Uplift Climate Conference
On a chilly September weekend, several Environmental Humanities students took to Moab to participate in the third annual Uplift Climate Conference. Uplift’s goal is to bring together young leaders and empower them to act for climate justice across the Colorado Plateau. This year’s conference took place September 15th – 17th and was held at Lone Mesa Campground where over 150 people gathered to listen to panelists with nuanced perspectives, participate in interactive workshops, form bonds of solidarity and connect with the land. Uplifters camped out together under the stars.
EH’s own Brooke Larsen has been a key organizer in Uplift since its beginning. Uplift was created in November of 2014 when a group of ten people in their twenties gathered at Kane Ranch near the Grand Canyon. Brooke was among these ten leaders. The goal on that November day was to get young people from across the Colorado Plateau together to act in response to the region’s current environmental problems. The gathering was named “Uplift” after the geological process that created the Colorado Plateau. The following spring, in 2015, the first Uplift Conference was held, supported by the Grand Canyon Trust and the Landscape Conservation Initiative. This conference focused on a variety of environmental issues facing the plateau and drew in 100 people. From there, Uplift decided to focus on Climate Change and Climate Justice, seeing the changing climate and its social implications as the greatest threat to the young people of today.
This year workshops offered participants a variety of topics to engage with from “Challenging Fossil Fuels on Public Lands” to “Indigenous Movement Building in Rural Communities.” Each workshop addressed one of the many facets of the climate movement and empowered participants to join in, share ideas, ask questions and apply what they were learning to their own lives. There were also several panels held throughout the conference. Brooke was one the panelists this year. She shared her ideas about storying telling during a panel entitled “Weaving Narratives of Resilience.” She also brought story-telling to the forefront with a display of pictures and stories that she collected during a bike ride across the Colorado Plateau. The goal of the ride was to listen to stories of the people on the frontlines of climate injustice and at uplift she shared some of those stories. At the end of the conference, participants created a “people’s to-do list” to address actions that should be taken to work against climate change and injustice across the Colorado Plateau.
For more information about uplift visit their website at http://upliftclimate.org/
Photo credit: Alejandro Higuera