Cornell on Fire Weekly 5/29
In honor of Cornell’s 156th Commencement, we held a banner drop announcing a critical moment for climate accountability: will Big Red continue to echo Big Oil’s climate denial, disinformation, and doublespeak? This moment of reckoning for Cornell involves climate hypocrisy on multiple fronts. The hottest front now is artificial turf.
Cornell on Fire Weekly 5/23
Cornell the Corporation has outdone itself in embarrassing Cornell the University. In support of their newest construction project, lovingly named for an Oil Baron, Cornell has submitted a strikingly inept "summary of research" on artificial turf fields to Ithaca’s Town and City Planning Boards. Except the report is not authored by scientists, and it does not review the scientific literature.
Cornell on Fire Weekly 5/15
In the entire history of the world, the Redbud trees were never so beautiful as they were this year. They arrayed themselves in splendor, even around the parking lot that Cornell bulldozed through our community nineteen years ago, in what was once called Redbud Woods. We hope the current cohort of Cornell administrators parked there last week, and saw the Redbuds, and that their hearts were broken open.
Cornell on Fire Weekly 5/8
I remember how it felt to be an undergraduate student on the verge of release from the pressure and routines of the academic year at an elite university: ready to make memories with friends through a giant rite of passage. But imagine if Cornell had an end-of-year celebration connected to the Earth. What would it look like?
Cornell on Fire Weekly 5/1
On April 22nd, we moved to Reclaim Earth Day from media greenwashing, corporate propaganda, and obfuscation by the political shills of the reigning socioeconomic world order. On this May Day, we must move onward to secure the earth itself and all its inhabitants, human and others, from those who are burning and inundating and poisoning and stripping it of life for the sake of personal profit, and from the political-economic system that enables and protects them.
Cornell on Fire Weekly 4/24
When over 440 people take action across Tompkins County to reclaim their relationship with earth and one another, something moves. On Monday, April 22, the people of Ithaca joined forces across campuses and the community to act in concert with the national movement to Reclaim Earth Day. We streamed in from the east, south, north, and west, in six different marches converging on the center. Under clear blue skies, we reclaimed our duty and our right to climate honesty.
Michael Charles speaks to Reclaim Earth Day
With gratitude, we reprint the opening address for Reclaim Earth Day by Cornell Professor Michael Charles, a Diné (Navajo) scholar and Provost’s New Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor in Biological and Environmental Engineering.
May we walk in beauty.
Caroline Levine speaks to Reclaim Earth Day
Cornell Professor and divestment activist Caroline Levine speaks to Reclaim Earth Day. We gratefully reprint her call to action here.
Organized collective pressure campaigns work a lot better than individual actions. So let’s keep focused collective action!
Yanenowi Logan speaks to Reclaim Earth Day
Yanenowi Logan, Seneca youth leader and senior at Cornell, spoke these words at Reclaim Earth Day on the Ithaca Commons, April 22, 2024. We gratefully reprint her words here as a continued call to action.
May we act with urgency and determination to protect our planet and all of our relations.
Robert Howarth speaks to Reclaim Earth Day
Cornell Professor and renowned scientist Robert Howarth speaks to Reclaim Earth Day on the Ithaca Commons, pointing to some local and regional climate successes while calling out Cornell’s lack of progress towards their climate goals. Watch the video of his address.
Cornell on Fire Weekly 4/17
Five days until we Reclaim Earth Day for climate justice! Our most provocative and primary demand is decolonization. Climate justice communities are the essential power for climate action because they offer a way of being that is decolonized. Here is what they say: Your society has lied to you. The earth is not a resource to be exploited, but a relation to be honored and tended.
Cornell on Fire Weekly 4/10
If you felt communion under hushed and darkened skies on Tuesday, please channel that collective recognition. We can mobilize around the path of habitability just as we did for the path of totality. Just as we left work, skipped class, and shut down business for personal totality on April 8th, we can do so to Reclaim Earth Day for collective survival on April 22nd. (Minus the emissions, obv.)
Cornell on Fire Weekly 4/3/24
Because the hundreds of you on this list have never met one another, we wanted to share some inspiring words from four of your fellow listserv members. Why now? Each story below offers a meditation on risk.
Fossil fuel’s comical hypocrisy
Cornell Professor Robert Howarth’s work is pushing climate policy forward and fossil-fuel companies can’t stand it. Cornell on Fire comments on the comical hypocrisy of their position.
Cornell on Fire Weekly 3/27
The Cornell Trustees have departed after a highly-protested visit to campus. We learned three lessons.
Quiet Success: Trustee meditation protest
A synopsis of the meditation protest held at the Cornell Board of Trustees meeting on March 22, 2024.
Cornell on Fire Weekly 3/20/24
The Trustees have descended! Literally. Their private jets were landing all day, spewing greenhouse gases to pollute our shared skies for hundreds of years to come.
Cornell on Fire Weekly 3/13/24
The spring peepers are peeping, the crocuses are in full bloom, and the winter storms never came…and Cornell’s Baseline Inventory has a new change too, in response to our work.
Cornell on Fire Weekly 3/6/24
Cornell on Fire met with the Carbon Neutral Campus Committee yesterday. We asked them to demonstrate radical climate leadership by committing to a 1.5 degree pathway and leading with insights from climate justice communities. Their response? “Meh.”