Talking Climate: Infrastructure
Our Second Fridays programming continued in March with Talking Climate: Infrastructure. This event took place on March 12, 2021.
Talking Climate: Infrastructure confronted how current infrastructure locks in the compounding crises of climate and inequality in the United States, and examined what is needed for a transition to a just, resilient, and climate-stabilized future. Like all of the Climate Museum’s programming, Infrastructure aims to provide a foundation for community-building, democratic engagement, and civic action.
Expert panelists Jainey Bavishi, Director of the New York City Mayor's Office of Resiliency; Julian Brave NoiseCat, Vice President of Policy & Strategy for Data for Progress and Narrative Change Director for the Natural History Museum; Justin J. Pearson, Co-Founder of Memphis Community Against the Pipeline and environmental justice activist, spotlighted the importance of truth-telling for confronting the inequities upheld by U.S. infrastructural history and building a truly equitable future.
The event began with a reading of selections from Albery Allson Whitman’s poem “The Freedman’s Triumphant Song” (1893) by Climate Museum Mellon Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellow Akua Banful. We thank Dr. Walter Gordon of the University of Alberta for sharing his dissertation research with us.
This resource guide is designed to complement our Second Fridays programming. If you enjoyed these readings or want to add to the list, please let us know!
Infrastructure and Inequality: Background Reading
These articles provide background on the history of infrastructural development and disinvestment in the U.S., the way fossil fuels undergird American energy systems, and the challenges that need to be overcome to move forward.
“Climate Change and Infrastructure Collapse are our Future if we don't act” by Kandist Mallett (Teen Vogue, March 2021)
“Our infrastructure systems shouldn’t be run as private businesses and the resources of this planet shouldn’t be sold off for profits. After decades of policies that have valued economic growth over ecological sustainability, America is now a decaying country — literally.”
“Texas’s Energy Crisis is America’s Future” by Kate Aronoff (The New Republic, February 2021)
“Where the right has capitalized on this crisis to push its retrograde ideas for more fossil fuel buildouts, the coming days and weeks could be a chance for climate campaigners to articulate what actually avoiding these kinds of disasters could entail.”
“How To Fix the Climate” by Robert C. Hockett (Boston Review, January 2021)
“Accompanying all the excitement of the past eighteen months have been many queries, most of which boil down to a question of how the authors of the Green New Deal Resolution—which is an aspirational, hopeful document—imagine, practically speaking, that its implementation might look. The definitive reply to that is easy: It’s literally up to us.”
“The Keystone XL pipeline is dead. Now what?” by Alec Jacobson (National Geographic, February 2021)
“The United States and Canada are covered in a fine mesh of pipelines, some 3 million miles of them, that carry oil, gas, water, and waste from tanks and wells to homes and refineries every day. When their need fades, the lines are sometimes removed but are more often cleaned out, sealed at their ends, and left in place, out of sight and mind.”
Book Recommendations:
Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance by Nick Estes (AK Press 2019)
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee (Penguin Random House 2021)
Toward a Just Transition
“A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” (The Intercept, June 2019)
“The only way to do it was to transform our economy, which we already knew was broken, since the vast majority of wealth was going to just a small handful of people, and most folks were falling further and further behind. It was a true turning point. Lots of people gave up. They said we were doomed. But some of us remembered that, as a nation, we had been in peril before: the Great Depression, World War II. We knew from our history how to pull together to overcome impossible odds. And at the very least, we owed it to our children to try.”
“The Green New Deal can’t be anything like the New Deal” by Samuel Miller McDonald (The New Republic, May 2019)
“America’s industrial economy, like a century ago, is powered almost entirely by fossil fuels. Carbon energy circulates through the veins of our transportation networks, buildings, data infrastructure, and globe-spanning supply chains… to say that a viable Green New Deal must dismantle and replace all this is not an ideological stance. It’s a material fact.”
“The Green New Deal is really about designing an entirely new world” by Diana Budds (Curbed, September 2019)
“We need to shift the conversation around infrastructure to what it does for people, that their commutes are better, their safety is protected... Infrastructure is an engine of social mobility. It’s not about delivering water and power and transit. It’s the backbone of prosperity.”
“Biden Is Betting His Whole Climate Agenda on Infrastructure” by Leslie Kaufman and Jarrell Dillard (Bloomberg Green, March 2021)
“Candidate Joe Biden rode into the White House promising to build back the economy after the devastation of Covid-19 with cleaner energy and a lower carbon footprint. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that President Biden signed into law today, however, does little in the way of fulfilling that pledge.”
Envisioning a Green New Deal: A Global Comparison by Andrew Chatzky and Anshu Siripurapu (Council on Foreign Relations, February 2021)
Work and Insights from our Expert Panelists
Jainey Bavishi, Director of New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Resiliency
“Director’s Message” (Mayor’s Office of Resiliency, accessed March 2021)
“Eight Years After Sandy Battered The Rockaways, Construction Begins On Six-Mile-Long Resiliency Project” by Sydnery Pereira (Gothamist, October 2020)
Rising Risk Docuseries: Episode 3 by Lee Goldberg (ABC7NY, September 2020)
Jainey Bavishi’s essay “A Tale of Three Cities” appears in All We Can Save (Penguin Random House, 2020); please consider ordering this title from your local bookseller.
Julian Brave NoiseCat, Vice President of Policy & Strategy for Data for Progress and Narrative Change Director for The Natural History Museum
For a complete list of Julian’s writing and talks, please visit his website.
“Apocalypse Then and Now” by Julian Brave NoiseCat (Columbia Journalism Review, Winter 2020)
“Why Native Americans Are Celebrating Rep. Haaland’s Nomination” interview by Hari Sreenivasan (PBS NewsHour, December 2020)
“Green New Deal Legislation must be Indigenous-Led” interview of Julian Brave NoiseCat (CBC, May 2020)
“A Green New Deal For Oakland” by Julian Brave NoiseCat (The American Prospect, December 2019)
Justin J. Pearson, co-founder Memphis Community Against the Pipeline
Memphis Community Against the Pipeline’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages
“Environmental Racism Runs Deeper than Memphis' Water Source” by Ashli Blow (High Ground News, March 2021)
“Pipeline through the heart: A Black neighborhood's uphill battle against oil developers” by Leanna First-Arai (MLK 50, September 2020)
“When a Community Says No to Big Oil” by Asa Burroughs (February 2021)
“Former Vice President Al Gore, National Poor People's Campaign join Memphis Pipeline Fight” by Carrington J. Tatum (MLK50, February 2021)
Ben Grant, Creator of Overview
Daily Overview on Instagram and Twitter
Overview’s Index of Images
Please consider ordering Ben Grant’s books Overview, Overview: Timelapse, and Overview: Young Explorer’s Edition from your local independent bookseller.
Support Indigenous Activism
In a virtual context where readers and audience members join us from all over the United States and beyond, we acknowledge this event, and our work and lives generally, take place on unceded Indigenous territories. Below, we have assembled a selection of resources that highlight Indigenous efforts towards self-determination. We encourage readers to discover the longer histories of their particular locations and of others listed here, and to consider donating to efforts restoring land back to Indigenous stewardship.
Native Land Digital: This is a tool to use as a first step in learning more about the names, traditions, and histories of Indigenous communities and land across the globe.
“Resource Guide for Indigenous Solidarity Funding Projects: Honor Taxes and Real Rent Projects.” Compiled by the Indigenous Solidarity Network and representatives from the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust/Shuumi Land Tax, Real Rent Duwamish, and the Manna-hatta Fund.
“Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, and Indigenous Liberation.” A reading list and resource guide curated by The Red Nation.
Find out more about the NDN Collective’s campaigns, including those on climate justice and an Indigneous Green New Deal.