The Office of Sustainability’s symposium reflects its multi-modal, interdisciplinary approach to combatting climate instability and abetting climate relations. University organizations such as UT Gardens; the student-run Environmental Law Organization; UT Sustainability and the McClung Museum “Homelands” exhibit are registered to table at the event. Local environmental groups such as Ijam’s Water Quality Forum will present on beaver biology. Keep Knoxville Beautiful will showcase the environmental cycle of microplastics.
This ethos of broad cross-medium action in response to climate change can run counter to the priorities demanded by American work culture.
“I would encourage people to come because it gives people an opportunity to take their nose away from their grindstone,” Gouffon said. “We’re going to need community, to step back from our current work culture, be honest and very frank with each other even if it is scary, we must understand how we can address it.”
Because the symposium is still a university event, academia has a chief role in the event. Academic presentations include Dr. Emma Schroeder of UT’s History Department, presenting on the energy and environmental movement of the 1970s. Graduate student Chelsea Jacobs (Evaluation, Statistics, and Methodology PhD student) offers her thesis on the intersection of the UT Library System and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
The combination of public facilities, academic research, individual interest, policy approach and cross-discipline demand lies the centerpiece of combatting climate change: there is no area of life that will not be affected by climate change.
“We will be clear-headed in what we need to stand for and what we need to do with our lives to sustain a healthy relationship with the world around us,” Gouffon said.
Embedded within the broader framework of the symposium are Gouffon’s personal interests, such as a nucleus of Native American perspective and a push to bring Native issues to the forefront of local environmental activism. It is no accident that the UTK Environmental Future Symposium is adjacent to The Mound, a historic burial mound located on the University of Tennessee’s Agriculture Campus.
Gouffon also doubles as one of the events primary speakers, where he will be presenting supplementary work of Dr. Clint Carroll of the Cherokee Nation (presently at UC Boulder).
Dr. Carrol’s work deals in “expressing the philosophy of the Cherokee people and their ongoing relationship to native plants, spiritualism and humanity’s role in its environmental relationships” Gouffon said.
He will likewise give a talk on the Tennessee Valley Authority’s energy portfolio and the path toward climate divestment.