Last year the Sustainability Task Force (STF) worked on rethinking TC’s role in climate action and sustainability around three main areas: divestment of TC’s endowment from fossil fuels, climate change literacy and awareness for the TC community, and green infrastructure campus upgrades. Part of how we are continuing to call for these steps forward is by engaging our peers in conversations around climate change on campus.
At the beginning of September we started to make a plan for events we can host this semester to foster action on campus, and we decided that New York City Climate Week would be a perfect place to start. Thousands of people come to New York City in September for Climate Week for all the events and conferences centered around climate change that take place. These events span many topics around climate change, including green technology, infrastructure innovation, sustainable fashion, climate change education, and sustainable food systems. We wanted to not only raise awareness for Climate Week, urging TC students to attend events, but also have our own kick-off to Climate Week right as students walk into Zankel Hall.
We set up a blank white board with the prompt “Words That Come To Mind… Climate Change.” Students, seeing our board as they walked into the building past the security desk, came to see what the board was. We had a table set up with sticky notes and markers so they could contribute to the board. The goal was for people to write the first words that came to mind when they hear climate change. As we sat there for three hours watching students add their responses, many stayed to talk to us about climate change. These conversations spanned from the actual science of climate to strategies for teaching about climate change in K-12 schools. Through these conversations we were able to raise awareness for Climate Week events and the work STF does on campus.
It was enlightening to see the different approaches people took in responding to the prompt board. Some responses communicated practices that contribute to climate change, the urgent need for climate action, or the impacts of climate change. Many more expressed feelings of fear, doom, and anxiety. Climate anxiety is in its own right a growing mental health crisis. People are already feeling the impacts of climate change throughout the world, and people viewing that from afar see that as an omen for what will be happening on a larger scale in the coming decades if we don't implement adaptation, mitigation, and resilience strategies.
Our Climate Week kick-off showed that this climate anxiety is close to home, here at TC. It is clear from the prompt board responses and passing conversations we had during this event that we need spaces at TC where people can express these feelings in constructive ways. The next generation of educators, health professionals, and psychologists going to school at TC should be empowered through their time here to participate in climate action efforts. Hopelessness towards the climate crisis needs to be met with pathways to foster collective action. At TC this starts with us looking at the ways we address climate change, climate anxiety, and sustainability within our community to set an example for our student body and other graduate schools of education, health, and psychology.
Many of the students we talked to were new to campus this Fall and were not here to be part of STF’s past climate action work. This prompt board was successful in helping get climate messaging to these new students from different degree programs at TC. However, having prompt boards to spark student conversation on climate is only a first step. We must continue to push for better ways we can address these topics in all our campus activities. We welcome anyone willing to collaborate with us on future climate action efforts to contact us using the information below.
Sustainability Task Force (STF) is a student organization dedicated to growing a sustainable culture and advocating for sustainable changes at Teachers College stf@tc.columbia.edu @tc_stf