To keep you in suspense just a little longer, for those of you who aren't as familiar with my ideas and ideology, let me give you a little background on my views and how they've informed what I've done up to this point. As anyone who has talked to me for longer than an hour will know, I have a hard time having a conversation that doesn't end with a discussion about the end of the world. I am convinced that we are in very bad shape environmentally, and the nature of climate change and politics will make stopping or reversing the effects of climate change virtually impossible. When I lived in DC, my friend Amy and I would get brunch every Sunday and it would always result in a conversation about how we're screwed, and how seeing what will happen will be both terrifying and sort of enthralling. In the course of these conversations, I started thinking about what I could do to help manage the transition from climate stability to instability. One of the things that kept coming up was the increasing risk posed by natural disasters. My dad mentioned this field called "emergency management" he'd read about in the paper, and I decided that's what I'd go into.
My experience working and studying in emergency management has been positive, but not exactly what I was hoping for or expecting. I don't say that to impugn emergency management (and certainly not NDSU's program, which has been wonderful), because I'm sure I would have had the same experience in any field that I came to through this experience of being terrified about the end of the world. The problem, from my perspective, is that EM is only partially connected to the threats associated with climate change. To clarify: emergency management scholars are probably some of the least likely people out there who will deny climate change or argue that it won't be a major challenge for their field; but it's hardly the only thing they're worried about. Not only are there other scholarly issues to be dealt with (e.g. manmade hazards like train derailments), but there are organizational and disciplinary issues to be dealt with as well (e.g. deciding on research standards -- a major challenge for any developing field). The effect of these "extraneous" issues for me has been that it's easy to lose focus on my ultimate goal: helping people manage one of the major effects of climate change: more (and more damaging) natural disasters.
Loyal readers of this blog will have read about my interest in pursuing a law degree to help manage western water resources. This ambition was motivated by the same interest in helping deal with the effects of climate change, but the more I thought about it, the more concerned I became about having the same problem I've had in EM. Namely, I was worried I would get side-tracked by other professional obligations and ambitions that didn't advance this goal of making peoples' lives better in the face of climate change. Perhaps a more significant problem is that, while I consider myself an intelligent and creative person, I don't know how much of a contribution I could really make within either of these professions. Being interested in a subject and being competent enough to make a career out of it are important, but frankly, I doubt my ability to come up with any innovative solutions to the primary challenges of emergency management and water scarcity. So, yes, I could switch fields, but the likelihood of achieving something through that switch began to seem rather dubious to me.
I was driving to Minneapolis a few weeks ago, and these personal issues were on my mind, but I was also feeling particularly frustrated with the push for fossil fuel divestment, which (you have surely guessed or read about already) I think is a waste of time, given the difficult political nature of climate change. Even though I was feeling down about my own ability to make much of a difference in terms of managing and adapting to climate change, I think this is the most meaningful and realistic way to respond to climate change. As I thought more about this, and about the people I know who are already doing this work, it struck me that encouraging people to do this kind of work -- to research and develop adaptations to climate change -- is perhaps something I could actually do.
So here is my proposal: I want to create a center to both fund research and to train graduate students to study and recommend policy to manage these effects. Some of the effects we will need to manage or adapt to include: sea level rise, extreme weather events, ocean acidification, fisheries collapse, forest infestation, food and water insecurity, smog and other health effects, forced migration, and infectious disease spread. The diverse nature of these effects would necessitate having a diverse group of researchers and disciplines represented. The purpose of having programs representing these different disciplines under one roof is twofold. First, it would be efficient to have programs which need similar resources as members of one institution (including both material resources, and intellectual resources – namely, other researchers). Second, and more importantly, it would help foster a movement of people who are concerned about the effects of climate change, but who do not feel that the current foci of the environmental movement are meaningful or effective. My ultimate ambition is to move the conversation away from fighting climate change to managing the inevitable consequences of climate change.
The more I think about this, the more it seems like the best and most obvious thing I could do with my life, and I'm changing some plans to make it happen. I still need to do my due diligence and explore all my options, but I'm currently intending to continue my studies in EM at NDSU a year from now. I think a PhD will open a lot of doors for me, including access to scholarly materials, experience writing grant proposals, the opportunity to attend academic conferences, more experience evaluating and doing research, not to mention the title "Dr." in front of my name. The next few years will also give me the opportunity to develop a list of contacts who might be interested in either working for or with the research center, which is one of the reasons I'm writing this blog post. Nothing is going to happen for five to ten years (optimistically), but I want to talk to as many people as possible right now, including any of you who are reading this and think it's not such a terrible idea. It's obviously all just in my head right now, but if you're interested in participating in any way, I would really, really, really love to talk to you. So call/text/Skype/email/message me! I certainly won't be able to do it on my own.
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