I am honored to have been chosen to be a community scholar for an Economics for the Anthropocene climate justice cohort. This group is comprised of economic phd students from York University in Toronto, ON, McGill in Montreal, QC, and University of Vermont in Burlington, VT. Recently we spent two weeks in a Climate Justice workshop which is reflected below in an excerpt from email I sent to my husband.

Looking north at chemical plants and refineries from Aamjiwnaang First Nations Community (Sarnia) near Lake Ontario, while on a Toxic Tour led by Beze and Vanessa Gray

Here in Toronto I have been learning about indigenous ways, practices, and injustices done to their people and land as well as the big finance of oil, the data for climate change, the work of activists, reform in city council, the immigration and migration of displaced people and culture due to water and food scarcity or rise of the seas. The north’s environmental debt to the south, and on and on. It has been a brutal two weeks. Long days of intense discussion and data. I am blessed to be here. I delivered my talk yesterday about creating change, pushing their (the student’s) papers and work out of the scientific debate realm and to the people who need to hear it....how to reach out. And of course that stems from art, poetry, dance, theater and visual art. I will do a webinar about it and there will be a book published from the collective papers submitted from the group. It will take a few weeks to absorb and process all that we have been discussing and learning, but I am emboldened to keep doing the type of work I am doing. The day after we took a toxic tour of a chemical plant and oil refinery near Aamjiwnang First Nation (Sarnia) and witnessed the devastation to the land, the air and waters as well as the peoples whose land it is on, we learned about trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement, a surreal silent moment followed by outrage in the classroom.