In a generation, much of the U.S. will resemble the lower Galveston Bay Watershed, a 10-county region surrounding Houston which Bayou City Waterkeeper (BCWK) serves. Home to the most diverse population, and also one of the most ecologically diverse major urban areas, our waterways — consisting of 2,500 miles of bayous, as well as creeks, coastlines, and the ocean — support immense biodiversity. Our region has lived through unprecedented storm surges and widespread flooding from hurricanes and heavy rain storms over the last two decades. Amplifying the worst effects of these storms are the region’s long-time underinvestment in forward-thinking flood prevention, lax attitudes towards land use regulation, and historic redlining practices which have driven over-development of ecologically sensitive wetland areas and the outer-lying parts of our city. Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud, Executive Director of BCWK, will explore the critical role that collective visioning, ecological imagination and storytelling play in connecting to and advocating for our region’s waterways and our community. Beyond the built environment, how can we use imagination as a tool to explore new ways to restore prairies and wetlands, which hold rainfall and prevent flooding? How can we use imagination as a tool for new approaches towards water infrastructure that center ecological impacts and environmental justice. Established in 2001, Bayou City Waterkeeper is a Houston-based organization working at the confluence of conservation and environmental justice toward cleaner water, wetlands and healthy ecosystems, and just, resilient communities. Time for interactive discussion with the speaker will be provided.  Please register for this talk on www.eventbrite.com at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/collective-visioning-for-our-regions-water-tickets-288968451417. Contact Lisa Brenskelle at gcs.lrc@gmail.com with any questions.

Members of Citizen’s Climate Lobby explain the ins and outs of carbon fee & dividend as an economic policy tool to address climate change. Learn about the positive impact not only on the environment, but also on jobs, the economy, and human health.   And, carbon fee & dividend has been deemed by economists as the fastest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of any economic policy approach.  But, best of all, carbon fee & dividend is designed to ensure equity and justice, a key concern of people of all faith/spiritual traditions. Please register for this event on www.eventbrite.com at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/carbon-fee-dividend-whats-justice-got-to-do-with-it-tickets-307725203367. Contact Lisa Brenskelle at gcs.lrc@gmail.com for more details.

Groundwater is, as famously quoted by the Texas Supreme Court in 1904, “secret, occult, and concealed.” Sometimes referred to as “hidden water,” it is out of sight and, therefore, unfortunately, out of mind. However, groundwater comprises 98.7 percent of all the fresh, unfrozen water on Earth. About 40 percent of all surface-water flows in the United States are sourced from innumerable seeps and springs that discharge groundwater into streams and rivers. Groundwater supports 26 percent of the human use of water with 70 percent of it watering crops. As drier areas become drier and droughts increase everywhere, groundwater is expected to make up the difference. Unfortunately, much of the groundwater used across the planet is produced unsustainably. This unsustainable use affects flows to springs, streams, rivers, wetlands, and estuaries that support ecologies as well as human needs. In some cases, such as in the Houston area, groundwater production has caused the land to sink, increasing flooding. In this presentation, Professor Mace will present what he has learned about groundwater sustainability through a report he published late last year title “Five Gallons in a Ten-Gallon Hat: Groundwater Sustainability in Texas” and in a forthcoming book titled “Groundwater Sustainability: Its Birth, Development, and Application.” Listeners will have a better understanding of what groundwater sustainability is, how Texas and the greater Houston area is doing with sustainable groundwater management, and what people can do to achieve groundwater sustainability. Time for interactive discussion with the speaker will be provided.  Please register for this talk on www.eventbrite.com at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-long-will-our-aquifers-last-tickets-314757356727. Contact Lisa Brenskelle at gcs.lrc@gmail.com with any questions.

The air quality in Harris County is influenced by multiple sources of pollution, including extensive road traffic, concrete batch plants, proximity to the largest petrochemical industrial complex in the United States, and port activities in the Houston Ship Channel. It is also important to note that environmental risks are not always uniformly distributed in urban areas like Houston, Harris County, and individuals classified with low socioeconomic status (SES) can become overburdened by environmental exposures. One pollutant of interest is particulate matter, specifically particulate matter of size 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5). PM2.5 is of particular interest because these fine particles pose the greatest risk to human health due to their small size and ability to reach multiple organs. There are long-term and short-term impacts of PM2.5 pollution on the human respiratory and cardiovascular organ systems. These short and long-term impacts may have contributed to poor outcomes following SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19). The COVID-19 Pandemic has impacted us all. An important public health objective is to identify key modifiable environmental factors that may contribute to the severity of the health outcomes related to this disease. Join Rachel White, MPH, PhD (c), University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, as she takes a deep dive into this topic and discusses how pollution may impact our understanding of respiratory illnesses such as COVID-19.  Time for interactive discussion with the speaker will be provided.  Please register for this talk on www.eventbrite.com at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/is-there-an-association-between-air-pollution-and-covid-19-mortality-tickets-330848455637. Contact Lisa Brenskelle at gcs.lrc@gmail.com with any questions.

“Green Jobs” are all over the internet. What is the true intention of the term? Clearly, installing solar panels is a green job, but are green jobs limited to renewable energy positions?  Join Steve Stelzer, Program Director of Houston’s Green Building Resource Center, who has researched this subject, for a multi-faceted presentation to help people understand the various green and not-so-green interpretations out there in the job market.  In addition, he has some suggestions for “greening up” one’s conventional job. Time for interactive discussion with the speaker will be provided.  Please register for this talk on www.eventbrite.com. Contact Lisa Brenskelle at gcs.lrc@gmail.com with any questions.

Join Professor Robert Mace of Texas State University for a discussion on freshwater scarcity. Growing populations, the ever-present threat of drought, aquifer over-pumping, reservoir sedimentation, and climate change are creating a perfect storm to challenge the resiliency of our water supplies. Since water is needed for human health, agriculture, industry, energy, recreation, and the environment and it takes decades to develop new water supplies, it’s critical for societies to carefully plan for today’s and tomorrow’s water. We all play a role here, whether through giving decisionmakers courage to plan for the future, supporting the development of new water supplies, and using water as efficiently as possible in our daily lives. Time for interactive discussion will be provided after his talk.  Register for this talk on www.eventbrite.com. All registrants will receive a recording of the talk afterward.  Contact Lisa Brenskelle at gcs.lrc@gmail.com for more information.

Join Professor Hyun-Min Hwang of Texas Southern University as he examines the issue of plastic pollution.    Plastic is a polymeric material, not biodegradable, and may last hundreds of years in the environment. Substantial fractions of plastic waste are disposed of improperly, and are found everywhere, even in the middle of the ocean and deep-sea floor.  Small plastics, known as microplastics, accumulate inside of animal bodies and pass through food chains. Some plastics contain harmful chemicals added intentionally during manufacturing processes. These chemicals leached from plastics can cause toxic impacts on humans and wildlife. Plastic production is fast-increasing, so the amount of plastic waste in the environment will also continuously increase unless we change the way we live with plastics. There are easy-to-follow practices we can apply to everyday life to help protect, preserve, and sustain natural resources. The future is up to us. Join Professor Hwang to consider how we can make the earth a better place to live for ourselves, future generations, and wildlife as well. Time for interactive discussion will be provided after his talk.  Register for this talk on www.eventbrite.com. All registrants will receive a recording of the talk afterward.  Contact Lisa Brenskelle at gcs.lrc@gmail.com for more information.

Join Professor Gunnar Schade of Texas A&M University to learn about the issue of air pollution. Air pollution is a major factor for public health throughout the world. An increasing human population, increasingly clustered in urban areas, is exposed to a variety of air pollutants. Among the common pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone exposure dominate health effects, which have become much better understood in the last two decades. While air quality has improved in much of the western world, population growth and the continued usage of fossil fuels to power economic growth has worsened air quality almost everywhere else. As the overwhelming amount of air pollution is caused by fossil fuels, namely their mining, combustion and widespread consumer use, a rapid transition to renewable energy use alongside the “electrification of everything” is expected to near eliminate air pollution as an environmental problem in the 21st century. Whether this can be achieved is therefore closely linked to climate change mitigation via phasing out fossil fuel use in energy production and agriculture. Time for interactive discussion will be provided after his talk.  Register for this talk on www.eventbrite.com at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-big-four-major-global-environmental-issues-their-causes-effects-s-tickets-378315811777. All registrants will receive a recording of the talk afterward.  Contact Lisa Brenskelle at gcs.lrc@gmail.com for more information.

Join Professor Sylvia Dee of Rice University to consider climate change, its causes, impacts, and solutions.  There is now a long-established global scientific consensus that climate change will damage human and natural systems at high expense. Climate change-induced disruptions to human-environment interactions occur via impacts such as sea level rise, storm surge, tropical cyclones, and degradation of ecosystems and resources.  Earth is already responding more quickly than predicted to rapidly shifting, pervasive radiative forcing. Our species’ future will depend on our ability to adapt to and mitigate this response.  Houston provides a geopolitically relevant model city for the impacts of climate change in low-lying coastal zones in the subtropics, where, globally, the highest development rates are occurring. The increasing frequency of flooding due to tropical storms and extreme rainfall have already cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and pose an existential threat to the nation’s energy security.  Houston is ground zero for the study of the impacts of climate change on coastal cities and energy infrastructure. In cities housing critical hubs for the petrochemical industry, the economic effects of climate change will resonate widely.  In this talk, Dr. Dee will summarize the science of climate change and the social challenges that accompany it, as well as the urgent need for solutions that can be adopted now to mitigate the social and economic consequences of environmental degradation. Time for interactive discussion will be provided after her talk. Register for this talk on www.eventbrite.com at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-big-four-major-global-environmental-issues-their-causes-effects-s-tickets-378315811777. All registrants will receive a recording of the talk afterward.  Contact Lisa Brenskelle at gcs.lrc@gmail.com for more information.

Gardening and growing fruit, vegetables, and herbs organically is easy when recreating systems of nature to incorporate plants for wildlife and for people. Gardening in the gulf coast climate allows us to grow year around. Carol Burton, Director of Garden Education at Urban Harvest will explore the seasons from Summer gardening strategies to Fall transitions for a bumper cool season crop and the top five fruit trees to get started. Time for interactive discussion with the speaker will be provided.  Please register for this talk on www.eventbrite.com. Contact Lisa Brenskelle at gcs.lrc@gmail.com with any questions.