Trending: Fall 2019

When Phaedra Pezzullo moved to Boulder, the city was circulating a new Climate Action Plan. While it sounded ambitious, it lacked an essential element.

“It was bold and high tech and grounded in climate science, which thrives in Boulder, but when you turned the page in the plan to community engagement, it was an iStock photo of generic diverse people with no plan proposed for actual engagement with residents of Boulder,” she says.

Pezzullo, an associate professor of communication who studies environmental justice, rhetoric and culture, offered to help the city develop a concrete plan for public engagement.

In 2016, Pezzullo and three campus colleagues formed the Just Transition Collaborative, which engages the public about the transition to a renewable energy economy through public events, trainings, and neighborhood meetings in Boulder and surrounding areas, such as Longmont and Lafayette.

One of the group’s programs, Climate Justice Leaders, brings together people of color, immigrants, youth, elders and low-income groups for a series of workshops to train them and to amplify their voices.

Angela M. Ortiz, a Colombia native, joined the program to learn more about policymaking in sustainability and equity. Since completing the program, she’s explored opportunities to join a board or commission in the city of Boulder, according to the group’s 2019 annual report.

The group also trains policymakers to communicate findings and recommendations using a model grounded in social justice, cultural competency and regional specificity.

This is the best way, Pezzullo says, to spark people’s passions and engage them in work that can lead to meaningful change.

Traditionally, climate scientists have communicated using an information deficit model, attributing public skepticism to a lack of education and information, Pezzullo says. In trying to convince the public that climate change is a real threat and that solutions exist to address it, they’ve relied mostly on peer-reviewed papers and reports.

“That has not moved the political needle or changed the culture enough,” she says, adding that because this approach tends to make climate change seem overwhelming or abstract, people don’t treat it with the same urgency as paying bills or caring for their families.

The group, whose partnership Boulder Mayor Suzanne Jones affirmed during a congressional field hearing in August, hopes their work can shape a just transition locally and on a national scale.

“Communities are already coming up with inventive ways to use less because they have less,” Pezzulo says. “So how can we learn from them about how to have a low carbon footprint and a joyous life in a way that’s not just all about sacrifice—in a way that understands what the good life means from a different cultural perspective.”