UMich hosts 2024 Michigan Climate Summit

The Michigan Climate Action Network and the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability hosted the 2024 Michigan Climate Summit in Ann Arbor Thursday. This year’s theme was Climate Civics, and the all-day programming featured keynote speeches from Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) and Bill McKibben, author of “The End of Nature” and founder of 350.org.

Attendees from across the state could visit tables from more than 50 sustainability organizations, participate in an art build and attend panel discussions featuring experts. The summit also coincided with the University’s annual Earthfest, which featured more than 45 student organizations tabling on the Diag.

The “Getting out the Climate Vote” panel brought together representatives from multiple environmentalist and pro-voting organizations to focus on strategies encouraging people to vote with the climate in mind.

LSA senior Maurielle Courtois is the co-president of Turn Up Turnout, a nonpartisan student organization working to educate potential voters and increase participation in elections. During the panel, she discussed ways in which Turn Up Turnout reaches out to students on campus. 

“We table all the time, regularly, all around campus, and we try to partner with different groups to try and elevate our goals,” Courtois said. “But obviously not every student is as passionate about certain issues such as environment and climate, and so meeting them where they’re already at, such as in the classroom, is one way that we’ve been trying to push out voter turnout.”

LSA junior Marwan Mikdadi, a panelist and volunteer with the Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s Higher Education and Youth Action Teams, used Michigan as an example of why every vote counts. 

“The election in 2016 in Michigan, the presidential one, was decided by about 10,000 votes,” Mikdadi said. “There are 1,100 people registered for this summit. If 1,100 people at this summit talk to just … five people and … do that for five weeks up until the election, you would easily clear that number.” 

Mikdadi concluded the panel by calling on the audience to vote and encouraging others to vote, regardless of their opinion on politics or the environment. 

“Don’t rest on your fear, don’t rest on your optimism, do something with it and actually make change,” Mikdadi said. “And you do that not just by voting, but by getting other people to vote.”

A panel called “The Fourth Estate: The Role of Media in Climate Democracy” featured a collection of Michigan journalists who spoke on their experiences covering the climate and related issues. 

Panelist Jena Brooker, an environmental reporter for BridgeDetroit, spoke about the direct impacts of her reporting on public opinion and public policy. 

“Last year with the Canadian wildfires … I collaborated on a story about how the air quality of Detroit was hazardous and there weren’t any alerts from the state or from the city health department about it,” Brooker said. “I feel like, because of our reporting, for the future days where the air quality was bad because of the wildfire smoke, they did send out alerts.”

Sheri McWhirter, a panelist who covers environmental issues for MLive, said one of the most important things she has learned about reporting on the climate is the value of centering her stories on people rather than concepts. 

“I have discovered that the raw science alone is not enough to get people to pay attention,” McWhirter said. “We’ve got to tell the stories of how people are interacting with their environment, how people are responding to climate change.”

According to McWhirter, climate journalism provides opportunities to write fun and interesting stories but also requires engagement with bleak subject matter. 

“We have to take the time to tell the grim stories too because they matter as well,” McWhirter said. “I wish that hope would solve the climate crisis, but hope is not going to solve the climate crisis, and sometimes you have to point out the grim realities to inspire action.”

LSA junior Emma Thomson said she attended the summit because she is studying environmental science and wanted to support environment related organizations on campus, which include the Campus Farm and Common Cycle in an interview with The Daily.

“It’s a good way to get the community involved,” Thomson said. “There’s people out there helping each other. The Common Cycle (is) out there helping people with their bikes. The Campus Farm is out there selling their delicious products at the farm and food stand. It’s a great way to learn more about different environmental movements and different organizations that are supporting environmental issues on campus.”

The summit concluded with McKibben’s keynote speech. He said the current climate threat is urgent but he is hopeful about the increasing affordability of developments like renewable energy, which now costs less than power from fossil fuels.

“Sometime, three or four years ago, we crossed some invisible line where it became cheaper to produce power from the sun and the wind than from burning things,” McKibben said. “The way to think about it is you now inhabit a planet where the cheapest way to make energy is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. That is a water-into-wine miracle that, if embraced with absolute fervor and conviction, could get us a lot of the places that we need to go.”

McKibben said the issue of climate change is especially relevant to younger generations, whose lives it could profoundly impact.

“If you’re in college now, if we don’t get this under control, it doesn’t really matter what career you’re training for,” McKibben said. “Your career will be disaster response because that will be everybody’s career. That’s what we’ll do until we run out of the ability to do it.”

McKibben also related his speech to the summit’s theme of climate civics. He said the next president will hold office throughout much of a critical window for the climate. This window is based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s projection that emissions would need to be cut in half by 2030 to align with the goals set out in the Paris Climate Agreement. 

“It throws into relief precisely how important this November’s election is because the president after this one will take office in January of 2029,” McKibben said. “This is the last one that’s going to count in those ways.”

Daily Staff Reporter Nolan Sargent and Daily News Editor Astrid Code can be reached at nsarge@umich.edu and astridc@umich.edu. 

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