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Planet Now
Blog on Effective Environmental Communication
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Environmental Communicator Brooke Bauman on Using Your Strengths for Solving Climate Change2/23/2023
If you read my book Planet Now, you may remember the chapters featuring Brooke and her writing projects. She wrote for Yale Climate Connections and wrote and produced her own podcast, the Guilty Plastics Podcast.
Now that she is with the NPS, Brooke is excited to be producing another podcast. This one is for Park Science Magazine about how Cape Hatteras National Seashore is addressing sea level rise impacts at their park. She interviewed Dave Hallac, superintendent of the park, and found it interesting to learn about the park’s research to identify areas that are susceptible to erosion, informing where to avoid building structures. In her role, Brooke has mainly been focused on projects about sea level rise and restoration. A big project has been putting together a spatial database of coastal restoration projects across parks. She has also been developing case study briefs that they plug into the database so that employees across parks can view project information and share resources. Plus, Brooke has gotten to occasionally visit field sites. She attended a volunteer work day in Rocky Mountain National Park and collected native seeds to be planted in burned areas that lost vegetation. Brooke loves getting to work in a space where she helps protect the environment and reduce the risks of climate impacts because she has been worried about climate change since she was a kid. She explained that in elementary school it was “a shock to the system to learn about something that could rock your world.” In high school she decided to take action to help slow climate change. She began a sustainability club to encourage composting and start a native plant garden. Going into college, she was interested in sustainability but wasn’t sure what a career in that space would look like. After about a year, she found her interest in environmental communication. Brooke graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2021 with a major in environmental science and minors in geography as well as media and journalism. Brooke highly recommends the Scientists in Parks internship program through which she found her NPS role. It connects recent graduates who want experience in the NPS and offers a wide variety of positions, both in the field and office. As we face serious climate change impacts, it is important for everyone to contribute to the movement to slow the problem in the ways they are able. Like Brooke said, everyone has skills that can apply to solving climate change. Read an earlier blog post on climate-related careers to learn more about the ways people can help and the types of skills you can apply to solving climate change!
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If you want to learn about a recent college graduate who has already done inspiring work in the sustainability field, look no further than Cara Kuuskvere! She is a sustainability analyst at Hanesbrands and a UNC Class of 2022 graduate. At UNC, she was Director of Sustainable Projects for the Residence Hall Association for three years. We worked together in the student organization United Solar Initiative, and I enjoyed seeing her drive for change.
Why did she pursue this path? Cara had many different career goals as a kid but always wanted to help others. For instance, she considered being a teacher and a doctor. “I thought about my skills and what would have a positive impact on those around me. Climate change is one of the biggest issues facing our generation, so I thought, maybe I can go into that,” she shared. She knew that working in the sustainability space would help create a more equitable world. While at UNC, Cara majored in environmental science and business administration, where she was in the Kenan Scholars program for students committed to putting the private sector to work for the public good. She also dove into sustainability outside the classroom. As a first-year student, she was the sustainability officer for her residence hall. Then, she became Director of Sustainable Projects for residence halls across campus. In this role, she focused on increasing education about sustainability for students living on campus. With a broad job description, she took on various projects from energy efficiency retrofits in the residence halls to putting on fun programs for residents to learn about sustainability. One program was letting residents decorate their own compost bins. I still use my compost bin from one of the events she helped my residence hall coordinate! “The more I got involved in college, the more agency I felt to make an impact,” shared Cara. Now, Cara is making change at a global scale! Hanesbrands is an international parent company of many brands. In sustainability, they focus on people, planet, and product. Cara works on the planet pillar, so she analyzes data focused on energy, emissions, water, and waste. She spends most of her time working on the company’s zero-waste-to-landfill goals and working towards science-based targets for reducing carbon emissions across the supply chain and across the entire lifecycle of products. Something particularly exciting for Cara has been working with the Champion Sustainability Fund at UNC, through which members of Hanesbrands and Sustainable Carolina review energy efficiency project submissions. Through this program, she has loved staying connected with UNC and even got to speak to a class about the fund. I’m excited to see the impact Cara continues to make. Not many teenagers get to meet members of the U.S. Congress. Before she even began college, Caitlin Flanagan used her voice to encourage federal policymakers to fight climate change. Some of the policymakers included Rep. Ted Budd (NC-13), former Rep. Mark Meadows (NC-11), Rep. David Price (NC-04), and Sen. Thom Tillis (NC). For this week’s blog post, I spoke with Flanagan to learn about her climate work and advice for climate advocacy. Now a sophomore at UNC-Chapel Hill, Flanagan is involved in many efforts to slow climate change at and beyond her college campus. She is president of the UNC chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL), a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that pushes for federal policies to reduce carbon emissions and slow climate change. She is leading the chapter to involve more people in grassroots efforts like text banking to encourage President Biden to include a carbon price in budget reconciliation. Plus, Flanagan’s organization is attempting to collaborate with a conservative group on campus to promote climate policies. Flanagan is a great example for other people who want to lead change through their institutions. Flanagan’s Background Growing up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Flanagan valued environmental preservation since her dad is a wetland ecologist. When she reached middle school, she learned more about climate change and felt strongly that it was a problem caused by humans. Flanagan got involved in climate advocacy her junior year of high school. Feeling nervous about climate impacts, like heat and hurricanes, she attended a Project Drawdown climate summit that brought together students who were passionate about creating environmental change. At the event, she learned about CCL and decided to jump into lobbying because it sounded fun. Through CCL, she traveled to Washington, D.C., to speak with Congresspeople. “I had a really great time immersing myself and getting to know the ins and outs of interacting with Congresspeople and communicating about climate in a bipartisan way that builds relationships,” Flanagan shared. At UNC, she became the vice president for the UNC CCL chapter as a first-year student. She helped lead the chapter in building relationships with UNC faculty to get endorsements for the university to pass a climate plan. Recommendations for Climate Advocacy Through her climate leadership, Flanagan has learned key lessons that can benefit people who are beginning their climate advocacy journeys.
Flanagan said that no matter a person’s career focus, they can find ways to use their interests and skills in climate advocacy. As a student majoring in environmental studies and public policy, she said she is thinking about being a legislative director or researcher for a climate advocacy organization. She is also interested in doing policy work for clean energy companies. I am thankful for Flanagan’s efforts to fight climate change and look forward to seeing what she does next. Who inspires you to advocate for the environment? Look for people in your community who are climate leaders, and reach out to see what you can learn from them! From arguments over COVID-19 vaccines to debates about different ways to respond to climate change, people often disagree about policies in the United States. Climate change is polarizing since more Democrats than Republicans think the federal government should take further steps to slow the problem. Have Americans ever come together to protect the environment? Yes, partly thanks to Rachel Carson! Carson was a marine biologist who studied human impacts on wildlife. In the mid-twentieth century, people used pesticides like DDT to grow crops and kill insects that could cause disease. However, Carson found that these pesticides had tragic consequences. These pesticides killed birds and could cause cancer in humans. Carson faced challenges communicating these dangers to the public because she was battling breast cancer and knew that chemical companies would attack her for sharing the dangers of their products. Nevertheless, Carson published the book Silent Spring in 1962 to call attention to the need to limit harmful chemicals in the environment. She claimed that chemical companies had spread disinformation about pesticides to make them seem safe when they are deadly. (Disinformation is incorrect information that has been intentionally spread.) As Carson expected, chemical companies attacked her, saying she was spreading disinformation and that people should not listen to a woman. Carson’s personality was as calm and quiet as the waters she studied, so it might be surprising that her written voice captured the attention of Americans. The book helped Americans understand the dangers present in the environment, leading to bipartisan support for policies protecting the environment. Carson targeted housewives, who had various political views, because many of them had seen dead wildlife in their yards and might experience moral concern about the dangers of pesticides to people. Carson died of breast cancer (possibly as a result of working with pesticides) in 1964, just two years after publishing Silent Spring, but her writing led to an environmental revolution. In 1970, President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency and Congress passed the Clean Air Act. In 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT and Congress passed the Clean Water Act. In some ways, the debate about pesticides in the 1960s is similar to the debate about climate change today. Fossil fuel companies attack environmental scientists who write about the threats of climate change for humans. These companies spread disinformation to make people think climate change is not as big of a threat as scientists say. Polarization around the environment has made an increased awareness of science less likely to make people support environmental policies. Rachel Carson’s work is one of the reasons I became interested in environmental communications. When I was in high school, I did a project about her life and impact on the environment. I realized that writing about the environment to make people aware of problems is a way to encourage change.
Given Carson’s contribution to the environmental movement, climate advocates should know her story and share it with other people who may wonder about the importance of environmental communication. I am thankful that Carson helped the American public understand the dangers of pesticides despite knowing that she would receive criticism from chemical companies. Perhaps Carson’s story will encourage more people to advocate for slowing climate change and see that it is possible to bring people together to protect the environment like Silent Spring did. The following documentary segment from PBS provides a further look at Carson’s life and the battles she faced when communicating about environmental dangers. |
Welcome to my blog! It is a combination of posts from my strategic writing (spring 2022) and personal branding (spring 2023) courses at UNC. I hope you will enjoy reading the posts and learning about the environment and communication.
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