“When we get it right, the structures we build around learning will look like the world we are creating, not the one we have left behind.”
Environmental Studies research associate Martha Torstenson wrote this quote in an artistic booklet titled “When We Get It Right,” which she compiled alongside Dartmouth students, faculty and staff for Earth Day 2026. The booklet, which included a series of visions for our planet’s future, was inspired by writer and climate-policy expert Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s Climate Week campus visit and keynote address in April. The booklet invited the Dartmouth community to imagine the world we wish to see, beginning with our own approach to learning and living here and now. This is a difficult task, particularly as our country promotes fossil fuel production and puts tax dollars toward genocide and war, all while cutting social safety net programs to support people in need at home. However, envisioning a brighter future is a crucial step to inspire action for change.
Two years ago, President Beilock announced the Dartmouth Climate Collaborative, an initiative that intends to “connect, strengthen and leverage Dartmouth’s work on climate and long-term resilience.” This includes a landmark $500 million investment in Dartmouth’s renewable energy transition.
The DCC has strengthened Dartmouth’s commitment to climate research and advocacy. Amidst a challenging political environment wherein even the most resolute researchers and advocates question if they should write down the words central to their work — “climate” and “justice” — the DCC holds significant resources with enormous potential to bolster climate research and community collaborations on campus, in the Upper Valley and around the world.
This summer, we — a group of ten students and young alumni involved in environmental justice advocacy — gathered to answer Martha’s call by imagining our collective vision for the future of the DCC. We asked ourselves and each other: When we get it right, what will the Dartmouth Climate Collaborative be? Who is involved? What are the guiding values, and what does the work look like in practice? Beginning with these questions, we allowed ourselves to dream. Here, we share our vision.
When we get it right, the Dartmouth Climate Collaborative will build respectful, reciprocal and long-term relationships with community partners, especially those who are directly and disproportionately impacted by environmental extraction and climate change. The DCC will apply its resources to develop and maintain these partnerships in support of community-led environmental justice initiatives from local to international scales. To guide this approach, the DCC will adopt the Energy Justice Pillars — including recognition, distributional, procedural, restorative, and epistemological justice — developed by Dartmouth professors Sarah H. Kelly and Maron Greenleaf as guiding principles for the Upper Valley community to address the climate crisis.
When we get it right, the DCC will be widely recognized across campus. Every department will work with the DCC to consider how they can support and collaborate with communities surrounding Dartmouth. With the support of the DCC, courses will increasingly be community-engaged rather than abstract and contained to the classroom, following examples such as Professor Sarah Kelly’s Energy Justice course GEOG 40.04: “Energy Justice,” Professor Charis Boke’s course ANTH 50.40: “Anthropology of Disaster,” and Professor Erich Osterberg and Professor Carl Renshaw’s course EARS 79.02: “Community Partnerships for Climate Resilience.” The DCC will also support and build out experiential learning beyond courses, highlighting volunteer opportunities, field research and projects that simultaneously support Upper Valley community and present rich learning opportunities for students.
When we get it right, the DCC will help break the walls between climate research silos, recognizing that climate change touches every field of research, and every field has the power and potential to touch climate change. The project will burst through the “Dartmouth bubble” by seeing community members as knowledge-holders — be they farmers, quilters, forestry workers, seed-keepers, builders, water-protectors or anyone else experiencing the intersecting impacts of energy insecurity, climate disasters and the affordability crisis.
When we get it right, the DCC will be iterative and ground-up. It will hold students, faculty, staff and community partners as decision-makers within periodic review efforts, including, but not limited to, those on advisory boards. Governance, decision-making processes, and funding sources will be transparent, and the DCC will practice its values and mission by rejecting fossil fuel funding.
When we get it right, the Dartmouth Climate Collaborative will cultivate hope and agency. The DCC will break down the conception that one has to fill a particular prestigious role — politician, CEO, engineer or NGO-founder — in order to make meaningful change. Instead, the DCC will provide students with support and guidance to integrate environmental justice advocacy into their future careers across multitudes of sectors.
When we get it right, the DCC will hold first and foremost that climate change and justice cannot be separated. That in fact, justice must be at the helm of all of this work — in addressing the inequitable effects of the climate crisis, in analyzing the global and systemic causes, and in progressing a green transition that does not replicate historic harm.
Ultimately, in Martha’s words, when we get it right, the Dartmouth Climate Collaborative will “look like the world we are creating, not the one we have left behind.”
Our visions are informed by our experiences with existing avenues for environmental, energy and climate justice research and advocacy at Dartmouth, including the Energy Justice Clinic, the Sustainability Office, E. E. Just, Fossil Free Dartmouth, and the Arctic Innovation Scholars Program. Our hope is that the DCC, Dartmouth administration and potential donors may take into account our visions and support the initiatives mentioned above as the Climate Collaborative continues to take shape and Dartmouth reckons with how to maintain, bolster and expand its environmental and climate initiatives amidst turbulent times.
Maya Beauvineau ’26 is a recent alum who worked with the Energy Justice Clinic and organized with Fossil Free Dartmouth. Harper Richardson ’27 is an organizer with Fossil Free Dartmouth and the Student Worker Collective at Dartmouth. Guest columns represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
