Tackling Climate Justice: Maxine Burkett

SPRING 2019 PEARLS AND SEAWEED NUMBER 59 Tackling Climate Justice: Let the daily tide leave some deposit on these pages, as it leaves sand and shells on the shore...This may be a calendar of Maxine Burkett f92 the ebbs and flows of the soul; and on these sheets as a beach, the waves may cast up pearls and seaweed. by Sarah Leibovitz s19 –Henry David Thoreau ecently Maxine Burkett spoke to us about her work as a law dinner and he responded by pointing silently at a live chicken. After Rprofessor, researching the implications of climate change for graduating high school, Maxine attended Williams College and the the world’s geopolitical landscape—climate displacement, migra- U.C. Berkeley Law School. She now works as a law professor at tion, and relocation—and how national and international legal sys- the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. tems can be used to help people at risk of losing their land. She opened her presentation with the idea that climate change is not Maxine was always interested in the environment, but her time the elephant in the room, so much as the octopus in the parking lot. here made her appreciate how lucky she was to know the natural She then showed us an image of a parking lot at high tide in Miami world so well. with an octopus parked behind an SUV. Something that Maxine said that really stuck with me was that she In her most recent article, “Behind the Veil: Climate Migration, didn’t say it is up to young people to save the world, but that it is Regime Shift, and a New Theory of Justice,” Maxine discusses how up to all of us. And also that it was okay to feel sad about it tonight, climate change threatens worldwide stability, and how we need a but that we wake up in the morning and do something about it. “swift, just, and equitable response.” Because we don’t know what climate change will do to the world’s socio-political landscape, Maxine describes the world as behind a “veil of ignorance,” We asked some teachers to respond to Maxine’s presentation: similar to political philosopher John Rawls’ well-known thought experiment. “Maxine put clear words and images In particular, she focuses on the people to an aspect of climate reality that I who have and will be displaced by the haven’t found the words for myself, and effects of climate change; these people that I need to pay attention to. But then do not fit into the legal definition of a I went back to Derby House that night, refugee, and often belong to communities assuming somehow that the girls would least responsible for climate change, such feel equally positive. They didn’t—at as small island nations and indigenous least not that night. They were so sad coastal peoples, both threatened by rising about what they had heard. They needed sea levels. I think her closing words said time, literally, to grieve over Maxine’s it all: “The sincere hope is that we will presentation. That experience made me choose the least-worst option.” wonder: As we educate students, how much curriculum should we devote to On Tuesday morning, Maxine and I curtailing carbon emissions, and how walked around campus together. We much curriculum to climate adaptation visited the twin lambs who had been and justice? How do we help students born the previous morning and went up see the hard truths about climate change to Conard, where Maxine lived during Maxine Burkett f92 while inspiring them toward action?” her time here. Maxine remarked that not —Alden Smith much had changed here in 27 years. “I found Maxine’s talk to be sobering and inspiring. While I Maxine is originally from Jamaica, but her family left when often think about the limitations of global governance from the she was very young, moving to N.Y.C. where Maxine attended perspective of addressing the root causes of climate change, the Spence School in Manhattan. Despite growing up in such an Maxine got us thinking urban environment, Maxine had some experience with farm life about the gaping holes Continued from page 6: Maxine Burkett in Jamaica. She remembers once asking her uncle what was for we’ll face in dealing with 1 Letter from the DIRECTOR Twilight of the Ash By Alden Smith love white ash trees. I find old groves of them in steep, rich to identify—has become sacred. We return to the same groves I soil—often north and northwest facing—near remote streams every spring to search among the tangle of living ash roots. Morels and marshes that make logging tricky. The season of discovery are rare—harvesting a few dozen would make a banner year, tends to be winter and early spring, when I ski after tracks of bob- according to one guidebook. They are ephemeral—only growing cat, fisher, and coyote. I’m following the trail through hemlock and in late May and early June. They’re delicious—perhaps the maple; suddenly I find myself in a cradle of old ash that feels more choicest edible in all the north woods. And they’re maddening—a ancient than it is. white ash grove that grows two-dozen morels one year will often yield nothing the following. Fast-growing, light, and strong—white ash enjoys special status in the north woods as well as in our forestry program. Each leaf I’m grateful for this twilight season for the ash, which has lasted has seven leaflets, making an excellent shade tree. And there’s longer than Markus Bradley predicted. Every morel mushroom I nothing quite like pounding a maul through a block of ash, having find among the roots of an old, healthy stand feels like a gift I it split perfectly in half. Forestry manager Kit Halsey Leckerling don’t deserve. There’s no saving the trees, but I wonder: in the sometimes hauls ash logs from our woodlots to library hill so that next few years, through savoring white ashes and documenting students can split wood as a study break. It’s sweet to watch them them, through splitting wood and collecting mushrooms, maybe out there, pounding away. Still, in my heart, there’s something else we’ll strengthen our resolve to protect other treasures that seem that makes the white ash special. like they’ll last forever. We’re on the verge of losing so much of what I grew up taking for granted: coral reefs, coastlines, glaciers, These magnificent trees are doomed. Fifteen years ago, Mountain the wild polar bear. Knowledge of imminent threat may hurt my School forester Markus Bradley told me that every ash would be heart, but it also deepens my gratitude for what’s here now. I’m dead within the decade. The emerald ash borer—a small beetle stronger for it, surely. from Asia—arrived in Michigan in 2002 and has been on the march every It can be motivating too. For the next since. Hundreds of millions of trees year, students and teachers will be are already gone. One year ago, an joining our neighbors in GPS-mapping infestation finally appeared just north all the roadside ashes in Vershire. of Vershire. I wish I could say that Our plan is to help the town identify there’s hope for white ash survival in the trees and plan for a program of my lifetime. But the bugs are coming, harvest and wise use that protects our and once the larvae get inside the roadways, power lines, and economy. bark, that tree’s a goner. Even if we’re powerless to stop the emerald ash borer, hope comes from My love of the white ash can also doing something—together—to make be traced to a secret. I remember the it all better. This group effort will first time I stumbled upon a trove of save the town thousands of dollars, morel mushrooms in an ash forest. I strengthen social bonds, and deepen was walking with Liz Niemiec f98 our resilience against future threats. and some other alumni near a remote marsh at their ten-year reunion. We We’ve lost the chestnut, the elm, and passed through some giant white ash Missy Smith among morel mushrooms much of the beech. Let’s cherish these trees and practically tripped over the good old days when white ash are morels. We harvested a dozen big ones right around us, and I still plentiful, and morels too. I keep faith in the durability of our returned to that area alone the next day, returning home with many woodlands, which are still thriving now in ways they were not more. two centuries ago. The morel is only the fruiting body of a vast underground network of fungi—a complex tangle of associations Since then, morel hunting has become an obsession in our beneath our feet. I hope for deep resistance within that soil, for household, where the white ash—the first tree our children learned strong resilience within ourselves. 2 FACULTY NOTES: We Tried That By Jack Kruse enjoy turning through alumni magazines of big schools. They • Five maternal hens (to warm the chicks in case of a power I detail exciting initiatives—pilot programs, green libraries, fit- outage; the hens bullied the chicks) ness centers—and they should, in part because those ships are so • Guinea hens, geese, ducks, breeding sow and boar, guard hard to turn. And also because their communications office has dog, guard donkey, work horse (Mostly not worth the effort.

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