Sustainable Environment Institute
Los Angeles Community College District
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The March 29 SEI Update Newsletter is out. It has important upcoming events and articles on the topics you see here on our home page. Feel free to share it.
Upcoming SEI seminars, Spring 2024:
All seminars are held over zoom.
April 1-30. Film festival
April 25th Didi Pershouse
May 16th Embedding Climate Literacy into Curriculum.
Youth Climate Strike - April 19, 2024:
On April 19, 2024, Youth Climate Strike Los Angeles (YCSLA), Friday's For Future (FFF) and Extinction Rebellion Youth Los Angeles (XRYLA) will join forces against the climate crisis by striking and creating a bike bus (a coordinated, safe group bike route) that will ride through the streets of Los Angeles.
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(Biking is entirely optional, we encourage you to come with or without a bike)
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This event is accessible
On April 19, 2024, Youth Climate Strike Los Angeles.
YCSLA has been holding climate strikes in Los Angeles since 2019, mobilizing youth to counter our government’s lack of climate action. As LA Youth, we’re using this climate strike to build power and solidarity with broader social movements in Los Angeles and to support other youth leaders in our fight for climate adaptation.
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Our strike’s demands center on organizing people-pressure on our elected officials to ACT NOW on the climate crisis and to end our dependence on oil. Our targets include—but are not limited to—LA City, LA County, LADWP, LAUSD, the State of California, CalTrans, the Federal Government, and dirty companies like Hyundai, Exonn, Mobile, and Chevron.
The SEI’s own Xiao Behlendorf has prepared a webpage via the LA Valley College library that hosts resources for faculty and students in confronting this challenge. Beginning with a useful definition of this phenomenon, the site offers links to book titles and short reviews as well as articles. There are podcasts and videos as well as links to local environmental organizations where students can volunteer, intern, and even get paid positions. Most importantly, the page offers several organizations that can help people facing a mental health crisis. The tab on Climate Crisis Conversations hosts 17 of them running from 30 minutes to 1 hour. The TED talk on mental health is also very well selected. Xiao was recently featured in the Valley Star for her work at the LAVC Library.
Recently the national availability of an emergency phone number, 988, is now national service for the most immediate help in a crisis. The issue is also getting attention in the LACCD so that Student Health services on each campus are stepping up their capacity to help students distressed by the tsunami of bad news. The SEI hosted a roundtable of sorts on November 10 as part of the Professional Development College series of Summer/Fall talks. See other article here on the planned schedule for these talks.
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Thursday March 28: SEI hosted two experts in the area of “climate anxiety”. Eugenie Lewis, a climate activist and licensed social worker as well as Trevor Lehmann, whose practice in psychotherapy focuses on such challenges as climate anxiety. You can find the recording for this seminar
Beth Abels
George Leddy
Xiao Behlendorf
David Beaulieu
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April 11, 2024