Hello, everybody. Welcome. We're going to get started
with our program. My name is Lauren Silver,
and I am the vice president of education
at the Commonwealth Club of California. And I am very happy to welcome
you all here tonight. This is our Fall 2023 program
and our creating Citizens Speaker series at UC Berkeley,
which is a collaboration with the Assisi Vote Coalition
and was launched together in 2022. So, yes, absolutely fantastic partnership. So how many of you are familiar
with the Common
wealth Club? Wow. All right. That's good. That's a few. For those of you who are not familiar
with the Commonwealth Club, we are the oldest and largest nonpartisan
public affairs forum in the U.S. and we're located in San Francisco. Every year, we host hundreds of programs
with leaders and influencers in conversation about diverse topics,
ranging from politics to education to climate to social justice, entertainment culture,
including pop culture and more. Just this month, the Commonwealth Club
merged
with another incredible organization, the World Affairs
Council of Northern California, which broadens our global horizons and adds new programs for you to explore. So with this change,
we are now known as Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California. Creating Citizens is the Commonwealth Club
World Affairs Civics Education
Initiative Building on Foundation values of civility, mutual respect across divides and informed civic action. Creating citizens engages youth and adults in meaningfu
l civil dialog
about contemporary issues so that we can all be active, informed participants in our democracy. We are grateful to the correct foundation
for their generous support of creating citizens
and for their dedication to improving the quality of civics education
in California and beyond. So I have a couple of reminders
for everybody before we get started. We are recording this program
for audio and video. So please take a moment to silence
any phones or watches or other devices that you
might have with
you that could make a noise. We also encourage you
to ask questions of our speakers tonight. You can do this
by writing your question on the card that's in front of your seat
and hold it up for us to come get to you. Come get it from you. And please write clearly. We will also remind you during the program
that it's okay to ask questions. And now I'm very happy to introduce to you Ava Escobedo. Ava is a second year student studying history
with a minor in Global Studies. She's pa
ssionate
about the political relevance of history and hopes that by understanding history
from new perspectives, young people will be more civically engaged and better
equipped members of our society. During her freshman year, Ava
worked as an intern for the As You See Vote Coalition,
and she was able to see the execution of previous creating citizens
speaker programs and to take part in the amazing dialog that was created
through these conversations. She now serves as the Deputy director
of pro
grams for Voco, where she gets the opportunity to plan
events like this one. It has been my privilege
to work with Ava on today's program, so please join me in welcoming Ava,
who will introduce our moderator. Thank you, Lauren, and thank you to the Creating
Citizens Club, Recruiting Citizens and Commonwealth Club World Affairs
of California for your partnership. On today's program. So my name is Ava Escobedo,
and as mentioned, I am the deputy. Director. Of programs
for the As You See Vote Coalit
ion. We are so deeply grateful
to the Commonwealth Club world affairs of California
for their endless support on this program and their dedication to uplifting
youth voices and civic engagement. This program began as a late night idea
by our current. EVP. Alex Edgar, and I'm so honored
to be able to carry out this speaker series and to have planned the fourth
installment of this event. Our moderator today is Valeria Espino. Valeria is a first generation,
third year student at UC Berkeley, double
majoring in society, environment
and environmental economics and policy. Her academic niche follows
at the intersection of environmental, public health and law. She is especially intrigued by topics
such as data analysis, sustainable design, public policy,
immigration and global production systems. Currently, Valeria is a research fellow
for Latin X in the environment and serves as the Environmental Justice
and Climate Change Policy lead in the Office of the External Affairs
Vice President. Val
eria also involves herself
with the students of Color Environmental Collective,
which. Aims to hold. Space for environmentalists of color. So at this time, I'd love to welcome Valeria
and the rest of our speakers to the stage. Thank you all for coming. Thank you to the panelists and Lauren
and Eva for planning this event. I hope you all are excited about learning
about the environmentalist movements of the engagement. I'd like to introduce our panelists
for the evening to be in. We have Abigail
Dillon. RB She is the president of Earth Justice,
which represents more than 500 clients free of charge, harnessing the power
of law to force climate solutions while protecting healthy communities
and ecosystems. Firm Dollar Founder is a proud
first generation college graduate and daughter of law refugees. She is an aspiring pleasure activists
and environmental educator who centers her work and vision
with values of love and joy. Sharon has served as the director
of the Student Environmental Res
ource Center
at UC Berkeley since 2017. Prior to this position,
Sharon worked as a TGIF and Sustainability Initiatives coordinator
and as a senior military strategist at the San Francisco State
University from 2014 to 2021, she was a board member for the Food
Empowerment Project, a vegan food justice organization where she helped
launch launched Vegan love Food. Sharon holds a B.A. in environmental studies
from San Francisco State University and is a certified zero
waste community associate and
holds a certificate in fundraising
and volunteer management from UC Berkeley. Extension. Dan Common is a James and Lauren World
distinguished professor of Sustainability with a parallel appointments in the Energy
and Resources group the Goldman School of Public Policy and his
and the Department of Nuclear Energy. His work is focused on decarbonization,
energy access and climate justice. He has served as the senior advisor
for the energy and Innovation at the U.S. Agency for International Develop
ment
as a coordinating lead author for the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and is a co-chair for the UC Berkeley Roundtable
on Climate Change, Environmental Justice and 2000 and Comment was appointed
as the first Environmental and Climate Partnership
for the American Fellows by the Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton. I'm sorry,
and he has served as a science envoy for the Secretary of State of State, John
Kerry in 2016 to 2017. Shereen Mishra is a senior at UC Be
rkeley
majoring in conservation and resource studies. She's spent her undergraduate degree
working to decarbonize UC Berkeley's energy system. First as an activist
and now as a Clean Energy Campus fellow in the UC
Berkeley office of Sustainability, She serves as a Berkeley student government environmental representative,
better known as the Eco Senator. Please help me
welcome our panelists for today. Okay. First, I just want to thank you all for taking the time out of your schedule
to come talk
to us tonight. I want to ask you all
now the first question, How have each of your backgrounds shapes
your desire to be advocates for the environment? And how did you become involved
in doing work that you were doing? If anyone wants to become. Sure. Happy to start. I don't. I would not be where I am today if it wasn't for finding activism
and organizing in my life. I remember being in high school,
dealing with all sorts of high school things and almost on the verge of actually
being a high scho
ol dropout, having a really bad counselor, telling me
I was not going to amount to anything. And I, you know, actually graduated
from a continuation high school, really honored to be have had that opportunity
in that ounce of hope and really found that through
when I first went veganism or went vegan and saw exploitation of things
that I was trying to make sense of, that led me to the path of knowing
that I wanted to pursue something, that I wanted to go
and get involved in something much more,
that there was a future
for me to do something. I luckily was able to find some mentors who helped me understand
veganism as an intersectional as an intersectional movement,
and that helped me kind of see the connections
between environmental issues, between between farmworker
justice, between, you know, health and other environmental racism,
things that come up within the animal agriculture industry
and felt like the environment was another calling
that I really wanted to pursue that was also a
round the time of the
significant BP BP oil spills. And I felt really called to
what was happening on the the Gulf Coast. And so when I was in community college,
I was applying to different schools and found that San Francisco State had environmental studies program
that I really wanted to pursue. And then when I got to Environment,
when I got to S.F. State as a transfer student,
I stuck around for three years because I got heavily involved
in environmental activism on campus. Really found diffe
rent issues
that I was really excited to work on, issues such as trying to divest
fossil fuels from our campus. We and my friends were the ones to help divest
fossil fuels from San Francisco State, and we're the first public,
you know, very city to do so. And I also pursued other campaigns
like trying to invest in financial security
for sustainability projects to create one and to create a green fund similar
to what UC Berkeley had has here. We never got a pass,
but I found my way to UC Berkeley
being so inspired by the work
that student activists were doing here and got to pursue a full time job
getting to oversee the program that I was so in love
with as a student activist. And so getting to work day to day
with students who share similar values, who really see
a future of climate justice, see a future of climate justice,
also meaning pro affordable housing, LGBTQ rights,
and having very intersectional approaches to where they see
climate justice is so motivating. And I feel like I o
we everything
to my younger self of, you know, pursuing activism, organizing
to get to where I'm at now. And every day I feel really privilege
and honored and inspired by the students I get to work at every day to know
that we're together. Co-creating a more just future. You know, that's really interesting
how you brought that up then. So I trained in school as a physicist,
and I didn't have the language about environmentalism
when I was an undergraduate. I went to grad school
and was in physics
and astrophysics because I planned to be an astronaut
until I failed the vision test at Houston. But I read an advertisement in a magazine
about a Berkeley based nonprofit group that send technical people
to send engineers to Nicaragua to work for the Marxist
the Sandinista government when the U.S. was was embargo in the country. So I worked a couple years for this group
technical for the Nicaraguan government. And during that time, I transitioned
from being a grad student to a postdoc down at
Caltech and accidentally found
this whole area of kind of energy. And we didn't have the justice language
either then. But now at Berkeley,
with amazing students and colleagues, I get to co-chair
this roundtable on Environmental Justice. And then the last thing that kind of keeps
me kind of refreshed is that I go back and forth
in and out of federal service. So I've served in the Obama administration
until I resigned when there was an election and just
came out of the Biden administration and ha
ve gotten to work
with amazing colleagues overseas. I work mainly in East
Africa and Southeast Asia today, but that back and forth allows us
to keep our research projects exciting, but also to find a way
to keep making sure that the things we do
have at least some level of impact. And I guess a bad fact is that I've now
been to 19 of these COP meetings and you would hope that we wouldn't need
19 meetings to transition to clean energy. But we seem to be going strong on
meetings, not going so stro
ng on action. So. Yeah, so I do not have backgrounds
that look like this just yet. Maybe one day, but I kind of came into UC Berkeley
as an economics student. That's one of my favorite stories to tell. So if you know it already, there's that I came in and econ student I didn't really like science
in high school. I was very determined
not to pursue anything science related, and I took a climate science class here
to fulfill a UC Berkeley requirement and then kind of just fell into it,
which I thi
nk corresponds to a lot of people's stories. When I look back, though,
it's kind of unsurprising that I chose to continue to work
as an environmental advocate because my parents are first
generation immigrants and we own farm land
for subsistence based agriculture. So I spent a lot of summers
actually working in the fields, just picking up things as a kid,
just running around, helping make sure the plants were watered
and everything. But we've gotten to see over the past
30, 40 years just how, y
ou know,
precipitation patterns have changed and there's been changes in terms of what
what's able to grow and what's not able to grow. So having experienced that firsthand
and seen how certain members of my family are struggling because of that definitely
made me more interested in agriculture. And then like share. And I got to learn there's so many
different aspects to environmentalism. So I had the opportunity
to get involved with U.S. Green New Deal here, and just a lot of different events
l
ed to me getting more and more involved. Think again. A lot of people here can agree
with when you get started, you kind of just fall in
and then you end up where you end up. And very grateful to be here to talk about
just environmentalism from a college student perspective
and excited to start my journey. I mean. It's wonderful. It's just so great
to be in all of your company and thank you for having all of us in this conversation. And what I'm
struck by the commonalities are when you open the
door
and to environmental advocacy of any kind, they're more and more doors. You'll you'll never come out because there's so much to do
and there's so much to care about. I my door was coming here to law school
and I had some great professors and just was excited
by the idea that you could take smart policy to address really daunting systems
problems and put it in the form of law and in a rule of law country,
or at least what seemed so to me then be able to to really change things. And, you know
, acid rain was a major issue that we were able to tackle
with a smart law that Congress passed and people enforced
and governments enforced. And so I spent my second
summer in law school in Montana working for Earth Justice,
where I still work now. And that was the moment where I realized
the laws don't execute themselves. A small group of people can bring the U.S. federal government to the table,
can bring multinational corporations to the table,
and the law is never enough by itself. You have
to organize political majorities to be able to have great laws
and ensure that they're enforced. But it is itself, you know, standing alone can create an important impact,
but it is itself an organizing tool. It can be that lever of power that brings people together
to win an important issue and and keep building a momentum to
to win the next and the next. And so that's
that's how I find myself here today. Thank you. All. It's really interesting to see
how different environments, communities ha
ve led you to this point
in time at our speaker series. Now, I'd like to move on to
individual questions, if that's all right. The first question will be to ask you
as a Gen-z student, what do you think Gen Z can specifically bring to the table
in this fight for environmental justice? And how do you think Gen Z can impact
future elections? Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you. I looked at Gen Z is 1997 to 2012. That means a lot of us are coming into
voting age if we haven't already. And I th
ink it's really going to make
a big difference in elections overall. Just as we come into as you mentioned, Dan, there wasn't
a lot of environmental justice, language or definition ones during
maybe when you were in school. We have a lot more conversations about it
now, at least in the communities that I am a part of. Obviously, there is a lot of work
to be done educationally from in like higher
educational institutions and then building down from there into high schools
and elementary schools a
nd middle schools. But just having
I think a big advantage that we have is the fact that we're already having
these conversations at a very young age and there's a lot of a sense of power
and hope that comes from it and acknowledging
that the impacts of environment of environmental issues
are disproportionate. And, you know, they impact certain
communities more than they do others. And being able to recognize that, oh,
I can help support this community in this way,
or this is where I need to be
able to divert my efforts
instead of viewing it as a, oh, I have to solve the entire climate crisis
or environmental crisis on my own. And I think coming in
with that perspective just as someone from Gen Z and talking to
a lot of people is very inspiring. It's it helps keep me going, focusing on that local change
on communities that I can help and how we can work to continue holding those conversations
that hopefully do translate into action. And I think again,
voting is a very powerful tool sho
wing up, like you said, in big majorities
to support parties, to support people in power who do you know, represent those issues. And voting
seems to be like one of the easiest ways and yet one of the most powerful ways
to do it. And I'm very excited to see
what my generation gets to do with that. Yeah, I don't know about you all,
but I'm very excited to be able to vote in next year's election. Missed the last year by one year.
Unfortunately. But yeah, I think it's really interesting
how you bri
ng up the climate crisis in that we're very ambitious
and want to solve everything at once when instead we should take a step back
and work with our local community members. And I think it's really empowering
what she said about that. And then the second question
is going to go to Daniel. As a professor
in the Goldman School of Public Policy, CNR Energy and Resources Group
and as an environmental advocate, do you and how do you encourage
or influence your students to be environment
educated and
environmental activists who. Well, so I'm really fortunate. In fact, I moved from being a professor
at Princeton to here specifically because Berkeley is such a hotbed of
students who take charge and need less direction and need more support
in terms of making this happen. So my primary group
is actually a graduate unit, although I see several undergrads
from my mixed undergrad grad class called Energy and Society
that I have a lot of faith in and a lot of just being impressed
about what they're
doing. So what I find I mainly do
is look at projects that I think have enough science to keep me excited
about the scientific component but have a path to impact. And that's
why going in and out of federal service or working for governor here and others
are sort of part of things we do. But mainly it's to open pathways
for students to do those things. And I mean, I have a student
who's the vice president of Pacific Gas and Electric. Another one of my students
drafted a lot of the material that
Presidents Biden
and she talked about today with the so so-called Sunnylands
not chosen randomly as a place to meet. The accord that they brought out. And so finding ways to empower them is,
I think, the most exciting thing. And sometimes it's connections
and kind of we used to call it a Rolodex. Now I guess you call it
a, but it's finding those connections that allow them to do what they say
they want to do but may not always know. Do I need to learn more material science? Do I need
a need to
learn more environmental law? We all need to learn
more environmental justice. And so finding ways
to build those connections so they can go off and do these amazing
things, writing laws or leading protests. My daughter,
I believe, is being arrested in L.A. at a protest today over the Israeli invasion of Gaza. And so there was a number of places
where you find you can support. And pretty early in one's career,
you think you figure out that writing papers and neat
journals is great, but your bigg
est impact is the people
you can empower along the way. Yeah, I think the phrase that you said
less direction, more support. I feel like it's really interesting
coming as a student myself, just because I feel like professors
always teach their own visions and I feel like that's a very
I feel like inspiring way of putting that. And I think it'd be interesting
as a professor to see how your students have been molded
and are filling these careers in the future sustainability
and then kind of shifti
ng that for Sharon. What do you think are examples of barriers
to sustainability within the UC Berkeley campus
and what is Serc doing to address them and to encourage young people
to take part in this fight? Mouffe Maria's so, so happy to be here,
so inspired by all of VR. I think for those of you
who don't know, Serc stands for the Student
Environmental Research Center. We're a campus department that supports students
and student organizations to work on different environmental projects
where a
majority student run. I'm lucky to be one of three
full time staff, but our 30 plus students are the heart and soul
of our organization that facilitate all of our different programs,
events, initiatives that we work on. And so the barriers
I think we face are the there are so many for institutions. You know, a lot of institutions are built
on different levels of institutional systemic oppression, from white supremacy
to patriarchy to colonization. And there's,
I think, you know, decades of this
work that you might find yourself
having to unravel or finding yourself of, like what are the different things
that we are up against? And I think doing environmental work,
you know, you get exposed to some of those isms
and you have to figure out what are the things that I can put them and invest my energy in and how can we
support students along this way? I think sometimes another barrier to just UC Berkeley students in getting involved
in environmental sustainability is there's a huge cultur
e of competition
and just burnout. Everyone is so busy doing so many things
having to feel that burden as well. I need to do everything
to solve the climate crisis or I need to do everything too
for this particular issue and this issue. But then I also have to be a student and then I have to be a senator
and then I have to do this thing. And there's just so much work. And so what I love that isn't necessarily
environmental that we get to do at Serc is to just kind of try
to support students in t
hat slowing down. How can we pause, how can we reflect,
how can we take care of our full selves and our whole to that or our human selves
so that we can be our full selves in showing up and doing this work
and have fun while we can? I love my job so much
and that's because I do try to instill the fun ness and the joy
because I really believe in as we're trying to solve the climate crisis,
we need to have fun along the way. We need to make friends,
we need to build community. And so some of the t
hings that we've
get to do is trying to really pursue that program that we launched last spring
called Nude Nature Education. Wellness Together is really trying
to get students to go outside more, to explore nature, to come together and specifically, you know,
to really support marginalized students who might not have had the opportunity to go hiking or go
camping growing up and to, you know, have facilitated conversations
and to have the camping gear ready to have our,
you know, our amazing sta
ff just be able to support them
on these hikes and camping. And so I'm excited for that program and just doing,
you know, more wellness activities, more conversation points around things
that students, you know, really care about environmental justice,
climate justice, and really filling the niche that students
might be getting in other places. And seeing how it can facilitate that,
how we can institutionalize that, how can we uplift that? Yeah, I use search services all the times. I love doing
the little yoga
wellness shops that they have on Fridays. I think it's really interesting
that you bring up the support and students as we're like trying to navigate college
because I know it's a lot of people's first times or the lack of knowledge
and just these overall barriers. I think it's really interesting
that you're trying to implement these practices at a young age
rather than in the professional stage. And then moving on to that for Abby,
how has Earth Justice's social media presence a
ffected
your approach to environmental activism and the ways in which Earth justice frames
issues and platforms? What impact have you seen this on youth
engagement, mobilization and civic engagement? Well, can I impact that question a little bit? When I came
into the environmental movement, there was a perception,
and I think it still exists, that it is older white people who care most about environmental protection,
and that is not the case. The core of support for the most ambitious
environmen
tal action is Latina black people of color. And part of the reason for that is that those are the populations in this country that have been most acutely impacted
by pollution, by environmental injustice. They are living that experience and
they are voting based on that experience. And so now we find ourselves at a time where young people are reshaping politics in the United States and they're doing it
so profoundly and so quickly that the established parties
in this country have not even yet ca
ught up to that fact. I'm not sure why, because 2018 and 2020 showed so despite positively
the impact of young voters. But you may have noticed there's
a huge age gap between the leadership, political leadership
in this country and Gen Z, and you have a political class
that has operated their entire lifetime forms with the assumption
that young people will not turn out and that they will not make
the difference in elections. Young people have proven that that is no longer the case and you have t
he power to reshape how both parties
think about their policy platforms and their obligations to you
and what you care about. And so coming back to the environment, young people have lived their entire lives inside this climate crisis. And so it is not a ideological issue. It's not a polarized issue. It is the fact of your lives and you know that it's only getting worse unless we can change
our current trajectory. And so now adding to the base
of people of color who are the base for climate acti
on and climate justice, it is young voters. And so as someone
at an environmental organization, you are the audience and you are the partners
and you are more and more the doers. My organization is training very young
because the best and the brightest people who are coming out
to do what they can do in the world are wanting to do this work to secure the future. And so just to be relevant,
we have to be on social media. And we could have a totally different panel about social media
and its pluse
s and minuses. But but one thing that it's doing
is giving young people a platform to shape opinion. And so one example of this for us
and so we've you know, I don't I don't know what I'm doing on TikTok,
and I may that may always be the case. But but but thank goodness they're young
people who work at Earthjustice and and who man Instagram and TikTok
and other important social media channels. And what we've found is that this is an area where young activated people want to go deep to understand
really complex problems, and they want to do it with people
that they trust to tell them the truth. And so interestingly, our explainer is on
things like the shadow docket of the Supreme
Court or organophosphates or arcane issues about how to operate in a public utility
commission actually do incredibly well. Very serious People are usually
using social media for a serious purpose, and we found that
how many people in this room know about the Willow Drilling project? That's great. This was a sl
eeper issue. No one in the world was really caring
about the Western Arctic and plans by ConocoPhillips to drill it,
but it broke through on social media. I'd like to think
that we had a handle on that, but what we recognized is the incredible
gen-z influencers were making this a crucial climate test
for the Biden administration. And I will tell you the difference between the activism that I was personally doing
with this administration. We worked our hearts out to stop the Willow Project
from g
oing forward during the Trump administration,
and we took it up to the Ninth Circuit. We won again,
and we handed over the possibility of stopping that project
on what we felt was a silver platter. And I think some of
the political fix was in. We we were understanding right away that and I have so many good things to say about the Biden administration,
and I hope I'll get the chance to do so. But sometimes elections matter enormously. But on this issue, the administration
was still taking the Tr
ump line in in the proceedings and the the what happened
when this went viral on social media. And there are 150 million hits on the meme stop Willow and 148 million more on
Stop Willow project. The White House took notice,
agencies took notice and meetings had a different tenor. And we haven't lost this issue yet. We're going to appeal
to the Ninth Circuit, but I want everyone in this room to know
is that the day after the Department of Interior
signed the approval for this project, we had a me
eting, a very high level
meeting with the administration. And this and the question was,
what can we do to make up for this? Because the administration
felt backed into a corner to make a very unpopular decision,
but they were worried about alienating this base. And so for anyone who feels dispirited
that this kind of up, swelling, influencing
campaign did not get the result that was intended to stop this project,
don't give up yet on Willow, but be recognize the power
that you have built and th
ere is not a met there is not a meeting that I go into,
whether it's with Leader Schumer, with the Climate Office,
Ali Zaidi, John Podesta. This is constantly on their minds. And you have shown the power
that you can have in this election. So choose your next test wisely. And the old people like me
will be right behind you. And we will use to the best of our ability
the power that you're building. I don't know what
you are, but those are really impactful. Answer I like how you tied
in a lot of r
acial, social, just very intersectional import implications
and like the holistic view of it all. I thought it was interesting about you,
including lived experiences, especially for like bipoc first
gen students, just because even though we're like new and we're fresh
and like we're unexperienced, as many would say, I feel like it's really
important and stressing that engagement and the direct interactive engagement
that we have on political campaigns, especially in our impacts
and future impact
s on civic engagement, and then kind of shifting
into the same realm for Archie, you have described in in well, environmentalism sorry,
in your previous campaigns as linked to social, racial, political
and economic justice movements. Could you expand a little bit
more on the intersectionality of it all? And describe what are Berkeley students role in
supporting that intersectional approach? Yeah, Now thank you for that question. That's a big question. Well. I'm going to do my best also to unpack
it. Just starting off by defining
what intersectionality really means. It's it's looking at it really does
start with looking inward and considering how your political and social identities shape
how you view the world, how you take actions
on different issues. And when I say or when the UC Berkeley community and the students
I get to work with say that environmentalism is intersectional. So it really starts
with acknowledging that the impacts of environmental issues again are disproportionate,
that they impact certain communities. As you mentioned, people of color, black,
black and Latinx communities disproportionately. And it's because of people
who have privilege, because of intersectionality, because of the political
and social identities that they hold and beat that power
that they have propagated on the communities
that you, Abby, have mentioned. So that's what we really mean when we talk about environmentalism
being intersectional. And I think it kind of answers
why we say it's
intersectional with, you know, your political identity,
with your racial identity, with your socioeconomic status, because I mean, there is histories of redlining
where you live, who what kind of your genetic makeup
to some extent as well, how you've been impacted
by where you live. All of that is very,
very influenced by historical historical oppression by by kind of just who your parents are,
which is crazy and a very big thing
to try to grapple with and dismantle. And again,
just the first s
tep of that is recognizing what environmental intersections
quality means. I think as students who understand that and at UC Berkeley specifically,
how we can work to recognize that we're only here for four years, we are quite literally
temporary residents. So making sure we take the time
to uplift the voices of the people who are longstanding residents
in Berkeley and Oakland, in the broader
Bay Area and help support their movements that are far going to outlast
our time here is probably the be
st
and the easiest way to help make sure that we continue
bringing up the fact that environmental environmentalism is intersectional
and continue to support these people and these communities
on the issues that matter to them. Yeah, and that's all really important. I just like to take a moment. I'd like you guys to please utilize your question cards
that are located right in front of you. If you'd like to ask any of our panelists
something, please don't let me be the only one
asking my own quest
ions up here because I will take advantage of that. But yeah, I really think that just understanding of where you come from
and your determinants of like how you are going to grow up,
I really feel like play into Berkeley's whole of challenging the status quo
and making sure we take everything
in a holistic kind of viewpoint. And I feel like that's really essential
to how we look at the actual scientific facts
of the climate crisis. And then I would like to ask Daniel,
considering your backgroun
d and that you've authored and coauthored
12 books written, 300 plus peer reviewed journal publications, testified
more than 40 times to US state and federal congressional briefings
and provided various governments with more than 50 technical reports
and all of your research and education. What do you think
is the most influential fact about our current crisis that you think
everybody in this room should know? And how can we fight
for an upcoming election? I know I'm trying to think,
what's the
three minute answer to that? I mean, I guess one of the features
that it's not just the right, it's not just the political right
obscuring the agenda. It's that progressive organizations, governments have in many cases has lost sight of or don't recognize because it's
hard to keep it all in your head at once. That question
already had a lot of stuff in it. But the debate right now is we. At the Paris Climate Conference, COP21 committed to a two degree guardrail. We did we weren't going to plan,
was not to let
the planet warm by more than two degrees. We have already warmed by 1.2. So not a lot of headroom
left from two degrees. But in the interim,
we've seen how huge the damages are on not only environmental grounds
but on gender and racial grounds. And I've worked on cookstoves
in rural communities with women's groups, as in the lead
I've worked on defeating coal fired power plants that were going to be
built in the US or in Kenya or in Bangladesh
with with groups of young activists a
nd some old people sprinkled
in to kind of do whatever we do. But a lot of that process and now we have 1.5 degrees as the new target,
recognizing how bad the damages are. So the headroom left is really tiny
and it's very easy to either give up. I was just at a panel
with a Nobel laureate and someone who is well-known
in this area, former Secretary Energy, who said, Well,
I think we're on a path for three degrees and three degrees for us on average
means 20 degrees. The poles, it means no ice in
the Arctic, in the Antarctic,
it means dramatic changes in food supply. You know, watch a movie like Interstellar,
not for the cool space part, but for the for the droughts
and the famines on earth. The world has perhaps
50 days of food in reserve. Pretty easy for that
to go away with one bad famine year. Despite all of those horrific things,
despite the fact the ocean is many degrees, many tenths of a degree warmer than it should be right now,
there is still clearly a path to make that one and
a half degrees work. You don't hear that very often because it would require us actually
getting off our collective backsides and not having PowerPoint all the time. But if you power plant and so one of the things is that
what it would take to make that happen, it would require the kind of things
we saw as controversial. It is in some areas. The Inflation Reduction Act
was passed by a political miracle. There were some people
chugging away for decades, but a remarkable dialog among a few people
got a bill together. There was such a transformative investment
in the US. We haven't gotten all the money out
the door yet. That's a problem for the coming election,
but that Europe had to send the President of France over to complain that we were stealing
all the good environmental companies. And if you add up the $1,369 billion
in the end, the Inflation Reduction Act and the quarter billion dollars
in the even more politically charged Chips and Science Act because there
a very anti China pie
ce of that despite what's going on today
with the G-2, the meeting between Biden and Xi and the Infrastructure Act,
that's about $1,000,000,000,000. We've never done that before. This is the most environmentally
progressive administration we have had since Carter
And maybe more so despite the things I disagree
with strongly like Willow, and leveraging all that money to not only
get the clean jobs out in the field, but also to make it clear that
any election that steers away from this remarkable
brief moment we have right now is not just political suicide here
or there. Someone gets elected,
someone doesn't get elected. It is literally rearranging deck chairs
on the Titanic. If we don't find a way to continue this
agenda and this agenda is not perfect, I actually have a little different
take on Willow. I actually think that it's well,
it was a bad decision. My own view,
the argument internally was that we've already gotten these bills
I mentioned through we need to win purple and we nee
d to pull
some votes in red states. And it's very unlikely
if we, the progressive center, left or reelected that Willow will happen. And so there was a calculus
that some of us may not like. It seems very calculating
about the future, but the calculus was
if we don't find a way to pull some voters towards this environmental agenda,
then other things aren't going to matter. And everyone has their different
take on different bills. But I would say this package that is now on the table
and right no
w the struggle is getting a lot of that money
spent in the short time, not only before the election,
but early enough so that people who are not interested in the environment
or recognize what California already has, there are far more jobs
in clean energy than dirty. If you look around this room,
the future is female. There are far more women
environmentalists than men. Environmentalists just count the bodies
by birth assigned gender. In this room,
it is what we have seen in my department. When
I arrived at Berkeley 24 years ago, we sifted through
some really interesting applicants, and they were almost
all refugees from STEM fields. They were almost all men. Last couple
of years we have been emitting 70 to 80% of our new grad
students are women and. That shift reflects values, understanding that the kind of thinking around
short term interest rates and short term returns,
which is very much the worldview of men in blue suits, is a world of the past. Longer, longer understanding about
impacts
the future, lower discount rates, a social cost on carbon
Justice 40 Run by Shalanda Baker. Someone who her own story
of being the actual person that was the Supreme Court's Supreme Court
case around Don't Ask, Don't Tell when she was in the Air Force
Academy, African-American lesbian woman. All those features
fold into a new calculus, and I think that's why some of the decisions
we see are disappointing. But if we can continue this,
the trend makes that 1.5 degree possible, despite eve
rything you hear that
it's already in the rearview mirror. Forget it. We're on the way to three, four,
five degrees. But it requires environment
not to be the second or third tier issue. It requires it to be the first tier issue,
because in my view, we live in a world today
where this quote from William Gibson, I think is right on the money. The future is already here. It's just incredibly divided
and finding a way to show the benefits of the clean energy transition benefit
everyone, not just ri
ch people who own Teslas
and live in gated communities. That is the future
that we need to empower. And so that little bit of headroom
left is actually enough. If we got off our collective rear ends know. Yeah, I know it's very hard to pick just one issue
within the whole climate crisis because there's so much
we could talk about. But I like how you tied in the racial,
social and political implications of the sustainability transition
just because they're everywhere. We can see them right on cam
pus. We can see that there's actually like
electric vehicle charging stations or buy right across the road on Hertz Avenue,
both trying to shift from fact to action. I would actually like to ask Sharon,
are there any successful environmental justice
initiatives, movements or projects that you find inspiring in your work
alongside Sirk Hmm. That's such a beautiful question there. I'm so inspired by so many different
initiatives and programs and projects that have happened
both off campus, just lo
cally, like even just like today,
there's tons of protests that have been existing
like just around the last few weeks. And right now in San Francisco,
outside of Apex, I'm like inspired by the people who are,
you know, on the streets right now with so much,
you know, heavy, big, a lot of different political leaders here
and such centralized area. But on campus, I'm really inspired
by the student organization, the Students of Color
Environmental Collective. They've just been such
a leading organ
ization in and really integrating and just environmental
justice, education, but really making, you know, really
uplifting the different issues related to diversity within the environmental sector
and within the campus. A few years ago, I think in 2017, the
students led a hashtag Environmentalism. So why it campaign outside
just that was targeting the College of Natural Resources
and the demand of where are the professors of color? That campaign actually led to creating
our first environmental j
ustice associate, wanting to figure out how can we implement
more initiatives in our own work? What are the things that are students
wanting to see? How can we help support the students of color
environmental collective for the things that they're
interested in institutionalizing? And what is our role
as a campus department and where? How can we support the students of color
Environmental collective when on to be able to actually share
their perspective? At the University of California Office
of
the Prison Sustainability Steering Committee,
where they shared their feedback, their experiences
of being students of color at UC Berkeley, their demands for more diversity
within the environmental sector, their demands for environmental justice
being a central component of their education, of their student engagement,
of their activism and experience. And that actually helped lead
to the creation of a working group on diversity, equity,
inclusion and sustainability, which I sit on that I've b
een sitting on
for the last few years, where we've been developing
different environmental, the AI policies and things that we can actually try to implement a little bit
more at the UC systemwide level. And that really stems and came from the students of color,
environmental collective from our campus. And so I love getting to work with them. They inspire me every day. Just again, all of the students on campus,
like I feel so privileged that I get to interact in the role
that I do and really get
to support the different programs and projects
that people are working on. No, it's really good. I might be a little biased
just because I am sick. I'm kind of sad that I didn't know about
that campaign, but I think it's really, I think, important for me
personally to have spaces for and by people of color
just because being a sort of color in an environmentalist career,
although like a lot of people will know, it's kind of hard just because our voices
get a little shouted down on. But yeah, I
will now be moving on to your guys's questions
that you guys have asked. And then we'll begin with Abby. How do you find hope in the movement
and build resiliency in your work? Oh, thank you. Ever asked that? Well, one is just to really agree is as much as I possibly could with Dan, there still is a plausible path. We have the ability to rein in runaway climate change,
and if we did it, how we would advance social justice, how we could protect our failing
ecosystems. I mean, it is an increase
of
a set of possibilities that we have. And we can't do it
without leadership from the U.S. We can't bring the US to where it needs
to be without caring for our democracy. And so it gives me a lot of hope to think about this kind of activism
heading into the most consequential election
of all of our lifetimes. And I kind of wish I can have a break
from that feeling because the last one was such a crucible. But this one is even more of a crucible
because of that head room, because of the difference
. And if you're speaking to anyone
who is feeling disillusioned with politics as usual, I want to say
this is not politics as usual. I've been doing this work
for almost 30 years. I've been at Earthjustice for 23, and the kinds of the kind of momentum that we are seeing in this administration,
notwithstanding all of the challenges this is this is an incredibly cross
pressured moment. Right? It is one that is defined by an economy with soaring inflation
that is now coming back under control. The
challengers are so high,
but the ambition has remained high and I hope that you are seeing I'm
I touted a problematic piece, but I will tell you,
when the IRA passed the Senate and I knew
I knew what the compromises were, and we're dealing with them every day
in the Gulf South and Appalachia. But I cried my eyes out driving down Marin,
and it felt very dangerous, in fact, because I thought now we have a chance and people this room probably had a part of that, you know,
surfacing this level of in
vestment. I didn't know if it would ever be possible
in my lifetime. A view of jobs
and justice and social change rather than kind of rearranging the deck
chairs. It's so exciting that that happened. And the the Green New Deal,
whatever you think about it, that popularized in so many people's
imagination, what investment, what government
at the scale of the first New Deal could do in the face
of this kind of crisis? And as a young people who made that idea
part of the political discourse in this
country so what gives me hope? You know,
a lot of people on these kinds of panels say young people,
and it's starting to feel trite, but I'm here tonight
because young people and the consciousness that you bring, the values
that you bring, the sense of urgency, that you bring, the sense of audacity,
that you bring, the sense of necessity that you will have to keep
bringing is part of it. And I don't say that
with a sort of a chill feeling of like, Great, I'm glad that
you guys are better than m
y generation. You'll solve it. Absolutely not. We are here. We are here. This is you know, every movement has a people say it one in different ways,
but the voices that matter most are the elders
who've who've seen it before and the youth who are seeing it
with fresh energy and understanding. And people my age and generation's
job is to hold it down, listen to you and hold it down. And I want you to know that there are many more people like me
and Dan who see the threat, who've worked our lives
to understand the possibilities. And with your help, we can do it. And we have to have the joy along the way. It's not going to get solved
in my lifetime. It may not be all solved in yours. So we've got to love this place
that we're trying to protect. That's what's going to give us the energy
to get up every day and keep having this fight
that we will win because we have to. And it was really, really inspiring. So anyone else want to add to that
or follow that in any way? No. No. Okay. That was
perfect. That was so beautiful. I'm so moved. That gives me hope. Yes. No,
I think it's really, really loaded. I know the question really loaded. I know that a lot of people think
that like environmentalism, when you tell people like, like,
I don't know about you, Archie, or anybody else, when I tell people I'm
an environmental studies major, they just ask me how I'm not oppressed
all the time, learning about all these horrific facts
and everything. But yeah, looking,
looking towards the future.
I feel like it's
a really big part of it all. I have a question
specifically for Professor Coleman. How can we close the education gap
and more specifically harmonizing social science and more STEM
technical domains amongst others? And if anyone else would like to add
after that? Well, I mean, you know,
you're asking the wrong person in some sense
because I'm a physicist, right? So I started in this area. What can the physics
what can material science, what can these topics bring to bear? And t
hat was quite appropriate back
when I did it, when clean energy in every category
was more expensive than fossil energy. And we crossed a point. We've crossed several interesting
thresholds. There was a point several years ago when the world produced more silicon
for solar cells and for computer chips. Then we passed a point where solar power,
which was the most expensive form of energy when I was in graduate
school, is now the cheapest. And if we looked at the world from 30 years ago where we a
re today,
we were just at, oh well, once. Solar is cheaper than fossil,
of course we're all going to. It's all wonderful now. It's all going to be clean energy. And now we're here
and we realize that's not the case. While we're building a lot of renewable
energy, the total annual investment in renewable energy around the planet,
hardware investment, the training, all of that totals
about a half a trillion dollars. Just the subsidies on the table,
not the actual revenues. And the hardware for fos
sil fuels
is between one and 7 trillion. And that's just the subsidy on the table
for fossil, let alone the revenues and everything else. So the goalposts have changed in a way
that the technical only approach that was kind of a reasonable way in
when I started, you know, back when dinosaurs roamed
the earth is not relevant today. And the piece that all of us are learning,
whether we come from physics or rhetoric
or whatever else is how to lead on not only social agenda
but the financial agenda.
And right now, the more weight is there. And so building a social justice movement
is much more about understanding how institutions and individuals are empowered
or marginalized or disempowered. And how is it that we flip over not only the way we think about politics
and the way we think we engage as voters, but also the fact that basically
every financial institution we've set up is aligned with a fossil fuel economy
where low upfront cost and cost and damage down
the road is discounted to ze
ro. We have to flip that to a world where
we actually value the future and we don't. We reward companies for polluting
because in almost all parts of the world the cost is zero or very low
in some places as a negative cost to pollute In Brazil under the former
president, not thankfully. Under President Lula,
you were given an incentive. The more rainforest you you cleared,
that was a financial reward. We do the same thing. And right now the US and China
are dividing up the Congo. Not always for
cobalt and other materials, but for gold, for water, for wood,
all kinds of things. So we are devaluing that future every day. We don't go out and do something about it. So I think that one of the
key aspects of the story is if you have a social problem, don't look for a technical tool
to solve it, because what a technical tool will do will make
a few people or a few companies rich. It's actually the social movement
that has to lead and utilize the tools, whether it's social media
or renewable e
nergy or whatever else. Don't go look and say,
Oh, we'll take this hard problem and solve it with a technical piece. And that means some very concrete things. We may or may not need carbon capture. We may or may not need to suck carbon
out of the air, but do not look to that technology
to solve a problem that's inherently greed and then say, Well, we'll find some magic
technical way out, right? In my view,
we live in a society where we have capitalism
for the poor and socialism for the rich, and
that makes no sense
if you want to value the planet. So that is inherently a story
about humanity. Social institutions, the social sciences,
the humanities, where the technical tool is a good tool,
but it is not the lead. But many places we think about
the technical tools, the lead, because where the money is is in the schools of engineering
and the biggest engineering companies. That is a way to guarantee the future will
be brutish, ugly and short. I guess I can try to take a stab at that ques
tion. Like I mentioned before, a lot of what I've learned
about environmentalism or environmental
justice has not come from my classes, and this is an experience that I know
many other students have felt. We had an event, Environmental Justice in Action yesterday
where we actually talked about this. How does climate action
or environmentalism play a role like in your academic careers
versus outside of it? And a lot of what was brought to the table was we're not there yet in our classes
and a lot
of what we learn comes from spending time in those communities
or talking to people who have spent those time in that
spent their time in those communities that have been facing those impacts. So just like I feel like this connection,
this question is a little bit connected to what you answered in that
if we're not the voices in a current financial or in a system
where money is kind of placed at a higher priority,
then people's stories, we're not using money
to value people stories in this curr
ent system,
then people are not going to view, you know, issues like this in a social context there. If you're not valuing their opinions
financially, they don't think
they can make careers out of this. And I've received a lot of this coming
from like an interdisciplinary major where I get to work with a lot of people
who do get to do the work in their communities,
and they're severely underpaid compared to people who are pursuing careers
in, you know, engineering disciplines. And it's not to sa
y that, you know,
engineers don't deserve the money they do. They are creating
and using tools that they are. But again,
if we're not valuing those stories and I mean,
it has to start in the educational space, if it has to start somewhere,
it should start in education where if we're not teaching
environmental justice or how to organize or things like that
as something that you can make a career out of and live a life
in this current system, like, yes, I have, I believe that the system
needs to c
hange in so many different ways. But just thinking like short term
about me, about like my generation, how we're going to be going into the workforce if we don't think
we can make a career out of it or like feed our families,
then we're not going to be able to, you know, integrate
the social aspect into into whatever into where it's needed,
basically. So, yeah, I think just educationally
it has to start by being like, this is valuable education
and you can pursue a path related to that. I just w
anted to add,
I wish that there were a major
in every university and community college that was about social change
and how movements work. I mean, what you just said,
what Dan just said is so important. I cannot overstate
how much in this society we rely on markets and technology
as as the solution to deep social problems,
and that will never work. We have to remember how to organize
to drive social change, and it's not intuitive. You have to really understand
the context that you're in. And so
how history can be a guide. There has to be a power analysis. I think most of us are illiterate
in how to really do a power analysis and then assess
what is a strategy to organize majorities. This is a science, it's an art. And I think we sort of chalk it up to
I hope people will show up in the streets and that the world will change. That's not how it works. And so having marrying up all of this expertise exists
at Berkeley in different departments, but having an interdisciplinary way
of marryi
ng it up and understanding how to drive change, I think that's like the major that we're all going to need
for the future. Our last question for the Speaker series just I know this has been
a lot of heavy conversations I were having, but in short,
how can students get involved in environmental activism
if they haven't already before? What would be like your main takeaway
into delving into this very big and intersectional realm given like everything that we've talked
about in the series so far. O
ne go to support Berkeley, Do it. You follow Berkeley on Instagram. That's why we exist. We are created by transfer students
ten years ago because they wanted to know how do I get involved
in the environmental community, like how it was hard to find in back then
and they a centralized space to learn what are the 40 plus organizations,
what are the different campaigns, what are the different professional
development opportunities I can do? And so that was the birth of what we do,
and that is our
job is to connect you all to different projects,
initiatives, student organizations, anything that's happening
on campus, community, so that you all have an avenue
to get involved outside of Serc
what I would share is environmental sector is so big, so broad
climate change is mighty fine. What your calling is, what do you
what is that sector? What is your niche within this big broad,
you know, sustainability sector? Like what is it
that you feel most passionate about? What are your strengths and
skills? We need everybody. We need lawyers, we need educators, we need researchers,
we need people who are on the ground. We need folks who can,
you know, make media. There is a place for everyone
in this work. So finding what your strength is
and seeing how you can integrate, you know, your values of climate justice,
your passion for the environment and that way of life. Being able to gage more in your
your your style of activism. Good answer. Yeah. We love Serc. Yeah. I mean, I can give just
like a very,
very brief answer. First off, my email is always open. If you're
if you're looking to get involved. I think it stands
for the environmental community at Cal. I've talked to many people
who consider themselves environmentalists and students
at the same time and never have. They've been like, Oh,
I don't have time to talk to you, or I don't know,
kind of where to direct you. So I'm going to take a little bit
of a different perspective on this and just feel it. Just say that don't be a
fraid
to show up to something just because you don't know
anyone in the room. I know there's a lot of discomfort
with that, and it's just because of like organized actions like serc
and different environmental like orgs. There is a niche place for you and
the people there are very, very welcoming. So to just take take that chance and things will fall into place. Yeah, I will put my self on the spot. I did literally email Ashley
not even like a few days ago introducing myself before this panel. I
know it's
even though we're all different majors, I feel like it's very hard
to get into a niche that's been very in the public sphere and it's very hard
to just like get right into it. But I feel like if you pick a topic
that interests you and you just find the intersections
within that feel like it'll leave you on a deep dive,
that'll go on forever. But it's all really interesting
and essential to our society, but avid and usurp anything. Just as someone who's had the privilege
of working in
the public interest, I want to say
dream of a public interest job. You know, there are more and more good
paying ones that you can make a life with. When I was starting out, I just didn't
think there would be a place for me. And a great professor said, If you want
it, there will always be a place for you. And there are more and more places
for everyone who wants to do this work. The need is so enormous,
so don't rule that out. So many people negotiate
against themselves early on. You can do good
for a living and and
and you can make a decent living doing it. I mean, I guess it's sort of
what said in different ways. And that is that these are all critical fights
and there are so many different doors. California makes a lot of mistakes. We tend to take two steps forward
and then one step back. But California is also a place
where there is a pretty clear agenda. And part of the story
is that this is a much broader battle. And so finding out of state,
out of country, out of region partners
hips, student,
fellow student groups to work with that, those partnerships are really critical
because we don't make it if decarbonize, as in New York
decarbonize this, but the U.S. South doesn't decarbonize or Southeast
Asia doesn't decarbonize. It has to be a much faster global process. And as many problems as we still have to fight here,
the bigger that tent, the better. And so I think finding ways
to build those collaborations, semesters abroad, going to work for the Peace
Corps, spending ti
me with a with a grassroots
organization in Nicaragua, we have one of the world's
best environmental justice organizations in the world
right here on San Pablo Avenue in grid. And they work many places. And so there are so many resources
right here. The more of these organizations
you meet up with on campus, the more chance you're to find one
that really resonates with your interest. Can I say one more thing,
which is politics gets a bad rap. It is so fun. It is so fun. And heading into 2024, oh
, my goodness. Whatever you could do to volunteer
with a campaign, you will never forget it. You'll
you'll meet the friends of your life. And I wish I had done that more. If I could go back
in time and switch places, that's what I'd be thinking about too. So just don't be discouraged by politics. Remember was a waitress
when she decided to run for Congress. Do not wait. Yes, this is a little hint
for the upcoming 2012 2024 election. Please get involved. Please be civically engaged. But I'd like
to thank you all. These are very insightful answers,
a very eye opening. And I don't know about you all,
but I feel like these panelists have a very big round of applause. But yeah, again, thank you
for taking the time out of your day for coming to talk to our students
and other like minded people. And I'd like to welcome Ava back
to close out her program. Yes. Thank you so much to our speakers and to our moderator for your amazing
and thought provoking discussion today. And thank you to the aud
ience members. I know we went a little bit over time, so thank you all for being engaged
and being here today. And I want to again thank the Creating Citizens
and Commonwealth Club World Affairs. And I just hope that everyone
had an enjoyable. Time. And was. Able to learn more about environmental activism
and civic engagement through this program. I know I definitely learned
a lot of things that I had not known before coming here today. We'd also. Love to welcome. You to future programs, Our Spr
ing
Creating Citizens Series Program will take place in April,
so make sure you keep an eye out for that. And the Commonwealth Club World Affairs. Also has lots of other opportunities for. Students and educators, including free tickets to programs
and discounted memberships. And if you'd like to find out more,
you can visit Commonwealth Club dot org such education and follow in
creating citizens on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Recording of recordings of today's programs
will be posted on th
e club's website. And I would. Also like to mention that on your way out you can register to vote
or take a QR code to register to vote. If you haven't done so already. You can also follow as you see vote go. If you would like to learn more about how to be more civically engaged
and how to register to vote. Yeah, and that concludes this program. Thank you so much to everyone
for your participation and all of your audience members
for coming out. I hope that you all have
a wonderful rest of your
night. Yeah. And thank you so much.
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