{"id":14287,"date":"2019-05-06T11:08:26","date_gmt":"2019-05-06T17:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/?p=14287"},"modified":"2019-05-07T16:13:04","modified_gmt":"2019-05-07T22:13:04","slug":"digging-into-the-roots-of-climate-change-michelle-gabrieloff-parish-tackles-tough-topics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/2019\/05\/digging-into-the-roots-of-climate-change-michelle-gabrieloff-parish-tackles-tough-topics\/","title":{"rendered":"Digging Into the Roots of Climate Change: Michelle Gabrieloff-Parish Tackles Tough Topics"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the energy and climate justice manager for the student-founded Environmental Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, Michelle Gabrieloff-Parish \u201900 <\/b>bridges energy, water, and climate change issues with a social equity lens. Gabrieloff-Parish\u2019s interest in these issues stems from her childhood. She was raised in a family where environmental and social issues were talked about constantly and often simultaneously.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy family\u2019s Colombian, and a lot of what was happening when I was growing up with the drug war was violence. But it was also wrapped up in this plant of coca, that the U.S. was so desperate for. And then at the same time, the U.S. was doing things like fumigating the forest in Colombia. And my parents, as people who love being outdoors \u2026 to them it was unfathomable that they would be spraying Colombia with these defoliants. In one of the most beautiful, biodiverse countries in the world!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When Gabrieloff-Parish landed at Colorado College, she got involved in a range of advocacy and activist groups on campus, but it\u2019s her first block that still sticks with her, for good reason. Her professor that block, Devon Pe\u00f1a (now at the University of Washington), took his students to Colorado\u2019s San Luis Valley, his home region. It\u2019s near the Baca campus, in a part of Colorado that used to be Mexico and still has those cultural roots, along with some incredible sustainable practices, including the acequia system. There was illegal, old-growth forest logging happening in the area and the community was organizing against it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSome of us got arrested while working with the community members to protest this old-growth logging. I will say I don\u2019t think that was the professor\u2019s intention. \u2026 We just went to witness it. I really felt like \u2018I can\u2019t watch and not participate. I have to support this community that is facing attacks on all fronts.\u2019\u201d She laughs when adding that her parents said after the fact that they \u201chad a feeling\u201d something like this could happen with her, though perhaps they hadn\u2019t expected it to happen during her first semester. What was happening in San Luis was a perfect example of the blending of social and environmental issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been more than 20 years since that arrest, but she\u2019s still as passionate about speaking out. <\/span><\/p>\n

In her role at CU, she manages about a dozen programs and 35 of the Environmental Center\u2019s 150-some student staff. One of the biggest of her programs is ECO-Visits, where trained student technicians visit off-campus housing to conduct energy conservation outreach. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe give students light bulbs and shower heads and faucet aerators. We insulate their pipes and we make sure that the hot water is set to the proper temperature. We check their fridge and their freezer and we check their toilets for leaks, and we do all of those types of things while talking to them about behavior change and things that they can do beyond the upgrades to live more sustainably and to lower their carbon footprint and take more responsibility for their impact on the planet, but also on people near and far,\u201d Gabrieloff-Parish says. <\/span><\/p>\n

Diverse groups of student technicians also work in a similar way with low-income community members living in affordable housing through an innovative program called Foundation for Leaders Organizing for Water and Sustainability (FLOWS). They, too, change light bulbs and check toilets while doing one-on-one training, but they also integrate that with intercultural discussions about diverse sustainable traditions and the leadership of both low-income and communities of color.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gabrieloff-Parish also founded and leads a semester-long, \u201cEco-Social Justice Leadership\u201d program. Students who care about social justice and students who care about sustainability and the environment come together to work together, start learning to speak the same language, and see how some of these issues are often not just connected but actually the same issues. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI actually find it really hard at this point to think of any environmental issues that don\u2019t have a social aspect to them. If you could list off your top environmental issues \u2014 whether it\u2019s pesticide use, climate change, mining, electronic waste \u2026 All those things, not only do they have big impacts on communities, and usually underrepresented communities \u2026 but usually those issues stem from already having exploited a community or not taken into account a really holistic view of sustainability,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Outside of her CU Boulder work, Gabrieloff-Parish also facilitates and conducts trainings throughout the state about food and environmental justice, ecological design, and the connections between equity and sustainability and deep ecology, often with her husband, Ramon Parish \u201900<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople think of climate justice as being about who gets impacted by climate change. I feel like climate change is actually caused by social injustices, and so climate change is the system\u2019s feedback to us that what we\u2019re doing isn\u2019t working,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe aren\u2019t going to solve our climate issues if we don\u2019t have everybody on board, which means that we\u2019re going to have to address these equity issues.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the energy and climate justice manager for the student-founded Environmental Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, Michelle Gabrieloff-Parish \u201900 bridges energy, water, and climate change issues with a social equity lens. Gabrieloff-Parish\u2019s interest in these issues stems from her childhood. She was raised in a family where environmental and social issues were talked…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1267,"featured_media":14078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-14287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-2019","tag-features"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/files\/2019\/04\/CC-BUL-SPR19-20_Gabrieloff-Parish.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1267"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14287"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14419,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14287\/revisions\/14419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}