Michael Méndez: Climate Policy and the Environmental Justice Movement

Climate change is fundamentally about people. In California, environmental justice activists have galvanized around human impacts of climate action—such as air pollution, poverty alleviation, and green jobs—to build a policy response that focuses on local communities and public health. Dr. Michael Méndez, assistant professor of environmental planning and policy at the University of California, Irvine, joins Charles Harper (YSE ’22) to discuss his book, Climate Change from the Streets: How Conflict and Collaboration Strengthen the Environmental Justice Movement, and the sometimes contentious history of incorporating environmental justice and the concerns of low-income people of color into climate change policy.