Greene County Democrat

Tag: Jennifer Granholm

  • Newswire: HBCU Climate Change Conference could spark needed conversations

    Student demonstrators for climate change

    By ddooleyhbcu, NewsOne

     

    The HBCU Community will come together for the 8th Annual HBCU Climate Change Conference next week. 
    The Deep South Center for Environmental Justice in collaboration will host the event in collaboration with Texas Southern University on April 13 – 16, 2022 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
    The goal of the conference is to unite HBCU faculty, students, researchers, climate professionals and environmental justice, and coastal community residents affected by detrimental weather caused by or related to climate change. The conference will work to help eliminate the gap between theory and the day-to-day realities of climate change. Issues such as climate justice, adaptation, community resilience, global climate problems, and other major climate change topics like transportation, energy sources, carbon emissions, and more will be discussed at the event as well. 
    Also, the conference will work to incorporate local high school students into the activities of the conference. These teenagers who are looking to attend College will have the opportunity to learn more about how climate science is an integral part of their lives. The activities will offer an introductory glimpse into the realities of climate change for these young students through computer-simulated games and other forms of engaging learning tools. 
    The conference was originally postponed until the Spring of 2022 due to the surge in the COVID19 Omicron Variant. But now the HBCU community will have an opportunity to come together to discuss and hopefully find some practical solutions to a very important issue. 
    In May of 2021, Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm, spoke to theGrio about the importance of inclusion for HBCUs and becoming actively involved in the discussion on climate change. 
    “My first venture out in this COVID environment was to Howard University … it was to announce a $17 million opportunity at DOE [Department of Energy] offering to support college internships and research projects and opportunities and to bolster investment in underrepresented use in minority-serving institutions,” said Granholm. 
    “If you don’t have diverse researchers at the table, your research product, whatever it is, is going to not be as effective,” Granholm continued. “So, for example, when we have all this face recognition software out there, all this artificial intelligence, well, they’re the way MIS identifies African-American faces, especially in law enforcement. If you have more people of color who are on the teams doing the development of that software and that technology, then you will not have that problem.” 
    The conference will likely continue to serve as a vital step in helping to get more diversity in the conversations around climate change. 
    “We have to have diverse participation in the design of these products and the research of them,” stated Granholm. “And that’s why we need to increase the diversity in our laboratories, but of our stem, our science, technology, engineering, and math workforce.”

  • Newswire : With historic cabinet picks, Biden puts environmental justice front and center

    By:Juliet Eilperin, Dino Grandoni and Brady Dennis, Washington Post

    Congresswoman Deb Haaland and Michael s. Regan

    President-elect Joe Biden chose Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) last Thursday to serve as the first Native American Cabinet secretary and head the Interior Department, a historic pick that marks a turning point for the U.S. government’s relationship with the nation’s Indigenous peoples.
    With that selection and others this week, Biden sent a clear message that top officials charged with confronting the nation’s environmental problems will have a shared experience with the Americans who have disproportionately been affected by toxic air and polluted land.
    “A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior,” Haaland tweeted Thursday night. “ … I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.”
    In addition to Haaland, Biden has turned to North Carolina environmental regulator Michael S. Regan to become the first Black man to head the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as Obama administration veteran Brenda Mallory to serve as the first Black chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

    While the picks represent a concession to progressives in Biden’s party, who publicly campaigned for an American Indian at the helm of Interior, they were also chosen to personify Biden’s plans to address the long-standing burdens low-income and minority communities have shouldered when it comes to dirty air and water. All three nominees will play a central role in realizing his promises to combat climate change, embrace green energy and address environmental racism.

    “We have individuals coming to these positions who have seen what it’s like on the other side, in terms of communities that have suffered,” environmental justice pioneer Bob Bullard said in an interview Thursday. “They have been fighting for justice. Now they are in a position to make change and make policy. That, to me, has the potential to be transformative.”

    Earlier this week, Biden chose former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm (D), a proponent of zero-emission vehicles, as his energy secretary nominee. He also established the first White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy and designated former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to head it. Former Obama budget official Ali Zaidi will serve as her deputy.

    “This brilliant, tested, trailblazing team will be ready on day one to confront the existential threat of climate change with a unified national response rooted in science and equity,” Biden said in a statement Thursday. “They share my belief that we have no time to waste to confront the climate crisis, protect our air and drinking water, and deliver justice to communities that have long shouldered the burdens of environmental harms.”

    If confirmed, Regan, 44, who heads the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, would be responsible for crafting fuel-efficiency standards for the nation’s cars and trucks, overseeing emissions from power plants and oil and gas facilities and cleaning up the country’s most polluted sites.

    Regan has served as the state’s top environmental official since early 2017, when Gov. Roy Cooper (D) named him to his current role. While union leaders have criticized his approach at times, he has shown a capacity to work with community activists and the corporate world.

    Regan forged a multibillion-dollar settlement over cleanups of coal waste with Duke Energy, established an environmental justice advisory board, and reached across the political divide to work with the state’s Republican legislature. In another high-profile case, the state ordered the chemical company Chemours to virtually eliminate a group of man-made chemicals from seeping into the Cape Fear River.

    Before entering state government, Regan worked on climate change and pollution issues as southeast regional director for the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group. “Michael knows how to make progress even when that isn’t easy — that’s a necessary skill in North Carolina,” the group’s president, Fred Krupp, said in an email.

    In selecting 60-year-old Haaland, a member of Pueblo of Laguna, Biden has placed the descendant of the original people to populate North America atop a 171-year-old institution that has often had a fraught relationship with the nation’s 574 federally recognized tribes.

    Three divisions of Interior have a tremendous impact on Indian Country, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Indian Education and the Bureau of Trust Funds Administration, which manages billions held in trust by the U.S. government.

    “It’s called plenary power,” said University of Colorado Boulder law professor Charles Wilkinson. “Native people jokingly call it, ‘plenty power.’ ”

    Born in Arizona to a Native American mother who served in the Navy and a Norwegian American father who was an active-duty Marine, Haaland bounced between 13 public schools as the family changed military bases. At 15, she worked at a bakery, and later attended law school with the help of student loans and food stamps, occasionally experiencing homelessness as a single mother.

    Now, after serving a single term in Congress, she will oversee a department that manages roughly one-fifth of land in the U.S. While she hails from a top oil-and gas-producing state, Haaland has pledged to transform the department from a champion of fossil fuel development into a promoter of renewable energy and policies to mitigate climate change.