Environmentalist Robert Bullard received the Museum of Science 2024 Bradford Washburn Award. PHOTO: DAVE BRENNER
Climate change took center stage Saturday at the Museum of Science, with the institution’s inaugural Boston Youth Climate Summit and the first convening of its new Champions of Environmental Justice series.
The gatherings over the weekend were part of the museum’s “Year of the Earthshot,” its year-long programming centered on climate solutions, energy and the environment. The events, in which the museum presented environmentalist and sociologist Robert Bullard with an award, drew local and national visitors for discussions on climate change and solutions.
This year has been a notable undertaking for the museum as, in the last two or three decades, the museum has not dedicated an entire year to one singular topic, said Meg Rosenburg, manager of operations for the Centers for Public Science Learning at the museum. This underscores that climate change is “a defining issue of our time,” she said. The sessions on Saturday emphasized this.
The Champions for Environmental Justice meeting was a series of talks and a resource fair that included more than a dozen community organizations. The idea for the gathering came out of a desire to highlight the museum’s community partners, amplify the voices of those involved in environmental justice and connect them with others in the same line of work, said David Sittenfeld, director of the museum’s Center for the Environment.
“The idea was to … give people hope that there are really great people in all of these communities working on these problems in positive ways,” Sittenfeld said, in addition to positioning the museum as a resource for advocates and community groups.
This first convening of the Champions of Environmental Justice drew speakers from the Greater Boston area and from as far as Atlanta and Flint, Michigan. Sittenfeld said the museum hopes to organize six such events, tackling topics such as climate justice in tribal nations, land use, city planning and equitable climate solutions.
“Environmental justice is such a unifying idea. All of us deserve a clean environment, and a lot of people just don’t realize that it’s not the same for everyone,” he said. “All of us are feeling, for example, the impacts of climate change, but not everyone is feeling them equally.”
This is the crux of Bullard’s research. Over the last 40 years, Bullard, dubbed “the father of environmental justice,” who is also a professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University, has investigated the realities and effects of climate change on marginalized and vulnerable communities nationally. In his work, he has examined grassroots movements, redlining, climate action and urban planning in the likes of Houston, Atlanta and Louisiana.
On Friday, Bullard received the museum’s 2024 Bradford Washburn Award, given to a person “who has made an outstanding contribution toward public understanding and appreciation of science.”
In his 20-minute speech on Saturday, Bullard highlighted the interconnectedness of issues like housing, transportation and health, sounded a siren for urgent action in the face of climate change and addressed “mounting denial,” delivering a call to action to audience members.
“Having the science, having the data, having the facts is never enough to make transformative change that we need to address this climate crisis that’s staring us in the face,” he said. “We must marry the facts, the data, the research and the science with action.”
Running alongside the Champions for Environmental Justice meeting was the Boston Youth Climate Summit, modeled after that of The Wild Center, a science museum in upstate New York. The summit began on Friday at the New England Aquarium and continued on Saturday at the museum, with dozens of young people attending workshops on topics such as environmental policy, citizen science and careers.
Rosenburg, with the museum’s Centers for Public Science Learning, said the youths’ passion was “humbling,” adding that “the ways that young people are taking in that information and not being passive about what they do with it is just really incredible.”
Bullard echoed this sentiment, saying the summit was emblematic of “intergenerational mobilization,” a necessary component in combatting the adverse effects of climate change.
“It’s the young people that are owning the issue of climate justice, environmental justice,” he said. “That’s what keeps me going, and to see the energy and vitality that they bring to the issue, it reminds me of myself in the 1960s when we were challenging the system of racism and inequality, and we were fearless. And so I see that same parallel energy now, with the urgency of ‘We need to get it done.’”
Bullard has spent four decades working in the environmental justice space, and many of the climate-related issues he wrote about years ago are the same ones faced today, he said. Still, he said he remains hopeful that the future is bright.
“The mere fact that many of these problems have persisted for decades does not mean that we have not made some impacts,” Bullard said. “That means we must keep working to eradicate these areas that seem so entrenched.”