Wyoming Rising hosting online film festival, climate workshops

Posted 4/21/20

Wyoming Rising, a non-partisan advocacy group based in Park County, is shining a light on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day with an online film festival that began Friday and runs through Sunday, …

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Wyoming Rising hosting online film festival, climate workshops

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Wyoming Rising, a non-partisan advocacy group based in Park County, is shining a light on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day with an online film festival that began Friday and runs through Sunday, April 26. Additionally, the group is hosting an online climate solutions workshop at 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Wednesday, which is Earth Day.

“Families will enjoy free access to more than 50 documentary films,” Wyoming Rising leaders said of the 10-day festival, while the workshop “promises a hopeful, scientifically grounded, action-oriented experience that educators, local government officials and citizens can use to evaluate the policy options that will offer the greatest leverage for reducing global warming.”

The films have been curated by a team at the Earth Day Film Festival and include international and national documentaries that “educate, inspire, and connect viewers to powerful and quirky stories about social and environmental justice, wildlife and nature.”

The professionally produced films include “Our Gorongosa,” a 60-minute film about the park in Mozambique; “America’s Shopping Addiction,” a seven-minute short about consumer waste; “Stekenjokk and the Guardian of the Eggs,” a 29-minute feature about guarding rare bird eggs in Sweden; and “A Message from the Future of Paradise,” a seven-minute piece about the destruction of Paradise, California, by wildfire in 2018. Wyoming Rising will host an online discussion of the films after the festival.

People may register for the Film Festival at Eventbrite. Registrants will receive a link and a log-in code from Wyoming Rising to watch the films for free.

Wednesday’s interactive, one-hour workshops will be conducted by Wyoming Rising Co-chair Mary Keller. Keller will be using the En-ROADS climate simulator — a project of MIT Sloan and Climate Interactive — to conduct the workshops. The online interface “simulates 100 years of energy, land and climate data in less than one second to identify solutions to limit warming to within 2 degrees Celsius (3.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.”

“... Earth Day 2020 is connected by history, science and human nature to the larger issues raised by COVID,” Keller said. “Lately, we have watched excellent community responses to COVID that suggest that small communities already benefit from ‘systems thinking’ because we know we are connected to each other. We can count on each other’s cleverness and generosity when disasters hit.”

Last fall, Wyoming Rising partnered with Park County Homeland Security to consider ways to “increase local resilience in light of the increasing volatility of seasons and the impacts of globalization that are our collective future,” Keller said.

“When rural communities make preparedness plans in light of evidence-based science, they can increase their food security, reduce their dependence on fossil fuel economies, reduce their carbon emissions, and increase the overall community wellness,” Keller said. “As noted in that November presentation, diseases are one of the big winners of our globalized world, traveling further and more swiftly than ever before. Rural communities that pay attention to the accelerating volatility of disease vectors will be more agile in their responses. Especially if we use the ‘systems thinking’ tools of agricultural economists and crisis management experts, which help drive the En-ROADS climate simulator.”

In the En-ROADS interface, users can move sliders “to simulate the implementation of policies to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions,” including global energy demand; energy production from coal, oil, gas, biomass, renewables, and nuclear; emissions from deforestation, agriculture and land use; deploying technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; and future economic growth.

The climate simulator workshops are free but also require registration on Eventbrite.

To register for either or both events, visit www.eventbrite.com and search for Wyoming Rising Earth Day 2020.

“If you like being on the inspired and trouble solving edges of our world, we hope you’ll join these free online activities,” Keller said.

A donation to Wyoming Rising is appreciated so the group can continue its work. Wyoming Rising’s mission is “to advocate for civil liberties, quality public education, affordable health care, protection of the environment, and participation in government.” Its website is www.wyomingrising.org.

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