Watch AWAKENED ACTION: Women Leaders Speak to the Climate Catastrophe and Pandemic

AWAKENED ACTION speakers, Upaya Zen Center Facebook.

Happy World Oceans Day

Happy World Oceans Day, June 8, 2020, the United Nations day to unite and rally humans around the world to protect and restore the oceans.

From 7:00 AM - 2:00 PM PT, the United Nations and Oceanic Global are hosting a free digital event "Innovation for a Sustainable Ocean," presentations from leading ocean voices. Learn more on www.unworldoceansday.org/2020.

Happy World Oceans Day.

AWAKENED ACTION: Women Leaders Speak to the Climate Catastrophe and Pandemic, and Explore Strategies for a Sane, Just, and Compassionate Future

I'm also looking forward to the June 21, 2020 online event "AWAKENED ACTION: Women Leaders Speak to the Climate Catastrophe and Pandemic, and Explore Strategies for a Sane, Just, and Compassionate World."

The day-long event is being organized by Upaya Zen Center and co-sponsored by Loka Initiative, Fire Drill Fridays, and Parliament of World Religions.

Schedule

Sunday, June 21, 2020

Three panels of speakers

6:00 AM - 8:00 PM PT

The Event

"We invite you to attend this extraordinary daylong intensive plunging deep into the facts, faith, and politics around our climate catastrophe and the effects of climate change and the pandemic on our shared future. We will examine the similarities between what climate change and Covid19 expose etc.

"The presenters are women of action, who are renowned leaders in their respective fields, all of whom have deep regard for the ways in which world view, values, science, and contemplative practice play an essential role in how we shape a future that is just, sane, and compassionate.

"The program includes key presentations and talks from climate scientists, perspectives from long-term contemplatives and environmentalists, and insights from social historians. 

"There will be presentations, meditation, Q and A from participants, panel discussions, plus a reader and reading list.

"In addition, registered participants have access to the program once it’s completed. 

"Join us now for this free, online (donation only) program on June 21. Information about how to access and all materials are forthcoming."

The Speakers

Dekila Chungyalpa

Dekila Chungyalpa
"Dekila Chungyalpa is the Director of the Loka Initiative, a new environment and climate education and outreach platform for faith leaders at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Its mission is to support faith-led environmental and climate action efforts, locally and around the world, through collaborations on project design and management, capacity building, training, and public outreach."

Dekila works with His Holiness the Gyalwang Karmapa on his environmental initiatives. Read more about Dekila in the February 9, 2020 Tricycle article "How Dekila Chungyalpa Draws on Faith to Protect the Planet."

Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen

Christiana Figueres
"Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen is a Costa Rican diplomat with 35 years of experience in high level national and international policy and multilateral negotiations. She was appointed Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in July 2010, six months after the failed COP15 in Copenhagen. During the next six years she worked to rebuild the global climate change negotiating process based on fairness, transparency and collaboration, leading to the 2015 Paris Agreement, widely recognized as a historical achievement. Over the years she has worked in the fields of climate change, sustainable development, energy, land use, technical and financial cooperation."

Jane Seymour Fonda

Jane Fonda
Jane Seymour Fonda is an American actress, political and environmental activist, and author. She is the founder of Fire Drill Fridays.

Roshi Joan Halifax, PhD

Roshi Joan Halifax, PhD
"Roshi Joan Halifax, PhD, is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and author. She is Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received her Ph.D in medical anthropology in 1973. She has lectured on the subject of death and dying at many academic institutions, including Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Medical School, Georgetown Medical School, University of Virginia Medical School, Duke University Medical School, University of Connecticut Medical School, among many others."

Sensi Wendy Johnson

Sensei Wendy Johnson
"Wendy Johnson is a Buddhist meditation teacher and organic gardening mentor who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Wendy has been practicing Zen meditation for thirty-five years and has led meditation retreats nationwide since 1992 as an ordained lay dharma teacher in the traditions of Vietnamese teacher Thich Nhat Hanh and the San Francisco Zen Center. Wendy is one of the founders of the organic Farm and Garden Program at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Marin County, where she lived with her family from 1975 to 2000. She has been teaching gardening and environmental education to the public since the early 1980s."

Sensi Kritee Kanko, PhD

Sensei Kritee Kanko, PhD
"Sensei Kritee Kanko, PhD is a climate scientist, educator-activist, grief-ritual leader and a Zen priest. She is a Sensei in the Rinzai Zen lineage of Cold Mountain, a founding dharma teacher of Boundless in Motion and a co-founder of Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center. She has served as an Ecodharma teacher for Earth-Love-Go (Lama Foundation), One Earth Sangha, Impermanent Sangha and Shogaku Zen Institute. As a senior scientist in the Global Climate Program at Environmental Defense Fund she helps implement climate-smart farming at scale in India. She was trained as a microbiologist and isotope biogeochemist at Rutgers and Princeton Universities."

Stephanie Kaza, PhD

Stephanie Kaza, PhD
"Stephanie Kaza is a long-time lover of trees, a practicing Soto Zen Buddhist, and an environmentalist. She is Professor Emeritus in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont (UVM). Her books explore timely questions of the challenging issues in climate, sustainability, and humanity facing us today."

Diana Liverman, PhD

Diana Liverman, PhD
"Diana Liverman is Regents Professor of Geography and Development, and formerly co-Director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona, USA. She is an expert on the human dimensions of global environmental change, especially the social causes and consequences of climate change. She was a co-author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) October 8, 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC."

Joanna Macy, PhD

Joanna Macy, PhD
"Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, Ph.D., is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. A respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with four decades of activism. She has created a ground-breaking theoretical framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application."

Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit
"Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and urban history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and disaster. Her books include Recollections of My Nonexistence; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; and A Paradise Built in Hell:The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she writes regularly for the Guardian and Lithub and serves on the board of Oil Change International.

"Rebecca also has been working with Upaya’s Nomads project since 2013 and was a student of Zenkai Blanche Hartman, an early leader at San Francisco Zen Center."

Heather McTeer Toney, JD

Heather McTeer Toney, JD
"Elected at age 27, Heather McTeer Toney knows what it means to be a public servant. She was the first African-American, first female and the youngest to serve as Mayor of Greenville, Mississippi from 2004-2012. In 2014, she was appointed by President Barack Obama as Regional Administrator for Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Southeast Region. Known for her energetic and genuine commitment to people, her work has made her a national figure in the area of public service, environmental justice and community engagement. She currently serves as the National Field Director for Moms Clean Air Force, an organization of over 1 million moms and dads committed to fighting climate change and protecting children from the dangers of air pollution. Heather is also a sought-after speaker and writer."

Some of the speakers' biographies provided above are excerpted from longer biographies. Continue reading those biographies on the Upaya Zen Center website.

Register for the Event

Visit the Upaya Zen Center website to register. You'll first have to create a free account on the Upaya Zen Center website.

Registration ends on June 21 at 10:59 PM PT.

This program is being offered for free. Donations of any amount are welcome and can be made on the Upaya Zen Center website.

Watch the Event

The event will be held on Zoom. An email will be sent out to all registrants 48 hours in advance of the event with the login details.

The organizers will also provide a reading list and a collection of selected resources. 

The Upaya Zen Center website says, "This program, including all sessions and Q&A sessions, will be recorded and made available to you shortly after the sessions end in order to make this a full experience for people in any time zone. You can view the program at a time that is convenient for you. You are not required to join the live session. If you enroll after the program starts you will have access to the recordings."