This fall I'm really excited to be introducing a new course here at UMD. This course is going
to be called Climate Community Connection, and our central question that we're starting with
is, why is it so hard to live well in the world? When we talk to kids, when we talk to people in
general, it's clear that concerns about climate and environmental justice are really central
to many people's lives, and yet it's so hard for so many of us to do things, either sort
of on a personal or on a political level. With climate change, one of the things we've been
learning about with school is how impactful it is, and that this is something that's real and
present and is affecting us right now, and if we don't do something right now the impacts in
the future are just going to be disastrous. The focus on things like community and how people
are involved is a really key aspect, and that's a really practical aspect because a lot of climate
solutions are talked about in academic spaces or scientific spaces or in activist spaces, but
it's it's not enough for certain spaces to talk about these issues, it's something that needs to
engage everyone. Talking to people from around the country, around the world about climate
change, something that has always fascinated me is how all of the different perspectives we have
help us think about the problem and also how they you know help us think about ourselves, you know
somebody else's perspective is really really helpful when you're trying to understand your
own perspective. Well I would say a great place to start is just right here in this class room.
You know, when I look around the people around me we're part of the solution, we're going to be
part of the people going into the world that are going to try and implement these changes and
that, in this classroom we're making these ideas we're thinking we're seeing all these different
ways that, oh this could work, this could work, so that's what we're trying to do, and then when we
go into the world we're going to take these ideas that we've learned here and apply them,
so right here and right now this is where we get the answers. There's seems to be a lot of
energy around thinking about climate together on this campus and I'm excited to see the classroom
discussions that emerge. I think it's important to have hope, is that one thing that we've seen
time and time again is, that humans can innovate, humans can change we can make the solutions to our
problems.