Reverend Vernon Walker, Jr. (STH’16) Featured in TuftsNow Article on Environmental Justice
The following is an excerpt from the TuftsNow article “Centering Environmental Justice in Climate Solutions” by Laura Ferguson, featuring alum Reverend Vernon Walker, Jr. (STH’16), published on October 10, 2023. The illustration is by Joel Kimmel.
At Boston University, Walker started to connect his spiritual calling with ecology. Later, when he was an associate pastor at the Berachah Church, he was jolted, spiritually and professionally, by the 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report urged world leaders to quicken the transition to net-zero carbon emissions and warned of catastrophic impacts if global warming exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“I was catalyzed to join the environmental movement,” Walker recalled. “I thought I could lend my voice as a faith leader to bring together my commitment to community empowerment and social justice with the most crucial and urgent issue of our time.”
The realization would lead him to Communities Responding to Extreme Weather (CREW). As a program director, he helped build grassroots climate resilience through education, service, and planning.
He worked with underserved communities, including those in Dorchester and Mattapan. One focus was providing workshops to help residents prepare for exposure to extreme heat, the top weather-related cause of death in the U.S.
“People often underestimate the serious risks of high heat to their health,” he said. “In this work, we were saying heat waves are serious—and they are likely to increase in frequency, so get ready.”