Alternate Title: EXPLORING CLIMATE AND CLIMATE JUSTICE THROUGH CLIMATE BATHING
My course idea, wholly inspired by our Incubator, is to create a community-centered class about Urban Climate - viewing and treating Climate as a living member of the Community. As an ecologist, I consider the “Community” to include not only humans, but all living organisms and living systems. What happens if we regard the system and phenomenon of climate as an active member of the local community? I envision structuring a class, open to both Drexel students and residents of neighborhoods impacted by climate changes and climate extremes, as a field-based exploration of and interaction with climate systems, such as urban heat islands, sea level rise, saltwater intrusion, novel micro-climates, air pollution, etc. To truly understand what climate is, let's literally dive into its various forms and expressions.
Included as a topic in the course will be broad discussion of the concept of 'justice.' The concept of justice will be applied to all living beings, including humans. The course will not be structured as a humanities-oriented class, centered on the issues of ‘climate injustice,’ ‘environmental injustice,’ and ‘environmental racism.’ Rather, these topics will be immersively and organically experienced through our field visits and fieldwork. In a healthy community, all members collaborate and work together on behalf of the community. If we engage collaboratively with climate, how might we all benefit, while we give climate 'its space?'
I believe the underlying issue at the core of both environmental and social problems is disconnect. Regarding environmental problems, humans have largely lost their aboriginal connections with nature and living ecosystems. Regarding social problems, humans are largely disconnected from each other. Empathy, both for other humans and for other living organisms, is in very short supply. The major problems related to climate, environment, and justice are all systemic. The only way to begin to redress a systemic issue is to first gain a functional understanding of the issue at its roots.
It seems as if everyone is talking incessantly about climate. But how many people truly understand what climate is? Accelerated climate change is about much more than the burning of fossil fuels. Systemically, it’s the result of a complex, interconnected set of scenarios. Webster’s defines ‘climate’ as “a region of the earth having specified climatic conditions” and also as “the average course or condition of the weather at a place usually over a period of years as exhibited by temperature, wind velocity, and precipitation.” To really understand climate, one needs to delve much deeper than the dictionary definition. One needs to approach climate as a dynamic system. The climate system is layered and interwoven by its layers, just like our Earth itself. Climate layers or components include the lithosphere, the pedosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the biosphere, and the atmosphere, and the interactions among and between the layers.
Webster’s defines ‘justice’ as “the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments.” Webster’s defines ‘just’ as “1A- having a basis in or conforming to fact or reason: reasonable; 1B-conforming to a standard of correctness: proper; 2A(1)- acting or being in conformity with what is morally upright or good: righteous; (2)- being what is merited: deserved; B- legally correct: lawful” Cambridge defines ‘justice’ as “fairness in the way people are dealt with; syn: equity."
So what does one make of all of this in practice? Like climate, justice is a dynamic system. To understand the inner workings of justice as a living system, one needs to immerse themselves in the actual environments where justice, or lack of justice, plays itself out.
“Welcoming Climate as the New Neighbor in Town” or “Climate Bathing” is a nonjudgmental, objective, curious immersion into climate as climate. Relatedly, the class is likewise an immersion into the diversity of ways that climate impacts local communities based upon their demographics. Before one goes about looking for remedies to address global warming and other climatic impacts, as well as problems of climate injustice, one must meaningfully understand what climate is, as well as who it is. One needs to meet it and welcome it - as a new member of the community - just like any other living human, plant, animal, or ecosystem. In all of our neighborhoods, changing climate has already arrived or is arriving. Let's openly meet it, get to know it, appreciate it, understand it, and then start collaborating with it.
This class will be field-based, as well as place-based. It will be taught in a Community-Based Learning (CBL) format, in which Drexel students and community students explore local neighborhoods and ecosystems together, with intense curiosity and without judgment. Students will immerse themselves and bathe in places and ecosystems. They will observe with all their senses. They will converse with local residents. Their observations will be recorded. A major class deliverable will be a climate-centered field guide. A significant portion of this field guide will be a natural and built resource inventory of features, assets, liabilities, opportunities, and threats of the neighborhood, all considered in relation to climate. The field guide will also include an initial slate of beneficial actions, based upon the resource inventory. If not too over-zealous, I would also like to assign students the co-creation of a children’s book based on some resonant aspect or experience from the class explorations.
The class focus will be on intimately understanding climate in the city. Through carrying out this approach, the class will consequently explore climate justice in the city. Deeply focusing on urban climate as a system will lead to deep, immersive understanding of climate justice as a system.
Climate as a Community Member; Climate as Climate – Dragonflies want to be free to live as dragonflies. Ginkgo trees want to be free to grow as ginkgo trees. Humans want to be free to live as humans. And climate wants to have space to live as climate.
What Is Justice in the City? — Justice as a living ecosystem.
Climate and Weather — How can we enjoy certain effects of climate?
Climate and Water — Land planning with climate and giving it its space.
Climate and Plants — Photosynthesis: the chemical reaction of Life.
Climate and Soil — Basics of the living soil layer.
Climate and Trees — Trees as a big part of the solution; basics of carbon sequestration.
Climate and Food — Growing new crops thanks to climate.
Climate and Plastics — Cycling, recycling, upcycling, and reuse.
Climate and Microclimate — Urban heat islands; havens of ‘treecosystems.’
Climate and Waste — Waste cycles, combined sewer overflows, landfills,and inequality of impacts to humans.
Field visits to various urban natural areas.
Exploring climate on campus.
Grays Ferry by kayak – Highly visible, ongoing environmental racism.
FDR Park and Philadelphia Airport – Filling in tidal wetlands and compensating with forest destruction, all at the expense of South Philly residents.
Cobbs Creek Park – Sacrificing century-old floodplain trees to rebuild a golf course in West Philly.
Eastwick – Of flooding, contamination, landfills, and lack of resident empathy.
The Logan Triangle – 40+ acres and 40+ years of environmental injustice.
Mill Creek and Juniata Park neighborhoods – The inequality connected to combined sewer systems.
Israel – Arid and hyper-arid deserts with Elli Groner.
Northern California – Seasonal fires with Cynthia and Ron Weissbein-Macken.
Northern Italy – Climate discussions with Giuliana Iannaccone and students at Politecnico di Milani.
Africa – Climate justice discussions TBD.
Acquisition of a working understanding of climate as a dynamic system.
Acquisition of a real, neighborhood-based understanding of climate justice and injustice in Philadelphia.
Acquisition of various tools to mitigate impacts of climate change in urban settings.
Acquisition of various methods to take advantage of new opportunities arising as a result of climate change.
Acquisition of the ability to effectively partake in civic engagement and discourse with empathy and understanding.
I envision this course as being housed in Honors and being taught in CBL format, in alliance with the Lindy Center. The target semester is Fall 2025 (although Spring 2025 is possible). My ideal would be to develop a linked applications-based CBL class called “Partnering with Climate and Neighborhoods.” Class actions and topics would include: enacting environmental justice, sustainably growing new foods thanks to warmer conditions, accommodating sea level rise, welcoming migrating plants and animals, creating new/novel urban ecosystems, and new enjoyment opportunities arising from changing climate.
Were it not for our Incubator, I would not have been inspired to come up with the particular course idea and approach that I am proposing. Aspects of our program that really hit me were our discussions and readings on climate emotions, eco-anxiety, and climate grief. The image that stays with me is the Climate Emotions Wheel: 75% of its contents are negative! Our program also brought to light how limited and scarce discussions about climate justice, environmental justice, and even climate itself are in academic settings and classrooms.
Here's something essential that the Incubator helped me realize: I am not an expert in climate justice or environmental justice. Yet I don't have to be to meaningfully teach about it. I am an expert when it comes to things like the inter- and inner workings of our natural environment. By immersing my students into areas where climate impacts and communities collide, I believe that I can lead my students to first-hand understanding and empathizing with both climate and climate justice and also the individuals unjustly impacted by environmental injustice and racism.
Throughout our Incubator sessions, the general forum experience was infused with empathy and priority on safe, open human interaction. I clearly felt an emphasis being placed on establishing Community in the Classroom. Such is exactly the ‘Classroom Climate’ that I want to establish in my CBL course. In my class, I intend to use specific ideas, such as values affirmation and free writing. I love the idea of bestowing small ‘gifts’ of private reflection upon my students. Some nice examples would be free-writing prompts for students to address their personal relationships with climate, with the outdoors, with justice, etc. From our readings, I am most pedagogically influenced by the teachings of Friere and hooks, who look to turn the classroom into a true community, capable of working in tandem to make meaningful change. How appropriate for the wide array of injustice scenarios that pervade Philadelphia!
Some additional examples of teaching ideas from Incubator colleagues that I intend to incorporate into my teaching are having students teach one another, viewing climate and the environment from your own window, and incorporating music into the classroom. And I am intrigued by the idea of having my students write or co-write a kids’ book.
“Welcoming Climate as the New Neighbor in Town,” aka “Climate Bathing,” is wholly exploration-centered. As such, among the myriad individual experiences to be felt and sensed by all the students, many are bound to reverberate on their own. When someone has a formative or impactful experience, they tend to relay it. Further, my class will collaboratively create a field guide, which contains on-the-ground recommendations. Such a working document can be used for years by the individuals who create it, along with their communities. Also, much of my course approach can be emulated by others, including public school teachers, community leaders, and local residents. My course will be adopting a ‘community school’ approach. Effectively employed, this approach is inherently bound to reverberate throughout the neighborhood and to other neighborhoods and communities.
Beyond the local community, I am hoping that my course will reverberate into a second, follow-up course – one that is applications-based and capable of enacting visible actions within communities. Also, given that my classes will incorporate several interactive global sessions with others in places like Israel, Italy, and Africa, my course may result in some positive global reverberations. And, finally, an emotions-laden book for children, co-created by my students, could conceivably make its ways into all kinds of nooks all over Philadelphia and beyond.