Director of Sustainable Waterloo Region, a social enterprise non-profit that helps the local business community, and Waterloo region as a whole, become more environmentally and economically sustainable, and therefore stronger. Tova brings her experience in public relations and communications to creatively approach sustainability opportunities. Paired with her business background she is primed to collaborate with top organizations in Waterloo Region to drive change locally and provincially.
Dr. Fraser is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at UWaterloo, where he also co-supervises the University of Waterloo Alternative Fuels Team. His research interests include: alternative fuels and hybrid electric vehicles, exergy analysis of energy conversion systems, thermodynamics of ecosystems, energy storage through compressed air/batteries/geothermal, and emissions impacts (local and regional).
Jordan Lin is a third year Mechanical Engineering student passionate about sustainable development. He is the co-founder of Impact Alliance at UWaterloo, which aims to mobilize SDG knowledge and deliver engagement opportunities that bring all levels of campus together. He recently co-founded the registered non-profit ReImagine17, which is a national community working to amplify youth action on the SDGs. Jordan’s passion has also led him to take part in co-op terms with a solar solutions R&D institute in Tanzania as well as the University of Waterloo Sustainability Office.
Mary Jane Patterson is the Executive Director for
Reep Green Solutions, an environmental charity that has been helping people in Waterloo Region live sustainably for over 20 years through programs regarding energy efficiency, water conservation, waste reduction and cultivating healthy yards. Mary Jane has been working with Reep to make an impact on local sustainability since its inception in 1999, and with her guidance Reep has helped the Waterloo Region community save over 23,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
Registration is now open.
