Event Blog 1

Recently, I went to a panel discussion about rivers at the Billy Wilder Theater in the HAMMER Museum near campus. With California in a historic drought, this discussion seemed to me very relevant to the times, and as it was a recommended event to attend, I decided to attend.

The panel discussing!

The panel featured Steve Fleischli, Director of the Water Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and hydrologist Dennis Lettenmaier, who is  UCLA Professor of Geography. Steve Fleischli spoke mostly about about some harms to our waterways in terms of drought, pollution, and habitat loss. He stated that fewer than 40% of the world's longest rivers are free of man made obstructions, and while rivers are very important, they tend to be contaminated with what he calls "urban slober," or run off waste. He showed us a variety of provocative images, including the one below:

Picture of the screen I actually took, image below is what was shown.

This is called nutrient pollution, where algae can bloom and remove all of the oxygen from the water, making it inhabitable for a lot of wildlife. Interestingly enough, Steve pointed out that there are swimming pools at almost all of the houses that are on the water line. It's powerful to see that people are using their swimming pools over the lake right besides them because of nutrient pollution. 

Next up was UCLA Professor of Geography Dennis Lettenmaier. Honestly, he did not show us much imagery and things of that nature, and so his presentation was not so relevant to this class. 

That's him behind me on a livestreaming screen, since I wasn't allowed to take a selfie inside the theater

Rather, he showed us data on droughts and tried to explain that it wasn't a "water usage" problem, and it's not a matter of how much water people use, because water is a renewable resource which means even if we use it a lot, we can get it back. He explained further that it is a water allocation issue, and that where we take water from and where we put it matters a lot in preventing drought situations.

Provocative imagery being used to demonstrate an argument for political reasons

Honestly, I really enjoyed the event, but it did not seem all that relevant to this class, which was surprising since it was a recommended event to attend. I did, however, think of "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by W. Benjamin, where he explained that mechanical reproduction of art, in this case photography, can be used for political reasons. Here we were being shown provocative photographic documentation and artwork in order to get people interested in supporting policy change. I would recommend this kind of event for other people to attend but just for their own personal knowledge of how they can help stop droughts and improve the policy regarding freshwater protection and allocation, but not necessarily for this class.