Events

Brighter Green's short documentary, "Meat World: China," (running time: 26 minutes) will be screened at the Copenhagen Klimaforum, the "people's climate summit," on Wednesday, December 16th at 9 p.m., with a panel discussion to follow. Directed by award-winning Chinese independent filmmaker Jian Yi, working with an all-Chinese crew, Meat World: China chronicles China's widespread embrace of industrial livestock keeping, and looks at the environmental, health and animal welfare consequences of these actions.

Deforestation and forest degradation are among the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions (approximately 20%). At the same time, forests are vital to the global ecosystem as well as crucial for human well-being. How can the global community act now to preserve these vital ‘lungs of the world’? Panelists will spotlight forest projects for mitigation and adaptation using rights-based approaches.

The livestock sector is another key contributor to global warming which at local levels causes drought, desertification and warmer temperatures. Panelists will explore how the livestock sector can adjust, and what role it can play in successful mitigation and adaptation efforts, including for forest protection and reafforestation?

Come listen to Brighter Green Research Associate Justine Simon discuss the connections between meat consumption and climate change. While eating locally and organic are important in terms of reducing your climate 'foodprint,' cutting back on meat and dairy may well be the most significant way to reduce your climate and other environmental impacts, both locally and globally.

Come listen to Brighter Green Associate Stella Zhou at the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival Festival. Stella will be discussing the current lost connection between food and its origin. She will also address the missing role of farm animals in present-day public health discussions, and will examine the growing trend of factory farming in China. The two-day event (it starts October 31) brings together food producers, national nutrition experts, award-winning chefs, and animal activists.

Food and climate change: it’s an essential connection. Join Brighter Green and other members of New York City's FoodPrint Alliance as we take part in 350.org's International Day of Climate Action. Come to Columbia University and learn more about our individual and collective “foodprints” and how to reduce them, and get your hands dirty in the process. We’ll be planting seeds for winter greens, talking about NYC “foodprints” and a city council resolution to reduce them, and showing films that delve into the connections between what we eat and the global climate. You can take a bite out of climate change with every meal.

Join Brighter Green Executive Director Mia MacDonald, Farm Sanctuary National Advocacy Organizer Jasmin Singer, and Kind Green Planet’s Outreach Director Marisa Miller Wolfson for a presentation on the connection between animal agriculture and global warming. As part of Climate Week, being held in NYC in conjunction with the UN General Assembly and special session on climate change, this workshop talks about the contribution of meat and dairy production to rising greenhouse gas emissions, and the steps we need to take to reduce our “foodprint” and sustain our planet. Co-sponsored with NYU Earth Matters! and the Sierra Club NYC Group.

RSVP: Mollie at campaignintern1(at) farmsanctuary.org

Mia MacDonald will speak about the ecological impacts of industrial animal agriculture at Farm Sanctuary's annual New York shelter Country Hoe-Down. Hear from chefs, writers, activists and Farm Sanctuary staff, attend a barn dance, and visit hundreds of rescued farmed animals: pigs, goats, sheep, cows, chickens, roosters and more. Each is an individual, like Lucas, pictured here. More details and registration information for the two-day hoe-down are available here. Read Lucas' story here.

If you live in New York City, please call your City Council person on Tuesday, July 21st to urge his/her support for the FoodprintNYC Resolution. The resolution calls for New York City to create a more local, climate friendly and healthy food system. This resolution's the first of its kind in the U.S. Lend your voice to seeing it adopted in the Big (green) Apple.
Climate Change and Food - New Yorkers, Take Action!

Brighter Green is attending the Nobel Women's Initiative in Antigua, Guatemala, both in its own right and also as a representative for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Wangari Maathai, with whom Brighter Green has partnered. For more information, click here. Executive Director, Mia MacDonald has blogged about attending the event at the Open Democracy website. Click here to read her daily posts. Also see video and photos from the conference and read updates on the proceedings and other blogs.

Executive Director Mia MacDonald will be speaking on a panel entitled, "Eating Green: Food and Climate Change," at The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspectives conference, co-sponsored by the European Union and Boston University. The conference is free and open to the public. For more information, click here.

Executive Director Mia MacDonald will be speaking at the Brooklyn Food Conference as part of a panel on food, agriculture and global warming. Here's more about the conference from the organizers: Food issues hit home for all of Brooklyn–from school lunches, the rise in diabetes, and escalating food costs to immigration, farmers markets and local food challenges and delights, food touches us all. Come join us for a day of workshops, food demos, and a kids’ food fair. Lunch and dinner will be available for purchase. Dance following dinner. The conference will be FREE for all participants. For more information, click here.

Lars Lindqvist, CEO of Basecamp, will speak about Basecamp's approach to responsible travel: tourism for people, planet, and profit. Brighter Green collaborated with the Basecamp ecolodge in Kenya's Maasai Mara on an experiential learning visit. Both President Barack Obama and Brighter Green's Executive Director, Mia MacDonald, have visited Basecamp Maasai Mara -- although not at the same time....

Author, activist, Nobel Prize laureate and Brighter Green colleague Wangari Maathai discusses her new book, The Challenge for Africa (Pantheon, 2009), with Leonard Lopate of WNYC New York public radio. Maathai discusses her new book, The Challenge for Africa (Pantheon, 2009), with Leonard Lopate of WNYC New York public radio. Maathai offers a compelling look at the problems facing Africa and the promises of the future. She stresses the need for Africans to become self-sufficient, rather than relying foreign benefactors, and to pursue an identity rooted in their own ideals and solutions, instead of Western visions. This event is co-sponsored by The Department of Public Programs at The Cooper Union, The Institute for Sustainable Design at the Cooper Union, and MillionTreesNYC and is free and open to the public. For more information, call 212.353.4195, or visit Cooper Union.

In honor of International Women’s Day

The Public Health Student Group at Steinhardt,
NYC Sierra Club, Brighter Green & the Women’s Environment and Development Organization
Present:

“Half the Sky: Climate Change, Women, & Population”
An innovative panel discussion on the effects of global warming and its intersection with gender and population realities worldwide

Panelists:
Robert Engelman, Vice President for Programs, Worldwatch Institute &
Author of More: Population, Nature and What Women Want (Island Press, 2008)

June Zeitlin, former Executive Director, Women's Environment and 
Development Organization

Moderated By:
Dr. Sally Guttmacher, NYU Community Public Health Program Director
Mia MacDonald, NYC Sierra Club and Brighter Green

Urban parks are becoming our newest endangered species. The 20-year effort to secure a park in an 85-acre strip along 1.5 miles of Brooklyn’s East River waterfront is a prime example of how the seemingly good intention of creating “parks that pay for themselves” is leading to the actual demise of public parks,

The prospect of increasing commercialization of NYC parks, as well as efforts to mobilize public support for a genuine Brooklyn Bridge Park, will be discussed by Judi Francis, president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Defense Fund, and Roy Sloane, who has led public outreach efforts as a board member of the BB Park Local Development Corp.
.
Apart from $150 million committed by the city and state for construction, the Brooklyn Bridge Park will have to generate enough income to pay for ongoing operation and upkeep. The main source, under the approved plan, will be payments from owners of apartments in high-rise housing with 1,200 luxury units that private developers will be allowed to build within the park – a significant intrusion into its narrow swath of green space.

Come learn about the state of farming and the invasion of CAFOs (confined/concentrated animal feeding operations) aka factory farms in New York state. Learn how our food is grown and what's changing for the better, and not, and how to support local farmers. Speakers will include advocates, researchers and farmers. Tastings of locally produced food and wine. Co-sponsored by the Sierra Club National Sustainable Consumption Committee, the Food and Farm Committee of the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter and local CSAs and community groups.

Brighter Green's Executive Director, Mia MacDonald, will speak at Portland VegFest 2008 on the theme "Your Burger or Your Car? Global Warming and Your Diet." We're looking forward to painting this (bright green) city even greener. To learn more about VegFest and to get a full list of all the great speakers and chefs who'll be there on May 9 and 10, click here.

Like many rural areas of the global South (or “developing world”), the effects of climate change are being felt in Maasai communities in Kenya. Droughts that used to be rare are becoming increasingly common. Rainfall patterns, once predictable, are now erratic. The changing climate is putting at risk the long-term viability of the herding livelihoods of the Maasai and other pastoralist societies. Green energy means lower greenhouse gas emissions and more trees left standing to combat desertification, reduce soil erosion, and offset CO2 in the atmosphere.

Solar and wind could provide heat for cooking and refrigeration to store vegetables and fruits in homes, and in health centers to store essential medicines and vaccines. Cell phones and laptops could be powered to facilitate the marketing of crafts and other locally produced goods, along with cross-cultural exchanges via the Web. This could lead to a new model of rural development, where young people don’t feel forced by lack of opportunity to leave for urban slums.

Francis ole Sakuda is the director and one of the founders of the Simba Maasai Outreach Organization (SIMOO) in Kenya. Daniel Salau Rogei is the program/financial officer for SIMOO. Both are local and international leaders in the areas of indigenous rights, livelihoods, community development, and environmental and cultural conservation. They are in NYC as part of a global delegation to the United Nations’ Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.