Event Details

Speaker:  Corrie Grosse, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, College of St. Benedict and St. John's University

How are communities uniting against fracking and tar sands to change our energy future?

Drawing on comparative analysis of climate justice coalitions in California and Idaho, this presentation, based on Grosse’s recently published book with the same title, investigates the ways people build effective energy justice coalitions across differences in political views, race and ethnicity, age, and strategic preferences. This presentation will focus on the case of youth climate justice activists in Santa Barbara, California. It highlights four practices that are critical for movement building: focusing on core values of justice, accountability, and integrity; identifying the roots of injustice; cultivating relationships among activists; and welcoming difference. These lessons on how to work together are more relevant than ever.

Corrie Grosse is teaches at the intersection of energy, climate crisis, social movements, and social inequalities and takes students to the United Nations climate change negotiations each year. She has conducted research on youth climate justice activism at the United Nations negotiations and with grassroots climate justice activists in Idaho, California, and Minnesota. Her book, Working Across Lines, was published this summer. In 2020, she received the American Sociological Association’s Environmental Sociology Outreach and Practice award for her community engaged research around the Line 3 tar sands pipeline. Her next research project will examine Native-leadership in renewable energy – in other words, the solutions!

To-go refreshments available at the end of the presentation.