Jason Rodney: Climate Youth and Activism

Jason Rodney is Program Coordinator for YEA! MN (Youth Environmental Activists Minnesota) – a core program of Climate Generation, a Will Steger Legacy.
I met Jason Rodney on a Wednesday afternoon in a coffee shop in St. Paul. He had managed to find time in his busy day to talk to me about his climate justice work. He arrived right on time with his bike helmet in hand having biked to meet me despite the near freezing temperatures. The area was familiar to him as it was right near Macalester College, where he graduated from in 2010.

Jason Rodney grew up outside of Cleveland, Ohio before moving to St, Paul, Minnesota in 2006 to attend Macalester College. Prior to college, Rodney had never been involved in environmental activism. However, something about Macalester’s culture often sparks activism in the students here. Many of us are privileged in that we do not have to think about climate change in our everyday lives. Rodney’s realization that climate change was an urgent issue that demanded immediate action came from viewing the film “An Inconvenient Truth,” which features Al Gore speaking on increasing awareness surrounding global warming and climate change. This inspired him to join MacCARES, a student-run organization at Macalester focused on environmental sustainability. This organization addresses the broad issue of climate change, but classes such as Environmental Justice deepened his knowledge on the ways in which climate affects people. It taught him the inequality of climate change: it most strongly affects those that are most marginalized and have the fewest resources to deal with the effects of climate change.

Becoming involved with MacCARES alongside other community led organizations inspired Rodney to attempt to create his own major, one relating to community organizing surrounding environmental justice work. However, when proposing this major, Rodney was pointed in the direction of American Studies which looks at the influence of race and ethnicity in the United States. This department is very interdisciplinary, looking at the influence of racism and ethnicity across time in education, art, and, of course, the environment. Rodney graduated with an American Studies degree in 2010, but with a strong connection to the Environmental Studies department.

Looking at Environmental Studies through a lens which closely examines the importance of race and ethnicity lends itself to environmental justice work. Under the category of environmental justice is climate justice, the crossing between climate change activism and environmental justice work. Although the majority of climate change causing greenhouse gas emissions are emitted by wealthier countries typically categorized as “developed countries,” climate change will disproportionately affect less wealthy countries often referred to as “developing countries.” As a whole, climate change will more directly and more strongly affect BIPOC communities in the US and internationally. On a smaller scale, more wealthy communities will have a larger environmental impact, while less wealthy communities will have to bear the brunt of those impacts. In addition, countries and communities that are less wealthy have fewer resources to adjust to the effects climate change will bring including rising sea levels, warmer and more humid climates (in some locations), and an increase in extreme weather events. As a whole, climate change will more directly and more strongly affect BIPOC communities in the US and internationally.

Locally, the proposed Line 3 pipeline is an example of a climate injustice. Enbridge seeks to build a new pipeline to replace an aging one which brings oil from Canada to the US. However, the new route for the proposed pipeline will cut across indigenous land through sacred sites and across wild rice lakes. This not only would destroy areas of cultural importance to Indigenous people, but it would put an important food source for them at risk from inevitable oil spills. The new pipeline would harm Indigenous populations to serve wealthier communities, continuing with the historic pattern of the health of Indigenous communities being placed below the luxuries for others.

Beyond race and class, there is the issue of age. Previous generations have created our current reliance on fossil fuels and caused much of our environmental harms, but it is today’s youth that must deal with the consequences and clean up the mess that has been made. In a way, this is an environmental justice issue because one group must live with the environmental harms caused by another.

Rodney binds both of these injustices in his work by uplifting the voices of youth through his work for Climate Generation as the coordinator of the YEA! MN program. This program supports youth activism by giving high schoolers the tools necessary to become involved in climate justice activism. Students often become involved in local environmental justice campaigns including Line 3, one of the most pressing environmental justice issues facing Minnesota today. In addition, they are taught skills on how to create clubs and projects that put forward their own ideas on how to effectively address the issue of climate justice.

Beyond workshops on effective organizing within their communities, Rodney teaches climate justice workshops to students who may be unaware about how it differentiates from broader sustainability work. Workshops often cover the growing clean energy business sector. Energy industries like oil, coal, and natural gas have historically profited a very small group of people, and a very limited demographic. The demographic primarily reaping the benefits of our energy dependence is white men and today’s energy industries continue to benefit them. When looking at a renewable energy future, it is important that these industries do not follow the same pattern.

Many organizations in Minnesota are working to address this and Rodney mentioned them in our conversation as organizations that are currently doing good environmental justice work. Groups such as tribal nations, the Just Solar Coalition, Power Shift Network, Cooperative Energy Futures, and Minneapolis Energy Options work to grow Minnesota’s clean energy in an equitable way, expanding renewable energy to be accessible and beneficial to people of color. Power Shift Network in particular links youth activism with a vision for a clean energy future. Connecting students with these organizations is an essential part of the work of YEA! MN. Rodney emphasized the importance of building connections: between different organizations working towards a shared vision for the future, between people with different views on climate change and environmental racism, and between high schoolers coming from different backgrounds.

Building connections allows Rodney to remain optimistic about the environmental movement despite how politicized the concept of climate change has become. Building connections bridges the gap between people with different views and can convince them that climate change is a real and must be addressed. Rodney stressed the importance of building on shared values and making sure to not exaggerate to gain the support of someone to your cause. He spoke of farmers that may be hesitant to support government spending on renewable energy. However, agreeing on something like soil health as an important issue builds a foundation of shared values. Soil health is put at risk by pipelines and in the future will be even more at risk because of climate change; so the consensus that this is an important issue opens people’s minds to need for a stronger push towards sustainability.

Although most of the high schoolers that Rodney works with can agree that climate change demands immediate action, connections that are built bridge the gaps that exist as a result of the different backgrounds the youth come from. The leadership core, a group of eight students in 2018, is the central section of YEA! MN and meets weekly to plan and lead workshops and events for other youth. The leadership core is a diverse group, reflecting the diversity within the Twin Cities. This program, along with several other programs, attempts to break the mold of Climate Generation being a predominantly white organization serving white people. Seeing these high schoolers forming connections is one thing that gives Jason hope about the future of climate justice. When they come together and innovate and lift their voices together they can be heard by many more people.

One of the main issues with Climate Generation is that despite its vision of an equitable clean energy future, the organization has a background as a primarily white organization teaching workshops to a primarily white audience. In our conversation, Rodney was very candid about the flaws of Climate Generation and YEA! MN, partially because of his background in American Studies and environmental justice work. Despite the organization’s mission to reach high schoolers all across Minnesota and teach them on how to become involved in climate justice activism, aside from the leadership core, the youth that he works with are predominantly white. This is one of the challenges facing the organization in the coming years, branching out to reach a more diverse group of youth.

This may be one of the reasons why Rodney hesitated from calling his work explicitly environmental justice work. Although he was recommended by an environmental justice activist as someone else doing good environmental justice work in the Twin Cities area, he said his work was more climate change than environmental justice focused. However, the YEA! MN program has a strong focus on climate justice. Climate justice looks to create a system of energy, land use, and more that redistributes wealth and decision-making power to be shared equitably.This raises the question: what differentiates climate change work from climate justice work, and that from environmental justice work? Climate justice work has a stronger tilt towards ensuring that increasing renewable energy is equitable than climate change work. Whereas work surrounding climate change may be purely focused on stopping the use of fossil fuels and increasing use of renewable energy sources, climate justice looks to create a system of energy, land use, and more that redistributes wealth and decision-making power to be shared equitably. Educating people on this issue is an essential part of Climate Generation’s climate justice work.

If climate change and climate justice work can be so easily differentiated, what is the relationship between climate justice and environmental justice? Environmental justice is defined as equality between races, classes, genders, and ethnicity with regard to the environment. This includes a diverse range of issues: from the location of hazardous waste sites in proximity to communities of color to gentrification in neighborhoods improving their environmental condition, from lack of food sovereignty in food deserts to poor working conditions and exposure to dangerous chemicals in factories and on farms. Under this broad definition, climate justice would fit within the category of environmental justice, but Rodney does not identify his work as completely environmental justice. Maybe identifying with climate justice is more specific to the work that he is doing, or it is not Climate Generation’s space to claim itself as an environmental justice group. However, the impression I got from our conversation was that Rodney prefers to amplify the voices of the youth he works with rather than claim the role of environmental justice activist himself.

Although he may be hesitant to identify as an environmental justice activist, there is no doubt that he is supporting the work of many youth environmental justice activists. The students he works with become involved in important resistance campaigns like Line 3 and run workshops and lead conferences such as the Youth Climate Justice Summit; they meet with local legislators about laws regarding climate justice and form partnerships with other organizations doing environmental justice work. Rodney’s role teaching skills to students and helping them build connections, putting their ideas into action, and making their voices heard is a huge support to the environmental justice work the youth activists are doing.

Rodney feeds off the energy and the optimism of the youth he works with. It is what gives him hope about the future of climate justice. Seeing high schoolers connecting over a shared agreement that climate change demands action, actively creating change within their communities, and raising their voices to be heard at a higher level gives him confidence that real progress will be made for sustainability and environmental justice issues in Minnesota. This is what motivates Rodney to continue his work creating the space for the voices of many more youth activists to be heard.