 All right. Welcome all to this morning's Dean's Symposium panel discussion on communicating climate change, policymakers, advocates, and public opinion. My name is Caitlin Ramey, and I'm an associate professor here at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and it's my pleasure to be moderating this discussion. We hope that you have and will continue to be able to enjoy some of the other sessions at this symposium. So climate change is often described as a wicked problem, one with many interdependent, changing and thorny factors to solve. For policymakers, this often means balancing complex and sometimes competing preferences from a range of stakeholders, both responding to those voices and communicating about policies and ways that will resonate with a wide range of audiences. This morning, we'll be discussing the way that climate change policies are influenced by messages from climate advocates and the public, and about the messages those policymakers communicate about climate change themselves. But first, let me introduce myself and our panelists. So I am a social and environmental psychologist who specializes in climate change communication. Among other things, I study how people perceive climate change, science, policies, and related technologies, and the interplay between individual level actions on climate change and public support for societal level policies. Our first guest speaker is Cara Cook. Cara is Chief of Staff for the Michigan Department of the Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, EGLE. She has worked in various roles within the Executive Office, most recently serving as a senior policy advisor to Governor Gretchen Whitmer, focused in the areas of energy and environmental protection. Before joining the Executive Office of the Governor, Cara served on the Whitmer-Gilchrist transition, where she helped set an agenda for the governor's first 100 days of office. Previously, she worked in government affairs at the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. Next to Cara, we have Mike Schreiberg, Professor of Practice and Engagement at the University of Michigan School of Environmental and Sustainability, or CES, and Director of Engagement for the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research and the Michigan Sea Grant. Mike's work focuses on water issues in the Great Lakes, local and state energy policy, campus sustainability and carbon neutrality, and environmental leadership. Prior to coming to CES, he was the Great Lakes Regional Executive Director at the National Wildlife Federation. Major initiatives there included leading advocacy for federal Great Lakes restoration efforts, ensuring water affordability and access, preventing the introduction of aquatic invasive species, reforming Great Lakes water management, building resilience of the Great Lakes from climate change, combating environmental injustice in the region, and engaging urban youth in nature-based education activities. On Mike's left, we have Donna Givens-Davinson, who was over 35 years nonprofit leadership experience in areas of youth and family development, community economic development, community partnerships, and community education. She now serves as President and CEO of Eastside Community Network, whose missions include climate equity. Over the past decade, Eastside Community Network has built a reputation as a leader in the urban climate resilience space, focusing efforts on policy advocacy, infrastructure development, and community education to promote climate resiliency and equitable climate change strategies in Detroit. Donna is also a lecturer at Columbia University School of Professional Studies and co-hosts a weekly podcast called Authentically Detroit. I want to acknowledge our co-sponsor, the Alumni Association of the University of Michigan, and our media partner, Detroit Public Television. Once the panel has spoken for a while, we will open it up to audience questions. If you're watching online, please click the link on the web page to ask your questions. If you're here at Wild Hall, please use the QR codes on the cards that were distributed. My colleagues, Kristen Bergard and Casey Sullins will moderate that Q&A. And if you're posting to social media, please use at Ford School and hashtag Dean's Symposium with two S's between Dean's and Symposium to do that. So, without further ado, join me in welcoming our guests. All right, so I'm so thrilled that you're able to join us today. And I'm going to start with a question that I'll pose to all three of you and I hope that you will each answer but also respond to each other a bit as well. So I thought before we talk about how policymakers, advocates, and the public communicate and influence each other about climate change, it's helpful to check in first about what are the topics and policies that we're communicating about. We often talk about climate policies at the national or international level, but as each of you are experts in climate responses in Michigan, I'm hoping that you can talk a little bit about how those state and local policy conversations about climate differ from those at the national level. So what are the climate issues that are most relevant or discussed in your communities or in Michigan as a whole? Are there different political fault lines when you think about local or state policies and about national ones? Are there different interest groups or stakeholders that you think about when it comes to Michigan or local level policies? So I'll start with Kara first. Great. Thank you for having me. That was a lot of different questions. I guess I'll start on kind of the difference between state level policy and how people interact with each other around climate policy versus like the national or international level. I think state and local policy is going to have a much bigger impact, so it's definitely good for everybody to focus on. It's also going to be less politicized. I mean, I started my career about 10 years ago in this space working at an environmental nonprofit where I was lobbying primarily Republicans, because we had a Republican legislature and a Republican governor at that time, and we were still able to get big things done on climate and clean energy policy. We talked about it a little bit differently, but we're still able to make that progress. So I don't think it's quite as politicized as we see at the national level, particularly right now. That being said, there has been a bit of kind of a transition into things getting a little bit harder post-2016. We've started to see some of those national politics really trickle down. It's not impossible to get things done. We've gotten a few big bipartisan budgets done that have had hundreds of millions of dollars for climate change, a few pieces of legislation that were led by Republicans on climate change, but nothing like we have seen now that we have a Democratic majority within our legislature. Going back to this last fall, we negotiated, and the governor signed a really large package of bills that brought Michigan into national leadership on clean energy. I think one of the most disheartening things that I heard just around the politicization around these issues was I was talking to an elected Republican in one of the caucuses, and they said, well, we would be supportive of pieces of this policy had the governor not said that she wanted to get these done. So it became less about the specifics of the policy or having like an informed debate about what was best for Michigan and more about the politics. So I'm afraid that that transition has started to happen into Michigan, but we're still working to try to get things done. Very good. Mike, do you want to take the next? Sure. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I guess I want to start a little bit with talking about right here in Ann Arbor, because I've had the privilege of serving on the Energy Commission here for years and helping to draft a couple of the climate plans. Now, let's start with the obvious. Ann Arbor is definitely not a representative sample of the country on climate issues. It's one of probably a dozen cities that have been really progressive on this, but there's a really interesting debate playing out here that I think we'll see play out in different ways, and that's over actually the fundamental role of investor-owned utilities providing electricity. And the debate here is whether we should actually kind of blow it up and start all over, meaning Ann Arbor has a proposal to create its own municipal utility. So should we be providing our own electricity, or should we work within the system and start building out our own infrastructure? It's called a sustainable energy utility. And that's basically where the city starts building solar panels on homes and things, but does it piece by piece alongside the utility. And I think it's an interesting microcosm because there is a fundamental debate right now about whether the structure of providing energy that came into play 100 years ago actually makes sense for the future that we're looking at, which is mostly about distributed energy. It's about climate progress and it's about energy justice and equity. And so I think what we're seeing starting to play out in Ann Arbor is going to spread out to different areas. And we're here in the Ford School. We know cities and local government are where you do some of that experimentation and we're seeing it happen just outside these doors. And I guess I'd just say briefly at the state level, I've spent a decent chunk of time sort of lobbying on state renewable energy policy, like Kara was talking about. And it's interesting because I think you'll find some big commonalities. So clean energy jobs kind of goes across different partisan lines. When you talk about the impacts on water, the Great Lakes are sort of in the state, they're a core value, right? They're not something that has necessarily partisan divides on that. So when you get at that kind of high level, you see things that, you know, more continuity than you'd see in Congress. But as Kara was pointing out, once you get to the specifics of policy and the politics behind it, things tend to fall apart just a little bit, at least behind that. So maybe I'll leave it there for now, but great question. Thanks. Donna. I think that the chief difference in places like the place where I work, largely fenced line communities that are also really constructed to sacrifice zones for the way of life for our community right now. We're not really talking about protecting the climate. We're talking about protecting people who are damaged in the very near term by policies and practices. And I will agree that it's not really politicized because nobody who is elected to office is really trying to do it, you know, I mean, in a real way. We can talk about all of these things. But it's interesting to me that in 2019, Solantis built a new plant, destroyed the city, facilitated the destruction of a greenway and all of the trees and vegetative buffers that stood between this automotive facility and a neighborhood where people live. There have been eight air quality violations. And there has been no regulation that is effectively protected people and other communities, people are allowed to relocate. But in Detroit, they get $15,000 on one block just west of this plant. Then the same automotive facility was allowed to build a 38 acre trucking facility in an area that is adjacent to a pumping station that failed in 2021 to protect tens of thousands of people from flooding. And they're right next door. They've created all this cement and steel. And now there's one truck per minute going into this facility adjacent to a residential neighborhood. And there's no regulation on truck idling. There's no regulation on truck routes. There's no regulation that's even tracking the amount of exhaust that's going into a neighborhood where people cannot open their doors in the summertime. So it's horrible for the climate. One of the ways we know things are bad for the climate is they're bad for people. And people have to matter as much as a theoretical climate does. And so you go to the city and there's no regulation. Now, you know, we did have a meeting in our office two days ago and they said we're working on it. That's great because they've been working on it for 40 years. And so eventually they may even get there. You go to the state and the state says we don't regulate that. The EPA doesn't regulate that. So what I find is that the kind of crisis that we are confronted with on a daily basis and the kind of crisis that will really make a difference for all of us is not up for real debate and discussion because the imperatives and the needs of the corporate community and private investors and equity investors is always going to trump the needs of people like me and the people who live in our community. And I'd love to see that conversation change and I'd love to see some policy around that because you can't really have any real meaningful protection of the climate when you're killing people. Thank you. Well that is a great segue into my next question which is that we're seeing this increased concern in the U.S. public and in Michigan when it comes to climate change and other environmental issues like air pollution. But it's not surprising that we're seeing increased concern about climate change. We are seeing these growing consequences at our doorsteps, everything from wildfire smoke to flooding to extreme storms, etc. But this concern is often paired with a kind of cynicism or fatalism among members of the public, sometimes including our own students that they feel that this is such a big problem that there's nothing they can do to stop it or this belief that this is a problem that policymakers need to address but they're paired with frustration that these policymakers aren't working fast enough that this change isn't happening. And so I'm curious for each of you and maybe Donna I'll start with you since you're talking about the community action. Like what do you see as the role of members of the public in shaping these policies? What levers can they pull and what do you see as the most effective levers for them to pull to encourage the kind of big societal level changes that we need. I think most people really want common sense solutions to some of this stuff. I don't think most people want to live in a world where we're continuing to do this. I think that most people don't see how to translate that into policy without changing how we live as people. And I think that the amount of fundamental change that's necessary to really bring about fairness is a challenge. But you know when we put our heads together we've created so many great things together and we really decide that this is something we want to solve then we're going to draw on the interests of most people but that means that we've got to start regulating corporations and we've got to be willing to do that. We've got to start regulating private equity and we have to be willing to do that. I love what Ann Arbor is doing in terms of considering creating some non-investor controlled utility. I'd love to see that happen in Detroit because if you look at what's happening with DTE which is our provider I believe here in Ann Arbor and also in Detroit. DTE is raising energy rates they're asking for increases in their rates every three or four months now and then they're paying investors off $700 million while they're asking for $100 million rate increases and it's like maybe let's do the math maybe you should ask for a 300 I mean why are you even asking for that just pay your investors less but you can't because that's the way that we measure success and so we look at stock market performance as evidence of whether or not our economy is doing it well not whether people are doing well but stock market performance. We look at what these investors I just feel as though we have to look at the financialization of our economy and our politics and we have to look at those first before we have meaningful change at the human level because corporate interests will always trump human beings right now in our economy cause challenges that we have to talk about I think that we have to be more willing to listen to people in our communities people like me but others who feel silenced and invisible in these debates and I'm not quite sure how to raise the profile of people but again I think that we start by looking at some of these root causes and stop thinking that we can consume our way out of climate crisis and that we can you know commodify climate crisis. Mike or Karen do you want to jump in next on how people can get their voices heard. Sure I mean I think you asked about sort of you know leverage the poll and I tend to think of this a lot of how do people feel these climate impacts right like where does it come from and people tend to do it based on their own experience and kind of their social reference groups and you mentioned that you know I worked at the National Wildlife Federation and we were trying to motivate and organize people to take climate action and we're thinking okay so we're that group is a coalition of people who like the outdoors for different reasons right and so we're thinking how do you motivate people to take action on climate well you start seeing where it's impacting the resources so we started looking to organize people who go out and fish and they're seeing the stream temperatures change and there's fish species are moving in a different way so technically you need to motivate whether often sort of swing voters or moderate Republicans in the state who care about outdoor natural resources but actually you know climate issues aren't high on their radar so we went out and you know produced a report called changing seasons which looked at the impacts on different recreational activities outdoor recreation that climate's having and then tried to get and motivate folks and then actually worked with folks in local communities so local rod and gun clubs and things like that which I would say you know politically these aren't the folks that I tended to interact with the most but they're actually folks who had a lot of political power in the legislature and so as they're experiencing these things then we're bringing them into what's ultimately these kind of wonky debates within the legislature right these debates are over things like are we going to do what that means but it basically means like how much solar can we put on homes before the utility stuff so like you can't start by saying hey we know maybe you're experiencing climate change we want you to go lobby to remove the distributed generation cap that is not a particularly motivating message right so it's actually figuring out how people are being impacted how you pull those levers and then motivate them based on that and so in the end we're trying to build up those coalitions to get to some of the victories and the victories that we've had in the state and Cara described this on the first one they've been good in terms of we're increasing you know amounts of renewable energy they've also been sort of chipping away at the margins I think what we're hearing here and what I believe in is we actually need to fundamentally alter the system and that's going to take even more work really focus on like how bad climate change is all of the impacts that are happening think one of the things that we've tried to do at the state level and we're not naive to how much more we need to do or what the impacts are but try to be optimistic and really focus in on like what are the benefits to people we definitely know that people are feeling the impacts of climate change but how do we really point out when we're talking about climate change like getting new economic opportunities or building wealth within their household what is this going to mean you know for the air quality that their kids are breathing every day it's really making it tangible and focusing on those opportunities and the benefits and really seeing kind of painting a picture of what the world will look like if we do the right things on climate because I think a lot of people you know kind of your everyday folks are thinking about climate policy means that something is being taken away from them versus they are getting something more or have more opportunities so I think reframing it is really important when it comes to people engaging in these topics and not feeling as doom and gloom about climate. In the community areas are just around the automotive plant the average life expectancy is 66 years a mile and the average life expectancy is 82. So I'm not being doom and gloom but I think that we have this ability to not see ourselves as connected to each other. Lenny Guinear wrote a book a long time ago about minors canary and this understanding that what is happening to the least of us will happen to all of us unless we make policy changes. So while I understand I had this debate with some of my colleagues and people vote on the basis of self interest and that's the problem because we don't understand that there is a collective interest in taking care of our planet that ultimately we may not see the connection between what's happening next to this automotive plant and what's happening a mile away but it's there because there's one air there's one water and there's one soil and it's all connected and you cannot take care of your planet. And you've got to look at those people who are the most vulnerable and how are we protecting them because you know if you're protecting them you're protecting your kids and you're protecting your kids future. I talk to so many 18 year olds who don't believe they'll have a future because of what they see as a trend in the world and so I think also we have to think beyond what is good for our children in 2050 after we do or don't do these things. The research backs that up completely so it turns out one of the best messages about to motivate people on climate change is to talk about future generations and the effects of climate change not just now but for our children and grandchildren because that really people care about their families and what they otherwise do. All right thank you all. So we're talking about how the public can influence or communities can influence policy and I want to flip it around a little bit to look at the other communication direction so in addition to influence and communication coming from members of the public to policy makers we also know that influence and communication runs the other way so the things that we're talking about are the severity of climate change and also about which aspects of it or which victims of it are most valued so when you think about the existing or potential climate policies that you work on how do you see the role of those policies or policy makers in shaping either public opinion or particular stakeholder reactions Carol I'll start with you this time. Sure I think when we're talking about policy makers we have to take public opinion into consideration because we know we need to be able to actually execute these things we want to be able to continue to have the actions and that also means that we have to have a lot of folks at the table which can at sometimes slow down those processes so I think making sure that we understand what the public feels about policy makers and how they fit the community unique to fit the state can really make a difference in making sure that we can deliver. Yeah I guess I would say one thing is that the policy context is everything in this space right so I teach a climate policy class I teach it with an energy economist and you start with the premise of there is no free market for energy right like so you hear a lot of these things it's just false right like because the policy context 100% dictates or it sets the frame for how these decisions are made right so like the pot like you can't and I really agree you can't separate out these policies advocacy from the impact side of things and what's it but what's interesting though or and interesting as it is like how people actually experience the policies can be really consequences is talking about cold kills thousands of people a year there's no like that's not hyperbole that's public health that's and how you talk about that and then but then people don't see that direct link or connection the way they're actually experiencing most of our federal policy right now is through incentives I mean we passed the largest climate climate bill in the world was bill funding in the world over the last couple of years but the way people are actually experiencing it is in cost for solar like E.V. policy all these different things so it's it's actually it's a real communication challenge and this is more your your own Katelyn because like it's like you know the connection between E.V. policy and public health and Detroit is indirect in some ways but that's kind of the whole it's kind of the whole thing but but how people experience it is really you know I so I've got solar on my house and I've got two E.V.s and like how that happened will impart because there were federal subsidies in place that helped actually you know level out the massive subsidies that go to the fossil fuel industry make that happen so people experience in that way but it creates a communication challenge because it's not a direct it's not a direct line. A lot of times we're talking about a subset of people we have a really weak democracy in the United States most people look at our democracy and see it shrinking people are not as engaged in political life as they had been some time ago and if you compare the U.S. democracy and this is not me these are researchers who've looked at our democracy you'll find that we our democracy is actually getting worse there's people who just don't know who really control narratives so I think one of the things that we have to do is make our democracy more robust by connecting people who are experiencing these effects people in cold country and people in Navajo Nation who are dealing with uranium and people in Detroit and people in the part of Michigan where Nestle is siphoning all the ground water we have shared interest we don't talk to each other and we're the people that have I think more ambitious policies and believe that we can change things there was a time when people did not believe that we could regulate child labor there was a time when we did not believe that we could regulate workplace safety there was a time when we did not believe that unions could be what unions are we didn't have social security we didn't have many of the things that we now have with climate and I think that in doing so we can begin to widen what we consider the public so that we can have voices that have been not hurt as part of the conversation but the last thing I want to say about this is we've got to move beyond corporate media because corporate media has a vested interest in keeping us focused and keeping us thinking these are the same people as a black woman when people say workers I know they're not going to get jobs they're certainly not talking about people who are incarcerated who produce goods and services workers represent a certain subset of people who people have deemed the kind of people that we want to mobilize again we've got to change that. That is a great teaser for a later panel on democracy so I encourage everyone to attend that one as well but what I'm hearing part of what you all are saying is about climate change is maybe not communicating about climate change directly to my point about the indirect effects and talking about the parallels and labor like a lot of the things that will affect climate change are things that are have co-benefits or have co-systems that need to change and there may be situations where for particular audiences for particular issues talking about climate in an effective way might mean not talking about climate change but talking about climate change and you don't need to talk about climate change necessarily to do that. Does that seem right to you or do you have examples of that at working or I'm curious about your thoughts on that. Anyone. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right in the public media part I think is important. I've got a project right now in a way that lifts up community voices and isn't extractive. That's a big question. It's with Detroit Public TV and Great Lakes Now and this media consortium and for this exact reason because the portrayal is either one of hopelessness or victimization and it's not one that's actually grounded in the stories on the ground and there's some good examples. The sort of decline of media overall I'm not saying that's necessarily a good thing but it's opened up the space for more grassroots media for non-profit media for other forms because I do think you have to take away some of that corporate incentive to actually get these stories told and so we're seeing some of those forms crop up right now like Planet Detroit which is a media outlet by a graduate who's doing that is I think a good example of that bringing together and I'm not sure if you agree with that but like of lifting up those stories in a way and it's actually telling what's happening on the ground through those voices directly without sort of the profit motive being out in the front on that and we're just going to have to do more of that. Bridge Detroit is another example Bridge Michigan is another example Bridge Detroit is our neighborhood but what I found is that people who worked in the city of Detroit were like loving what I was saying and I wasn't being nice to the mayor I was like oh really thank you for saying that because I can't really say it right and so what I find is sometimes people just need other people to be willing to speak out it's scary right because we have free speech but people are always afraid of the consequences of using their life and so anything I say and I say obviously I speak you know whatever freely anything I say I don't get to go back and edit like I do on my Facebook post and so I was really scared oh my goodness I say that how is that going to be received I found that we could get more foundation money because people trusted us more because we knew the issues and we spoke with more authenticity so I think there's also got to be comfortable talking about them and there's no framework for them to do so and so as we look at how we can cultivate the voice of students coming out of this university and cultivate the voice of some of our partners understand that it's okay to speak truth to power power is going to be powerful but we're speaking on behalf of people who don't get heard so I think that we just got to change the conversation we got to trust in people and yes we don't just complain we have a lot of projects that we engage in in our community to help address the situation we are improving homes we are actually partnering with our DTE you know utility to do housing upgrades we are you know installing rain gardens we're doing all kinds of things we have resilience of networks that we are forming so that we can also help people understand through doing that you have the power to change what you can and so those actions are also so helpful just for making everybody feel like they're not alone a lot of the research suggests that people don't talk about climate change because nobody else talks about climate change which makes you think that nobody else cares and you're the only one who's worried and so this is called a spiral of silence so the more people are talking about things and their concerns and their actions and you know what they want the more people are talking about and you all have experience with nonprofits which can play a huge role in shaping both policy and public opinion about climate change at the local state and national level so I imagine that the nature of that role must often must change in the face of shifting political wins or which environmental or climate topics are top of mind for citizens so how have you seen the role of nonprofits and guiding and reacting to policy as well? So I left in a nonprofit to join the administration and we went from a Republican administration to split government now to a Democratic trifecta and it's been interesting to watch the nonprofit community and our stakeholder community at large try to figure out how to best interact what the levers are that they're supposed to pull the types of messages that they need in between administrations but that kind of transition to make sure that as government changes or as public policy is changing that we're changing along with it that being said like at the state level like it is so important to have our nonprofit partners you know from small community organizations to our public meetings all the way up to large environmental groups everything in between to be involved in our policymaking whether it's a specific thing on a permit around something like that. So I think it's really important to have that transition that we made in the past last year to the kind of day-to-day decisions that we make in state government having those voices at the table really make a huge difference. So while things kind of transition a little slower than I'd like it's really critical that we continue to have everybody at the table. Do you have ideas for how to make the new crop of folks that are coming in to really tell them what it's like to transition in between administrations what it's like to work with the legislature versus a governor's office because a lot of that is just learned so if you don't have that mentorship and guidance of folks that have been doing this for decades it's really just learning as you go so the more mentorship we can have from folks that have the experience for people that are doing this for a long time you know one thing I think that's different is we're seeing more coalitions I'm really excited about the coalitions we've initiated the east side climate action coalition and we're working with a bunch of you know historical environmental groups that are now working in our community and so we're able to help direct some of the energy towards the needs that we have I'm really excited about that I think that we really have to be able to do that because you're not allowed to really get engaged in policy conversations in a big way as a 501c3 and certainly not partisan politics or impacting candidate you know elections or you know but a lot of us are now starting to embrace the need to form 501c4s and also PACs and so I'm on the board of voters not politicians and 501c3 and 501c4 we're also looking at PAC that we need to take on but our organization as well because and if so many of us are doing that because we understand that you can't really have real power when all you're doing is advocating you've got to also look at accountability tracking funding monitoring and then sometimes primarying those people who refuse to act on your interest and I'm seeing more people willing to have those conversations. You know 501c3 is your general charitable nonprofit organization. Most nonprofit organizations that exist for charitable mission based work exist on that basis. A lot of times when people hear about nonprofits who are influencing elections are talking about 501c4s dark money where you don't have to release who your donors are and a lot of times those of us who are doing things the right way don't want to embrace dark money as our path forward because it's you know it's when people form 501c4s a lot of times we've seen them in the justice community as the enemy but a lot of us are beginning to embrace 501c4s which are allowed to raise money for campaigns and to engage in political activity as long as it's not coordinated with a candidate and so you have this you know sometimes pretends that these are separate things even though a lot of times they are coordinated activities and then a PAC is definitely allowed to have direct political activity and to fund candidates and to you know get involved with issues where we are a little bit more straightforward and so a lot of times organizations are seeing the need for all three. We do our mission work in the community through the 501c3 building political power through 501c4 and then the PAC is how we finance campaigns. Mike. Yeah it's interesting to think about the non-profit sort of flow within the government and care of course it's a great example about someone I've worked with at LCV and then you know spent the next four years calling and saying and you know essentially lobbying and things like that and so those kind of flows go back to working at a nationally focused organization National Wildlife Federation from the Obama to Trump to Biden transitions and because the strategies totally change right so during the Trump years you know it was kind of like holding on to victories using the courts stalling things I mean if we're honest about it from the environmental side your strategies 100% changed at that level and we were able to find some victories really consensus based funding stuff that you could still get done but pretty much you were sort of you were sort of clinging on but then you know with the Biden transition it happened that the CEO of National Wildlife Federation happened to be close with the Biden families from Delaware he's actually running for Delaware right now so that all of a sudden your organization your insiders and you're shaping that policy frame right that doesn't mean you're even close to it there's actually a lot of quibbles over things like that but the strategy is different and the NGO community was then advancing many of the policy frameworks together adopted by the administration and all those different pieces so I mean going through those kind of two massive transitions and what I was doing was running the six state Great Lakes region for NWF and looking at how that impacts that area has been really fascinating because the framework is really different framework is totally different strategy by the way the funding structures change completely like what happens when and you know I don't think anyone in the environmental NGO community is going to say having Trump elected was a good thing donations flow much more though right because people see that as an existential threat right and you'll see every organization would send out you know a screaming email saying we need an environmental ally an office and actually the resources go down right so there's this resource flow issue as somebody that spent a lot of time on the fundraising and budget side of things there's another transition sort of behind the scenes that matters with that too so you've got these you know the NGOs have to be super nimble I guess is the take away from that. Your answers are making me think that they have to be nimble but that there's different layers of government happening at the same time so like you might have a Trump and a Whitmer at the same time and that might have a really complex you know interaction for how nonprofits are trying to position themselves and how they're trying to communicate to both of those kind of administrations. Yeah absolutely and most of them go through some strategic exercise at the beginning of the year like that when you have you know great folks like Kerry that are coming into an administration like that it's different it's different opportunities. And right now I'm talking to a lot of groups particularly at the national level that are thinking about contingency planning because they have their plans for what it looks like to have another four years of President Biden but they're thinking about what do they have to do right now while they have the time in to go. I just came back from a convening in D.C. a couple of days ago and you know we were talking about the need to infuse equity and vision into all of our conversations as well because I don't know that either Biden or Trump because of the trade offs that we make in our you know politics have a vision for true energy equity and climate equity I think that we have not looked at the things that we are pushing for there's a lot of people in the circles I'm in who are concerned about for example this move to EVs without really thinking about you know public transit as an option because there's the you know we can talk about what's happening in the Congo to produce the minerals for that are needed for electric batteries but also when you manufacture them here the waste and how we're going to control the waste we are going to be using but some of us think that we need more wholesale change than just moving from gas powered vehicles to you know EVs and I say that although we have an EV charging station and one of the first EV car shares in the city of Detroit is in our building so I'm for EVs but I think that it's short-sighted to just say EV I've seen electric vehicle you know pickup trucks and it's like at some point again I just think we need to think more thoroughly about the short-term impacts and how it's impacting everybody and I think a lot of times we get so caught up in partisan politics that some people just you know check out because they feel as though they're not being represented in either space. So my last question is thinking ahead what do we what do we see as the biggest issue on the horizon that we as the public or future policymakers for the students in the room or advocates need to be focusing on when it comes to addressing climate change in Michigan and maybe different contingencies that we might need to be thinking about. Carol I'll start with you first. Sure. I don't know if it's a specific policy I think on climate we have to just continue to have everybody do everything or do the thing that they're really good at. I think if somebody wants to focus in on how they can communicate about climate change if they're you know an artist or a communications professional like that's what they need to be doing. If there's somebody like me that wants to be wonky and do policy and government affairs then they should do that. So I really think it's about not only collective action and doing every policy at the same time. Whether it's climate mitigation climate resiliency and adaptation and climate justice and figuring out like how everybody can play a role from the seat that they want to sit in. Yeah I mean seems almost cheating just to say culture but I do think that is kind of the piece right. You know I don't know if you asked this question 10 years ago the answer is probably like technology like we need to make sure we've got the right tools in place for the sustainable and equitable energy transformation we need that's not we've got those tools right now and what's actually lacking is sort of the the cultural will to do it and it's kind of the psychology of these changes and those types of pieces to me is where the focal point really is and it's not that we don't need more technological advancement you know every time we can get more out of you know batteries and the technology it's not a bad thing but I don't think those are the barriers anymore I think the barriers are mostly sort of on the sort of deep cultural roots of it and really and as talking about it's the capitalist economy and it's you know it gets really deep really quickly when you think about what we need to do to get to that transition that we need right now to mitigate some of the worst impacts of climate which we're already feeling. I think we need a collective vision and I think that we need to do more effort make more of an effort of trying to come up with a collective vision for what the end result looks like not like in five years and ten years what are we trying to get to in our society and start there and I think we need to be inclusive in that conversation and then we need to set policy priorities that get us towards that because I think a lot of times we are just responding to our own individual visions and so it's fragmented and the more we can come together around a collective understanding of what makes sense the more we can get people to buy into it and I think that we need to mobilize again more voters in our community to more people to vote more people to understand the power of their vote and to get more people who are actually engaged in this work running for office so that they can also speak very directly I think some of our most effective political representatives are people who have done this work in the field and then go and run for office and understand who they're fighting for. So I'm curious how you see all three of you see us moving to this visioning for a collective vision or changing the culture like how what are the concrete kind of steps that we can take to get there or that communicators or wonks can do to get us there. We've got to talk to each other. We've got to listen to each other and we've got to care what the other person is saying and then again form this understanding that we are going to do things that address all of our needs. I feel as though we speak in bubbles and we're not having conversations with each other. A lot of us are ideological purists and we don't want to hear from this person because this is a bad guy and this is a good guy but ultimately in an effective democracy people are working together to make change. Right now I just feel as though too many people are outside of the conversation and so I love to have more intentional listening and creativity between all of these different people who are fighting for the same thing and that is a just future. Go ahead. I think like the intersectionality piece is huge particularly like with climate and democracy because the way that we change the culture is by getting more people engaged, getting more people that understand these issues to run for office, to be the ones that are in decision making power. I think people often think like oh there's like environmental issues and then there's civil rights issues or there's policy issues and they're the same thing and you know whether it's like us talking about the specifics or kind of the institution like you just need to start viewing them in the same way and having the same conversations. Yeah. Well I'm glad you went first because it's very similar to what I was going to say you know which is that the linkage between the justice movement and the environmental movement and the conservation movement like big diverse coalitions with the shared vision. I don't know that there's any other way to do that and I would just say the environmental NGO movement was very separate from even the environmental justice movement let alone the broader justice movement and it still is but I would say and I'd be very curious take on this that there's been movement that way over the last five or six years in this state the Flint water crisis shook the environmental movement to its core because leaders and I'll be honest I'll put myself in that realm as the head of an organization at that time it was hard to see how that impacted us it was like oh well I work for the National Wildlife Federation what happened in Flint is it's racism it's bad governance it's bad infrastructure what does that have to do with wildlife you know and I'll be self critical that's the absolute wrong attitude but that is what I think almost everyone in the movement was thinking at that point and since then it's not perfect by any stretch but there's been a more intentional movement to link the justice concerns with the environment concerns with the conservation movement that's the only way it's going to get done is building a shared vision like that you know and when the Detroit incinerator was built Coleman Young was mayor and we put the largest incinerator in the nation right for garbage and we were taking international garbage from you know Canada and everywhere and the people who were coming to fight it were white suburbanites and they were coming in saying no this is terrible for the environment and so you know that Detroit said no you can't we don't care about trees we care about people they were actually fighting for the right to pollute our own community and there was this belief in some of our communities that if you fought for the environment you didn't care about the people and so the civil rights movement in Detroit was very slow to embrace environmentalism although there were people like Joanne Watson who was a city council person and with NAACP who was one of the early people in the environmental justice movement but that was sort of like you know fringe right and so increasingly we are understanding the intersectionality that the environment and people are connected to each other and in fact the people who are the most vulnerable are sometimes the people who have been politicized to believe that they shouldn't care about the streams they shouldn't care about the trees they shouldn't care about the air quality and so we as leaders have come together with more of a shared vision. I used to sit on the board of an organization that was you know an environmental organization in the city of Detroit and when I would talk about environmental justice they said people are the problem we don't care about people's health they're the problem with those kinds of beliefs are now the fringe beliefs and so I think we are seeing good movement. Alright well that is an excellent good news story of movement and good directions to end on this section of our conversation and now we get to turn it over to the Q&A for audience questions as well. So the first question is around communication which we were just talking about but sort of a slight tweak to that. How do you think the worsening climate impacts will change how we should communicate climate change and or influence what people are able to hear? I think that we have to be careful as we talk about worsening climate impacts that we look at the solutions I think one of the fears and one of the things that we're seeing internationally is climate gentrification where we are solving climate problems for people who are the least socially vulnerable and people who are in the least environmentally risky areas and so you're seeing that and you're seeing people sort of like in our community you're seeing on the one hand this talk about green infrastructure and there's been no public investment in green infrastructure on the east side of Detroit by the city of Detroit and we don't have a watershed management plan and so I think one of the challenges is that it can't just be going from climate disaster and climate shock to climate shock we've got to look at how we invest to protect people all around. I think also when we start looking at climate recovery and you look at the role of FEMA FEMA has done a very poor job of compensating and addressing the needs of low-income people if you're not a homeowner you don't count. Your losses don't matter and there's very little compensation from what we see in our community so I think it's the way we talk about it I don't think that we should talk about climate in terms of just the big disasters I think we have to talk about it in between disasters and we have to be as willing to invest in communities that are vulnerable or more willing to invest in communities that are vulnerable than those that are high-income communities but a lot of times also we talk about the financial losses like this is a billion dollars of loss and that's going to be more significant in a wealthy community than a poor community where we don't talk about the loss to people so I don't know I think that we've got to sort of shift and make sure that we don't widen the climate gap. It's interesting there's a workshop on campus the last two days about combating climate anxiety so it was really about this question and this is definitely not my area of expertise but I learned a lot from this because you know part of it is I mean those of us within this we're seeing bad news every day and it's not you know and it's important news we're seeing it feels like every time scientists predict what the impacts of climate change are going to be they underestimate it right so it seems like you see these accelerating impacts but in the natural response to that particularly as an educator and advocate is we just need to communicate more about this like we need to tell people more but of course that doesn't work people shut down right like I think back this it's a personal anecdote the first class I taught many years ago I was like really determined that every student was going to learn every fact about what's wrong with the environment and about halfway through some it was a terrible class because of that right because about halfway through some brave student came up to me and said this is really interesting and you were depressing us all horribly I was like that wasn't really my goal but and so you know and it's this it's the same piece and so on the flip side well what is it well it's it's storytelling it's also being solution oriented it's talking about what can go well what are the stories of hope and you don't want to do that it like kind of with rose colored glasses that aren't accurate to what's going on but you can do that in ways that sort of lift up the positive and are still accurate about negative because you know people just shut down if it's just you know bad news bad news bad news it's psychological numbing right like people won't react to that and it's but it but it's hard because you hear it every day and you know those of us are reading about it every day but it's it's highlighting hope that people learn through stories telling telling stories and making sure that we're showing and it's I think back to same before it's showing some of the vision of where we could be going like where and where we should be going here at the Ford School we are dedicated to the public good so as soon to be graduates are hoping to make an impact within the climate policy space what advice would you give those seeking to make a career or as they're beginning their career journeys within the space. I think just getting involved there are so many different opportunities like it's it's very much about who you know and I don't mean that in a political way like it's not about like getting somebody that will give you a job but like making connections in your community there are people doing climate action there are people working on really interesting projects and there are people that are focused on policy. If there's not that opportunity like within your existing circle then like reach out to a nonprofit get involved in a state program like one new thing that we just started is the climate core program there's one here in Ann Arbor as well Ann Arbor climate core A2C2 so I think there are just so many different ways whether it's again kind of getting in just into your networks joining a professional or skill you know skilled group like a climate core reaching out to people I think that's one of the biggest things people reach out to me all the time I think people in this space want to bring more people in so just reach out to as many people as possible connect to people and try new opportunities. Just about everything about climate change is governed by policy right and changing policies so you're really doing the research to better understand what those policies are and I wouldn't just look here at looking at other parts of the world and see what other people are doing where they're doing it well where they're not doing well in other you know states and cities where they're doing it well I was just talking to somebody who lives in the city where they are 100% solar powered now or something like that or renewable energy and that's happening right here in the United States I want to say she lives in Vermont so let's find out about how she did that I love these innovative ideas that we're seeing about you know changing our energy source and maybe even looking at creating a public energy source to replace the private I think that I would just want to look at that and look for hopeful solutions and also you know people are going to work in different sectors and we need people in different sectors not all in the NGO sector and so figuring out what people in your sector are doing to create change and finding where the interest groups are I think that would be what I recommend because I've had students who are working in private equity and they're looking at you know how they can shape change there and there's people working in transportation and people who are working in food systems and in each system there are policy inputs that you can begin to effect. Just add to that point like we've been talking about the co-benefits and intersectionality in this conversation and so many of these students like you may not be going into a climate policy job but you may be going into a health policy kind of job or a transportation policy or finance and there are lots of opportunities to bring climate into those that work and so look for opportunities to bring that in where you can when you can. So the next question is the president and governor both said they would prioritize environmental justice and climate change and climate policy implementation. How are they doing? Where can they do better? There's a lot more money flowing into climate justice and people are really optimistic in the short term about getting resources. There is a new EPA grant that everybody's talking about I think you can get up to 20 million dollars and we're going to be applying for that and so groups feel kind of hopeful that they're going to have more resources to do some of their projects where they were able to test it out. I think that we have to look at things like our energy grid when we talk about solar. We have to look at our energy policy in the state and whether or not community solar is allowed and also net metering and some of those policies surrounding that to make sure that solar makes sense for everybody and also how do we finance it. Because right now when you finance things to tax credits for people who don't pay taxes or don't own their homes you may or may not have access to some of the new innovations coming forward and so how do we incentivize landlords, how do we make it available to people maybe through some other type of funding. And then I think that we need to do a much better job figuring out our green infrastructure and what are we doing with our water systems. I'm as concerned about water as I am about any other aspect of the climate and we haven't figured that out right now. We're not investing in it. We have a combined solar system in Detroit and either we are going to separate them or we're going to have to do a whole lot more to stop the flooding and stop the polluting of the Detroit River and Rouge rivers and so I would like to see some more ambitious policies there as well. I agree. I think what I've seen which is really good the Biden administration is a very significant attention in terms of dollars in funding and a lot of really good people doing good work like the administration is now filled with folks who are true justice advocates and that that has trickled down effects throughout things. I think where there's been some struggles are on those big decisions often around energy infrastructure where there are potential trade-offs political trade-offs and you know like the Willow project for those who are familiar that big oil and gas project in Alaska that was allowed to go through and probably because it might have had an impact on gas prices otherwise right. So like the politics of that play out and then right here in Michigan probably the biggest one that's in front of the Biden administration would be the Line 5 oil pipeline. So I won't go into the whole background on this but you know it's an oil pipeline flowing through Wisconsin and Michigan and there's the Biden administration and the Whitmerin administration has been an advocate for shutting it down and the indigenous landowners have been on that side too it's working its way through the courts but the Biden administration has not weighed in and if it has weighed in it's largely been on the side of the oil industry and why is that? Well it's because of the politics of it it's because of maybe energy prices but it's also because there are powerful forces on the labor side of things that are not aligned on this that are aligned against the environmental side and so that's when you sort of get your justice out so you're going to go with the solution that obviously is better from a justice standpoint that's actually agreed to shut down line five or you're going to balance that with labor politics and energy prices so I think those decisions where the rubber hits the road are hard for an administration I think has largely done a good job but there's some major gaps as well and I guess I'll just say from the state perspective I can't speak on behalf of everything that we've done but you know the Whitmerin administration we do at state government so we can have a voice and have that space for environmental justice as we work to integrate it and all of our work we definitely have a lot more to do by no means have we accomplish what we want to accomplish on that but we've started to see what we can do to really center it as we look at policy for example in this last year the package of bills that the governor signed on clean these ideas as they got involved in the public service commission that regulates our utilities our new law now says as our public service commission looks at long-term energy plans that come in from utilities they have to take environmental justice impacts into consideration they have to look at the affordability of energy and those things were not allowed to them before we changed that law they weren't allowed to consider those things but the public service commission that worked to get folks in the legislature educated about that educated me and other folks on the Whitmer team to make sure that we could get that policy across the finish line at our form the other day Abram Iash was suggesting that more people support a bill that will address cumulative impacts of air pollution right and it was the position of the attorney from the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center that Eagle already has the ability to do so and so I think it's those types of things where we really need to have some conversations about are we doing everything we can do within the law we do need to change laws but are we doing everything we can do within the law I love Regina Strong and the environmental justice advocate for Eagle but what I would love to see is Regina and her office and her influence permit approval for air pollution I'm not seeing that I'm seeing an analysis but not power and I'd love to empower people like her and others to actually you know change because we we're still approving too many polluting processes this next question delves into the question that my colleague from Michigan becoming potentially a climate destination first and foremost do you all believe that or see that to be true and if so how could we prepare Michiganders for what that might look like I think a lot of people will welcome migration to Detroit right because Detroit is depopulating and it's like oh that'll be great I think the challenge is again climate gentrification and so will people come in and move and displace more in preferred areas and will our resources go towards helping to facilitate their migration to Detroit it's not like people are going to come to Detroit and say I'm a climate migrant they're going to come to Detroit and buy a home and we already have public policy that incentivizes people moving into wealthy clusters of spaces in our community while disinvesting in most of the neighborhoods and so I think the challenge is where because we know that of course our population is slowing and people want to repopulate the state but I think it's important that we balance that the incoming population and the potential incoming population and I think most politicians want to see with protecting the people who are already here and making sure that the resources are more equitably shared and I would add like it's not just folks you know like residents that are moving to Michigan or looking at different states across the country like they're nervous about going to the Southwest because they don't think they're going to have the water resources not only to you know power their factory but to make sure that the community that they bring in to work around them actually has like access to drinking water like those basic human rights so this is as much of like a migration issue as it is like an economic opportunity issue but it has to be managed really carefully yeah it's not a matter of if it's when and it's actually already happening it's hard to measure but like the scale of it I think in you know every prediction it's going to take off more over time meaning we're going to have more people coming in and so yeah it's community preparedness I've been doing a project with the community of Benton Harbor which folks are familiar with on the west side of the state and it's got some characteristics fairly similar right on Lake Michigan and so trying to prepare for that and have a future where to avoid what they're calling blue gentrification like people coming from for the water and pushing out the folks who are living there and it's complicated I haven't seen anyone come up with like the formula for how you do that and it's not formulaic too it's going to vary by community but that's exactly the questions and we need to wrestle with those like now because the climate is going to excel right and as you said people aren't going to come and say hey I'm here as a climate migrant that's not the way it happens right I think that you know this goes back to the whole idea of the intersectionality of all of this right so housing justice is an intersectional you know relationship with environmental justice if people already don't have secure access to housing and we know that we have a growing homeless population if you look at big cities in the world we've got to do a better job of trying to ensure that people have a place to live and people are secure where they are even as we're bringing new people in because it would be very easy to think that we can improve our economy by pushing out poor folks and welcoming people with more money I think it's also education is really important too I think most Americans have no concept of the idea of climate migration at this point like our own research Americans having to move because of climate change when we ask people open-ended questions about like what do you think of when you think of climate migrant half of them describe like a snow bird like a retiree from Michigan moving to the south in the winter it's just like not on the radar and so I think if we want people to be making decisions for their own lives and be able thinking about where they want to live the place that's going to be safe and proactive about explaining this to all kinds of different audiences this next question is for Donna Donna, what do you see as the role of academia and engaging with community organizations what makes successful partnerships and what makes not-so-good partnerships we have so many wonderful relationships with the University of Michigan I have to say I'm an alum that's my oldest youngest graduated from here my oldest is going to be getting her masters here going to fall so I love U of M and I love Wayne State and I don't think we could do the work we're doing without our relationship with the universities quite honestly all of the research that we produce is done in partnership and we have so many wonderful students who've come into our community and learn we have interns who come in two of my directors right now started as interns so I love the research centers and so we talk about participatory community participatory research as CBPR community-based participatory research as a model and a framework for engaging in research where we allow the community to help shape the research questions to participate as equals to co-publish the studies to circulate the information and we make sure that the information that we're developing is useful and directly applicable to the needs of of people in our community and Barbara Israel will be retiring she is the current director we need to honor her and also make sure that as other units of the university are beginning to engage in some of the same research that you always try to lean in on those principles and URC is there to help train people and help facilitate those partnerships so I think let's continue to do that Thank you Thank you all for your time We appreciate it Thank you so much