Environmental & Social Justice

2017 Fellow Lauren Richter just received the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) student paper competition award for 2018.

The Breakthrough Institute is proud to announce Steven Pinker, Ariane de Bremond, Sarah Evanega, and Julio Friedmann as our 2018 Senior Fellows. This is the tenth year that Breakthrough has conferred Senior Fellowships to leading scholars who have shaped our research and vision. This class of Senior Fellows will join the ranks of the 45 prominent experts who have joined our network of global thought leaders committed to building a future that is good for both humans and nature. We are grateful to be able to count upon their expertise, counsel, and inspiration.

“Climate change will increase the global burden of infectious diseases such as malaria, Zika and Lyme disease,” says 2017 Fellow Dev Vashishtha. “We are also seeing changes in pollen patterns and increases in asthma diagnoses. We know that the poor and people of color will be the hardest hit. My interest in climate change is closely tied to my interest in public health and disease prevention.”

Denby Fawcett’s severe call to action, Give Us Back Our Parks, generated several well-reasoned responses. We share with Fawcett a sense of urgency — the reality of pervasive homelessness needs effective action. What we wish to add to previous critiques of Fawcett’s essay is context. Understanding the historic, bureaucratic, fiscal, political and other contexts of houselessness in Kakaako is critical to understanding the problem we must face creatively and collectively.

The School of Architecture continues to build its Race and Gender in the Built Environment Initiative with new faculty appointments. Edna Ledesma will join the school as a fellow for the 2017-18 academic year, and Miriam Solis will begin her appointment as an assistant professor in Fall 2018 after completing a Switzer Environmental Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley.

In this study, Switzer Fellows Evan Hansen and Lara Cushing explored whether gas production has become more prevalent near where people live, work, and play, increasing the potential for human exposure to contaminants associated with drilling and natural gas extraction.

For decades, California Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia has been trying to clean up the air in polluted neighborhoods — first as an activist, then as a legislator. Recently, she celebrated her most significant victory: Governor Jerry Brown needed her help to extend California’s cap-and-trade program. In return for her support, she got the legislature to pay attention to not just greenhouse gases, but all the accompanying nasty that pours out of smokestacks. The result: California’s most significant air-pollution law in years.

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