(uplifting music)
- And the School of Social Work
is pleased to host this talk by Dr. Lisa Reyes Mason,
as part of the 2022 Salem State University
Earth Day Celebration,
for which the theme is Climate Crises:
Actions for a Just and Livable World.
Associate Professor Lisa Reyes Mason is a social worker,
scholar, and advocate for climate justice.
She finds purpose and passion in engaging social work,
a profession in pursuit of health, equity,
and social justice,
in confronting the climate crisis to create a thriving
and regenerative world for all.
Biracial and bicultural. Dr. Mason draws inspiration
from her maternal roots in urban Philippines,
and paternal roots in rural California.
On faculty at the University of Denver's
Graduate School of Social Work,
Dr. Mason co-created a master's in social work
concentration in ecological justice,
the first of its kind in the US.
She also co-edited the book "People and Climate Change:
Vulnerability, Adaptation, and Social Justice",
a collection of lived experiences
and case studies of climate injustice
from the global south and north,
and serves the city and county of Denver
as a member of its Sustainability Advisory Council.
Dr. Mason received her MSW and PhD
from Washington University in St. Louis,
where she was a Chancellor's Fellow
for advancing diversity in the professorate,
and Olin Fellow for exceptional women
to become leaders in society.
Dr. Mason's BA is from the University of Pennsylvania,
where she majored in folklore and folk life,
or the everyday knowledge of people,
and how wisdom and ways of living
are past from one generation to the next.
After Dr. Mason's talk,
we will have some time for Q & A, and at this time,
it's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Lisa Reyes Mason.
- Thank you so much,
Dean Johnson for the welcome and introduction.
It's really a pleasure to join you
and your community for these Earth Days.
I've been looking at the Earth Day site
for all the things that are being offered.
And I love that it's not just one day or one event,
but this month-long and maybe longer series
of different ways to engage in learning
and action at this nexus of environmental
and climate and social justice.
So it's my pleasure to be a part of it and to be with you.
I am going to share my screen.
And then get my view set up here.
Okay, great.
One more adjustment.
Okay, so Dean Johnson already shared
the title of my talk today.
And like the spark that's in this image,
our world, unfortunately, is on fire,
quite literally, as drought and wind
and human activity provide fuel for quite devastating fires,
such as in the mountainous West,
where I'm calling in from today, and figuratively,
as we have global average temperatures rising,
deforestation continuing, and weather extremes
that are becoming more frequent and severe,
which we were just sharing experiences of
and stories of before others joined in for the talk.
So we humans, we are just one
of over 8 million species on Earth,
and it really is us who've lit this fire.
We've changed this planet, its ecosystems,
its health through these fires that we've lit
of extraction, of consumption, of colonization.
And so, in my talk today,
I'm gonna begin with some specifics about climate change
and about the crisis that's unfolding in our midst,
but I won't stop there.
I'll also aim to give examples of how social work
is already engaged in climate justice,
and starting actually further back
with how social work has engaged in environmental justice
more broadly for some time now,
and then I'll turn to solutions and hope,
ideas, examples, inspiration for how each of us
can be these sparks for change.
So taking this fire metaphor of this image
in a different direction as sparks, maybe,
in a movement that actually really believes
that we can indeed achieve climate justice,
and that we can repair and restore ourselves,
really, and this world.
So let's begin.
So the most recent IPCC assessment report,
which has been released in a couple of phases now,
and I'm sure you've been hearing about it on the news,
or maybe have been diving into
some of the headlines of it yourself
was unequivocal in attributing
climate change to human activity.
Hopefully to those of us on this call,
that wasn't a debate to begin with.
But nonetheless, the report in its most recent version
was unequivocal in attributing
climate change to human activity.
And greenhouse gas emissions in our atmosphere
are at unprecedented levels.
So carbon dioxide, in particular,
is at about 419 parts per million today.
And according to NOAA,
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
this is about 25% higher than it was 50 years ago,
and 40% higher than the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Also, unfortunately, globally greenhouse gas emissions
have not yet peaked.
So in 2019, we actually saw 12%,
or we produced, maybe, better way to put it.
We didn't just observe these.
We humans produced 12% more carbon dioxide emissions
than we did in 2010,
and 54% more than we had produced in 1990.
So global greenhouse gas emissions
are still trending upward.
They have not yet peaked.
And so, we know that climate change is here.
Our planet overall has already warmed
on average by about 1.2 degrees Celsius,
or about two degrees Fahrenheit.
And we are currently irrevocably on track for more warming.
With climate change, we have more weather extremes.
We have prolonged drought in some places,
like where I am now, and then more intense rainfall
and catastrophic flooding in others,
like the Southeast where I used to live,
parts of the East Coast.
Speaking only about the United States for the moment.
We know that heat waves, wildfires, coastal sea rise
are all on the rise and increasingly more severe.
And all of these are the dire
environmental consequences of climate change
that we experience every day.
We as people on this planet, we as social workers,
we as members of humanity, and again,
we as one of the 8 million species
who are affected by climate change.
So it's not just us that's affected by climate change.
It's these millions of other species
that are part of our world as well, that are affected.
So for social work,
and also for several of our allied professions,
including public health, psychology,
community development and others,
we know that the consequences of the climate crisis
are vast, unequal, unjust,
and so clearly connected to myriad other
social justice issues that we work on.
So basic access to food and water, food security,
physical health, mental health,
disparities there are exacerbated by climate change,
social connection, financial security
can all be disrupted by climate change,
and in inequitable ways.
Inequitably in terms of who has contributed the least to
the actual consumption and production
of greenhouse gas emissions
being often the most impacted
or the most quote unquote, socially vulnerable
to experiencing the impacts of climate change.
So as some examples of this
during the 1995 heat wave in Chicago, Illinois, for example.
There were many older adults who were on lower incomes
who felt unsafe going outdoors to keep cool.
And instead perished,
died inside their own apartments alone.
Last summer, there was the heat wave
that hit the Pacific Northwest,
which had temperatures 30 degrees higher than average,
and hundreds of people lost their lives.
In coastal Louisiana, for example,
the United Houma Nation is losing their ancestral land
to climate change and sea level rise.
And this has impacts to wellness, to identity,
to sense of place, ties to place.
And we have, at Arizona State,
there's a social work scholar, Dr. Shannon Dorabiliad,
who works with this community and studies this problem,
because she herself is a member of the United Houma Nation
who's affected by this loss of ancestral land.
In the Philippines where my own maternal roots are,
Typhoon Haiyan resulted in 6,000 deaths
with millions of Filipinos,
many of whom were already impoverished,
left without homes, water, food, or sanitation.
So all of these are examples
of how climate change is a threat multiplier.
Sometimes you'll hear that.
It's a threat multiplier.
It takes already existing injustices and inequities,
and then worsens them.
Also climate anxiety, PTSD,
suicidal ideation have all been identified
as mental health impacts of weather extremes
that are climate-change related.
ecoAmerica has its 2021 report out
on mental health and a changing climate,
which is available for download online.
It goes into much more depth
about the mental health impacts of climate change
and what we can do about it.
And we have social work's own Dr. Leah Persha,
who is an editor and contributor on that ecoAmerica report.
In my own prior research from Knoxville, Tennessee,
we did a study with participants
from lower and middle income census tracts
within the city limits.
And over 75% of participants in our study
said that their physical health was affected
by weather extremes, 75%,
and over 50% expressed mental health impacts.
And then another example in Denver,
where I am now, and in so many other cities,
racist redlining policies that were codified 100 years ago
are so clearly connected to climate injustice today.
So red line neighborhoods have experienced
this intentional disinvestment over decades,
and now tend to have less green space, less tree cover.
They tend to be hotspots of urban heat islands,
or they tend to be in higher-risk flood zones
than non-redlined areas.
If you just Google this, Groundwork USA,
their climate safe neighborhoods program,
it's only for 9 or 10 cities.
So it's not for everywhere,
but they have created story maps using ArcGIS
for these 9 or 10 cities
that just paint so clearly the picture
of historic redlining,
and how those red line neighborhoods map so clearly
onto less tree cover,
higher flood risk, higher heat exposure.
So the effects of that persist today.
So, so far I have focused on the problem with examples,
statistics painting the picture of the climate crisis
and how it connects to social issues, social justice,
inequities that we care about as social workers.
It's possible that some on this call,
including myself at this moment,
start to feel overwhelmed or discouraged
that the problem feels too big.
What can I, as one person, do about climate change?
Or it's possible that maybe some of you are thinking,
I've connected the dots.
I see how this is related to social justice,
but is social work even at the table?
What are we doing about it?
And I've provided a few examples of that
just with mentioning different folks
who are engaged in this work.
But the answer to that question of,
is social work at the table is, yes,
our profession is engaged in climate justice,
and going further back in environmental justice.
And any time somebody asks me about that connection,
about why is social work engaged in this?
Or is this a social work issue?
To me, I've always been
more on the macro side of social work anyway.
So the connections are so obvious,
but I think of these as issues
that are really so inextricable from so many other social
and structural problems that we confront.
So how could we not be engaged in climate change?
So a little bit more on that.
So it's already 10 years old,
but it's such a helpful review.
I like to still talk about it.
In their 2012 review, John Coates and Mel Gray
summarized kind of this overview of the environment
and social work was the name of their article.
And they kinda trace, now, 50 years' worth of history,
although at the time,
it was about 40 years' worth of history
of social work engagement with environmental issues,
environmental crises.
So contemporary engagement.
So starting in the 1970s,
when there was some initial writing
by social work academics about this connection
between environmental and social issues.
And then in the late 80s and 90s,
kind of a renewed interest in it,
some broad calls for social work to get involved.
And then in the early 2000s, again,
more calls for new understanding,
but then going a little bit beyond just, let's get involved,
let's do something, actually turning then
to more concrete practice implications.
And since this review 10 years ago,
we've only seen growth in social work scholarship
and teaching and practice in this area, which is exciting.
When I was a PhD student,
I started my PhD in 2008 and graduated in 2013.
And it was hard to find advisors,
mentors who were working in this space.
I still remember it.
I won't name the school, but I still remember
at one of my interviews on the job market that year, 2012,
being asked the question kind of skeptically,
how is the social work?
And I hope that our students,
PhD students who go on the market now
aren't facing that at all, or at least as much.
So some of the examples of this,
which also then therefore provide resources as well
that you may want to look up
if you're not already familiar with some of these,
is that CSWE, hopefully we all know,
has competencies now for environmental justice.
Sometimes I notice that we still talk about this
as if it's new, but it's really, since 2015,
that the environmental justice was added
as a competency by CSWE.
In my experience, I know that schools
are still trying to figure this out,
even though it's seven years later.
CSWE did produce a curricular guide
for environmental justice
that's available for purchase, I believe.
$15, something like that on their website,
which ties each competency to readings,
to classroom activities, pedagogical activities
that schools of social work can use to try to address
the environmental justice competencies in their programs.
We really do see coursework,
faculty field placements on the rise.
At DU, we now have this ecological justice
concentration in the MSW program, which is really exciting.
A lot of schools now have
like an elective course in environmental justice.
And there's a lot of open
syllabus sharing that happens.
I've found that faculty have tended to be pretty generous
in this space with sharing.
In fact, there was somebody who created
a repository for this for folks to access.
And I can try to find out where that was.
I saw Dean Johnson, your eyes light up with that.
So (laughs), yeah.
There's also, if you're not familiar with these,
the International Federation of Social Workers
has three edited volumes
of their sustainability workbooks edited by Dr.,
I believe it's Michaela Rinkel and Dr. Meredith Powers.
And these are free, open-access,
downloadable from IFSW website.
And they are full of case studies, examples,
learning activities from around the world,
not just US at all, but from around the world.
And they're open resource.
Dr. Powers at UNC Greensboro is the one who runs
this EcoSocialWork listserv.
I feel like any time I give a talk, I always mention this.
And then I'm always wondering like,
Dr. Powers must get emails right after.
She's like, what's going on?
Why is it so episodic?
I'll get like 20 emails.
So there's hundreds of subscribers.
Maybe some of you are already on this listserv,
but this is where the call for the syllabi went out,
for example, and folks started sharing together.
And it's not a listserv that's like,
in my experience, overly active.
So if you join,
you won't get too, too many new emails,
but you will periodically get some new things there.
And then we have, of course,
one of the 13 Grand Challenges for social work
is in the environmental space.
It's create social responses to a changing environment.
And I co-led this grand challenge for five years,
I recently stepped away
because of some upcoming administrative changes.
I'm gonna serve as associate dean for academic affairs here
starting this summer, so I needed to make some choices,
but during the time that I was a co-lead,
we really worked on attracting
and supporting more social work scholars
and educators in this space,
providing mentoring opportunities for students.
We organized a three-part environmental
and racial justice webinar series,
which has had over 7,000 views across the three videos.
And we have responded to calls from NASW and others
to weigh in on policy proposals and advocacy opportunities,
'cause NASW has also been,
especially at the nexus of mental health on climate,
been working on advocacy at the federal level.
So social work practice at this nexus.
I know that we love
and say that we don't love the micro to macro spectrum,
'cause there's so much overlap.
Any of us who practice social work know
that you really are integrating skills all the time,
but maybe we think of this as the majority of your work,
but so, in direct clinical practice, not my forte,
but we see this showing up in therapy, for example,
where people may have eco grief,
they may have climate anxiety.
There's an MSW student who reached out
because somebody was presenting with,
was hoarding in relation to fear about climate change.
And then of course,
which this social work has a long history of intervening,
and there's disaster related mental health,
both acute trauma post-disaster,
and long-term mental health and PTSD from disaster.
There's also social workers engaged at that mezzo level
with program development and community organizing,
working on local food systems, food sovereignty,
which actually serves as both mitigation
and adaptation to climate change.
So both reducing those greenhouse gas emissions,
mitigation, and adapting, coping,
preparing by supporting local food systems.
There's folks working at the nexus of heat and homelessness,
because people experiencing homelessness in our community,
in many communities, when heat waves are on the rise,
it's just another, again, kind of threat multiplier
for health and wellbeing
for people who are literally exposed to the elements
and exposed to heat every day.
We have social workers working on energy poverty,
working on weatherization of homes,
which is, again, another one
that's both mitigation and adaptation.
And then in the realm of policy practice,
I'll give my example that Dean Johnson mentioned of,
well, the Sustainability Advisory Council that I sit on,
it's for the CASR office here,
which is the new office in Denver
at the city and county level
for climate adaptation, sustainability, and resilience.
And CASR, we have here in Denver just as of two years ago,
it's one of only a couple in the country, I believe,
a tax-payer-funded climate protection fund.
And this fund generates about $40 million a year.
And the funds are earmarked for one of six allowable uses
for related to climate change.
So job creation, renewable energy,
neighborhood environmental justice,
adaptation, and resiliency,
transportation and energy efficiency.
And the local policy that was passed had, I forget,
I wanna say it was maybe 2/3 of support in Denver,
but I need to look up how many,
the percentage that voted yes for this,
but it had strong language
and a strong emphasis on, was said at least 50%,
I believe, of the funding was supposed to be directed
specifically towards equity and racial and social justice.
So investments in that.
So I offer that as an example,
if it's something that cities,
communities that you're in may want to look up
and learn about that policy process
of getting it passed and what that office is doing.
And then another one,
more at the federal policy practice level.
We have another social worker, Thomas Bain,
who works with Health and Human Service's
new Office of Climate Change and Health Equity.
And Thomas' work is in support
of decarbonizing the healthcare sector,
building its resiliency,
and supporting community outreach on climate equity.
And then COP26.
We've had social workers in attendance
and advocating and engaged
in policy discussions at the COP meetings.
Dr. Lena Dominelli, Dr. Praveen Kumar are two of,
I'm sure, others who I know have attended
and engaged at that level.
So lots of examples, I think.
Sometimes it feels small because social workers,
we try to work on so, so many different things,
but when I love look back and think about the growth
in this area of climate change
and climate-related social work,
there's just been a lot of growth and it's so needed.
So a lot of that has been,
what have we been doing or what are we doing now?
And what I'd like to offer are some thoughts on,
what can we do going forward?
What can each of us do,
whether it's kind of in our more personal time
or in professional roles or settings that we are engaged in?
So I'll offer four.
Find hope, connect the dots,
talk about it, and take action.
So first, finding hope.
I start with this because I do really
think it's so important.
The climate crisis can feel so daunting.
Many of us experience grief or loss
or anxiety about the larger issue,
or maybe because we ourselves
or our communities are personally impacted
by the climate crisis.
And so, I start with find hope
because I think it's important that we have those feelings.
We're not about denying them,
but how do we also not stay stuck, but keep moving forward?
And so, for me, so I offer for you, I guess,
two of the touchstones for me for finding hope,
which are these two books, "The Future We Choose",
which is by Christiano Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac,
who are two of the architects of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
And "We Do This 'Til We Free Us", by Mariame Kaba.
And so, I pose, I guess,
which is one of the things that Figueres
and Rivett-Carnac write about in their book,
can we intentionally cultivate mindsets
of what they call stubborn optimism
and radical regeneration to carry us forward with this work?
There's a third mindset they talk about,
but those are the two that I put here in my notes,
stubborn optimism and radical regeneration.
Or drawing from Mariame Kaba's work,
which is specific to abolition,
but oh so relevant to this work as well.
Mariame Kaba writes,
changing everything might sound daunting,
but it also means there are many places to start,
infinite opportunities to collaborate,
and endless imaginative interventions
and experiments to create.
So this idea of, yes,
there's so much to do to build the world
that we want to radically imagine.
So let's start building it
one sustainable brick at a time
is what I take from it.
Another quote, another touchstone
that might speak to some folks is from a youth activist
from East Michigan, Aqelah Amani Amatullah Miyzaan.
Everybody knows the system's jacked up,
but if we don't fight to change it, what's going to happen?
It's going to stay the same?
So I feel like as long as we're fighting,
we're already winning.
So again, this idea of, here we are,
what's one thing to do?
One thing you can do?
Connecting the dots.
Hopefully, I guess, looking back with the examples
I've used, hopefully the dots are connected,
but sometimes I do find
that we do still have to connect these dots for folks,
for other social workers,
for other disciplines, other professions.
I don't know if this happens to any of you,
but it still happens to me,
that my bio's right there.
I've just introduced myself,
and then somebody will still say I'm a sociologist.
And none of my degrees are in sociology.
So I'm forever an advocate
for speaking about the social work profession
and what we bring.
And then also, within our profession, connecting the dots.
So here, what I have for you is the 13 Grand Challenges,
just as one example, the one that climate change
you could say falls most squarely under
is this create social responses.
But hopefully each of you,
if we were to open this up,
would identify already ways that these intersect,
and not just two at a time,
but three or four at a time where this nexus is.
And so, I also think that,
while I'm very excited that we have more social workers
who want to, we don't have a name for it yet.
And then people are starting to debate
what the name should be.
Is it green social worker,
environmental social worker, climate social worker?
I get less caught up in the names and am more about,
let's just do the work.
So while I'm excited that we have more folks
who want to specialize in this,
I'm equally excited about just the connecting of the dots,
and that I don't want social workers to feel like,
well, I'm not a climate expert.
I don't know the science.
That wasn't my training.
And so, I can't engage in this,
because there's so much overlap.
So looking at this list, just to pick one,
advancing long and productive lives and climate change.
So many connections here in terms of aging
and physical vulnerability, perhaps,
with heat, with cold, with impacts,
and there's wildfires and air pollution,
and that impacts respiratory health impacts.
But then also, on more of the assets,
the strengths, the resilience side,
there are some communities that are doing
climate adaptation, like neighborhood-based
climate adaptation planning,
and kind of like in the disaster preparation area,
and are tapping into older adults
and their wisdom about weathering disasters
all these years and weathering change.
And also, if they are ones who are connected
in their communities and know everybody else,
there's somebody in my neighborhood who plays this role,
who's like in the know about everything.
And so, who are these connectors
for when there is disaster crisis in a neighborhood,
how to get the message out,
how to let people know what resources are available.
So just one example there of connecting these dots
across these Grand Challenges.
Another way to think about it, of course, too,
is in terms of NASW's specialty practice sections.
And there isn't one on climate or environment.
And there have been times when I've thought,
should I make that part of my job
to advocate to NASW
that we should have as specialty practice area?
Or is the work, again, kind of about,
pick alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs?
How could we think about
how that might be connected to climate change?
It's outside of my area, so I don't know.
I would welcome conversation with than of you
who might be experts on this in the call.
And we could talk together about what is the interface here,
and how might we bring climate change or weather,
a way to think about it too,
is weather extreme related knowledge,
and how that might connect
to this area of social work practice.
So always thinking about connecting the dots.
And then I have to try to keep my poker face.
Sometimes I'm better about it than others
when people ask the inevitable question of,
how is this social work again?
I think it depends on my mood in that moment,
how I handle that question.
Talk about it.
That's my third one.
And I really borrow this inspiration from Katharine Hayhoe.
Not sure if folks are familiar with her work.
So Dr. Hayhoe is a climate scientist out of Texas.
She's also an evangelical Christian,
and she has made it her mission to get people,
one of her missions to get people
talking about climate change as a way to make a difference,
because the more people talk about it,
the more chance that they might find common ground,
shared values, public support for the changes,
the policy changes that we need.
So Katharine Hayhoe has a great TED Talk that's,
I forget how many years old now,
about this, but it's called, I think it's called,
"The One Thing We Can All Do About Climate Change".
And then the Yale Program on Climate Communication
does a lot of great research
about how to talk about climate change.
These are just some interesting stats to sit with.
In some of their research,
they find that one in three people
are very worried about global warming,
and 7 in 10 say it's extremely,
very, or somewhat important to them,
but then 6 in 10, rarely or never talk about it
with family or friends.
In ecoAmerica's report,
they also cite some statistics about this disconnect,
where people, more people are concerned
about climate change than I think the news media
tends to paint the picture,
that it's this extremely bipartisan issue,
but that more people are concerned about it,
but yet think that other people aren't as concerned about.
So there's a disconnect there.
So there's opportunities to, even after this talk,
how do each of us keep up the conversation
about climate change?
And as we do that, everybody has their advice
about how to approach these conversations,
kind of gathering from the Figueres' book,
Frameworks Institute, which I like their work a lot,
and Katharine Hayhoe's work.
For some people, the facts and statistics
just aren't gonna work.
But what could work is the sincere,
a lot of this should speak to social workers,
the sincere listening, asking questions,
being curious, trying to understand
where somebody else is coming from, finding shared values,
finding one piece of common ground in conversation.
And knowing that that one conversation,
let's say, you're talking with somebody who,
I guess an easy one to pick is like,
who is a climate skeptic?
Maybe your goal in that conversation
isn't to convince them about the science of climate change,
but to plant that seed, to have a conversation,
maybe it leads to another conversation down the road.
And then the importance of experimenting with frames.
So the Yale Program has some interesting
research about this around,
one of their examples is methane or natural gas.
So natural gas is composed of 70 to 90% methane.
Yet when you ask the American public
about how do they feel about natural gas,
76% of the American public is favorable to natural gas.
Whereas when you ask the public about coal,
for example, only 39% is favorable.
And then the public tends to associate with natural gas
words like energy and clean and cooking,
but then they tend to associate with methane
words like greenhouse, global warming, and climate change,
and yet natural gas, methane, practically the same thing.
So the importance of words and frames and they matter.
And also just like crisis or solution framing.
So with this talk, at the beginning of the talk,
more focused on the problem, there's more crisis framing,
which can often, I think,
lead to these feelings of being discouraged or daunted.
But at this point in the talk,
we're on to the solution framing part,
which hopefully feels more inspiring and actionable.
And the Frameworks Institute has some research
on this difference between crisis framing
and solution framing,
and how solutions framing is more effective
in moving people towards action.
So, taking action.
So we've talked about finding hope,
connecting the dots, talking about it.
And so now, taking action.
In your own organization,
what kinds of actions can you take or have you taken?
And this could be your university,
your school within the university, your field site,
your employer, or a community group that you're a part of.
Maybe you can first just, if it's not already happening,
be the one who brings the climate crisis
and climate justice knowledge
or concerns into your organization,
because again, where social workers are practicing,
there's this role for social workers to go on
and work in climate and environmental-focused organizations.
And I think there's a huge opportunity
for social social workers who are in practice,
and for students who are in field placements
that aren't climate or environmental organizations
to bring these connections to these other organizations.
And to then, for example, identify possible overlaps
with the organization's existing mission and vision,
thinking of all those ways
that we connected the dots earlier,
and then generating ideas,
one idea for what the organization might do at this nexus.
At the bottom of these next few slides in blue,
what's there are just a few of the social work skills
that I think just go so well
with each of these areas of intervention.
So with organizational change,
we're looking at social work skills of assessment,
of planning, of doing trainings and workshops,
of being creative,
which is one thing I love about my job,
being creative and being a program developer.
I think I'm like a perennial program developer,
even as an academic.
So there's that.
In your local community.
And again, whether this is in a formal role,
like employment or field role that you have,
or it's as a volunteer,
or somebody who shows up to public meetings
of your city council or whatever it might be.
Most cities and counties, many now have climate adaptation,
or at least they have emergency management plans,
because having an emergency management plan
is required for later FEMA eligibility in times of disaster,
but many have now developed climate adaptation plans.
And one thing though,
this social worker really can bring to this
is a deeper assessment of equity.
And then the speaking up part,
if you find that attention to equity is lacking,
because I think many of us find now
that equity has become such a buzzword
that people just say that they've attended to it.
But what does that really mean?
And so, not being hesitant to, I really think this is not,
can't be overstated enough,
the role that social workers can have,
and always being that voice around racial
and social justice in planning efforts
like the city council meetings,
commissioner meetings, things like that.
So other ways to engage in your local community.
The possibilities are endless.
So my message is like, pick one, pick one.
Maybe it's working for equitable access
to urban green space, or to clean an affordable transit,
or to the development of those local food systems.
Maybe you are a medical social worker,
you work in health social work,
or you work in mental health.
Expanding access to physical and mental health care
is climate adaptation.
Whether you frame it that way or not,
it's needed for climate adaptation,
and it's needed before crisis or disaster occurs.
So anything that can be done
around improving access to insurance, to care,
those are all also forms of climate adaptation.
And then maybe you're a social worker
who works with a particular population.
So thinking about maybe it's be people who are homeless,
people with lower incomes,
people who work outside or are employed seasonally,
thinking about extreme weather and their unique needs,
and identifying what could be improved there.
So some of our skills here we bring
are around community engagement, collaboration,
and that local-level advocacy and local lobbying.
So almost to the end here.
Taking action at the state or federal level for policy,
I mentioned NASW has been doing some advocacy work
around mental health and climate change,
and I'm hoping that that will continue
with other connections to climate change as well.
CRISP, the Congressional Research
Institute for Social Policy,
I'd love to see more partnering there on climate justice.
The NAACP has an Environmental and Climate Justice Program
for a long time, actually, which just as an aside,
I moderated a panel earlier this morning,
and one of the panelists was Jackie Patterson.
Not sure folks here are familiar with Jackie's work,
but Jackie recently founded the Chisholm Legacy Project.
But prior to that, Jackie was the head of NAACP's
Environmental and Climate Justice Program for 10 years.
And Jackie, I'd learned in preparing for the panel,
has an MSW from University of Maryland.
And I was so excited to learn that.
I followed Jackie's work for a long time,
but hadn't found out that she actually
had a social work background.
So that was exciting.
So, okay.
So got a little distracted there,
but so, advocating at the state or federal level,
I put this in parentheses.
So advocating for socially just
and equitable environmental or climate policies.
And I put them in quotes because,
again, hopefully the way the dots are connected
was before, or is now obvious.
So if you're advocating around, boy in Colorado,
we have terrible air pollution problems
in Denver and in Colorado.
It's partially geographic,
but it's also partially very much transit,
transportation, other things.
But so, if you're advocating around air pollution policies,
and we think of that as an environmental policy,
it is very much social justice advocacy as well.
So that brings me to this third point,
which is looking for these overlaps.
Again, if you're advocating for policies on paid leave,
for example, that relates to climate change.
It relates to climate adaptation,
because what's an example?
My daughter's school closed
for a day or two in the fall
because of extreme heat,
and the school doesn't have air conditioning, right?
I'm in a job where I have a lot of autonomy, flexibility.
Also, she's 14.
She didn't need me to be home,
but if she had been younger
and I had been in a different kind of job
where I couldn't, I'm at risk of lose my job
because my kiddo's now home.
And I don't show up to a paid leave policy
matters for climate change,
because kids may not be in school
because of weather extremes.
So again, these intersections
where we are advocating for policies
that are meeting both climate justice needs
and other issues that social workers
would already be working on.
And then, joining.
I know it's more work, but being a voice for equity,
for racial and social justice around climate change
on these commissions or committees
at the state or federal level is needed.
We have this very recent article
in the Journal of Policy Practice and Research
that just came out where we did a policy mapping
at the federal level of congressional proposals
at the nexus of climate change and social justice.
And these are proposals.
They haven't necessarily been passed.
So one of the things we found is that
very few indeed have been passed, no surprise,
but the number of proposals at the federal level
at this nexus really did jump from the 115th
to the 116th Congress, which we expected
because we saw greater growth in the diversity of Congress,
especially by race and gender.
But one of the things we also talked about in the paper,
and I hope it's not too naive, but I do believe it is,
is that bipartisan support
actually is still possible on this.
An example is that there is now
a Conservative Climate Caucus
that formed in the US Congress.
I think in the paper,
I link to the New York Times article
that described some of the history of this caucus.
It formed last summer, summer of 2021,
the Conservative Climate Caucus,
and the organizer of the caucus
first was organizing it as clandestine meeting.
So like a meeting in secret,
because conservative members talking about climate change,
a little bit concerned about that.
But then there was so much interest
from conservative members of Congress
that then it got hosted in the ballroom of a hotel
or something like that.
So my point being that I don't want folks
to give up hope anyway, that action at the federal level
and bipartisan action isn't at all possible.
And so, we shouldn't be doing any work there at all.
When I teach policy practice,
I'm always talking about how we need people at all,
kind of at all points of policy change and policy practice,
from social workers who are in the think tanks
and doing the policy analysis,
and writing the papers around it,
to the grassroots organizing folks,
getting people out to vote,
to the more radical and critical social workers
who are on the front lines,
really pursuing more radically imaginative worlds,
and to the folks who are working
at the federal level on Capitol Hill
or in state legislatures, trying to get policy passed.
And of course, I'm a huge advocate
for social workers running for office themselves.
So on that note, my final slide,
we come back to this image, which now is,
kind of, I said it at the beginning too,
but somebody lighting this spark for change.
And so, my hope is that all of us will become
or continue to be these sparks for change
for climate justice, whether that's just in our home
as a starting point as our personal lives
or in our communities with our neighbors,
in our universities, our field placements,
our places of work, society at large.
And please remember, I really do mean this,
that you don't need to do it all.
In fact, you can't.
No one of us will ever solve the climate crisis
in one fell swoop.
We need to mitigate it.
We need to urgently draw down greenhouse gas emissions.
And we need to adapt.
We need to help people prepare for
and cope with these disproportionate
and unfair impacts that are already happening.
And this work takes many, many people,
many players pursuing action.
There's another touchstone of mine that I like to share,
which is a Jewish teaching that I always come back to,
which is that, though you may not finish
the work of perfecting the world in this lifetime,
neither are you free to desist from it.
So onward together, connecting the dots,
taking action for climate justice and social change.
Thank you.