In 2023, News Decoder, The American Library in Paris and the Climate Academy at the European School Brussels II presented Ecologues, a series of six webinars featuring experts on various aspects of the environmental crisis. Conversations were hybrid, taking place in person at the American Library in Paris and online.
Attached to “The Writing’s on the Wall” (WoW), a year-long project helping students across the world grapple with the climate crisis through journalism, activism, and art, the series allowed participants of all ages to deepen understanding, tackle disinformation and, ultimately, inspire change in their communities. Reconciling science and art, knowledge and action, pragmatism and hope, the conversations stirred curiosity and encouraged participation.
The Conversations
We find ourselves firmly in the Anthropocene, the period in which human activity is the dominant influence on the natural world. We wonder: what is happening to the earth, the sky, and the oceans? How did we get here, and where are we going?
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Watch: Full recording
If environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies, then there is much to do. Where to start?
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Watch: Full recording
Volatile gas and electricity prices, accelerating energy diversification, and a cold winter ahead, the question of energy (and of the energy transition from fossil-based to zero-carbon by the second half of this century) is central to contemporary discussions about the environment.
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Watch: Full recording
While half of the world’s habitable land is used to produce our food, fertilizers, sewage, and pesticides contaminate large swathes of the rest. How to feed the world, we might ask, without destroying the planet?
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Watch: Full recording
Can the way nations spend money help bring about the change needed to cool the Earth?
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Watch: Full recording
How can we expand our sense of time to confront the long-term (and increasingly short-term) devastation of the climate crisis? How to, moreover, legislate against this devastation? And to legislate on behalf of who exactly? The rivers and the trees? The children of the future?