Women Scientists From The United States

"The tribe has been robbed of thousands of dollars' worth of property, and the government shows no disposition to return what belongs to them."

"The whole Ponca tribe were rapidly advancing in civilization; cultivated their farms, and their schoolhouses and churches were well filled, when suddenly they were informed that the government required their removal to Indian Territory."

"It crushed our hearts when we saw a little handful of poor, ignorant, helpless, but peaceful people, such as the Poncas were, oppressed by a mighty nation, a nation so powerful that it could well have afforded to show justice and humanity if it only would. It was so hard to feel how powerless we were to help those we loved so dearly when we saw our relatives forced from their homes and compelled to go to a strange country at the point of the bayonet."

"Peaceful revolutions are slow but sure. It takes time to leaven a great unwieldy mass like this nation with the leavening ideas of justice and liberty, but the evolution is all the more certain in its results because it is so slow."

"A struggle for existence is not a decent living. A man or woman or child may die of starvation in a city teeming with plenty. Only human life is concerned."

"When the world is in trouble, chemistry comes to the rescue."

"Okay so Adam is there anything, do I have action items here?"

"The early composition of my lab at Berkeley, in fact really the core people that did the work that the Nobel Foundation has recognized me for, if you look at that group of people they are far more diverse than certainly at that time you would see in the average chemistry laboratory. I had a preponderance of female grad students at a time when our representation in the graduate program at Berkeley was maybe 30%, but my lab was over half. I had people from different backgrounds, people who identify as underrepresented minorities, and I think that diversity of people created an environment where we felt we didn't have to play by the same old rules as scientists. We could do things like organic chemistry in living animals. Why not? Right? We didn't have to play by the rules. If there weren't the right chemistries to get the job done, we could invent new chemistries. Why not? We didn't have to play by the rules. And I think that culture, it kind of grew organically, no pun intended, without a whole lot of steering by myself. I was very fortunate that I could actually play a supportive role in my lab and let that diverse group of students find their voice, realize their curiosity, break the rules, and do something that 25 years later some people found impactful. And I owe them a great debt of gratitude."

"I am distressed that there are so few who indulge in the ecstacy of even a humble translation, and still fewer who attain the worthy translation."

"Prohibition, whether of the use of alcohol or anything else we may want or wish to do, will never develop in us or any people self control, a sense of social responsibility, or the ability to make wise choices for ourselves."

"One of the most difficult things the doctor and teacher have to do is to blast the popular and ancient delusion that there is an instinctive preparation for parenthood; that because a husband and wife produce a child they are mysteriously endowed with perfect wisdom concerning the nurture and development of this child."

"It is as stupid to oust ancient history from the schools in favor of American and modern European history as it would be to knock out the first two stories of a skyscraper and expect the structure to stand."

"Because of its very personal influence men of action as far back as Cicero have proclaimed that there can be no more distinguished calling than that of instructing youth."

"When you looked at the map, the only areas that they were talking about not rebuilding were areas where the African-American population was about 75 to 80 percent. That was New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward."

"academics continue to play a crucial supporting role through such institutions as the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark-Atlanta University, founded and run by Robert Bullard, and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Xavier University in New Orleans, run by Beverly Hendrix Wright. These centers, and others like them, provide crucial research that aids local struggles, as well as train a new generation of professionals of color."

"it is important to recognize that governments seldom initiate action to address environmental problems. Governments generally respond to outside pressure, and this pressure must be applied over an extended period of time to achieve lasting results."

"A colonial mentality exists in the South, where local governments and big business take advantage of people who are politically and economically powerless. This mentality emerged from the region's earlier marriage to slavery and the plantation system-a brutal system that exploited both humans and the land."

"history of human slavery spawned environmental racism in the United States."

"Racism holds everybody back. So, while people make the decision that people who work in hotels and restaurants really don’t need a livable wage because they’re black, and we don’t have to pay black people a lot, what they are doing is they are robbing themselves of a decent tax base. They are producing citizens who can’t buy health insurance, putting a drain on the city. And so the racism that drives this belief that you can treat some human beings less than others, in the end catches up with all of us because it lowers the standard of living for everybody. And I think that’s what we have been dealing with in the city of New Orleans."

"There was a lot of discrimination against African-Americans with apartments. You would go there to rent, you’d call, and it was available, and when you got there it wasn’t. And then later you found out there were rental units, but they were not renting to us. They had met their quota of African-Americans."

"Environmental justice becomes a major point of contention for us in that we have to ask the question: if we were in Boston, for example, in an area that was mostly white, how long would it take for them to clean up that city? We were promised initially that in three months the Army Corps of Engineers would come in. It would take them three months to remove the topsoil and sweep the streets clean so that we can return. Then, all of the sudden, the whole discussion about contaminants completely disappeared, but the contaminants are still here."

"I think that black people’s concerns about the environment and environmental justice are synonymous. I believe that black people understand the environment because of the injustices that exist in their communities as it relates to their health and exposure. It all merges around the larger concept of civil rights, and so we have combined the idea of environmental protection with civil rights."

"My hope is for the future with young people. I would say that young people are not NEARLY as racist as what we used to be. And I think they see a completely different world and I’m so happy that that is the case."

"My thing was, if you’re not going to protect the citizens at least tell them what they need to do to protect themselves. So we started the Safeway Back Home campaign, where people remediated their own properties and planted new grass, and so on."

"Environmental injustice occurs in a number of ways. The fact that, first of all, when you look at the federal level they never addressed soil contamination that exists all over the city. We have extremely high arsenic levels, and PCBs, cause where we live we use a lot of pesticides; we have a lot of pests. From rat poisoning, to pesticides for roaches and mosquitoes, you already have all of that, right, and then you add to that the big mixture that came in all the water from all over, even from the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain, then you add to that human feces and everything from the sewage treatment plants. That water was extremely filthy. And very dangerous. And then it settled. There was a light dust that covered everything when we came back home."

"In New Orleans east, we have one supermarket. I went to the supermarket yesterday. I could get no lettuce, you know, no fruit…all the fruit gone. It was just amazing. 70,000 people, one supermarket in New Orleans east. That’s it. And I have to tell you, I’ve not been a big McDonald’s fan, but after Katrina, if it weren’t for McDonald’s we wouldn’t have had anything to eat. It was like people just forgot about us."

"People of my age group are so angry, Why are we in the same place? We’ve actually lost some of the progress."

"The Harvard study comes out and I’m like, ‘OK, now I understand.' Black people are dying because of where we live."

"After Katrina, trying to get back to the city was awful for Black people and we still haven’t fully recovered."

"Any climate bill has to deal with both repairing EJ communities and reducing climate change. The fact of the matter is that they go hand in hand, because one of the reasons that we are the way we are is because of what we’ve done to communities of color across this country — putting fossil fuel industry facilities in our communities, not caring about our health or our lives, that’s why we’re here. We can’t move forward without addressing that."

"Communities have not been able to recover, to go back home. And gentrification is happening at warp speed in areas where climate change and flooding have caused the displacement of communities. This is a huge problem. Race is at the center of it in terms of fairness. And we have to find a way to make certain that we make up for the harm that’s been done and put things in place so that harm does not continue for racial minorities in this country."

"I don’t think we should talk about reducing greenhouse gases and saving the planet without environmental justice being shoulder to shoulder with that."

"it seems difficult to talk about putting in place a project that deals with racial discrimination when you can’t use race in evaluating it. It’s really insane."

"Biden’s approach is unique in that it not only acknowledges the damage that is now and has been done by pollution and the resulting changes in the climate, but his approach attempts to attack the sources of the problem. That includes racism. And Justice40, [a federal initiative to deliver 40 percent of the benefits from federal climate and clean energy investments to disadvantaged communities] is an attempt to ameliorate the existing problem and stamp out or change policies and regulations and laws that perpetuate the continuation of disproportionate pollution burdens for Blacks and other minorities."

"Any project that moves forward should be inclusive of three things: It will not harm communities. It will not contribute to the climate crisis. And it will not perpetuate racially disproportionate burdens of pollution. Any program that we bring in to solve the problem must have these three principles embedded in it so we don’t make the same mistakes."

"On liquefied natural gas, the majority of the places where they want to put liquefied gas facilities are in poor and minority communities. So the same group of people is now being asked to bear the burden of our transition [from fossil fuels]. What kind of transition is that for communities?"

"My mother used to say a man’s money goes where his heart is, so if that’s the case, the amount of money going to CEQ to support environmental justice [EJ] does not show where their heart is. I believe the heart is there, but the money has to follow."

"The sea level rise that we’re going to see in the next 15 years is going to transform Florida, it’s going to transform many parts of the world, it’s going to create major problems with flooding and drinking water. We’ve got a lot of science, we know that climate change is happening, we know that it’s human-caused, and we know that we’re starting to see the impacts now. But this information is not being sufficiently reflected in our policies at the state or the federal level."

"Reduce the amount of meat that you eat. Think about transportation, how you can reduce the amount of flying that you do. How can you not drive as much as you do? If you're going to buy a house, think about energy efficiency and think about what you really need in terms of house. Do you need a 5,000 square foot house or 15,000 or 1500 be okay?"

"How can we look at our kids and say we're fighting climate change and we're driving SUVs and eating steak every night and soaking up energy. It's hypocritical. We need to kind of walk the walk."

"So ocean acidification for folks that work in, for example, fishing industries, storms for anybody that lives along the coast, sea level rise for folks that live along the coast as well and heat, which is pretty much everybody. So I think to think that anyone is immune to the impacts of climate change is delusional."

"There are some impacts that are already baked into the system that we can't avoid and we need to learn to adapt and adapt in a way that's equitable. But we also need to do everything we can to prevent the worst."

"The research for a long time had showed how Latinos and in general communities of color are disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of pollution. But at the time we weren't talking about how those same communities are disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of climate change."

"being the only Latina in most of my science classes and certainly not having any Latinos, let alone Latinas to look up to in terms of mentors, kind of put it upon me to do better, to represent my community. So that's tough. So you kind of have to do both. You have to represent your community at the same time. You want to hold your own as a scientist and not feel like you're going to only be doing research that affects your community."

"If we avoid the worst and we're able to adapt in a way where we really kind of changed our approach to things like equity and how we deal with the environment. If we do that, and I want my son to know I was a part of it, even just a small part of it, but part of it, and if we don't and we fail, I want him to know that I tried."

"We’re dealing with multiple impacts… wet periods, dry periods, sea level rise, increased temperatues. That’s why there’s such a sense of urgency behind adaptation and mitigation, because the window for us to make decisions on how we’re going to prevent the worst is closing, and if we don’t take action now, then we’re going to be dealing with, in the words of the IPCC, “horrible” consequences."

"Migration is a huge issue, not just for the Americas, but also for other parts of the world. When we talk about the many impacts of climate change, what they mean, I think a major end result are climate refugees."

"Whether you like it or not, we’re going to have to deal with climate change, and we’re going to have to adapt. A lot of people say, just do what they do in the Netherlands, or New Orleans, build seawalls, but we can’t. We sit on a very porous limestone rock, so when the sea level goes up, it doesn’t just come up over the coast on the beaches, it comes in underground into the acquifer, and we get our drinking water from that acquifer. It raises the water table causing inland flooding and it also contaminates that potable water. Communities are spending millions of dollars moving well fields inland because of salt water intrusion."

"I also think that because we have more international perspective we’re not as susceptible to the campaign of disinformation that’s being pushed by the polluting companies. These arguments seem to be most upfront in American media. But when you look at international media, whether Telemundo or BBC, they’re presenting the information in a more practical way. They’re talking to scientists, they’re talking to experts, and when you do that, there is not a debate."

"The list of places that have the largest and/or the fastest growing Latino populations are also the places that are most vulnerable to sea level rise. And practically speaking there’s a large portion of the Latino population that works outdoors in the environment whether it's agriculture or construction, and so we are more sensitive to environmental changes."