2024 MASHUP: Mean Girls, Slippery Slopes, Spin Doctors, and Sea Legs

2024 was a year of tremendous growth, deep fulfillment, and much joy. It was also a year of despair, disillusionment, and hard won lessons in climate activism.

After a debilitating illness that left Rose bed ridden for nearly four months, the website for Rapid Anthropology Consulting (RAC) was launched: https://www.rapidanthropology.com/. Shortly after, Marsha Prior jumped on-board to co-lead RAC. As seasoned anthropologists, we know first-hand the power of combining passion and injustice for driving transformational change.

We worked throughout the year to build awareness at the intersections of extreme heat, public health, and equity, where there are significant gaps and urgent need. Climate leaders rarely talk about regional challenges, but they should; activism is not one-size-fits all. Heat has been ?weaponized in Texas and climate policy is governed by “good old boy” networks, mean girl dynamics, and the pervasive influence of the oil and gas industry.

2024 Highlights

Municipal Advocacy

We urged Dallas’ Environmental Commission and the Office of Environmental Quality & Sustainability to prioritize heat in the City’s Comprehensive Climate Action Plan (CECAP), adopted in 2020. Despite Dallas sitting in one of the worst urban heat islands in the country, heat was not included among the plan’s eight mitigation and adaptation objectives.

Our advocacy efforts failed. In September, the City revised CECAP, but heat was not designated as a primary objective. Heat remained secondary to infrastructure and energy concerns, with interventions narrowly focused on trees, parks, and heat mapping. This approach overlooks the fact that heat is the leading health and death threat from climate change. In failing to integrate heat and public health into CECAP, the City continues to place vulnerable communities—particularly Black, Brown, and low-income residents—at increased risk for heat-related illness and death.

State Advocacy

We launched a statewide initiative to advocate for OSHA's proposed heat standard, designed to reduce heat-related injuries, illnesses, and fatalities for American workers. This standard is particularly critical for Texas workers who face disproportionate risks from extreme heat.

In 2023, Texas passed HB 2127, a law that overturned local ordinances requiring mandatory rest and water breaks for construction workers. Texas is on track to experience a temperature increase of 3–7°F by 2036. It has recorded more heat-related workplace fatalities than any other state since 2011 and remains the deadliest state for Latinx workers. Although Texas workers are on the front lines of the climate crisis, the state continues to prioritize profits over people.

OSHA is accepting public comments on the proposed heat standard until January 14, 2025. Use this link to provide input and support workers: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/OSHA-2021-0009-4761

Community Advocacy

Raising awareness and supporting community initiatives on heat remained at the forefront of our work throughout the year. Our efforts spanned a wide range of activities: speaking at grassroots events, delivering educational presentations to healthcare providers, participating in environmental justice panels at conferences, and collaborating with union organizers, public health experts, city hall liaisons, executive boards, and academic colleagues.

We also took on behind-the-scenes work: drafting heat action plans, writing op-eds and letters of support, analyzing heat-related mortality and morbidity data, and providing guidance on grant-writing, research protocols, and strategic planning. Throughout these activities, one overarching theme became clear: a significant lack of knowledge and understanding about the complex, multifaceted, and nuanced ways heat impacts the human body. Bridging this knowledge gap is foundational to advancing equitable and effective solutions to the growing heat crisis.

Media

We engaged with a wide range of journalists, including those from mainstream and independent newspapers, television reporters, investigative journalists, data journalists, environmental reporters, and freelance writers. This helped amplify our message and ensured it reached broad and diverse audiences.

Rose was featured in a two-part podcast series, Climate Change is a Public Health Crisis, for Fahrenheit 140, produced by The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University (Part 1, Part 2). Meanwhile, Marsha was profiled in the historic documentary Katie Johnson Warren Herstory, which explores the lasting impact of racial violence, Jim Crow laws, and systemic discrimination in early 1900s North Dallas: ?https://dickersonciviccenter.org/documentaries. The documentary was screened at the African American Museum in November; plans are underway to broadcast it on PBS.

We also maintained a strong presence on social media, sharing research, news articles, and commentary on a weekly basis. In 2025, we plan to explore alternative social media platforms. Stay tuned!

Looking Ahead

We will remember 2024 as the year we got our sea legs. We are grateful to those who supported our fledgling advocacy efforts, especially those who provided guidance, mentorship, and kind words of encouragement. To those who undermined our efforts and worked to mute our voices and presence, you made us stronger, more determined, and much more resilient.

As we move forward, we plan to ground our work in the science and humanity of anthropology. Social scientists came late to climate activism and have assumed a marginal role in this space, leaving critical gaps in knowledge, expertise, advocacy, and impact. Now more than ever, addressing the climate crisis requires the collective strength of all scientific disciplines, with social science perspectives playing a central role in shaping humanistic, equitable, and holistic solutions.

Here's to breaking down climate silos, pushing past smoke screens and self-serving agendas, replacing spin doctors with empathetic listeners, building narratives grounded in people and community, and pursuing it all with integrity and a commitment to equity and justice.

Happy New Year!!!

Rose and Marsha

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