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.