You might have heard, WUWM is eager to learn what issues are most important to you — especially as the presidential and various state and local elections approach.Many people say they’re concerned about climate change and how candidates will address it and one of them is Fiethong Thao.
Thao had just finished a morning’s work tackling invasive shrubs. "I always, I just tell people I work outside," Thao says. He’s a restoration ecologist at Schlitz Audubon Nature Center nestled next to Lake Michigan north of Milwaukee.
Thao says he feels like he’s making a difference, but he still has major concerns for the environment.
"Globally, it has to be climate change. It’s kind of in our faces — we’re having hotter summers, warmer winters. Also that leads to more intensive fires — California, northern Wisconsin, all over the U.S.," Thao says.
He wants whoever is elected president to take the crisis seriously and act. Locally, Thao wants leaders to create more paid opportunities for Black and brown young people to get out in nature. "Growing up in Milwaukee... It’s a concrete jungle. Tensions rise and people can get hotheaded. We have such a big green space that’s not really being utilized by a lot of youth of color," Thao says.
Another Milwaukeean trying to make a difference is Michael Brichta. He says climate change drove his career path. "I spent ten years in landscaping and then went to school for permaculture design," Brichta says.
Permaculture mimics the diversity and resilience of nature by integrating perennials — like fruit and nut trees — with annual vegetables and herbs.
Today Brichta brings that skill to the Great Lakes Community Conservation Corps.
I found him working with a small crew in the Metcalfe Park neighborhood.
"What we do is go around to startup farms, nonprofits and help them... Over here, we were doing some weeding, and we planted daylilies, black-eyed Susans," Brichta says.
He wants elected officials—at every level of government—to support neighborhood initiatives rather than industrial-scale operations, which Brichta says "require massive input—thousands of pounds of chemicals and fertilizers that get into our waterway and creates a cascade effect over every single organism in the ecosystem."
He believes, "There are millions of people in this country who want a clear path to the solutions that we already have available to us at a small scale."
Danielle Washington grew up and is raising her young daughter in Milwaukee’s Lindsay Heights neighborhood.
Washington—who earned a masters in public health—believes environmental issues cannot be separated from public health and must be addressed simultaneously—starting with the most fundamental—making sure everyone has clean drinking water.
"Without it you expose yourself to harmful health outcomes," Washington says.
She believes elected officials have the capacity to help get important work done at a local level.
"They can create policies by working with people at the grassroots level... but similarly if they don’t promote it well or they have disagreements with it they also be harmful," Washington says.
Xia Lowery also has a message to share with the people we elect to office. When we met on the UW-Milwaukee campus, she was about to graduate with a degree in conservation and environmental science.
"I want them to know that climate change and global warming are important, it’s real, and to take it into consideration when they are passing bills and approving legislation because our environment is not waiting for us; it’s going to continue to decline and decline. And that’s all I’ve got to say to those officials because I really do believe that we are going to be the generation of change; I truly believe that," says Lowery.
The now 22-year-old says she first became aware of climate change when she took a high school honors class.
I took just to get the college credit at the time, but after learning about sustainability and wildlife conservation and all of these topics that I had never heard of before. I was honestly devastated because I learned about these huge topics that we’re facing right now like why haven’t learned about these things sooner.
Lowery made up her mind she had to be part of the environmental movement. She’s off to earn a master’s degree in environmental conservation.
One day, she hopes to be elected to public office, putting climate policies into action.
Support for Environmental Reporting is provided, in part, by Brico Fund.
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