We spend 90% of our time indoors surrounded by materials that often contribute much more to the spaces we design than we realize. At this current moment, in prioritizing human health and our carbon footprint we need to look beyond aesthetics and performance in the materials we specify. Toxic chemicals in building materials are well documented, the correlation between carbon and chemicals is less so. As designers we can address two of the major issues of current design and construction practice in the materials we specify.

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Join for a conversation about plastics and the future of our planet with environmental leader and author, Bill McKibben, and Pullitzer prize-winning journalist, Elizabeth Kolbert, moderated by Beyond Plastics president and former U.S. EPA regional administrator, Judith Enck.

The Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law & Graduate School is delighted to announce the upcoming release of our online Environmental Justice State by State (EJSBS) law library and database. On Tuesday, April 4 from 4:30 – 5:30p (Eastern) we are hosting a webinar to preview the development version of this resource and seek feedback from our friends, colleagues, and EJ stakeholders around the country.

Please join us online for an evening of short films curated by American Indian Film Institute. The theme of the evening is: “The Land Back Movement.” The program is part of Spring 2023 film series by Creatively Speaking Films at IRPPE called, "World Humanity & Economy: Dreams Deferred But Not Forgotten." Guest curator: Mytia Zavala 

Buddha Weeps in Jadugoda chronicles the deadly impacts of uranium mining on adivasis (South Asian Indigenous peoples) living in the community of Jadugoda in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand. Decades of unsafe mining, milling, and tailings management by the Uranium Corporation of India have contaminated the water, land, and air, destroying local ecosystems and causing cancer, congenital birth defects, and numerous other health problems among local residents. The film highlights the gross abuse of power by state authorities that has displaced the original inhabitants of the region and abrogated internationally accepted norms and safety precautions for the handling of uranium and its by-products.

Join us for a lunchtime Brown Bag conversation with EJ Atlas! This will be an opportunity to hear presentations by members of the EJ Atlas team on current research and policy initiatives and a chance for conversation with the EPSM community. Looking for a Capstone topic related to global Environmental Justice and participatory methodologies? Come to this Brown Bag!

Please join us for a conversation about environmental justice with Dr. Ana Baptista. We’ll talk about what environmental justice is, New Jersey’s Environmental Justice Law and what it means, what’s next for the EJ movement in New Jersey, and the role that allies can play. 

Join CMEJ, Ana Baptista & Danielle Swift in discussing why zoning matters!

Zoning is one of the most important functions of city law. As zoning was established nearly 100 years ago in many cities across the country, it has historically played a major role in the segregation and concentration of unwanted polluters in lower-income and communities of color.

South Asia’s adivasis (“inhabitants since the beginning” in Hindi) make up one of the largest Indigenous populations in the world. Like their counterparts across the globe, adivasis are on the frontlines of struggles against extractivism, which has accelerated significantly since the liberalization of the Indian economy in the 1990s. This is particularly the case in the mineral-rich eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, which has been a hub of Indigenous rebellion since before the colonial era. Join us for a vital conversation with photojournalist and activist Ashish Birulee about the adivasi-led struggle against uranium mining and its consequences in the community of Jadugoda in eastern Jharkhand.

Join this talk by Tishman Center Faculty Grant Awardee and Parsons Faculty Daniel Michalik. This presentation will be a short "provocation" on the work he was lead over his sabbatical on regenerative systems within cork agriculture and industry and applicable lessons we may learn for other industries.

It is evident in these times that climate change is a serious crisis, with serious consequences. The potential mental health impacts are being seen in people of all ages, all around the world. It can be difficult to navigate these feelings and find spaces to process them. In this workshop, Marisa will identity some of the ways that bearing witness to environmental destruction may effect one’s mental health and will help attendees to feel less alone in this experience. She will also provide guidance and suggestions for managing these, at times overwhelming, emotions.

We are witnessing corporate interests hijack critical climate action around the world, by co-opting key concepts, frameworks and language from our movements, often faster than we can generate them.

Join us via Zoom for a showcase of graduate research in the field of environmental policy and sustainability management! Click here to register for the first day of presentations on May 9th.

Join us via Zoom for a showcase of graduate research in the field of environmental policy and sustainability management! Click here to register for the first day of presentations on May 9th.

In honor of National Day of Awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Girls, Women, Trans, and 2 Spirit People, BIPOC Earth will be holding a virtual teach-in presented by Camp Migizi and Indigenous Earth Protectors.

Black Ecologies Earthday Event with Michaela Harrison & Mia C. White

ZOOM Apr 29, 2022 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Michaela Harrison’s ocean-song-healing work with the whales situates the ocean as a site of Black artistic production, healing, and possibility for living in an age of climate grief and ongoing racial oppression. Her whale-song / whale whispering can be understood in the tradition of reclamation and research-as-lived-experience. It is Black metaphysical space-making through expressive culture and historical witness/resistance, offering epistemologies for a community-environment relation which is so necessary for our collective climate futures.

Join us this Earth Day for a dual in-person and Zoom teach-in and discussion led by young organizers made especially for organizers working at the cross-section of justice & environmental issues.

Let's celebrate Earth Day by taking a deep dive into a mysterious and mundane aspect of everyday life: plastics. Parsons faculty Jess Irish will screen her award-winning doc short (21 min), followed by a discussion of why plastics are both magical and monstrous, and what kinds of change can really make a difference.

This event will be recorded and shared with registered attendees afterward.

Join the Tishman Center and the NYC 2030 District for a talk about the hows and whys of energy and equity in the NYC area. This event will feature speakers with expertise on building energy efficiency, residential solar energy and building science. The speakers will talk about their experiences in the field and how we can create more equitable outcomes for energy access.

Current methods of assigning climate responsibility build on existing global inequalities between rich and poor nations, and the global trade and financial architecture actively impedes climate mitigation and adaptation efforts by developing countries. This talk will consider how this plays out currently and what can be done about it.

Open to members of The New School community only. Valid New School email required for registration. Registered attendees will receive the Zoom link via email.

This panel was preceded by Hoodwinked in the Hothouse: Examining False Corporate Schemes being advanced through the Paris Agreement. The recording of this event is available here.

This panel features Indigenous organizers from frontline communities that are disproportionately impacted by false solutions to the climate crisis. From Mapuche communities in Chile, to Dine communities in Southwest Turtle Island, climate false solutions such as nuclear power, megadams, fracking, and many more continue to cause displacement and disaster in Indigenous communities worldwide.

In the United States, heat is the leading cause of death due to extreme weather and communities of color and low-income communities are disproportionately impacted. Underscoring the enduring impact of systemic racism, formerly redlined areas are consistently hotter than non-redlined areas across the country. This session shares the research findings of a group of 25 emerging leaders in urban design, development, and policy in New York focused on an equitable approach to mitigating the impact of extreme heat.

The presentation will go in-depth about the ideas, research & activities that Dream Garden in the Anthropocene encompasses, as well as documentation photos. In Spring 2021 I have been diagramming, researching, drawing, writing a very long text, clearing, regenerating soil, speaking to my grandmother, caring, learning, planting with the help of friends & The New School community. The land is a 0.2 acre lot of land on Eastern Long Island or Paumanok, NY I acquired this year. I hope you can join us!

We are on Native Land. We uplift the health of the land and her people by centering Indigenous sovereignty and First Nations rights. This North East bioregion, so called New York State, is home to many neighboring Native nations. Today we will focus on Haudenosaunee liberation and struggle. As Indigenous people and allies, we fight to ensure a beautiful thriving future for the next seven generations. We can restore and uphold the most thorough care for the ground we stand on.

We are excited to invite you to Cooperative Climate Futures' unveiling of The Hub TOMORROW Wednesday, April 28th 5:30 - 7:00 PM EST! Please RSVP and share this invitation with your networks.

We are facing a convergence of global crises that are only being exacerbated by climate change. The threat it poses to frontline and fenceline communities and all life on Earth is the foremost challenge of our time. Mainstream solutions, education, and media fail to acknowledge the root causes of the climate crisis (white supremacy/anti-blackness, settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, extractive capitalism) replicating the same systems of oppression fueling climate change.

This panel gathers voices from diverse key projects from across Abya Yala and Turtle Island (‘the Americas’) that embody real solutions based on decolonizing communal alternatives. Indigenous communality and reciprocity forms the basis of projects to reconstitute territories of life. Such projects are real, decolonizing solutions to intersecting “syndemic” crises of health, environment/climate, food and systemic violence (including state and corporate violence).

The World We Need: Stories and Lessons from America’s Unsung Environmental Movement (The New Press, May 4, 2021) captures the riveting stories and hard-won strategies from a broad cross section of pivotal environmental actions and highlights the struggles against polluting corporations and industry while featuring movements, activists, and organizations that are already working toward a positive vision of a just, regenerative society.

Join us for our Earth Week keynote conversation between Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (Founder of Urban Ocean Lab & Co-Founder of the All We Can Save Project) and Dr. Mia White (Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies in the Environmental Studies Program at the Schools of Public Engagement at The New School).