Evergreen’s Climate Justice and Resilience Speaker and Event Series is centered on the Climate Academy program, and is hosted by multiple programs that study climate themes. All students, faculty, and staff are invited to join these events on Zoom. Announcements of speakers and events, ways to access the online events, and background links and documents, will be posted here. Soon after each event is over, videos will also be posted here. Many thanks to Evergreen Media Services staff for their hard work in making this remote series possible.
The speaker and event series builds on the Anthropocene series (2015-16), two Indigenous Climate Justice Symposia (2015-17), the “Water is Life” forum (2017), “The Waters Connect Us” forum (2018), the “Nurturing Roots” forum (2019), and other collaborative events at Evergreen.
Join on Tuesday, October 27, 2020 10:00-11:30am.
Dr. Michael Méndez is an assistant professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of California, Irvine. His new book Climate Change from the Streets: How Conflict and Collaboration Strengthen the Environmental Justice Movement (Yale University Press, 2020) is an urgent and timely story of the contentious politics of incorporating environmental justice into global climate change policy. The leading sponsors are Evergreen’s Tacoma Program and the Resilience Studies Consortium.
Dr. Méndez previously was the inaugural James and Mary Pinchot Faculty Fellow in Sustainability Studies at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Michael has more than a decade of senior-level experience in the public and private sectors, where he consulted and actively engaged in the policymaking process. This included working for the California State Legislature as a senior consultant, lobbyist, gubernatorial appointee, and as vice chair of the Sacramento City Planning Commission.
During his time at UC Irvine and Yale, he has contributed to state and national research policy initiatives, including serving as an advisor to a California Air Resources Board member, and as a participant of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s workgroup on “Climate Vulnerability and Social Science Perspectives.” Most recently, Michael was appointed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to the Board on Environmental Change and Society (BECS). He also serves as a panel reviewer for the National Academies of Sciences’ Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP).
Dr. Méndez holds three degrees in environmental planning and policy, including a PhD from UC Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Planning, and a graduate degree from MIT. His research on the intersection of climate change and communities of color has been featured in national publications including Urban Land (published by the Urban Land Institute); the Natural Resources Defense Fund Annual Report; the American Planning Association’s Planning Magazine; Green 2.0: Leadership at Work; USA Today; and Fox Latino News.
Email Prof. Anthony Zaragoza for information about accessing the 10:00-11:30 event.
Visit https://sites.evergreen.edu/climatechange/speaker-and-event-series/ for more about the speaker series!