climate change

Intelligences

The Climate Crisis as Learning Space

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Figure 1. Photo showing totems such as figurines of a fly, a gecko, a petrified stone, a dish with a mermaid, and a tile with a centaur.
FLOOR BASTEN Independent Scholar MARC COENDERS Independent Scholar DOWNLOAD PDF It is becoming widely accepted that the climate crisis is a multiscale breakdown of interrelated ecological systems, caused by behavioural patterns that are unsustainable. As behaviours are largely informed by ideologies and as the latter are passed on by education, we submit that the climate crisis is also a crisis of learning. Our game invites participants to reflect on a variety of ways of human thinking and sensemaking, i.e. paradigms. Putting the so-called Western paradigm into perspective by presenting other ontologies and epistemologies, we challenge participants to rethink learning as situated against the backdrop of new insights into the nature of ‘situation’, an intra-emergent phenomenon in which humans and other-than-humans are agentically enmeshed (Barad, 2007). Context Societies worldwide are responsible for unsustainable lifestyles. When we trace how we got to this, we see a history in which antique Greeks’ speculations about...

Intelligences

Creating Companies and Products Conducive to Life

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Melissa Gregg presenting on stage at EPIC2022
Keynote Speaker: MELISSA GREGG, Senior Principal Engineer, Intel Melissa Gregg is a senior principal engineer in user experience driving carbon reduction and green software strategy at Intel. With a Ph.D. in gender and cultural studies, she is a widely cited author, theorist, and ethnographer, with over 60 peer-reviewed publications and books. Her research has appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Fortune, The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC, and CBC, and has been translated into Russian, Mandarin, and Korean. Melissa joined Intel in 2013 after a career in academia. She led Intel Labs’ first university investment in the social sciences before building user research to a position of strategic impact in the PC business. In client computing, her research informed a range of initiatives to support a more flexible and agile office, women’s role in the smart home, and increasingly responsive, energy-efficient laptops (Project Athena/ Intel EVO). Her current focus is driving sustainability strategy through software and open-source...

Intelligences

Human Action and the Dynamic Environment

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Human Action and the Dynamic Environment
ELIZABETH CHURCHILL, Chair Google CHRIS CSIKSZENTMIHALYI Cornell University GAVIN MCCORMICK WattTime PAMELA MCELWEEN Rutgers University LIANNE YU Studio Resilience An EPIC2020 Sponsored Panel presented by Google What does human scale mean through the lens of the environment? Alternatively, what does the scale of the Earth’s environment mean to human activity and life? We may start by thinking of the enormity of the problem to just describe these two perspectives. But, by stepping back and reframing our questions in terms of the tools we use—design, ethnography, AI, art—we gain a powerful and novel perspective. Panelists discuss their work in terms of the world’s biggest threat, climate change. Approaching this topic from each one’s unique worldview and the tools of their practice, they follow out the scales of local to global and how small and seemingly one-off events can grow to a world scale. How do we design, provoke, educate—and ultimately change the world—by employing disparate data...

Intelligences

Tutorial: Integrating Sustainability Perspectives in Ethnographic Work

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MIKE YOUNGBLOOD Youngblood Group Overview This tutorial examines ways ethnography is uniquely positioned to contribute to the design and innovation of environmentally sustainable (or even better than merely sustainable) products and services. It reviews several emerging design perspectives—such as circular design, regenerative design, systems-oriented design, and value-centered design—and explores ways that ethnographers in industry can use them their own practice and organizations to build sustainability considerations into their work. It is valuable for those who are relatively new to sustainability as well as those with deeper experience who are interested in expanding our collective impact toward more planet-friendly industries. The session covers: Opportunity costs of doing design research “as usual” Key perspectives and approaches for sustainable design and innovation Baking sustainability perspectives into research Ethnographic/anthropological theories and methods that can support a sustainability...

Intelligences

Sustainability: Addressing Global Issues At A Human Scale

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LEE RYAN More Things Considered LOUISA WOOD More Things Considered Our tiny provocation is that the word “sustainability” is not sustainable. Just using it is sabotaging our efforts to build a better future for the planet. Despite decades of global sustainability discourse, the world is still going to hell. What's gone wrong? Our paper is about willful ignorance and complicity at a global scale; the benefits of small talk; and a better, more effective word than sustainability. Article citation: 2020 EPIC Proceedings pp 300–321, ISSN 1559-8918, https://www.epicpeople.org/epic...

Perspectives

Ethnography Taught Me to Fight Climate Change. But to Have Impact at Scale, Ethnography too Must Change   

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photo of a piece of public art made of green computer components
by MELISSA GREGG, Intel In the spring of 2019 I met Klara, a fashion blogger based in Malmö with a growing reputation in sustainable design. Klara was a classic millennial of the type I had been studying for years: ambitious, anxious, confident and concerned about her future job security. In the course of a long interview about her laptop routines, she worried about depending so much on devices. She was one of several participants in different parts of the world who were cynical about tech companies’ constant push to sell new products. She had high standards for quality, but didn’t think there were enough products available that focused on sustainability. Rather than feel guilty about buying something that compromised her brand, Klara was considering making her next computer purchase second-hand. Several months later, the research complete and the presentations over, I am listening to another young woman from Sweden, Greta Thunberg. “This is all wrong,” she was saying on stage at the United Nations Climate Summit: “I shouldn’t...

Intelligences

Agency and the Climate Emergency

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EPIC2019 Panel, Providence, Rhode Island Moderator: DAN LOCKTON, Director of the Imaginaries Lab & Chair of Design Studies, Carnegie Mellon University Panelists: MAKALÉ FABER CULLEN, Urban Soils Fellow, Anthropocene, Urban Soils Institute GYORGYI GALIK, Lead Advisor, Architecture and Built Environment Team, Design Council; Royal College of Art MIKE YOUNGBLOOD, Principal, Youngblood Group What are ethnographers’ roles in dealing with catastrophic climate crisis? Should we be exploring people’s experiences of change, trying to use our insights to help drive individual and collective action at scale through organizations, or helping civil society deal with the consequences? In this diverse set of presentations, panelists share ethnographic and design approaches to climate that engage communities, products, policy, artists, activists, and more. They examine tensions, responsibilities, and value that ethnographic practice can bring to one of the biggest issues for our collective futures....

Perspectives

What Is Going on with the Weather? Reflections on Gaps Between Data and Experience

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by HANNAH KNOX, University College London If it’s summer in your part of the world (or even if it’s winter), you’ve probably been feeling the heat. On 5 July, Ouargla, Algeria recorded 51.3°C (124.3°F), the highest temperature ever reported in Africa. A few days later, Areni, Armenia hit a record 42.6°C (108.7°F), and on 17 July, Badufuss in Norway topped its charts at 33.5°C (92.3°F). Perhaps most disturbing were reports of people collapsing in the fields in Japan, where high humidity exacerbated record-breaking temperatures of over 40°C (104°F). Japan declared a natural disaster, a designation normally reserved for earthquakes and tsunamis.1 “Something is going on” – people feel – “but what?” Of course, climate scientists have been beating their drums for decades, pushing out papers, reports, and campaigns about the risks of anthropogenic climate change. But dramatic and even deadly weather events are, it turns out, rather effective at opening opportunities for speaking about climate change across...