BY MONIQUE DUBOS

Imagine living in a region where your livelihood depended on the frequent flooding of your property.  David Lipset has lived with and chronicled the lives of people who make such a location their home. He shared how a population of roughly 3,000 in the Murik Lakes region of Papua New Guinea is being effected by rising sea levels at the March 6 Frontiers in the Environment seminar, "A Mangrove Lagoon in the Time of Climate Change: The Politics, Science and Culture of an Intertidal Environment in Papua New Guinea."

The opening of the American Museum of Natural History's new exhibition, Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture, this Saturday (Nov. 17) comes at an interesting time. 

The exhibit, which will look at food production throughout history and address the challenge we currently face of feeding an ever-growing population without destroying the planet as we do so, comes just days before Thanksgiving, the nation's holiday most focused on food as celebratory act. Obviously, as this is an annual holiday, the exhibition planners no doubt planned the opening with Thanksgiving in mind. The second reason the timing is interesting, though, is due to an event that no one could have anticipated well in advance. The AMNH is located in New York City, which, along with other areas of the East Coast, is still recovering from Hurricane Sandy. In recognition of these dichotomous events, Ellen V. Futter, president of the AMNH, said in a press release, "As the Museum prepares to open this comprehensive exhibition on the subject of food, we find ourselves disquietingly poised between the extremes of Hurricane Sandy--with its extensive devastation, including disruption to the food supply--and...Thanksgiving. In such a timely and vivid context, the Museum presents Our Global Kitchen, which addresses the vital and complex topic of food from the perspectives of the environment, food supply, and human culture."

BY BEN LAUER

What if we were able to step outside of ourselves and observe the Earth from above the Troposphere over the past 1,000 years? What would we see?

That was the question posed by Lewis Gilbert, IonE's managing director, at last week's Frontiers in the Environment talk, "From Muscles to Molecules: A Revolution in the Earth System." The answer, Lewis suggested, reveals a startling process of human-controlled change. 

The irony was not lost on the 300 or so environmental scientists, policy makers, activists and citizens who gathered earlier this week at the Aspen Institute for three days of solution-seeking around the theme, "Living in the New Normal." Even as participants in Aspen Environment Forum 2012 shared information, ideas and opinions, haze from the forest fires currently ravaging Colorado hung over the nearby mountains. This, more than one participant commented, is the new normal: uncertainty, extremes, unpredictability, unexpected turns of events - all brought on by humans' fiddling with the dials of nature on a grandiose scale.

Of course it's relatively easy to talk about troubles. But that's not what AEF2012 was about. The forum focused not only on defining the new normal, but also on exploring what we ought to do about it. Should we let us take it where it will? Or should we engage? Will we be tossed about like ships at sea? Or will we work to understand the changes taking shape, and shape our own activities to make both most compatible with the preservation of life on Earth?

Perhaps the best way to get a sampling of the conversations is to pull some participant quotes and paraphrases from the Twitter stream (#AEF2012):

If we continue at the present rate of eliminating species, half of them will be gone by the end of the century. - E.O. Wilson

The bulk of the credit for maintaining a planet that works goes to a living ocean. - Sylvia Earle

60,000-90,000 years ago, there may have only been 600-2,000 human beings. We were an endangered species at one time. - Richard Potts

‎‏ We *have* to figure out how to close the gap - to bring environmental externalities into pricing. - Jason Clay

The past is no longer any guide for the future. This planet (w/new climate, biosphere, land use, ocean acidification) is new. - Jon Foley

Abruptness in climate change creates largely unpredictable side-effects. - William Calvin

Eating tuna is like eating something that feeds on dragons. Very high on the food chain. - Daniel Pauly

What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. - Neal Conan

If you're pro-free market and ignore biggest market failure on planet (CO2), you have a problem. - Gernot Wagner

We have the tools at our disposal to end overfishing. We should start tackling the problem now. - Miguel Jorge

Comparing block to block, house to house, there is 7% greater property value to tree lined streets. - Rohit Aggarwala

In public's eye, pollution is top ocean problem. In reality, it's #3, behind overfishing & climate change. - Ayana Johnson

When you say "climate" it turns people off because they fear they'll have to reduce their quality of life. - Heidi Cullen

Not climate change or global warming, but planetary destabilization. - David Orr

‎‏The future of America is networked resilient communities. - John Robb

Never eat shrimp: either caught with 90% bycatch net, or in mangrove-destroying aquaculture. - Ayana Johnson

We have to be careful about what we can measure and what matters - Daniel Pauly

We need to make climate an economic issue, because it is. - Mindy Lubber

The notion that our emergence occurred during the most violent period of climate fluctuation means that we're able to adapt. - Richard Potts

We need to preserve ecosystems as working systems, for us to learn from and emulate in the Anthropocene. Not keep as museum pieces. - Jon Foley

Don't fish, you have zero fish. Fish too much, you have zero fish. Sustainable fishing is in between. - Daniel Pauly

Smart growth is the greatest technology we have to fight climate change, and its not in any of the books. - Peter Calthorpe

Trawling is like using a bulldozer to catch songbirds. - Sylvia Earle

The past can no longer be a guide to the future.- Dennis Dimick

No farmer is going to invest in sustainability if they don't have land rights. - Jason Clay

Let's celebrate successes in sustainable agriculture - and scale them up. - Chris Reij

U.S. agricultural research budget has gone to hell in a handbasket. - Dan Glickman

‎‏Something that people often miss: resilience doesn't just mean strengthened rule of law, it also means stronger civil society. - Jamais Cascio

We thought the ocean was too big to fail. Now we know otherwise. - Sylvia Earle

Why should unsustainable products cost less? They should cost more because they are subsidized by nature. - Jason Clay

If there's an elephant in the room with the global food system, it's a cow. - Jon Foley

Like to learn more? Check out video of select AEF2012 panel presentations here.

Few things are as inspirational as people who put their lives on the line for a cause greater than themselves. For National Geographic photojournalist Paul Nicklen, that includes diving beneath sea ice, swimming with leopard seals off Antarctica and trekking across miles of stark Arctic wilderness in -40F temperatures.

His cause? Convincing all of us to care for this wild and precious planet.

It's not unusual for university faculty to have multiple affiliations. Less common is to have them 9,000 miles away from each other.

Institute on the Environment resident fellow Peter Reich, a Regents professor and Distinguished McKnight University professor in the University of Minnesota's Department of Forest Resources, recently added a joint affiliation as founding director of the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment (HIE) of the University of Western Sydney (yes, as in Sydney, Australia) to his list of titles. For Reich, the distance involved is worth every inch for the opportunity it offers to connect scientists around the globe in the search for knowledge of what we must do to help our planet survive and thrive in the face of human-induced change.

The Hawkesbury institute, which opened last month, is one of the world's most advanced research sites for studying how terrestrial ecosystems respond to environmental change. Reich is helping guide, with two full-time onsite co-directors, the new institute as it grows and develops. His primary role is to "stir the pot" science-wise and cultivate a culture of collaborative team science. He will also use his international connections to draw researchers to HIE for short-term collaboration, permanent employment and everything in between. Research taking place at HIE builds on, complements, and will link with work at University of Minnesota field stations such as Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve and Cloquet Forest Center focused on exploring how ecosystems respond to variations in the composition of the atmosphere.

The logistics of having two offices half a world away from each other may be a bit complicated, but Reich says Skype calls at all hours of night and day help bridge the distance. Moreover, benefits abound in the synergies and insights to be gained as the two institutes work together to understand and mitigate the impacts of global change.

"This is an ambitious, challenging goal," Reich said, "but a crucial one at a time in history when the largest challenges facing society involve learning how to adapt to a warming planet, while at the same time figuring out how to turn down the heat."

To learn more about HIE's research, check out this just-published BBC story and watch the short video here: