Center seeks resilience, advocacy, transformation

 

By Mary Stamp

In the five years since the Gonzaga Institute of Climate, Water and the Environment was launched in April 2021, it has facilitated efforts by the campus, schools, city, county, state and community to transform technologies, policies and ethics to turn around climate change.

Its founder and director, Brian Henning, is a professor of philosophy, ethics and environment, committed to integrating Gonzaga's Jesuit Catholic roots and Pope Francis' 2015 encyclical Laudato Sí, "On Care for Our Common Home."

Brian, who grew up in Boise, came to Gonzaga in 2008 after earning doctoral and two master's degrees at Fordham University in New York City and a bachelor's degree at Seattle University.

"We help the Inland Northwest understand and respond to the climate crisis. As a Jesuit, Catholic, humanistic university, we have the opportunity and obligation to help our region understand what's changing, why it's changing, what they might do about it and how the work has matured," he said.

Brian is one of five full-time and two part-time staff, two senior fellows and 12 to 20 student interns who work with the institute.

The institute focuses on three components of climate change as society transitions to a low carbon future: creating resilience to the changes, advocating to change policies and addressing the moral and spiritual dimensions.

The first part of the Climate Institute's work is the Climate Resilience Project, which was inspired by the Northwest Heat Dome in June and July 2021.

Brian said it was the deadliest weather event in the state's history. The Climate Institute and Spokane Regional Health District responded by mapping heat across the city and finding islands where there was less green space.

"Heat was highest in areas with fewer trees, and those areas correlated with the income and race of residents," he said.

"We found a statistical likelihood that those with less money and those who were not white lived in areas with fewer trees and green spaces. In a fair world that wouldn't be the case," said Brian.

The Climate Institute and colleagues at University of Washington hosted a symposium with community leaders to analyze and publicize a survey on who had air conditioners, who could afford to run them and what barriers there were to having and running air conditioners.

Aware that another summer hazard related to climate change was wildfire smoke, the institute conducted another survey and hosted symposiums over five years, leading to the Spokane report on wildfires.

By understanding problems, they help the community do climate resistance.

Identifying heat islands on a map of Spokane, they urged the City of Spokane to plant trees through its urban forestry program, Spocanopy, with the Lands Council. The Parks Department can use the maps to decide where parks are needed in its 20-year Comprehensive Plan with the county,

The city, county, Avista, academic entities and community organizations formed the Spokane Community Resilience Collaborative that meets monthly to make the city more resilient to extreme heat and wildfire smoke.

"In Spokane, we have access to nearby natural spaces. Riverside State Park is minutes from downtown. Residences are across the river," said Brian. "Generally, we can minimize the spread of fire from forests to urban areas but this summer an arsonist and winds made the fires hard to prevent," he said. "Fire lines can create defensible spaces, but 45-mile-an-hour winds sent embers to rooftops a mile away."

Instead of thinking of trees as a liability, Brian said the group is focusing building houses that are less likely to burn. We can rebuild with fire-resistant homes, as they are doing in California, and not build in the wildland-urban interface.

"We have a long-term need to address what's driving climate change that brings shorter winters with less snow and longer summers with less rain. The combination makes forests dry," he said, pointing to the need to reduce burning oil, coal and natural gas.

"Focusing on the impact of changing climate on vulnerable community members is a central commitment for our Jesuit university," Brian said.

The second part of the Climate Institute's work is advocacy to change laws and systems.

Brian said communities cannot adapt their way out of the climate crisis. They need to change political and economic systems by adopting local and state laws that create change.

For example, in 2024, the institute helped the Spokane City Council draft and pass a law recognizing renters' right to install air conditioning.

"Because we grew up in a world that considered heating a necessity and cooling a luxury, landlords could not rent a unit or home without heating," he commented. "We learned in the 2021 Heat Dome that cooling can make the difference between life and death."

Spokane was the first city in the state to say landlords can't prohibit tenants from installing air conditioning. Its law was the model when the state legislature passed SB 6200 in 2026 to recognize that renters have the right to install cooling. Brian cited that as an example of advocating for systemic change.

"Building on that, we have worked six months with the Spokane City Council on a second law that moves beyond landlords allowing cooling to requiring landlords to provide it as they do heating. We are the first city to recognize renters' right to cooling," Brian said, noting plans to advance a state bill to meet the urgency of climate change impacts by working politically to pass policies that change systems.

Last fall, Gonzaga's Climate Institute began collaborating with the Environmental and Climate Law Clinic at the GU Law School to advance systems-level policy changes. Law students can now also focus on environmental law—along with elder and tax law—to advance laws that change systems.

"As law students do that, the institute can focus on implementing renters' rights," Brian said. "We don't want to move too fast with creating new laws and skip implementation."

The third part of the Climate Institute's work is what Brian considers the most important and most difficult—worldview transformation.

"In Laudato Sí, Pope Francis tells us that the climate challenge is not just a technical problem but also a moral and spiritual problem. It's about more than what type of cars we drive or how we create energy," Brian said.

"We need to understand ourselves in relationship to our planet and the natural world. We are not lords over nature, but part of the community of life. We need to have a sense of care and connection to the wider community of life," he affirmed. "We need to transform our worldview.

"That's where my work as a philosopher and ethicist comes in," said Brian. "Worldview transformation is critical to the future we want—not only decarbonizing energy and transportation but also restoring our connection with the rest of the community of life. We are kin, connected in a web of interdependent life."

The Worldview Transformation Project is a multigenerational endeavor with two parts.

One part is through the Climate Institute hosting 10 to 12 lecture series every year to create conversation on the complexity of the climate crisis.

The second part is the Climate Literacy Project, which does worldview transformation through K-20 education, by GU students hired and trained as climate literacy fellows to engage youth eager to understand how and why the world is changing and what they can do.

"We train educators to change technology and change people," he said.

Brian reaffirmed that "we need a cultural, societal ethical shift along with a shift to technical sustainability so we can be resilient to changes and can change ourselves. We need to change ourselves and our lightbulbs."

In weighing strategies to decarbonize electricity, transportation and heating, he noted that the options are not simplistic good-bad choices but are complex better-worse choices. This relates to personal choices for vehicles and heating to choices about public land use, transportation, greenspace and growth management plans of cities and counties.

Because it is about both technological transformation and human spiritual/moral transformation, Brian hopes that more faith leaders will participate in the institute's programs.

"Faith communities have robust resources and structures to advance concrete plans in this journey," he said.

For information and detailed reports, visit gonzaga.edu/climate institute.