Transformative Action Memo

The U.S.D.A. Environmental Justice Strategic Plan of 2016-2020 was developed in an effort to provide equitable conditions throughout every community in the United States of America. The goals that have developed to reach the equality in all communities has to consider climate changes unlike other strategic plans. The key priorities for this strategic plan are many and varied. For example, one is to increase public participation, opportunities for minorities, low income, American Indians and Alaska natives. This plan is a malleable to adjust for the best results. However, it does contain parts that are immovable.

In Michael Pollan's article “Why Bother?” he discusses how climate change is a serious threat to humanity and needs to be addressed immediately. Pollan begins to discuss possible solutions but also realizes that these “solutions” may not be easily achieved. There is no way to eliminate people who make a conscious effort to help the advancement of climate change, but it is still important for others to attempt to make changes to help save the environment.

So truly this proves that sustainability is a wicked problem as there is no way to win. From southern United States, to northern Canada, there is environmental injustice everywhere with no answer in sight. A point that was brought up in these three lectures is that there is nothing I, nor my peers can do. It is up to these people, the Inuit’s and Americans to stand up to their battle, and for us to support them. Especially in America where these people are facing these environmental problems, and yet are voting to worsen it. With most of the population being lower class, and having health issues, they are the people who voted against Obama Care, and voted in Trump who abandoned them after the first major hurricane (pers. comm., R. Bullard, October 26, 2017).

The fight for climate change is a fight that has been ongoing in modern years and is all too familiar for people who never seem to have the voice to speak up against it. With the increase in oil extractions or the rise in carbon emissions, it is no secret that climate change’s impacts have severely taken a toll on people and the environment, but it is also evident that certain people are being impacted by its affects more than others. Often times, marginalized people are the people that have to deal with the most apparent effects of climate change - whether it being combating it or living with it, they are the ones whose lives are being changed the most because of it. In Bill McKibben’s Oil and Honey, Bill McKibben finds himself at the forefront

With the looming threat of global warming, overpopulation, and world war III we do not often find ourselves in a position to change the world around us. But what do we do when the situation presents itself? What is our response to injustice? Sometimes nothing. In first world countries it is easy to discuss an issue without taking action because people often feel too minimal to make an impact. However, history shows some of the largest social and political movements were sparked by the actions of a single individual with the audacity to stand up. The truth is power in the hands of an individual has the magnitude to create equal amounts of good as it does bad, but the power for change does not only lie in the hands of powerful, it can be found in the hearts of any individual, no matter their status or origin.

With the rise of calamitous news regarding extremists groups taking over certain states, countries threatening to go to war, and viruses spreading throughout the world; the outlook of humanity does not look good. In addition to these dire headlines is the matter of climate change, which, unfortunately, is not as alarming to the public eye. Nonetheless, climate change is a pressing matter as it will impact every facet of society from economy to even human survival. Perhaps the general public find climate change as a vapid subject because of its nature to react belatedly to human activity, and how it is often represented with numbers, graphs, and projections; things that are not compelling to those that do not understand its importance. Even

I know today that it takes more than activism to create change. Hailing from a family deeply involved in environmental politics and science, the wellbeing of the environment has always been something I’ve

One of the most unique aspects of climate change is its ability to impact every person in every nation across the world. Its omnipotent presence calls for, what I predict will be, the largest global initiative and

When I polled a few of my friends about “what is the single most critical problem facing us today?” I got a frequent response that’s not so shocking, climate change. So why climate change? Why not obesity, or population control, or education? While all of those are problems that deserve discussion, no single topic is so fundamental to us as humans as climate change. In 2007 Al Gore stated in his person of the year interview that “Today we 're dumping 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the environment, and tomorrow we will dump more, and there is no effective worldwide response. Until we start sharply reducing global-warming pollution, I will feel that I have failed.” (Walsh) Perhaps the paradigm has changed. Climate change is now talked about at every level of government, in large and small businesses, and communities across the globe. It’s a topic that functions to affect our economy and our environment. Moving forward, it’s important to understand why our way of life will be affected by the way we tackle these issues surrounding climate change. Climate change is the single most important issue affecting the human race today due to its widespread impact on our survival; impacting food sources, transportation, weather, geography and other life forms on the earth.

There are many issues facing the United States. There true importance is widely debated, but some of the more prevalent are climate change, including droughts and severe weather, energy independence, income inequality, and governance equality. The most hotly debated among these issues is whether or not climate change or global warming is even real. The scientific community acknowledges that there is something that is making the temperatures around the world fluctuate from normal, even that something that is causing the changes is debated, whether it is a natural cycle or is a man-made disaster. Currently the most pressing issue is the inequality among governance and income. The middle class has shrunk and the upper one percent hasn’t controlled as much as they do now since the age of Rockefeller.

For instance, Western country people generally perceive the climate change that is primarily affecting in developing country who are in a lack of resources (Reser, Bradley, Glendon, Ellul & Callaghan, 2012). A survey in Australia, Slovakia and Ireland conducted by Uzzell (2000) showed that people not only tended to saw the climate change problems as more serious the further those issues were from themselves, but also their sense of responsibility for doing something about climate decreased with the increasing spatial distance. This result shows the challenge of communicating and supporting climate change action, given the lack of equality between the location of perceived effects and the willingness to take action. Also, Spence, Poortinga, and Pidgeon (2012) revealed that the willingness of taking action is when people think the problem is local, yet they tend to discount the severity of effects at the

Climate change is hitting places at unequal effects. Not everyone is impacted as much of the people living in the arctic. Norgaard's study, the wide variety of people she interviewed all were pessimistic or felt helpless because of the large scale of cooperation between countries. Governments were unable to reach agreement. Norgaard looked at the silence around climate change and found climate change was a very disturbing topic. It generates a lot of negative emotions that people try to avoid. She ended up focusing on guilt, sense of helplessness, and fear about the future. people avoided these feelings she observed. The people she studied in the community changed the topic of conversation, tried to avoid talking about climate change, and kept it off the agenda of political meetings. Norgaard found that for the highly educated and politically residents of Bygdaby, knew about global warming was common and shocking. Norgaard believes this comes from emotions to cultural norms to political econom.Her study results exemplify that you don’t have to be educated and wealthy to care about climate change, and most people are oblivious to it or just don’t care. There are some limitations to her study. While she interviewed multiple people, there wasn’t enough data to fully get the opinion of everyone. I’m sure there were some people of Bygdaby, that did care about the warming temperatures. While Rikoon analyzes the conflict between the national park service and wild horses in Missouri, and how to properly manage the horses on the range. Rikoon explains that the national park system determined that the horses are feral and should be removed. However the horse league on the other hand believed that the horses

The idea of change requires sharing with it with interested people as noted previously, including the marginalized whom with enthusiastic seeking to improve their current state of life. 4: 2: 3 The Attempted Action For Improvement Using Langley et al. (2009) & Bryk (2010) Improvement model for the design of action, I continue to ask the unchanged question. “What am I trying to accomplish? This question can be complicated, specifically when you are not in the institution system or the site of work eagerly to contribute change for transformation.

Furthermore, the people mostly affected by the climate change are the ones that are most vulnerable due to their socio-economic status. As a result, the poorest and most under-privileged populations are not only most susceptible to being at risk for climate change-related diseases but they also often contribute to the environmental decline by unknowingly participating in activities that result in the destruction of the planet. Therefore, I felt that focusing on the health/environment issues would be a viable solution to address many of the global health crises. Another strength of my proposal is one of the actions that I would take to address the climate change-related issues, an education of the people affected. I believe that while fighting the effects of the climate change, it is crucial to involve and educate the local communities about the importance of maintaining a healthy environment. While it is beneficial for outside agencies to heat-related in repairing the consequences of the environmental destruction, it seems equally important to educate the locals on how to support their own communities in efforts to lead healthier and more sustainable lives.

The global character of climate change, its probable adverse effects and manmade character, qualify it as a collective problem. In Garrett Hardin’s (1968) Tragedy of the Commons it is argued that such problems need collective action to solve them; if individuals uninhibitedly chase their self-interest, they come to a result that is not in their common interest and which they would not prefer given their possibilities. Working together by agreement they can come to a result that in the end will much better serve their (common) interests. But where Hardin focused on commons shared by a group of peasants, climate change affects the different climates around the globe, involving the world population and the various societies within it. We can therefore characterise climate change as the tragedy of a global common, but averting this risk might ask for a different approach to collective action.