Earth Week Speakers

What happens when creative tinkering goes collective? Scott Beibin has his eye on today's garage scientists, and the rise of maker culture within the DIY movement. As it gets easier and cheaper to prototype new things, a new generation of tinkerers and experimenters are creating new things that are beneficial to all - as art, design, sustainable technologies. Hear more about Scott's experiments in ars technica (the art of technology) during this live multimedia spectacle exploring the fuzzy and quirky lines between hard science, social science, and metaphysics with hands-on examples of environmentally sustainable art and technologies.

Michigan Notable Book author Jeff Alexander will discuss his theory of how opening the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 and allowing ocean freighters into the Great Lakes, accidentally unleashed an environmental disaster that will cause more damage than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The Seaway was built to link Great Lakes shipping ports to ports around the world. The intent was to increase international commerce in the region. The Seaway did achieve that but there would be a high price to pay. Alexander will explain how foreign species that ocean freighters carried into the lakes in ballast water tanks are wreaking havoc on the Great Lakes, how this could have been prevented and why it wasn't.