Category: Climate (Page 4 of 18)

Barr Resilience Program Officer

Resilience Program Officer, Barr (Boston, MA)

The goal of the Climate Resilience focus area is to increase the capacity of Greater Boston’s residents, neighborhoods, institutions, and businesses to prepare for and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

This program officer will report to the Co-Director of Climate who focuses on mobility, and work with the overall climate team to help roll out the Climate Resilience focus area. The program officer will play an important role in thought leadership, strategy implementation, and grantmaking.

Barr’s program officers are integral in identifying new grant concepts—through conversation and network building with current and prospective grantees and leaders in our fields—and preparing effective written summaries and other communications for our trustees.

Application Deadline: February 2nd
Apply Online: Here

Slacktivism or #Activism?

Content based on a Tisch College Civic Life Lunch given to professors, staff, and students at Tufts University.


Civic Life Lunch – #Standing Rock: Starting + Sustaining a Movement
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2017, 12 – 1PM

Featuring: LaDonna Brave Bull Allard & Cutcha Risling Baldy, Moderated by Tufts American Studies Professor Jami Powell

Join us for a conversation with LaDonna Brave Bull Allard & Cutcha Risling Baldy. LaDonna Brave Bull Allard is the Historian and Genealogist for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Allard is also the Founder and Director of the Sacred Stone Camp, a spirit camp established in April 2016 that has become the center of cultural preservation and spiritual resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline. Cutcha Risling Baldy is the Assistant Professor of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University, where her research focuses on #IndigenousHashtagActivism and #TheNewNativeIntellectualism and how Indigenous people are engaging in #HashtagActivism to achieve social change.

Social media has transformed the way people communicate and relate to the world in the last few years. It has been applauded as a unifier and simultaneously criticized as “fake news,” as a realm where people lose touch with reality and get trapped into a world of likes and retweets. Could it be that social media is actually the great equalizer? Could social media really be a platform that empowers the people to broadcast their truths to the world while mainstream media and “the news” continue to ignore or distort them?

If you ask Professor Cutcha Risling Balding, she’d tell you that social media, especially Twitter, makes a huge impact on the growth and success of a movement, as seen at Standing Rock—one of the most widely recognized and recent cases of blatant environmental injustice. Risling Balding studies #HashtagActivism of social justice movements and believes that there is no such thing as “slacktivism.” As she explained at the Civic Life Lunch, there is no harm done by retweeting and liking posts that elevate and amplify indigenous voices which are so often silenced. Often, people seeing these posts get inspired and feel empowered to do something to stand in solidarity, even if locally. These actions can have a huge impact, pushing the mainstream media to actually cover movements on the news and even calling out the President to come out with a public stance on an issue.

Calling these actions “slacktivism” diminishes the importance of movements that are seen as “indigenous issues.” The reality is that water protectors at Standing Rock, organized by young indigenous women, put their lives on the line to protect water in the Missouri River from pollution because “Mni Wiconi,” “Water is Life”—a universal truth for all living beings. Access to clean and safe drinking water is a human rights issue facing many communities in the US, disproportionately communities of color. Social media enabled millions of non-native people to become allies and engage with the Standing Rock water protectors through retweets and likes of their posts, checking in at Standing Rock on Facebook, watching live videos and pictures as evidence of the police brutality and militarization. All of this shaped the narrative of what was occurring at Standing Rock, instead of it being entirely decided by distant, out of touch, and inaccurate media and government reports.

This so called “slacktivism” caught the attention of media outlets and politicians who were now pressured to address the sovereignty rights of the Sioux tribe in the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. News outlets began to invite and speak to indigenous people involved with the #NoDAPL movement. This #HashtagActivism as brought the movement to decolonize Native American tribes and the United States one step further. Through social media, activists at Standing Rock have spread awareness to the public of the real, living, contemporary indigenous people and can further shape the narrative of these social movements.

Hazard Mitigation Community Forums

Don’t miss the upcoming Tufts Hazard Mitigation Community Forums on 9/27 and 9/28:

Over the past few weeks, several institutions of higher education have been impacted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Come contribute to Tufts’ own plan to prepare for future disasters and adapt to the impacts of #climatechange. Learn about hazard mitigation strategies that have been identified to make each Tufts campus more resilient to disaster and provide input on how the university can best ensure its resilience in the years and decades to come.

What is hazard mitigation?
Hazard mitigation is defined as any sustained action taken to reduce or eliminate the long-term risk to life and property from hazard events. It is an on-going process that occurs before, during, and after disasters and serves to break the cycle of damage and repair in hazardous areas.

Wednesday, September 27
Medford/Somerville (students): 12:15-1:15 PM (Terrace Room, Paige Hall)
Medford/Somerville (faculty/staff): 3:00-4:00 PM (Austin Conference Room, Tisch Library)

Thursday, September 28
Boston Health Sciences: 10:00-11:00 AM (Rachel’s Amphitheater, Room 1414, 35 Kneeland Street)
SMFA: 12:30-1:30 PM (Conference Room B201)
Grafton: 3:00-4:00 PM (Dean’s Conference Room, Jean Mayer Administration Building)

Environmental Organizing Fellowship, Green Corps (USA)

Green Corps is looking for college graduates who are ready to take on the biggest environmental challenges of our day.

The planet needs all the help it can get, especially now with so many environmental protections under attack. To win now and build a strong foundation for lasting progress, we need people who know how to organize: to run organizations and campaigns that will inspire the support and action we need to save our planet. Our year-long program gives you intensive classroom training with people like Bill McKibben, Jane Kleeb, and Phil Radford. Then, you move to hands-on experience working with groups like Corporate Accountability International, The Wilderness Society and Mighty Earth to fight climate change, protect public lands, and reform our food system. When you graduate, we help you join our nearly 400 alumni in a career with one of the nation’s leading environmental and social change groups. We’re accepting the top 20-30 candidates out of more than 1,000 applicants for our 2018-2019 program. If you’re passionate about the environment and ready to learn the craft of organizing, apply today!

Green Corps’ year-long program begins in August 2018 with Introductory Classroom Training in Denver, and continues with field placements in multiple locations across the U.S. Candidates must be willing to relocate. For more information, click here.

Early fall application deadline: October 6th, 2017
Apply online:  http://www.greencorps.org/apply.html

 

The Silver Lining for Climate in Politically Uncertain Times

Content based on the 150th Environmental Studies Lunch and Learn given to professors, staff, and students at Tufts University. Every week during the academic year, the Lunch & Learn lecture series features speakers from government, industry, academia and non-profit organizations to give presentations on environmental topics. This is a great opportunity to broaden your knowledge beyond the curriculum, meet other faculty and students and network with the speakers.

Students, faculty, staff, and members of the community are welcome to attend this lecture series, which is co-sponsored by the Tufts Institute of the Environment and the Tisch College of Civic Life.


Climate Strategy During the Trump Years
Kenneth Kimmell, President, Union of Concerned Scientists

The presidency of Donald Trump poses significant uncertainty about the extent to which the United States will continue to make progress on addressing climate change. Ken Kimmell will explore how the incoming administration might rollback policies that have been put in place to address climate change, and make it more difficult for future administrations to address the issue. He will also discuss the progress that is being made in states and regions of the country and the improving economics of clean energy. He will highlight the strategies that the Union of Concerned Scientists and others are likely to employ to limit the damage to our climate objectives and build upon the progress that is being made.

Like many of us, Ken Kimmell, the president of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)—a leading science-based nonprofit that combines the knowledge and influence of the scientific community with the passion of concerned citizens to build a healthy planet and a safer world—see the “dark cloud” surrounding the new political climate; however, Mr. Kimmell is hopeful that its “silver lining” will come in the form of positive change from the people.

In his talk at Alumnae Lounge this March, Ken discussed the darkness in terms of threatened democracy and a “very confused citizenry.” The new administration has been riddled by what Mr. Kimmell refers to as a “factless presidency,” upheld by “alternative facts” and dominated by the belief that climate change is a hoax. Meanwhile, Congress is increasingly captive to special interests that wish to deregulate industries and thwart protection of the environment and human health. And, every day an increasing amount of fake news is published in the media, leading the public to lose trust in the institutions of media, government, and academia to try to “separate fact from fiction.”

At the same time, climate change continues to be a reality faced by many. The Paris Agreement, a global agreement between 197 signatory countries to address and reduce climate change, makes ambitious goals for the U.S. Kimmell explains that this agreement has not been ratified through the Senate and with the new administration’s determination to repeal and prevent climate policy, it will be a great challenge to meet the goals set by the Paris agreement. The administration’s “scorched earth” tactics to dismantle comprehensive climate policy create a long lasting impact on the viability of climate policy. These tactics work hand-in-hand with the government’s “censorship of science” to created what Mr. Kimmell refers to as “Climate Denial 3.0,” in which people do not argue whether or not climate change exists, but instead feel that this determination and proceeding action cannot be made before further “debate and dialogue.” There is a real possibility more funding will be granted to the fringe theories in this “continuing debate,” creating propaganda that sows doubt instead of producing policy upheld by over 20 years of federally-collected data on climate change.

While it may seem a bleak future for the climate movement, Kimmell sees a silver lining in “opportunities to resist, build power, broaden the environmental movement, and revitalize it.” He observes that with “lightning speed, resistance is forming.” People are ready and organizing to mobilize, protect, and expose injustice in changes to federal policy. He also sees the court room as a safety net built into our government, as its decisions and actions are based in factual evidence for actions taken. While the federal government is lagging behind in climate leadership, many cities and states are taking initiative to create climate strategies and goals for increased reliance on renewable energy, clean energy job creation, carbon pricing, cap and trade, zoning codes for smart growth, diversion of food waste, and investment in public transport.

With all this to contend with, what can we do as residents, citizens, students, and academics? Kimmell advises us to lead by example within our institutions, mentioning as an example UCS’s recent divestment from fossil fuels. Another way to make change is to join local movements of resistance and get more civically engaged, contacting your members of Congress and local representatives. There are also national opportunities to stand up in resistance, including the March for Science—focusing on how science and academia can publish, communicate, and engage to reach the groups who need their help—and the People’s Climate March—working to acknowledge the issues of climate, justice, and jobs—both of which are coming up at the end of April.

We have the power to make our voices heard on climate change—a universal issue that “reaches across all people, animals, and landscapes,” and impacts disproportionately the health and security of low-income communities and communities of color. It is important that the environmental movement work with environmental justice communities to elevate the priority of climate change and resist deliberate inaction and oppression collectively.

 

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