Our world, our environment our climate

These past two weeks, I have been focused on a new topic of interest that I would love to expose our students to, environmental science and justice and climate science. It started when one of our advisory board members, who happens to be an environmental scientist, gave me information about funding from a federal agency to support climate literacy educational projects. In addition, to preparing a letter of intent for this grant, I attended a 2 day conference on climate literacy. Both of these disciplines, environmental and climate science, not many people want to explore mainly because how many of us have an environmental scientist in our network; but it is a topic that is so relevant to our everyday lives.

A few years ago, I started paying attention to environmental science and justice based on some cases in the news (mainly on NPR) about neighborhoods, mostly in disadvantage communities in which its residents were getting sick due to toxic dumping by corporations in their neighborhood. In these stories, the communities had issues with their drinking water, air quality and/or their houses where built on land that wasn't properly cleaned prior to building residences on it. Unfortunately, most of these incidents were happening in communities of people of color and/or lower socioeconomic status. It made me wonder about the policy that allowed this to happen as well as if this was happening in these communities because most of the communities don't have enough scientific literacy to understand what is happening to them until it is too late.

Environmental and climate science are so intertwined. In climate science there is this debate if things such as global warming, ocean acidification etc are a result of human pollution or the natural evolution of the planet. Climate science in a nutshell is observing how patterns in climate over a period of time affect our planet. A simple change in weather patterns can affect so much of our lives. It isn't as simple as if we will have more hurricanes or rain or if it will be a brutal winter. Climate science issues can truly affect our food and water supply.

Environmental science is such a broad topic but in a nutshell it covers how we protect and preserve our planet. Yes, there is the big push for going green by reducing our waste, water consumption and paper use etc, driving hybrid vehicles, trying to figure out ways to reduce our use of fossil fuels and non clean energy. We are counting our carbon footprints. We are utilizing more recycled paper or trying to go paperless. Put what is also covering is holding corporations accountable for the damage that they do to the planet. There are companies that have polluted our water supply, air and land and not only are they getting fined, but they are responsible for the cost of cleaning up their mess and in some cases, the medical treatment for those who suffer medical issue such as cancer, asthma etc.

But what I've learned most about these two sciences, is that it truly is where science and policy intersect. We can't have effective policy to protect our planet without scientists and engineers nor can scientists and engineers do enough research without policy that not only requires research but funds the research. This is going to be problem not only for the scientists of today, but as part of an issue that the future STEM workforce both those who stay in research and/or chose to pursue a career in scientific policy to continue to solve.