Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies

Jon Christensen is an adjunct assistant professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, the Department of History, and the Center for Digital Humanities at UCLA.  In this LA Times article, Christensen talks about the narrative surrounding California wildfires. 

Concerns about gentrification in Los Angeles have reached the point where it’s not just art galleries and coffee shops that trigger alarm bells — parks and bicycle paths are in the crosshairs. Things are so bad that a proposal to improve bike safety and pedestrian access to parks along the Los Angeles River was recently...

"[W]hat if we deliberately offered sanctuary to endangered species in our cities—those that are native, of course, but also those that are not?" - Ursula Heise, in CityLab.

"Parrots are not uncommon around Los Angeles. More than a dozen different species have established wild populations in the area, descendants of pet birds that escaped at some point and managed to make a home for themselves in some part of the sprawling metropolis," Ursula Heise writes in Elemental.

Brad Shaffer, a biology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, notes that cities not only destroy habitat, but also create new living spaces for animals and plants. (Wired)

Published as part of an environmental storytelling partnership with the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS) at UCLA, with extensive contributions from faculty and MFA students in UCLA’s documentary film program in the School of Theater, Film and Television. The second storyline considers how Los Angeles has inadvertently become a sanctuary city for non-native animal species that are sometimes...

The City of Malibu Arts Commission helped sponsor the event, which was moderated by Jon Christensen, senior fellow and journalist-in-residence at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies and Center for Digital Humanities.

How diversity plays into going to the beach.

Invisible barriers have kept people of color at bay.

Climate Lab, a new YouTube series by Vox and the University of California that explores the behavioral science of climate change and attempts to mitigate it, is a smart idea for a series.

“In terms of behavioral change, we need two things,” said Magali Delmas, a professor at the Institute of Environment and Sustainability at UCLA and the Anderson School of Management. “We need first to increase awareness, and then second, we need to find the right motivations for people to change their behavior.”

What I learned through Climate Lab, a new video series I’m hosting in partnership with the University of California and Vox, is that most climate change messaging is filled with doom and gloom. This has the opposite effect in getting us to care and take action. Human nature is hard-wired for optimism, and we shut...