(October 17) Beyond Borders: Tackling embodied emissions through local climate action

Join ACT representatives at the event Beyond Borders: Tackling embodied emissions through local climate action to discuss the complex topic of embodied emissions in cities and communities. Experts and decision makers from Vancouver, the U.S., and the U.K. will convene to discuss emissions reductions from sources that stem from outside their boundaries and the resulting embodied carbon that passes and accumulates through global supply chains.

Join this PICS-hosted event and learn from the challenges and successes of leaders in the field:

• Anthony Pak, building life cycle analysis consultant and founder of the Vancouver chapter of the Embodied Carbon Network
• Patrick Enright, Green Building Engineer at the City of Vancouver and lead on “Big Move 5,” targeting embodied emissions in construction
• Caterina Brandmayr, Senior Policy Analyst with Green Alliance in the UK who works on local government policy for embodied emissions (joining remotely)
• Abel Chavez, Associate Professor in Environment and Sustainability at Western Colorado University with expertise in urban emissions accounting and resilience planning
• Georgia Piggot, Staff Scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute who focuses on low-carbon transitions at an urban scale
• Hannah Teicher, event moderator and PICS Researcher-in-Residence for the Built Environment

This event is free and open to the public, but space is limited, so please register here.

You may also join remotely via webcast. https://www.sfu.ca/itservices/technical/webcasting-and-video-recording/webcast-archive/2019/10/2019-10-17-pics/

(September 5) Watch a Webinar on Canada’s Top Climate Risks

The webinar is a summary of the recently published Canada’s Top Climate Change Risks report. In the report, the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) identify 12 major risk areas, assess which risks have the greatest potential for adaptation, and explore how the federal government can best inform its decision-making in response to these risks. The CCA convened a multidisciplinary panel of experts with backgrounds in economics, human health, earth sciences, social sciences, and climate change adaptation and risk assessment. The report’s findings emerged from the judgement, experience, and expertise of the workshop participants and Expert Panel members; a Panel ACT Executive Director Deborah Harford is proud to have been a part of. 

The webinar will present the five key findings of the report and discuss the 12 major risk areas, along with contextualizing the risks throughout Canada.

Presenter bios:

Dr. L. John Leggat, former Assistant Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence

• Dr. Leggat graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada with first-class honours in Mechanical Engineering and received his MSc and PhD from University of British Columbia in 1976. In 1989, Dr. Leggat was appointed Director General of Research and Development Operations at the National Defence Headquarters and in 1993 became Director General of the Defence Research Establishment in Ottawa, Ontario. He was appointed Chief of Research and Development for DND in 1997 and became the driving force and founding CEO of Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC). During his career, Dr. Leggat has served on about 30 scientific advisory committees and boards and received numerous awards and honours. He was the Canadian representative for the NATO Research and Technology Organization for many years and led the team that wrote the current NATO Research and Technology Strategy.

Paul Kovacs, Adjunct Research Professor, Economics, Western University

• Paul Kovacs is founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at Western University. Since 1996 Paul has been a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading forum for the study of climate issues. He is Canada’s leading authority on insurance and climate change and has been a contributing author to numerous international and Canadian reports on reducing the risk of loss from earthquakes, flood and severe wind. For more than thirty-five years Paul has been a popular commentator on insurance, disaster safety and economic policy. He has written more than 200 publications and articles and he is a passionate champion for insurance, disaster resilience and adaptation to climate extremes.

Watch the full webinar here.

(September 5) Speakers announced for upcoming Livable Cities Forum

The Livable Cities Forum is less than 2 months away, and we are thrilled to share some of our speakers with you. The program brings together a diverse group of panelists, workshop hosts, and speakers from across North America. They will share stories, innovative ideas, and lessons learned on the conference themes and engage in thoughtful, valuable dialogue with delegates. ACT is delighted to co-host this event with Shift Collaborative, ICLEI Canada and the City of Victoria.

Some of our speakers are sampled below, and the most up-to-date list can be found here. Check the website as more speakers are announced!

Practitioners and experts:

• Mary Rowe, President and CEO, Canadian Urban Institute
• Dr. Courtney Howard, Emergency Physician, President of Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment
• Paul Kovacs, Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction
• Dr. Ann Dale, Author and Professor, Royal Roads University

Leading organizations in resilience:

• Canadian Institute of Health Research
• Urban Systems
• Evergreen
• The Co-operators
• Federation of Canadian Municipalities
• Wood Group

For more information and to register for this event visit the event home page. 

(October 10) Webinar: How Cities are Paying for Climate Resilience

On October 10, 2019 from 1:15 – 2:45 PM (EDT) join professionals and city leaders, authors of the recent report: Playbook 1.0: How Cities are Paying for Climate Resilience to explore strategies that reflect leading edge climate financing practices and discuss what these mean for other cities and the evolution of climate-resilience finance. This webinar will also explore how to decide what to pay for in terms of resilience, and how governments will access and generate necessary revenue.

Panelists for the webinar include:

• Joyce Coffee, LEED AP, is founder and President of Climate Resilience Consulting, a Certified B Corp. Joyce has over 25 years of domestic and international experience implementing resilience and sustainability strategies, management systems, performance measurement, partnerships, benchmarking and reporting.
• John Cleveland is the author of Life After Carbon, and President and a founder of the Innovation Network for Communities, a new national non-profit whose mission is to develop and spread scalable innovations that transform the performance of community systems.
• Andrew Salkin joined 100 Resilient Cities from New York City’s Department of Finance, where he was the Deputy Commissioner of Operations, managing more than 800 people and responsible for collecting $30 billion annually through real estate and business and excise taxes.

Register for the webinar here. 

(September 9) Webinar: Killer Heat in the United States

July 2019 was the hottest month on record. A recent report entitled Killer Heat in the United States: The Future of Dangerously Hot Days  shows the rapid, widespread increases in heat expected to spread across the country. The analysis in the report finds that the intensity of the coming heat depends heavily on how quickly we act now to reduce heat-trapping emissions. 

The report includes a tool to compare the temperature impacts of climate changing in your community in the US under a number of different scenarios. If we do not change the current GHG emissions trajectory, Washington DC, the residence of the host will see 100-degree (37°C) days jump from 5 to 37 by midcentury, including 20 days over 105 (41°C) degrees.

Panelists include: 

Rachel Licker, a senior climate scientist at the Climate & Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists is also the coauthor of “Killer Heat”.

Rachel Cleetus is the policy director at the Climate & Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists is also the coauthor of “Killer Heat”.

Michael Simpson is Co-Director for the Center for Climate Preparedness and Community Resilience and Chair of the Environmental Studies Department at Antioch University, New England.

Moderator: Abigail Abrash Walton, PhD, co-director of Antioch’s Center for Climate Preparedness and Community Resilience.

Register for the event here.

(August 22) – Volunteers needed for Livable Cities Forum, Victoria, BC

We are looking for volunteers to help us with registration, set-up, and breakout sessions throughout the course of this year’s Livable Cities Forum. The forum will be held between October 28-30th in Victoria, BC. If you are interested, click here to apply online. Volunteers are able to attend a half-day of the conference on the day of their shift.

(October 28-30) – ACT Co-hosting Livable Cities Forum, Victoria, BC.

ACT is excited to co-host this years Livable Cities Forum in beautiful Victoria, BC on October 28-30th. Now, more than ever, collaborative community-level action is required to build sustainable, healthy, and equitable communities that are resilient to the risks posed by a changing climate and more frequent extreme weather. Actions that transform and protect our cities must play a role in fostering livable, thriving communities.

The 2019 Forum will bring together a wide range of speakers and sessions, and is designed to showcase the importance of taking this synergistic approach to climate change planning and implementation at the local level. The main themes of this year’s forum include: