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Treść dostarczona przez Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Yesh Pavlik Slenk. Cała zawartość podcastów, w tym odcinki, grafika i opisy podcastów, jest przesyłana i udostępniana bezpośrednio przez Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Yesh Pavlik Slenk lub jego partnera na platformie podcastów. Jeśli uważasz, że ktoś wykorzystuje Twoje dzieło chronione prawem autorskim bez Twojej zgody, możesz postępować zgodnie z procedurą opisaną tutaj https://pl.player.fm/legal.
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What drove a former USA swim team member to tackle the diesel problem

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Manage episode 305102181 series 2968758
Treść dostarczona przez Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Yesh Pavlik Slenk. Cała zawartość podcastów, w tym odcinki, grafika i opisy podcastów, jest przesyłana i udostępniana bezpośrednio przez Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Yesh Pavlik Slenk lub jego partnera na platformie podcastów. Jeśli uważasz, że ktoś wykorzystuje Twoje dzieło chronione prawem autorskim bez Twojej zgody, możesz postępować zgodnie z procedurą opisaną tutaj https://pl.player.fm/legal.

BJ Johnson is in a hurry—and for good reason. He’s frustrated by the slow pace of change to address the climate crisis. And he’s angry about how air particle pollution endangers everyone, but especially marginalized groups.

Black, brown, and poor communities are especially plagued by harmful health outcomes—like asthma, COPD and other lung diseases—from environmental pollutants. Regardless of their state or income, Black residents are exposed to 26% higher levels of soot from heavy-duty diesel trucks than the national average. Once exposed, they are then at a three times higher risk of dying.

BJ won’t settle for it taking another two decades to solve the problem. As he tells host Yesh Pavlik Slenk, “This notion of, oh, well it's okay, that five-year-olds in L.A. today have asthma because we'll have electric school buses in 2040—we need to reject that type of thinking and start asking, no—why can't we start making this better today?”

Which is exactly what he’s trying to do. BJ talks with Yesh about how he and ClearFlame cofounder Julie Blumreiter are working to transform the dirty fossil-fuel-based trucking industry into a clean one, affordably. Now.

But that’s not all—the two founders are also fighting for more diversity, inclusion and equity in academia and in the world of high-tech startups. Johnson is one of a small handful of Black academics who have earned doctorates in engineering.

Sadly, that’s not surprising: women and Black people (both men and women) remain underrepresented in STEM degrees and careers, according to the Pew Research Center. Black people are especially underrepresented in engineering, where they make up only 5% of all groups in that field, despite being 11% of the workforce.

Blumreiter and Johnson, who is half-Black, call for an end to this inequity. Writing in an open letter on their website, they reference their own experiences as being “consistently underestimated” because of their identities. In their letter, they call for acknowledgment that solving the world’s problems must come from “a diverse range of thought-leaders.”

Additional Information:

Follow BJ Johnson and ClearFlame Engine Technologies:

Follow EDF:

(1) https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/04/01/stem-jobs-see-uneven-progress-in-increasing-gender-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/

  continue reading

60 odcinków

Artwork
iconUdostępnij
 
Manage episode 305102181 series 2968758
Treść dostarczona przez Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Yesh Pavlik Slenk. Cała zawartość podcastów, w tym odcinki, grafika i opisy podcastów, jest przesyłana i udostępniana bezpośrednio przez Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Yesh Pavlik Slenk lub jego partnera na platformie podcastów. Jeśli uważasz, że ktoś wykorzystuje Twoje dzieło chronione prawem autorskim bez Twojej zgody, możesz postępować zgodnie z procedurą opisaną tutaj https://pl.player.fm/legal.

BJ Johnson is in a hurry—and for good reason. He’s frustrated by the slow pace of change to address the climate crisis. And he’s angry about how air particle pollution endangers everyone, but especially marginalized groups.

Black, brown, and poor communities are especially plagued by harmful health outcomes—like asthma, COPD and other lung diseases—from environmental pollutants. Regardless of their state or income, Black residents are exposed to 26% higher levels of soot from heavy-duty diesel trucks than the national average. Once exposed, they are then at a three times higher risk of dying.

BJ won’t settle for it taking another two decades to solve the problem. As he tells host Yesh Pavlik Slenk, “This notion of, oh, well it's okay, that five-year-olds in L.A. today have asthma because we'll have electric school buses in 2040—we need to reject that type of thinking and start asking, no—why can't we start making this better today?”

Which is exactly what he’s trying to do. BJ talks with Yesh about how he and ClearFlame cofounder Julie Blumreiter are working to transform the dirty fossil-fuel-based trucking industry into a clean one, affordably. Now.

But that’s not all—the two founders are also fighting for more diversity, inclusion and equity in academia and in the world of high-tech startups. Johnson is one of a small handful of Black academics who have earned doctorates in engineering.

Sadly, that’s not surprising: women and Black people (both men and women) remain underrepresented in STEM degrees and careers, according to the Pew Research Center. Black people are especially underrepresented in engineering, where they make up only 5% of all groups in that field, despite being 11% of the workforce.

Blumreiter and Johnson, who is half-Black, call for an end to this inequity. Writing in an open letter on their website, they reference their own experiences as being “consistently underestimated” because of their identities. In their letter, they call for acknowledgment that solving the world’s problems must come from “a diverse range of thought-leaders.”

Additional Information:

Follow BJ Johnson and ClearFlame Engine Technologies:

Follow EDF:

(1) https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/04/01/stem-jobs-see-uneven-progress-in-increasing-gender-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/

  continue reading

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