Gaming for Change: The Role and Power of Games in Education and Climate Justice

January 2026 – Explore how tabletop games and simulations teach climate justice, ecology science, systems thinking, and collaboration for our modern-day students. 

Featuring Evergreen faculty Sam Saltiel and leading game designers, including creators of the indigenous futurist story-game Coyote & Crow, a local alumni business owner of Heart of the Deernicorn, and indigenous game designer Andrew Gross, creator of the Solarpunk TTRPG Fully Automated. 

Guests spoke about Washington state’s status as the global capital of game design, as well as the role that tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) have for incarcerated individuals, and as a supplemental therapeutic Social Emotional learning (SEL) for children’s development post-pandemic.

Lecture on “Fungi for Human Health and the Environment” and Metamimicry

January 2026 – Guest speakers from Metamimicry virtually held a lecture for one of the academic programs. Featuring Jade Swor, Executive Director of Metamimicry, and Mack Kleiva (MES ’25), Chair of the organization and Evergreen alum. This session was part of Prita Lal’s Fall 2025 academic program, “Fungi for Human Health and the Environment,” and dives deep into the transformative potential of fungi in addressing environmental challenges. The discussion centers on bioremediation and mycoremediation as innovative strategies that harness natural systems to detoxify and restore ecosystems. Framed through a solarpunk lens, Jade and Mack explore how fungi can help us imagine and implement regenerative futures, blending science, sustainability, and creativity. Topics include:

• How fungi break down pollutants and heal damaged landscapes
• Practical applications of mycoremediation in community projects
• The intersection of ecological design and solarpunk aesthetics
• Opportunities for collaboration between science, art, and activism

Chevron, Palestine, and the Climate: Intersections of Extractive Industry and Global Injustice

Representatives from Palestine Action South Sound and Economics for Everyone (E4E)

October 2025 – This lecture covered topics such as Chevron’s global environmental impact, including pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon and its role in climate pollution; The occupation of Palestine and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza; The BDS movement and its roots in anti-apartheid efforts; Chevron’s involvement in Israel’s energy sector; and Local organizing efforts, including Tumwater-based actions and I-5 corridor campaigns.

Are Solar Jobs Good Jobs? Uneven Geographies of Apprenticeship, Wages, and Employment in the US after the Inflation Reduction Act

Dr. Nikki Luke, Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Tennesseee

May 2025 – In this talk, Dr. Nikki Luke shares results from a study of solar industry employment and training in the US.  Dr. Luke reviews the realities that unions, academics, and journalists have observed that jobs in the solar industry, among the fastest growing clean energy sectors in the U.S., are dangerous, underpaid, and staffed by temp workers with few protections. During the Biden Administration, policy efforts to reverse this trend and encourage good jobs in clean energy industries focused on using incentives to encourage high labor standards. Most importantly, the Inflation Reduction Act adopted in 2022 added a bonus for the first time ever to investment and production tax credits for clean energy projects that hire through registered apprenticeship programs and pay prevailing wages. In this talk, Dr. Luke shares preliminary findings from policy analysis, interview, and quantitative wage and apprenticeship data to show how the IRA is changing the solar industry. This study finds significant geographic variation in apprenticeship trends across the U.S. that call into question the durability of current regulatory and tax provisions to create good jobs, promote unionization, and improve job quality through the energy transition. The talk concludes with policy lessons for a just and equitable energy transition. 

 

Just Transition: Ensuring Equity in the Shift to a Carbon Free Economy

Dr. Mijin Cha, Assistant Professor in the Environmental Studies Department at University of California Santa Cruz

February 2025 -Join us for an insightful discussion on the critical topic of strategies and policies needed to transition to a sustainable, carbon-free economy while protecting the rights and livelihoods of workers and communities. Our speaker, Mijin Cha, will share her expertise on climate and environmental justice, labor/climate coalitions, and the intersection of inequality and the climate crisis. Attendees will gain valuable insights into the importance of inclusive and equitable approaches to environmental policy and the role of community engagement in driving meaningful change.

 

Voices of Resistance

Jacob Johns, Jhajayra Mendoza Mendúa, & Kayla Jenkins

February 2025 – In this panel, CCAS was delighted to welcome Jacob Johns, a climate justice organizer and current EWU activist-in-residence, alongside Jhajayra Mendoza Mendúa, a land and water protector who serves as spokesperson for A’i Cofan, who joined us virtually with collaborator Kayla Jenkins of the Kuan-Kuan Foundation. Together, the panel shared stories and lessons about climate justice activism at the Conference of Parties climate negotiations, struggles for Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, and hopes for collective action to tackle the climate crisis. 

 

Climate Action in Local Government

Dr. Pamela Braff (City of Olympia), Linsey Fields (City of Lacey), Rebecca Harvey (Thurston County), and Alyssa Jones Wood (City of Tumwater)

November 2024 –This panel focused on local and regional climate action through a focus on the work of the Thurston Climate Mitigation Collaborative. Panelists are climate professionals in local and county government who have been working to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals and build climate resilience for communities in the South Sound.  Panelists were asked to respond to questions about the challenges and opportunities for climate action in the face of potential reductions in federal support for climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. 

 

Water and Environmental Justice in Renewable Energy Transitions

Dr. Alida Cantor is an Associate Professor of Geography at Portland State University. She is a political ecologist with interests in water governance, legal geography, and the intersections between water, communities, food, land, energy, and social and environmental justice.

October 2024 – Renewable energy projects, while considered key to climate change mitigation, often encounter accusations of environmental injustice and raise disputes over land and water. Infrastructures and extractive activities at the water-energy nexus have impacts on the hydrosocial cycle, and can unevenly impact communities: even if some will benefit, others might be left more vulnerable. Dr. Cantor shares her research on the hydrosocial impacts, imaginaries, and environmental justice issues associated with water-energy transitions in the Western United States.

 

Making Climate Justice and Environmental Justice Real: Bold Ideas, Subversive Action, and Transformative Community Building

Dr. David N. Pellow  (Dehlsen Chair and Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Director of the Global Environmental Justice Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara)

May 2024 – This presentation considers the long arc of environmental and climate justice scholarship, activism and politics within and across spaces of academia and grassroots movements in the U.S. and globally. Dr. Pellow considers cases of climate and environmental justice movements that offer lessons for students, teachers, researchers, administrators and community advocates seeking to engage these important issues. Dr. Pellow offers analyses and hopeful reflections on struggles within communities of color fighting for liberation in the face of threats from toxic waste facilities, carceral institutions, militarization, and the effects of climate disruption.

 

The Extinction Paradox

Dr. Jessica Dempsey (Associate Professor, University of British Columbia) and Dr. Rosemary-Claire Collard (Associate Professor, Simon Fraser University)

April 2024 – Dr. Jessica Dempsey and Dr. Rosemary-Claire Collard shared the results of an ongoing research project on biodiversity loss and ecological politics entitled “The Extinction Paradox.”  Their talk answers two main questions: (1) who benefits from extraction; who bears the costs; and what systems of power uphold these geographical distributions?  (2) why does the state approve extraction that harms endangered species the state is committed to protect? The research team’s answers to these questions are based on a long-term study of extraction causing caribou endangerment in northeast BC – Treaty 8 territory of West Moberly First Nations and Saulteau First Nation. They conclude that the state is at the center of the extinction paradox, and biodiversity loss’s root drivers are entangled with racial, colonial and patriarchal systems of power.

 

“Indigenous Legalities, Pipeline Viscosities: Colonial Extractivism and Wet’suwet’en Resistance”

Dr. Tyler McCreary  (Associate Professor of Geography, Florida State University)

February 2024 – This talk examines the politics of pipelines on unceded Wet’suwet’en territories in Northern British Columbia, Canada. Dr. McCreary offers historical context for the unfolding relationship between Indigenous peoples and colonialism and explores pipeline regulatory review processes. He explores corporate efforts to reconcile Indigeneity with pipeline development, alongside fundamental and enduring conflicts over territory and jurisdiction. Throughout, McCreary demonstrates how the cyclical and ongoing movements between resistance and reconciliation.

 

Dr. Shannon Cram (Associate Professor, UW Bothell) and Britany Kee’ ya aa. Eichman-Lindley (Staff Attorney, Hanford Challenge)

January 2024 – Dr. Shannon Cram and Britany Kee’ ya aa. Eichman-Lindley consider the politics of waste, exposure, and cleanup at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a former weapons complex in southeastern Washington. Once the heart of American plutonium production, Hanford is now engaged in the nation’s largest environmental remediation effort, managing toxic materials that will long outlast their regulatory containers. Cram and Eichman-Lindley examine cleanup’s administrative frames and the stories that exceed them. They detail the practical challenges that come with environmental decision-making and discuss how to engage productively in both critique and action.

 

November 2023 –  Since the 1990s, we have seen a major shift in who owns private industrial timberland in most forest-reliant communities in the United States, with formerly vertically integrated companies restructuring and making vast quantities of land available for purchase by institutional investors like pension funds and university endowments. One impact of this change has been that the norms of access for community members have shifted—with many communities experiencing the rise of gated forest roads, new paid permit systems, and increasingly expensive leases for hunting. Dr. Kay delivers a talk that discusses how the changing nature of recreational access on private industrial timberland has impacted those who live, work, and play in the woods. 

 

Industrial Chemicals and the Problem of Too Much Food

Dr. Adam Romero (Associate Professor, UW Bothell)

October 2023  – After WWII, US agricultural output exploded, due in large part to the massive influx of industrial chemicals like pesticides and fertilizers. The consumption of farm products, however, did not keep pace and immense surpluses quickly accrued. This talk explores the role that credit played in the creation of an agricultural system of high chemical input use and chronic surplus production. It examines how the expansion of public and private credit along with the creation of new financial technologies gave farmers the ability to pay for more and more chemicals despite falling crop prices caused by too much food. In sum, Dr. Romero discusses his new book project about the techniques, technologies, policies, and narratives developed to “upkeep” an agricultural system of high input use and chronic surplus production. 

 

Climate Coloniality: Global to Local Challenges and Potential Pathways Forward

 Professor Joshua Long (Southwestern University) &  Professor Jennifer Rice (University of Georgia) 

May 2023 – This presentation examines the intersections of settler colonization and the climate crisis. First, Drs. Long and Rice discuss the historical legacies of (settler) colonization and show how these have influenced our current global system, with an emphasis on environmental and climate harms. The second part of this presentation considers how climate coloniality plays out in the more mundane and everyday aspects of urban life. Using Seattle, Washington as a case study, they show how narratives around nature and Indigenous nostalgia work to separate urban climate action from Seattle’s historical-present as a settler-colonial city. Profs Long and Rice conclude by examining political commitments that might begin to reject climate coloniality in favor of more transformative climate justice. 

 

Indigenous Climate Action and Place-Based Management 

Ron Reed (Karuk Tribe) & Professor Kari Norgaard (University of Oregon)

February 2023 – Professor Kari Norgaard and Ron Reed discuss their longtime collaborative work that integrates scholarly work on climate emotions and Indigenous climate justice and on the ground place-based management with the Karuk.  This is a must watch lecture for anyone interested in climate and environmental justice and Indigenous environmental management. 

 

Climate Justice and the Politics of Emotions

Professor Sarah Ray (Cal Poly Humboldt)

January 2023 – What role do our emotions have in addressing climate change? What interior resources are needed for the marathon of realizing climate justice? What does justice have to do with climate change emotions? How are climate emotions politically powerful? Who feels climate anxiety, and what does it tell us about the politics of climate justice in America today? In this talk, Professor Sarah Ray  explores the relationship between climate change, justice, and the role of emotions in bringing about political change. She investigates the seeming paradox that marginalized people and people of color report higher concern about climate change than white and privileged people, yet rarely articulate their concern in terms of “climate anxiety,” even as the term is proliferating in climate discourse, from popular culture to the New York Times. How might racial and social justice concerns shape those conversations? Drawing on her book, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet, Dr. Ray offers ideas for how we might enlist the power of emotions for climate justice.

 

Beyond Climate Despair 

Professor Jennifer Atkinson (University of Washington – Bothell)

October 2022 – As our climate crisis deepens, despair is on the rise. Terms like “eco-anxiety” and “climate grief” have spread throughout activist circles as well as popular culture; meanwhile, a raft of academic studies now identifies climate change as a mental health crisis. In this talk, Professor Jennifer Atkinson outlines the existential toll of environmental destruction on different groups – from scientists and activists to students and BIPOC communities. We also discuss strategies for channeling dark emotions into collective action, and developing the agency and courage to stay engaged in the work ahead.

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