I thought it was a joke at first. Something from The Onion, perhaps.
But, no, it’s real. Something called the “Climate Justice Research Project.”
Yea, that’s right. The Climate Justice Research Project.
Its the brainchild of one Michael Dorsey, who, according to an official press release from Dartmouth College, is an assistant professor of environmental studies at that distinguished school.
Mr. Dorsey has just received $300,000 from (of course) the Ford Foundation to launch a probe into “the racial and social inequities that occur in addressing climate change.”
Like some new Green Gang of comic book heroes, Mr.Dorsey’s team of “undergraduate and graduate students and post-doctoral fellows” will now go forth to do battle with those evil villains, “market-based environmental programs.”
These programs, according to Mr. Dorsey, “exacerbate the vulnerability of poor and marginalized communities.” Not to worry. Thanks to the Ford grant, Mr. Dorsey’s vigilant group of students and “fellows” will be working to “ensure that climate change mitigation will occur in an equitable and just manner, inclusive of marginalized, low-income communities and communities of color.”
The Chairman of Dartmouth’s Environmental Studies Program is reportedly “delighted” that Mr. Dorsey got his grant, and says, “We know the work will enrich our faculty and our students as well.”
Well, $300,000 won’t go very far to enrich Mr. Dorsey and his student team, but of course, we know that’s not what was meant. All of Dartmouth will be enriched by any advances that may be made toward “global environmental justice.”
And we are enriched, too — enriched by the knowledge that our institutions of higher learning continue to produce that steady diet of eye rolls, groans and belly laughs that will help to get us through these hard times. There is bright hope for an economy that can still afford to fund folks like Dartmouth’s campus cut-ups of climate change.
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