 us for this week's lecture in planning series presentation. Our opening speaker this fall semester is Professor Michael Mendez, Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy and Planning at the University of California, Irvine. My name is Helena Rong. I'm a PhD student here at Columbia's Urban Planning Program, and I'll be moderating the session. I'll just start with a few brief technical logistical announcements before turning to introduce our speaker. During the talk, I'd like to remind audience members on Zoom to please mute your microphones. We'll be recording today's lecture, so for anyone who wishes to be not recorded, should turn off their camera. Audiences and everyone for a team who are also connected on Zoom, please be mindful to mute your microphone as well. The chat box should be used only for discussion regarding the session. If you have any technical questions that apply only to you, please message my co-host Renjani and Carolyn privately. We encourage all of you to type questions into the chat box during the presentation. After the presentation, we'll have time for Q&A. We'll start Q&A at around 2 to 2.15 PM so that we have enough time for everyone's questions. I'll be coordinating the Q&A with attention to diversity and inclusion. So if you have already had a chance to ask a question, please allow others to do so before asking another one. To ask questions, participants can use to raise your hand feature, and we will call on you to unmute and ask your question directly. Or you may also type your question in the chat box, and I can read them out. And for our audience here in everyone 14, you can just raise your hand and I'll call on you and you can ask directly. So with that, I'm delighted to introduce our speaker today. Dr. Michael Mendez is an assistant professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of California, Irvine. He previously was an inaugural James and Mary Pinchot faculty fellow in sustainability studies and associate research scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. Dr. Mendez has more than a decade of senior level experience in the public and private sectors where he consulted and actively engaged in the policy making process, including working for the California State Legislature as a senior consultant, lobbyist, and as vice chair of the Sacramento City Planning Commission. In 2021, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Dr. Mendez to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board. The board regulates water quality in the region of 11 million people. During his time at UC Irvine and at Yale, he has contributed to state and national research policy initiatives, including serving as an advisor to the California Air Resources Board Member and as a participant of the US Global Change Research Program work group on climate vulnerability and social science perspectives. Dr. Mendez 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. Dr. Mendez's talk today is entitled Climate Change from the Streets, which is the same as the title of his new award-winning book published in 2020. It's an urgent and timely story of the contentious politics of incorporating environmental justice into global climate change policy. I'm sure it'll be an insightful talk on the relationship between public health and environmental protection. So, Professor Mendez, if you're ready, I'll pass things over to you now. Thank you, Helena, and good afternoon, everyone. It's such a pleasure and honor to be here. I believe some of you may have read my book over the summer as the incoming masterclass and for those that haven't, I hope this is a good highlight about these important issues between the intersection of climate change, public health, and community of color and particularly how can we put a ratio and equity lens framework in the climate change policy-making process. So, thank you for this opportunity. Again, it's quite an honor to be invited by Columbia and the Department of Urban Planning and to be part of the summer reading again. So, I'm gonna begin by sharing my screen and I'm gonna be providing some broad highlights of the book and then I'm gonna delve into one of the key chapters that has a local and international environmental justice lens. So, to begin with, in places like California where the majority of my research takes place in the international context. In California, we are experiencing a major climate change crisis and historic racial unrest. In the last past years, millions of people have been impacted by multiple disasters, fires, blackouts, heat waves, drought, hazardous air quality and a deep economic recession and of course the ever-present COVID-19 pandemic. These are all major life events that are compounding together. These compounding of disasters have cascading health, social and economic impacts. And due to existing structural inequality, these impacts are disproportionately affecting low-income people of color. To address the climate emergency, activists and policymakers have proposed a renewed deal at the federal level. As many of you know, this is a radical proposal to decarbonize our economy and address poverty and inequality. However, for the last two decades, low-income communities of color have also pushed state and local governments to experiment with reducing greenhouse gas emissions and approaches that also address inequality and public health. These efforts in climate experimentation have been contentious and are often met with significant resistance. While I'm supportive of the Green New Deal, I'm here to say that there is nothing new about the Green New Deal. Climate change experiments in places like California since 2006 have been all-out street fights. Environmental justice activists are often pitted against traditional environmentalists who favor the least costly mitigation solutions which do not necessarily maximize equity and public health outcomes in low-income communities of color. These conflicts over climate change are cultural at their core. They illustrate that although the signs of climate change is clear, policy decisions about how to respond to its effects remain contentious. Even when such decisions claim to be guided by objective knowledge, they are made and implemented through political institutions and relationships and all the competing interests and power and racial struggles that this implies. So if we look towards the example of California, it reveals the contingent nature of climate change policy, the assumptions and social, political and cultural attitudes that often create conflict between community understandings of local environmental conditions and the prevailing global top-down conceptualization of climate change. In California, tensions between different approaches to addressing climate change are often centered on the politics of scale, economics, class, and race. These differences and worldviews, if unacknowledged can lead to the breakdown of trust, even among groups that are normally working towards the same goal, reducing the harm that climate change would do to human societies and our planets. For insight into national level conflicts between groups working on climate solutions, one should look towards the nearly two decade California experiment of incorporating environmental justice and health equity principles into climate change policy. For environmental justice activists in California and other places, the main threat from climate change is the disproportionate harm it causes to their bodies and the health of their communities. For them, climate change is not just about global greenhouse gas models, rather it is also about opposing worldviews through which policy and science is seen. Yet California is still often seen as this homogeneous entity that uniformly values environmentalism and climate action. This image universalizes the idea of climate change and detaches it from its cultural settings. It also obscures how the localization of environmental policy and science within the state involves processes the public consultation and legitimacy. For example, the traditional environmental narrative is really embodied in this recent book that was published by a major university press and it describes itself as the definitive book on California's environmental history. And this recently published book is about 300 pages and an entire book, People of Color and People of Color legislators are only mentioned in passing twice. So the traditional environmental narrative of California and its global leadership really facilitates this erasure of people of color and enacting a comprehensive environmental policy and leadership. Therefore, I published my book, Climate Change from the Streets with the explicit focus on people of color. My book foregrounds people, place and power and the context of climate change and inequality. This research originated in my public policy work for the California state legislature during the 15 year period. This provided me valuable insight into how the interactions of governments, businesses and NGOs, a shape climate change policy. My research is further influenced by my experience growing up in Latino immigrant communities of Los Angeles that faced multiple environmental threats. At the youth in places like Poquema, Selmar and Lake Butaris, I was surrounded by people resisting environmental racism. Whether protesting the siding of landfills or organizing to demand the cleanup of toxic properties, they sought to understand how these situations originated to develop alternatives and to imagine new environmental futures. Therefore, this has focused my work on what the conceptualization of environmental justice and climate change has meant to activists, policymakers, experts and scholars alike. Understanding this is important because the idea of environmental justice have been growing in scope beyond the initial application to the inequitable distribution of hazardous waste dumps and poor communities of color. My work analyzed the expansion of environmental justice policy discourse and the ways in which it has challenged definitions of nature and society. When I began this research project in California, I was struck by the lack of scholarship on the narratives of environmental justice in the context of climate change. The literature shows a real neglect of environmental justice groups worldview and influence in climate change policy arenas. The lack of a narrative perspective largely due to the fact that since the 1980s, environmental justice studies has sought to legitimize itself as an area of serious academic inquiry. The first generation of environmental justice scholars in general focused on causality and quantifying environmental inequality through the lens of race and class at a single scale. However, an emerging second generation has extended the field to incorporate a deeper consideration of critical theory and intersectionality, the ways in which gender, class, sexuality, immigration status and other human and other human identity shape environmental justice at multiple scales. This second generation has been dubbed critical environmental justice studies. And it focuses on four important questions that are central to my own work. The first question asks, how does intersectionality multiple forms of difference, race, gender, class, immigration status, sexuality, influence environmental justice outcomes? The second, to what extent should scholars focus on a single scale or multi-scale analysis of the causes and possible resolutions to environmental justice struggle? Third, to what degree do state power and market systems entrench social inequality? And finally, how can marginalized groups whose participation is indispensable to society shape sustainable and collective futures? Therefore, using a critical environmental justice study lens, the key argument in my book is, for society to successfully resolve the phenomenon of climate change, critical attention must be placed on the human dimensions of climate change policymaking, such as local knowledge, culture and history, and it should be done at multiple scales. Central to this argument, it's a demonstration that environmental protection and improving public health are uniquely linked and maintaining that link is key to advancing future climate action policies. The case of California is particularly productive. I asked to analyze how the human dimensions of climate change policy unfold. As the world's fifth largest economy and the only US state to implement a comprehensive program of regulatory and market-based mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, California has consistently been at the forefront of broader national and global environmental experimentation. The state's cap and trade program, a central market-based mechanism for ensuring carbon emissions reduction is the third largest in the world after the European Union and China. This program has been especially contentious in debates within California. Supporters emphasize its global reach and cost-effectiveness and detractors criticize its inequitable effects on specific local communities and demographic groups. California's prominence in climate change policy makes it an ideal place to investigate the dynamics of such disputes and their roots in differing climate change worldviews. My multi-sided ethnographic policy analysis weaves together case studies that are three interconnected case studies. The first looks at climate and public health activism and two heavily impacted communities of color, Richmond and Oakland, California. The second looks at conflict over state-level carbon trading and use of its revenue for investment in local communities, most harm-bark air pollution. And the third looks at international and local implications of forest conservation projects in the global south. In this case, Chiapas, Mexico and Acre, Brazil allowed under California's market-based climate change laws. And this is a case study that I'll go into that momentarily. These case studies combine to reveal the contested politics of the local, state and transnational levels on which California makes climate change policy and takes action. For example, I trace activists as they travel between geographies and policy scales. They are not just situated in one space but transverse geographies and policy scales. For example, in Richmond, California, which has the single largest oil refinery west of the Mississippi, that also happens to be the single largest greenhouse gas emitter in an entire state of California and one of the largest emitters of local pollution that affects people's health. So activists in that area have been fighting to close down that oil refinery or change its business practices for their less harmful. So that these activists understand that the Chevron refinery is part of a global system that's not just only locally based. So they know they can't just protest in city hall in Richmond, California, but they also have to jump policy scales such as Sacramento, California, the state capital which defines California's climate change programs. So while they're protesting in Richmond, California, they're also working at the state capital to try to rescale California's global worldview and perspective on its climate change programs to focus back on local communities that are hit first and hardest from climate change impacts and local pollution. At the same time, they understand that California is part of a global system. California often sees itself as a nation state operating its cap and trade program with other major nations in the country. Again, California's cap and trade program is the third largest in the world after the European Union and China. So these activists are also trying to rescale that global perspective, particularly on projects that are outsourcing environmental benefits to places like Chiapas and Ocula, Brazil. And these projects are not only contentious in environmental justice communities in California, they're also contentious with many indigenous leaders in the global south that fear that California's forest conservation projects, carbon sinks that they're creating there may create dispossession of indigenous lands. And I'll go into that case study momentarily. So the three aims of this multi-scale research are the first to demonstrate that public health and environmental justice perspectives can be central to successful climate change policy development and implementation. The second is to offer an interdisciplinary framework for theorizing the kinds of negotiations between scales and worldviews that are involved in the development of equitable climate change policy. And third, provide a set of findings that activists can use to negotiate with governments that legitimizes their perspectives or worldview about the differential impact of climate change on disadvantaged communities. A quick note on my methods as a multi-scaler study my work draws on two main sources, notes from my years observing policymaking in Sacramento State Capitol and extensive interviews with climate policy makers and environmental justice stakeholders from 2012 to 2015 with several follow-up interviews conducted in 2017, 2018 and 2019. My participant observer reflections, content analysis and semi-structured interviews provide valuable information on the conflicts and collaborations defining climate change and environmental justice in California. Now on to this international global case study. While some of you may not agree with this following case study as scholars and activists it is important to understand the modes, strategies and logics that strong social movements like environmental justice groups employ. So I ask you to explore this case with an open mind. In this case study from my book, here we will be jumping scales from the local to global. We will see how the conceptualization of environmental justice as an organizing theme has spread horizontally throughout California and how it's now vertically linked to the global South in Mexico and Brazil. For California advocates there has been a growing need to develop a global consciousness in the environmental justice movement. Activists recognize the importance of connecting local agendas with trends they see nationally and internationally around climate change. In this case study, I examined how the continued collaborations experimentation and coalition building since 2010 brought California environmental justice perspectives onto the global stage. This story centers on the ways in which carbon markets can create international links between local injustices and prop new forms of trans-local activism. A central figure in this story is Mary Rose Turroup an activist with the Asian Pacific Environmental Network or APEN for short. One of the leading environmental justice groups in California, also based in Richmond, California. Her interesting, her indigenous last name and Tagalog means to know. According to Mary Rose, the need to engage on a global scale became clear when APEN's Native American allies who represent sovereign nations were participating in United Nations debates on climate change policy. Native American advocacy groups like the Indigenous Environmental Network developed campaigns that brought U.S. environmental justice groups to the United Nations and other global spaces. And these arenas California environmental justice groups learned how linking their local campaigns could also help indigenous communities in the global South. These interactions laid a strong foundation for new trans-local efforts when California attempted to link its cabin trade system to Chiapas, Mexico and off the Brazil through forest offset credits. Carbon offsets allow California's polluting industries to pay someone else anywhere in the world to reduce their emissions by engaging in activities such as forest conservation. Forest offsets are also known as reducing emissions, fund teeth, forestation and digger diggeration or red for short. In other words, red offsets allow pollution at home only if developing countries keep their forests in the ground and do not use their own natural resources. Polluting industries in the United States are allowed to continue to pollute most often in low-income communities of color like Richmond and Oakland, California. California's traditional environmentalists such as the Environmental Defense Fund, the Nature Conservancy, Polluting Businesses and some large indigenous groups. These are large indigenous groups that have formal land title to their lands and therefore are recognized by their federal and local governments. Support such offset projects because of cost-effectiveness, ecological enhancements to tropical forests and benefit sharing opportunities for indigenous communities. These groups stress the need to combat tropical deforestation. That is the cutting and burning of trees to convert land to grow crops, extract oil or raise livestock. It is estimated that such activities account for more than 20% of the Earth's human-caused carbon emissions. Polluting industries support forest offsets in the global south in particular because it is a significantly cheaper option for reducing carbon emissions when compared to U.S. domestic mechanisms. For California environmental justice groups, however, it seemed that red offsets likely would not address local air pollution and they foresaw increased emissions and disadvantaged neighborhoods. Smaller indigenous rights groups in Auclid and Chiapas, these are smaller groups that don't have land tenure, land title and are not recognized by their local or federal governments, argued that the new value of pristine forest reserves could motivate landowners to evict forest-based indigenous communities, especially in regions like Chiapas, Mexico, where there has been a long history of violent conflict over land rights. To them, red could exasperate local environmental problems and perpetuate historic injustices. Thus in response, a new trans-local coalition emerged between South and North social movements. Here again, we see how notions of environmental justice travel and are horizontally and vertically linked. This trans-local coalition more over argues for systems thinking or feedback loop approach to climate change policy. For example, they claim U.S. imports of crude oil from the Amazon are driving the destruction of some of the rainforest ecosystems' most pristine areas and releasing large amounts of greenhouse gases. According to an Amazon Watch study, American refineries processed over 230,000 barrels of Amazon crude oil a day. And California represents a large majority, an average of 171,000 barrels, comprising 74% of all Amazon crude imports to the U.S. And also, activists really argued that the processing of crude oil has these embodied environmental and health impacts at the local level, creating injustices in the Amazon as well in places like Richmond, California. Just earlier this year, the processing of crude oil, the Chevron refinery in Richmond spilled over 600 gallons of crude oil into the San Francisco Bay, as we see in the picture on the left. And the Chevron refinery has had multiple fires that created mandatory evacuation zones. It's at 15,000 people to hospital emergency rooms, for example, and August 6th, 2012. Moreover, for people like Mary Rose, a hostile incident solidified her determination against red offsets and towards a system-thinking approach to climate change policy. At a 2010 United Nations meeting in Cancun, Mexico, she was detained and tossed out of the climate negotiations for holding a sign opposing carbon markets. She told me, quote, you would think I would be afraid after that experience, but actually I was encouraged because to the right of me at the protest was the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, and to the left of me were leaders of social movements from the Western Hemisphere, from the MST of Brazil, and the Via Campesina, a Mexico. And in front of me were the Native American brothers and sisters from the Indigenous Environmental Network who have been campaigning to add red forest offsets, and quote. So working together in person via conference calls during 2011 and 2012, California Environmental Justice Groups and Indigenous Rights Groups organized an opposition campaign. Through this process, they were able to overcome concerns from groups from Mexico and Brazil that California Environmental Justice Groups might sell them out through carbon market trading and revenue sharing programs. After several collaborative negotiations, they eventually forged a common understanding about the spatial implications and global reach of California's carbon market, highlighting potential harms to those living among the trees and those living next to polluting industries. The debate, again, this debate is so contentious because California is the third largest carbon market in the world. The implication here, California is a global climate leader and if California adopts red offsets, others will follow globally. While policy makers in California proclaim the benefits of forest offsets at international events, several Indigenous groups from the global South protest the lack of consultation during the development of a proposal that could impact their lands and livelihoods. The first major global protests against California's carbon market occurred on September 26th, 2012, where over 40 Indigenous protesters from the land con jungle and members of international NGOs gathered outside the governor's climate and forest meeting in Chiapas, Mexico. The task force founded by the state of California brought together governments, the government and business officials dedicated to implementing red offsets globally. They represented 16 local governments of six countries, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, the United States, Peru and Nigeria. That between them held 20% of the world's forest. Among the most vocal protesters at the task force meeting was Ufima Sanchez, a Mayan Indigenous leader from the remote jungles of Chiapas. Denied a chance to address the meeting, Sanchez seized the microphone phone during the opening plenary and spoke before a packed auditorium of several hundred participants. Quote, she was quoted as saying, we have come before you today to denounce the programs and projects that threaten to dispass us of our territories. Why did the wealthy want to impose their will by force? The jungles are sacred and exist to serve the people. We don't come to your countries and tell you what to do with your lands and livelihoods. We ask for the same respect, end quote. Ufima's rejection of forest offsets invoked the nature of the forest as a home, a historically contested territory and a sacred space. Her intervention highlights how climate change policy maps onto existing cultural meanings and social and historic dynamics concerning property, politics and culture. For example, at this protest on several Indigenous leaders held up signs, the one at the bottom right reads, the government of Chiapas had lied to us. They didn't inform us, they didn't consult us and we don't want red offsets. So under international law and policies before you enter into any multilateral or bilateral agreement that'll impact lands and livelihoods of Indigenous communities, there has to be free, prior and informed consent. An allegation here that that was violated and that didn't occur. Three weeks after the Forest Task Force meeting in Chiapas an international delegation of Indigenous leaders from Brazil, Mexico and Ecuador traveled to Sacramento, California to register their opposition in person at the California Air Research and Board Public Hearing on October 18th, 2012. The delegation was hosted by Friends of the Earth and several California Environmental Justice organizations. While digital communication aided the development of the South-North Exchange, activists understood that physical sites of assembly were still the most effective way of collectively expressing resistance and challenging the dominant power. California represented the locus of power as it is the only local jurisdiction in the world considering red offset programs. The presence of Indigenous leaders alongside California Environmental Justice advocates moreover showcased a narrative of the potential South-North environmental injustice derived from California's global market-based climate change solutions. In other words, it was a symbolic reminder of the spatial and human-scale impacts of carbon markets. Several Indigenous advocates and public health advocates spoke out in opposition at the Air Resources Board meeting in Sacramento. For example, one public health activist that worked with Indigenous communities and the remote jungles of Chiapas presented this brochure that the state of Chiapas distributed at the 2000 conference of the parties of the United Nations and Cancun, Mexico. And this brochure, as you can see, highlights that it cleared 172 illegal groups were relocated and efforts to avoid deforestation. So the advocate made the allegation or searching here that while California has not officially linked its carbon market, its cap and trade system to Chiapas, Mexico, the state of Chiapas, an anticipation of that potential linkage is clearing out Indigenous groups that don't have land tenure to create these carbon markets and potential revenue for state and land owners. There was also Indigenous leaders from Ocala, Brazil speaking out in opposition. Ninoa, the president of the Federation of CUNYQ people spoke out in opposition and he was quoted the same at the hearing quote, Indigenous people are feeling the effects of offset programs. They are restricting our way of life and our ability to have access to our traditional hunting, fishing and gathering sites. So for this reason, we are urging you not to accept red offsets in your trading program, end quote. California environments with justice advocates also spoke out in opposition. One group was quoted as saying, quote, we stand with our international brothers and sisters. We will leave red programs are bad for communities internationally that are being decimated from the program and California communities that are not receiving the benefit of local pollution reduction, end quote. When the board hearing concluded, members of the Trans-Local Coalition continued their lobbying efforts at the state capitol. They met with legislative leaders and presented them with a letter signed by more than 30 California-based organizations opposing red. Following the capitol lobby day, the coalition organized a no red tour throughout Northern California. Coalition members sought to educate the public about the effects of offset programs on people living in both industrialized and forest regions. The tour led to a larger policy discussion in the capitol and news media over California's ability to monitor the integrity of international offsets in developing countries. For example, the legal scholar Alan Rommel noted that any international offset program implemented in a developing country would depend on the host country or third parties for verification. Corruption at any stage, including initial reporting, verification and monitoring could undermine offset programs. Rommel's comments influenced by the visibility of the Trans-Local Coalition further raised concern with capitol staff members. This included whether the state could monitor international offsets in the same manner as domestic ones. The state, unlike the federal government, lacks international authority to enforce provisions or intervene in another country's sovereignty. Several senior capitol staff members told me that California should be cautious developing linkages where doing so could induce or exasperate human rights violations in the global south. There's other concerns and major challenges of implementing carbon offsets programs. And really understanding can forest preserve carbon that sinks for at least 100 years, which is the IPPC rule for forest offsets. There's several major challenges including a wildfires increase in severity and frequency. As you know, in California, in Brazil, Australia, the intensity and severity and frequency of wildfires is increasing. We currently have six major active fires for which are currently burning are the four largest in California's history that are occurring currently now. And there was a recent study by UC Berkeley that showed that carbon offset burning is undermining the program. The airboard has this 20% buffer to account for wildfires that are taking over some of these forest conservation projects. And this study is showing and it's finding that that 20% buffer is being decimated by the current and past fires. Also the issue of drug cartels and political corruption. There was an interesting, a very informative investigative reporting by the Los Angeles Times that showed that forest reserves are being taken over by drug cartels, not to grow drugs, but to grow avocados because that's a higher commodity. And one ecologist who was taking care of those forest preserves quoted the same quote, the worst case scenario is that they decide making too much noise and they kill me, end quote. He was one of the whistleblowers telling the world about this situation. I didn't finally economic and political uncertainty in many countries. For example, many of you know that the president of Brazil is, it can be identified as a climate denier, is not supportive of climate change programs and really undermined some. And for example, in the fires that happened two years ago, the president blamed actor Leonardo DiCaprio for paying people to start these fires. Moreover, at a red panel that I hosted in 2006 at the Yale School of Forestry, the California Air Resources Board member Dean Flores commented that regulators are walking a fine line balancing in-state political pressures with a goal of combating global climate change. He said, are we trying to save California or are we trying to save the world? In some sense, the answer may be both. Flores identified forest offsets as one of the most controversial issues facing the Air Board. He added that the Translocal Coalition has done a good job in highlighting the ledge negative aspects of offsets, which made it more difficult to quickly approve the program. Throughout 2012, California Environmental Justice advocates and indigenous leaders demonstrated how powerful network coalitions could shape environmental narratives of carbon reductions. During the next five years, the Translocal Coalition helped stall momentum towards adoption of an international forest offset program. Most importantly, its protest created market and political uncertainty. Today, the issue continues to be contentious and unresolved and sacramental. This form of translocal activism is consistent with Margaret Keck and Catherine Chichin's research on global human rights activism. What the authors termed the boomerang pattern can be observed in the ways that NGOs in the global south work with similar domestic groups in the global north. In the case of translocal opposition to red, indigenous groups in Chiapas and Acle, Brazil protested their own government state A, as we've seen the diagram, to stop the development of offset programs. However, due to the relative weakness of civil society in Mexico and Brazil meant that the groups lacked sufficient power to influence their governments and could even become targets of repression themselves, a situation diagram as blockage in the pattern. The groups therefore connected with California organizations for help. The global north organizations in comparison had greater freedom of action and benefited from stronger civil societies. Information sharing and collaboration between regions led California environmental justice groups to protest their government state B to block the program. Therefore, under the boomerang model, California policymakers perhaps not wanting to be viewed as adopting policies that could provoke human rights abuses abroad began to slow down the process of approval of global offsets. Again, this issue has remained contentious and debated and sacramental and unresolved. Therefore, through their efforts, anti-red activists are challenging the worldviews that are considered valid within California's decision making on climate change. The translocal coalition posed a fundamental question. Who has the power to protect nature and humanity from the existential threat of climate change? The answer has emerged through various forms of conflict and collaboration. California's climate change policy increasingly depends on the ways in which it incorporates and watch our lives voices from within the state and around the globe. So to sum up some of the key findings from this translocal anti-red coalition, the first is that distant groups formed an anti-red campaign based on diverse worldviews and histories. Environmental injustice is interconnected. Environmental justice groups travel across geographies and scales to effectively address them. And more importantly, there are spatial implications of carbon markets. The third finding is that the coalition challenged state power in the North and the South rejecting global structures that embedded environmental injustices within state sanctioned climate change solutions. And then finally, instead of only market-based climate solutions, environmental justice groups are arguing for more equitable alternatives. However, there's a lot of limitations and challenges to this form of translocal activists. The first is there's unequal power dynamics between global North and global South activists, as I previously mentioned. There's divergent perspectives and priorities among global South indigenous groups, US and Native American tribes and California environmental justice groups. As I mentioned earlier, not all indigenous groups in the global South opposed carbon offsets are red. These larger groups that have more political power, they have land tenure so they can negotiate their state and local governments are in strong support of these projects. Also, some of Native American tribes in the United States are supported. For example, the California-York tribe, which is the largest tribe in California, is also happens to be the largest tribe of forced offsets on their own territories within California. And they're linking up with some of these indigenous groups around the globe with the help of the Ford Foundation to try to strategize of how they can help implement red projects globally. A third is that the state and market forces might co-opt the movement. They essentially may create astral turf or greenwashing and slap on a couple of equity principles without really addressing the structural challenges and inequities in these programs. And then finally, red is an unresolved issue. As I mentioned, there's a lot of difficult to sustaining trans-local coalitions over time. It takes a lot of resources, staff time, money and effort to convene these type of coalitions. So what does this all really mean? So what are the larger, broader theoretical findings of this research? Well, through my more than 10 years of research, I came to see this tension between world views of climate change, those of scientists, mainstream environmental groups and policymakers, and then those of environmental justice advocates. While these world views are not absolute, they are a generalization of the dynamics I initially observed within California. In the first world view, I generally saw one base on utilitarianism, efforts to develop climate change policy for the greatest good for the greatest number. I call this world view carbon reductionism and that adherence to cost-effectiveness and market-based solutions focused only on reducing global greenhouse gas emissions without social equity, justice and local health considerations for the most polluted and disadvantaged communities. Under this world view, my research generally observed governments being judged whether their policies are cost-effective and benefit the majority. So in the initial years under carbon reductionism, there was a strong emphasis just on global greenhouse gas reduction potential. And this was often measured in tons of CO2 equivalent because carbon is the most abundant greenhouse gas emission in the atmosphere. And there's this strong scientific framing around climate change, very detailed expertise of who can frame the idea of climate change as a problem and define the idea of climate change and its data gathering methods and the corresponding solutions. And these solutions are often focused on cost-effectiveness. How can we reduce greenhouse gases most cost-effectively without having a major burden on businesses? And this is often achieved through what's called market-based solutions such as the cap and trade system or carbon offsets that I mentioned earlier. And again, California has a third largest cap and trade system after the European Union and China. And this cap and trade system is often seen as being geographically neutral. So since carbon emissions are global in nature, they mix uniformly and the global atmosphere don't settle at the local level. It doesn't matter where you reduce carbon emissions so long as you reach that global target. So you can do all your emissions reductions in a wealthy community like Beverly Hills or Santa Monica or Manhattan, or you can do them in environmental justice communities like Compton, South Los Angeles or North Long Beach. And the geographically neutral approach to cap and trade and carbon programs in the early years only had an emphasis on mitigation, just reducing and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. And in the early years, they did not focus on climate adaptation, acknowledging that wildfires, heatwaves, extreme weather vents are already happening and we have to adapt our communities and our society, particularly our most vulnerable communities. So conversely on the other side, environmental justice groups generally had a moral rights-based worldview. I dub their worldview as climate change from the streets. They critical reevaluation of both the practice and politics of reducing carbon emissions. Their worldview considers social equity and argues that a utilitarianism approach ignores distinctions between people and the disproportionate impact of climate change on low-income communities of color. My research observed the environmental justice worldview as participatory, embodied and experimental. So under a climate change from the streets worldview on the right-hand side, there's a strong emphasis not only on greenhouse gas emissions potential, but co-benefits potential, understanding that the processes of burning fossil fuels which causes greenhouse gas emissions also creates other local pollution like knocks and socks that are co-pollutants that happen at the same time of burning a fossil fuel that stay at the local level and do affect people's health. But generally in our climate change policy, we create these policies silos between global pollution and local pollution. Here they advocate activists advocate for a more system-staking approach, a more interlinking of our client and climate change policies that are holistic that address multiple pollutants, people's public health and greenhouse gas emissions. So there's a strong contextual frame, understanding that climate change is happening in larger society affecting differently, different communities and demographic groups. So there's a contextual framing, local expertise it's acknowledged to bring into the conversation of defining climate change, data gathering and policy formulation. So there's an emphasis not just on cost effectiveness, it focuses on cost effectiveness of course, but it should not happen at the expense of social equity, justice or other forms of equitable outcomes. So focusing on cost effectiveness but also environmental justice. And these solutions are generally community-based solutions ensuring that the solutions are not just only benefiting the majority but the communities that are hit first and worse by the impacts of climate change. So there's a multi-scaler approach to this type of climate policy, acknowledging that geography, context and place matters in carbon markets and climate change programs. And then finally, there's an emphasis not just on mitigation. In 2008 and 2009, environmental justice group really pushed the state and local governments such as the city of Oakland, but largely the state to focus on not just state-scale adaptation policies and hard assets safeguarding our freeways, hospitals and schools from the impacts of climate change but also safeguarding our neighborhoods. So having a local focus on neighborhood adaptation. So environmental justice groups in 2008 really pushed the state and local governments to focus on that. So many of you may consider these world views as a simple dichotomy. However, its use is intended to highlight a critical analysis of a contentious politics of scale, economics and race. And it helps us as scholars understand that the actors involved in climate change policymaking are often speaking from structural locations that are worlds apart. And in 2012, yet I witnessed a big change in climate change policymaking. It became more participatory and synergetic. Through a reoccurring process of conflict and collaboration, a broader range of individuals and organizations are now co-producing what climate change means. Human geographer Mike Helm argues that the tension between world views can have a balancing, even created impact yielding stronger, more robust approaches to resolving climate change. Furthermore, world views are not fixed. They can transform over time. Scientific ideas and beliefs about climate change evolve together with the representations, identities, debates and institutions that give practical effect and meaning to policies. In other words, the ways in which we conceptualize climate change just don't happen. People are behind our governments, policies and environmental values, and they can change their minds. For instance, at a 2017 United Nations Climate Change Conference, the former California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made statements that some traditional environmentalists ascribe to the wrong climate change worldview. He insisted that climate action should now focus more on local air pollutants and their health effects. Schwarzenegger's 2017 position, however, directly contrasted with his worldview when he held public office. As California governor, he often impeded efforts to link climate change policy with environmental justice and public health. His changing perspective reflects the broader evolution of California's world views of climate change. Through such instances, we can assess the diversification of climate change and politics, tracing how scientific facts about the world are fused with social commitments. So to close up, I attribute this co-productionist framework as being underscored by narratives of embodiment. And environmental justice groups are pushing new hypotheses as well as evaluating existing ones around climate problems and solutions. They are calling for multiple ways of learning and knowing about climate change. Through my many years of interviews, I observed how environmental justice groups centered their work on telling stories how their bodies bear the marks of environmental interactions. They framed their work on the human embodiment of climate change and carbons associated with pollutants. For them, the body is where diverse points of pollution, social stratification and poverty intersect. I call this way of knowing and learning as climate embodiment. The concept that draws on eco-feminist studies and the field of public health. For example, environmental justice advocates in Richmond argue for a holistic understanding of leaks between the infrastructural body that is the extraction of raw materials for the construction of buildings or the refining of oil to the contaminated human body. In other words, we began to imagine a form of climate embodiment that represents a continuum where the human body cannot be divorced from its environment and environmental solutions cannot be isolated from the human body. In conclusion, this embodied research represents new models of engagement with climate change that makes space for alternative paradigms of environmental protection. My engagement of a key stakeholder since 2006 has allowed me to critically analyze how the success of climate change policy in California now depends on incorporating marginalized voices and embody perspectives from the local and global scales. So thank you for this opportunity. It was such a pleasure and I look forward to our conversation in the Q&A. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Mendez for your talk. I would now like to open up the session for questions. So just as a reminder again to ask questions, participants on Zoom are encouraged to use the raise your hand button and I will call on you to unmute and ask your question directly or you can also type in the chat box, your question and I can read them out. For everyone here in everyone 14, you can also raise your hand and I'll just call on you and you can ask your questions. Ronjani, is there an equal push for policies that are geared towards reducing the per capita consumption of natural resources by Californians or there is for red in California? That's an excellent question. So that goes to the sort of systems thinking approach to climate change policy, particularly around forests that environmental justice groups have. Friends of the Earth, which is a big NGO, environmental NGO that works in the global south around forests and other natural resources along with a couple of environmental justice groups about two years ago entered legislation dealing with forest products from the Amazon and trying to reduce the consumption of California use of such products. Of course that bill did not really move forward. I think it might have gotten out of one policy committee but then it was stalled eventually and defeated by various industries that obviously are benefiting from Amazon forest products. So yes, there's really that push to look at a more of a global systems thinking approach to the California's footprint and contributing to global greenhouse gases both within the state. And in this case in the Amazon through the buying and use of forest based product from there. But also really acknowledging that our fossil fuel thinking even at the largest scale also important to understand that it's a fossil fuel based economy that is not just about these type of lumber products but it's all the products that are derived from fossil fuel use as well. So really thinking about it's gonna take a fundamental shift in our economy in all sectors to really achieve a net zero or a more equitable approach to climate change policy to really address the root causes of greenhouse gas emissions and other co-pollutants that affect people's lives and communities. Stefan? Okay, can you hear me Professor Mendez? Yes. Okay, I'm curious about the stability of the political coalition the kind of utilitarian market-based environmental political coalition as we approach contentious issues that are either inter-regional in scale. So like the Colorado River watershed or something or invariably engaged the nation state. And I guess I'm curious about the power of actors whether it's Chevron or farmers in the Central Valley that the many actors both within California and beyond for whom any climate change or carbon framework is a concern. And I guess I'm curious about where EJ and then this kind of utilitarian market environmental coalition land on that with the ultimate concern being of course that the divisions within these two groups on the kind of liberal left might ultimately prevent climate reduction strategies overall. And then I guess a follow up question to that is whether you think the red framework as it's currently envisioned is doing more harm than good kind of in its current form? Two excellent questions, a lot there but two excellent questions I'll try to answer as best I can. Subtitled, my book is how conflict and collaborations strengthen the environmental justice movement. So regulators in California are regulators in North Carolina, no matter what don't environmental regulators that is don't just wake up one day and like I'm going to implement environmental justice. I'm going to have an equity lens frame. So you really need to understand who are people from the policymakers to the rank and file regulators to appointees governor and presidential appointees that are in these powerful positions often do not look like individuals that are from these environmental justice communities the most impacted most disadvantaged communities. So again, that worldview is quite different and that's why I really emphasize in this book and this presentation that they're struck individuals and stakeholders are coming from structural locations that are worlds apart. So to go back to your question is again regulators don't wake up one day wanting to do that. Oftentimes they resist this, don't want to do this have a very technical scientific framing and see equity, how sort of outside the purview or scope of the work that they do. And as you mentioned earlier, they do have that utilitarianism approach that what they're doing benefits larger society and therefore encompasses environmental justice. So the conflict and collaboration in my subtitle is really at the heart of that. It takes social movements to protest to have oftentimes antagonistic tactics to force policymakers rank and file regulators to change their practices and behaviors because there's definitely oftentimes a regulatory culture within regulatory agencies. And there's a legislative culture as well within legislative bodies that bracket out these equity and inclusion dimensions. So oftentimes it takes lawsuits, it takes protesting, it takes finding allies within the legislature, which the big theme in my book in chapter three, if you read it on the changing demographics of the California legislature where retiring white coastal Democrats, mostly men started to retire or either get voted out of office because of the changing dynamics from the African-Americans, the API community and of course the Latino community. So these groups started teaming up with Latino legislators in particular that understood these communities, often times, not always, but oftentimes understood these communities and sponsored legislation to change those cultural aspects. My little daughter there, same side. The cultural aspects of these issues and essentially the Latino caucus in particular one of the largest, I think it is the largest caucus in the California legislature started with holding their votes on major environmental bills, climate change bills. So again, California is always the innovator, the experimenter leading the force. So anytime California over the last 15 years wanted to do that, the Latino caucus started with holding votes and saying that is not addressing the heart of environmental justice, our community and they started incorporating that a little bit more and that's sort of the conflict and collaboration I discussed in the book. And of course, California is not perfect. There's still a lot of environmental injustices, environmental racism, but in the last 15, 17 years there has been major progress and California is not only a global leader on climate change, it is a global leader on climate justice though still more needs to be done and the state can always do better. The second part of your question about red offsets there's still been questionable. There have been three major investigative reporting and this year alone, a one from MIT Technology Review which is one of your peer planning groups. The MIT Technology Review Magazine that many of you may read did an investigative reporting with I think two academics that really showed the nature conservancies in particular and a couple other voluntary offset programs of how they weren't valid oftentimes and they did verification and really showing that they weren't adding any additionality that there's been cases where there have been conservation projects that an NGO conserved and dedicated to the preservation from the 1970 to 1980s and they were double dipping saying that that project that they got in the 70s or 80s is now a forest offset. So forest offset to be valid, you have to show that that land, that forest would have been threatened by development, oil extraction or any type of development news and it has to be immediate. It couldn't be from the 70s or 80s. So that was an MIT Technology Review. Also look at Bloomberg News, which again, this is a business news publication also did a very critical analysis of offset and just earlier, I think it was last week the Los Angeles Times did a follow-up investigative reporting on the nature conservancy and citing UC Berkeley and I believe it's carbon pulse or carbon plan, their recent analysis of offsets. So I encourage you to look at those three independent sources to make your own judgment of offset programs yourself. Thank you. Thank you. And we have a question from the Zoom chat. This is from Rejoice. And the question is, are there are some local community solutions to climate change, especially from the anti-red groups? Can you repeat that again? Are there are some local community solutions to climate change, especially from the anti-red groups? Yeah, so their idea is again, securing land tenure, particularly for the smaller indigenous groups of forest people that have been there. We see this in the United States. Some indigenous tribes here, particularly in California are not recognized by the federal government. Luckily, they're recognized by the state government, but the federal government does not want to recognize them. That's one of the main issues, not trying to do a program in places like Chiapas that have a long history of land tenure and long conflict. If you don't know about this, look up the Zapatista Rebellion. That'll give you an idea of how contentious and how violent some of these places are. And I don't know how California decided to use that at first as one of their pilot areas to look at, but really acknowledging the history and the conflicts that exist. Providing opportunities for people to again, own their land and be able to conserve the land, but also to still maintain their livelihoods. And looking at other types of climate change solutions that tackle both global and local pollution, black carbon is a major issue, particularly in Latin America from the heavy duty trucks. So black carbon is what they call short-lived or what did they just, it should be called short-lived climate pollutant, but they changed it to, I can't remember, high powered, I can't remember what it's called, but essentially it has a seven to sometimes 20 times the global warming potential of just regular carbon. And this comes from the burning of fossil fuels. So it creates a global pollutant as well as local pollutant that affects people health. The black carbon is sort of that very, very fine suit you see everywhere, but it's even finer than that that comes from the burning of diesel fuel. So looking at how can we convert our transportation infrastructure to have less impact on our environment and of course people's health. So that's a big issue of, I think would be better to focus on, both in here in the United States that have multi-benefit policies addressing co-pollutants. Here we have a question. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. First of all, I love your book. Thank you so much. I went to undergrad for, I did my undergrad in environmental policy and I was surprised that I'd never heard, even though I was thought about carbon offsets and carbon trade and everything, I never heard about the spatial and human implications of this solutions. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you for reading the book. Is he there? Oh, okay. Sorry. So I was just like shocked really. I really enjoyed learning about that. So my question is like, very often opportunities to access a higher quality residential environment. So to live in a better community or yeah, we're better conditions I would say. Depends on income. So how would inclusion of the streets or of these perspectives from the streets or the knowledge from the streets in the development of climate solutions could change or affect how the capitalist system works? So like the cheapest areas to live will be the ones who that are next to the polluting facilities. Like how is that going to be changed? It's going to take a lot. We see these conflicts, these cleavages, these tensions, these fights within California, nationally and internationally. The IPPC report came out last month and then the UN climate change conference will be in Glasgow, Scotland in early November. I'm going to be attending for my first time. So I'm really excited. But it's going to take a fundamental shift on how we live. So I often say that, yes, there are very hard core climate deniers, they do exist, but a lot of people that can be classified in that climate denier section, like particularly policy makers and industry leaders and business owners. Privately, they oftentimes don't deny that climate change is happening. We're all experienced it, but they often are opposing climate change because many people are benefiting from the fossil fuel economy. Many people are becoming very wealthy and are extracting a lot of resources from our planet that is supporting their lifestyles from the 1% to suburban communities. So we're asking people to fundamentally change that lifestyle, those benefits, those advantages that they have. So going from the fossil fuel economy essentially is asking for a redistribution of resources, work types of jobs and benefits that people are having. So that's going to be a continuing conflict that we have even within California. So people, yes, the state is a very climate leader, but again, environmental policy doesn't just happen within California, depending on which list you look. California is the fourth or fifth largest oil producer in the United States. So the oil industry, the Western States Petroleum Association, which is very powerful, gives a lot of money and lobbying and political contributions to various legislators doesn't as well as the natural gas industry, the building industry, they don't just roll over and let all these quote unquote progressive policies happen. There's a lot of fights that happen, particularly as that's why, as we see with environmental justice, environmental justice changes our societal practices as well as our business practices. So I think the more honest we could be about that, the better we can moving forward. It's sort of the immediate things that you're asking for is particularly for local governments, taking the time and effort to build relationships with NGOs, environmental justice communities, disadvantaged communities, understanding where these communities are mapping them, building relationships and having some of these trusted organizations work hand in hand with local governments, providing them resources to do the outreach and building policy that really works with the speed of trust. And a lot of times, governments want to be policy innovators and just get a report or policy done or adopted without doing the work and building that speed of, working and building that trust with the idea of trust. So that, I think that's one area and a lot of governments don't do it from climate change to sustainability issues to my new research, which I want to share right now on climate induced disasters. So I'm really, this article, I encourage some of you, everyone to read this, looks at the invisible victims of disaster, understanding of the vulnerability of undocumented Latino and indigenous migrants, particularly focusing on farm workers that are asked to risk their lives and livelihood through these extreme wildfire events. Again, four of the largest wildfires that ever happened in California's history by acreage are currently burning. And each year for the last four years, we're breaking that record. So there's a new fire that beat out 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and now 2021. So essentially, a lot of these fires, extreme wildfire events, these are very complex fires, multiple fires coming together. They're called extreme because they don't follow traditional fire science practices or behavior. And people, farm workers in particular and winery areas like Sonoma and Napa, the central coast, Santa Barbara are asked to go into mandatory evacuations zones that are considered hazardous for the rest of the general population and not given proper N95 masks, goggles, or anything, particularly in 2017 when this article takes place and asked to safeguard the crops from smoke and ash without really looking at that human embodiment of what is happening to these farm workers, particularly ones that are undocumented and indigenous and Latino, what is happening to their bodies from safeguarding harvest, who is safeguarding their bodies? And so my research is really looking at that and we're having, I co-authored this with community groups and we've had a great opportunity to engage with high level policymakers both at the local, state and international levels including the United Nations. And I'm continuing this project during NSF, National Science Foundation study, looking at another region in California and Sonoma County, which has some of the most expensive wineries and bottled wines and how that area has experienced multiple years of extreme wildfire events and how that's impacting in particular farm workers there as well. So I don't know how much time we have left but I just wanted to share that as well. Maybe we can take just one last question. Great, super. Thank you for being here today and speaking with us. This might be a little wide ranging, so forgive me but as an environmental justice activist myself, I work with a lot of groups in regard to climate action, a particular interest in mass communication and building popular support. So I was wondering if you could perhaps share some of your observations on the most effective methods you've observed in promoting any particular climate programs or the strengths and weaknesses. I guess more specifically, I've heard in some academia and recently strongly argue against using hard science, hard data as a tool for building support. They think it's, and it alienates a lot of just quote unquote normal people that they're trying to convince and maybe what is effective in turn for that. And then perhaps in addition to that, if you want, I was just curious on your thoughts on these people in minority groups using their experience to convince for a certain political argument. That is like, in my experience, like having those shared these very emotional appeals but their body experience very effective but it also requires a lot of emotional labor on their part. So, I don't know if anybody wants to. No, no, no, not, everything that you talk about in the heart of my book. That conflict and collaboration, those worldviews that I mentioned, structural locations that people are coming from environmental justice groups believe in climate science. They believe in climate-based science from public health, COVID-19 pandemic. And they have taken stances on that as well to climate change and sustainability science. They absolutely believe in that and from the research that I do and then my own professional practice as a policymaker myself on the water board have seen that. There's no argument about there. For the attention and the conflict or cleavage that may happen is what science are we gonna use? What data, what metrics? Data telemetals who's a very famous sustainability science scientist. She had a saying that really stuck with me. We measure what we value. So, nobody is in sustainability science and nobody's arguing against the science but what people are often, what are you gonna measure? What are you valuing? And then if you're one demographic group, all the scientists, all the engineers, all the modelers are coming from just one worldview, one cultural background. How's that gonna impact the research questions that you ask, the data you collect and again the corresponding solutions and then what stakeholders you invite and who you have rapport with. Anyone, this is a very international program, a very elite international program. People are coming from all over the world and that's one of the draws of your school and your department is having that experience that international context, that world global context and that often doesn't happen at the local state and then some of these very fancy United Nations convenings, there's some dominant groups because of wealth and power. So, key individual actors are driving the agenda oftentimes. So, I'm learning more about the international context and climate change, I'm gonna participate my first time but I do know the local state and increasingly the federal level and it's quite jarring sometimes to be in those spaces and who's invited, I'm quite privileged and honored to be starting to be invited to those spaces but seeing it at various policy scales really matters. So, diversifying who are the scientists, who are the scientists interacting with and again, building those relationships. What urban planners do and from disaster planning to transportation is a form of a scientific tool or scientific method that's based on rationality and nobody's arguing against that but how do we make those systems and tools and logics that we use as urban planners, sustainability scientists or engineers or policy scientists that are more inclusive, more representative and more understanding of the various contexts that individuals experience and understand that climate change happens in larger society in multiple groups and demographic groups. We see more question in the chat box but unfortunately we're at time. So, on behalf of the urban planning program in particular, I'd like to thank you again Dr. Mendez for your wonderful presentation. We really appreciate you taking the time and thanks also to everyone who attended today's lecture. Make sure to join us again next week at the same time for our next speaker by Professor Sophie Gannick whose talk will be on contesting this possession, immigrants and the struggle for housing Madrid. And I just want to do a shout out to Ariela. I went to MIT with her and hope to connect with you soon. Thank you. Awesome. And Professor Mendez, if you have 10 to 15 minutes we just have like a one-on-one with the PhD students. Great, thank you. So yeah, we'll just take a couple of minutes to get the room cleared out and set down the Zoom for everyone else. Okay, I'm gonna get some water. I'm gonna.