Issue: Environmental/Climate Justice

YPCCC’s Partnerships Program grows the capacity of the climate movement to conduct strategic communication campaigns and transformational organizing. Over the years, organizations (both big and small) across the climate movement have used our tools and advice to develop effective tactics and winning strategies. This webinar highlighted some of these case studies and explored the major lessons learned for strategic decision making, message testing, recruitment, and advocacy. Through an interactive break-out session, they explored how our tools and data can best serve your specific organizational and campaign goals.             

Youth and young adult climate advocates can help motivate others to organize. Younger generations have the most to lose from climate change, and most Gen Z youth are concerned about climate change. Yet, often young people are left with the impression that their peers and public figures do not care. Even still, there is a lack of diversity in the public messaging around climate change, which includes a lack diversity of generational views. Virgin Media O2 and Global Action Plan have put together a short report highlighting some potential actions that advocates could use to encourage and increase youth participation. Advocates interested in increasing younger participation or interest should continue considering their messaging in terms of social and racial diversity, but also in terms of generational diversity.

When communicating about science, prioritize inclusion, equity, and intersectionality. Communicating science can be hard, and in particular it can be hard to communicate in an inclusive, respectful way that incorporates diverse perspectives and backgrounds. Inclusive science communication works to encourage folks to acknowledge systemic inequities and personal biases, while increase diverse and collaborative participation in and quality of STEMM (science, technology, meth and medicine) research. In this starter kit, you’ll find the key traits of inclusive science communication (intentionality, reciprocity, and reflexivity), as well as tools in how to incorporate those traits into your own work.

California and the US are increasingly beset by climate-fueled disasters like wildfires, extreme heat, and power blackouts. These events put additional stress on frayed hard and social infrastructure systems, and disproportionately impact working-class communities of color. To adapt to these changes, society must update our notion of disaster response to increase resilience in these systems before disasters strike. This report offers two models for this response: 1) building and normalizing resilience hubs where community members gather and organize both in good times and bad, and 2) increasing in-home resilience by recognizing homecare workers as effective agents for assisting vulnerable populations and bridging authorities and the frontlines. The report goes on to recommend specific ways to set up resilience hubs, train care workers, and develop forward-thinking emergency response plans to avert human disasters after natural disasters.

This report looks at the intersection of pollution from refining and burning fossil fuels, repiratory diseases caused or exacerbated by this pollution, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and race and racial inequality in the United States. It makes the case that the CARES Act constitutes a bailout of the dirty energy sector that spent more to prop-up the fossil fuel industry than it did on health care supplies and investments, even as this industry contributes to the adverse health outcomes from the COVID-19 pandemic in communities of color. The report’s key findings also link large financial sector players like big banks, asset management companies, private equity and insurance companies to the chain of carbon and chemical emissions that have disproprotionately negative impacts on communities of color and low-income communities.            

The first chapter of the Washington State Environmental Justice Task Force (EJTF)’s Fall 2020 report provides context for what environmental justice (EJ) is, how to build on existing EJ work in Washington, and why state government must prioritize addressing EJ issues and environmental health disparities. The second chapter focuses on the EJTF’s process for developing recommendations, a statewide EJ definition, and EJ principles. The final chapter of the report includes all EJTF recommendations. The report appendices include additional resources, including guidance developed by the EJTF’s Community Engagement Subcommittee for how state agencies can develop their own community engagement plans.