Climate and Democracy: Alliances Amidst Uncertainty

How does uncertainty impact our ability to come up with collective solutions to the climate crisis?

The Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy and PPEH present a panel discussion about how to build alliances to advance solutions to the climate crisis in the face of the uncertainty followed by a documentary screening and a discussion with Philadelphia youth activists.

• 12:30 - 2pm: "Alliances amidst Uncertainty" Panel in the PCPSE auditorium
• 3pm-6pm: Screening of Youth v. Gov, the documentary about the Juliana v. The United States of America constitutional lawsuit brought against the United States government for its role in creating the climate crisis, followed by a panel of youth from the university and environmental organizations in the city.

Speakers

• Ashley Funk, executive director of the Mountain Watershed Association and one of the plaintiffs in the constitutional suit filed against Pennsylvania for its failure in protecting its natural resources. The Mountain Watershed is part of the Waterkeeper Alliance that works to protect, preserve and restore the Youghiogheny River watershed and its broader communities. 

• John Kanbayashi is assistant professor in the department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. His body of work speaks to the ways that natural objects (like watersheds and the climate) get constructed as objects of knowledge and the way that this construction makes them objects of power and contestation.

• Anand Pandian is professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. The central issue he grapples with in his scholarship is environmental ethics and how the words we use to describe our environment ("nature," "environment," "ecology") also shape it. 

• Victoria St. Martin is an environmental reporter for Inside Climate News based in Philadelphia. She reports on a variety of environmental issues, but with a special focus on health care disparities affecting Black women, and how these disparities are linked to the environment and the climate crisis.