This webinar and online discussion took place on May 14th, 2019. It looked at responses to climate change as an increasingly pressing policy issue. With the view to the lack of decisive action from governments around the world, this webinar explored where effective action and policy initiatives could come from. From a transatlantic perspective, webinar participants focused on grass-roots and civic society initiatives in the politics of climate change.

Speakers Overview

Miranda Schreurs (PhD University of Michigan) is a Professor and Chair of Climate and Environmental Policy at the Bavarian School of Public Policy, Technical University of Munich. She investigates environmental movements, green politics, and climate policy making both comparatively and internationally. She has researched in Europe, the United States and Asia. She also specializes on the politics surrounding the disposal of highly radioactive waste. In 2011, Prof. Schreurs was appointed by Chancellor Angela Merkel as a member of the Ethics Committee for a Secure Energy Supply. In 2016, she was appointed by the German Bundestag as a member of a committee established to bring citizens’ voices and ensure greater transparency in the search for a disposal site for highly radioactive waste. She was a member of the German Council on the Environment (2008-2016) and is Vice Chair of the European Advisory Council on Environment and Sustainable Development. She was a Fulbright Fellow to Japan and Germany and spent three years studying at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She also worked as a professor of comparative politics at the University of Maryland. From 2007 to 2016 she was Director of the Environmental Policy Research Center and Professor of Comparative Policy at the Free University of Berlin.

Ben Isitt was first elected to City Council and the CRD Board in 2011 and re-elected in 2014 and 2018. He holds a PhD and an LLB and has taught history, international relations and labour studies at UVic, UBC and Simon Fraser University. An award-winning historian, author and community advocate, Ben has written several books that challenge how we think about BC politics and Canadian and global history, including From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada’s Siberian Expedition, 1917-19 (UBC Press) and Militant Minority: British Columbia Workers and the Rise of a New Left, 1948-1972(University of Toronto Press). Ben Isitt’s involvement in civic politics builds from his long-standing commitment to social justice and environmental protection. He has volunteered with residents and organizations on grassroots campaigns for worker rights, peace, Indigenous rights, the abolition of poverty and racism, and protecting our region’s forests and farmlands from urban sprawl. Ben Isitt’s research on housing, regional land use and public education builds on this community work. He combines professional and volunteer expertise with hands-on experience working with Victoria’s street community as a former Housing Support Worker with the Victoria Cool Aid Society.

Co-financed by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European union and the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria.