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Jess Phoenix is a dedicated volcanologist and field scientist who is now running for Congress in her district in California. Phoenix’s mission is to bring facts and evidence to politics with the hope of garnering more widespread support for climate-change research, and that definitely makes her a millennial influencer.
Phoenix’s background is not political, but she believes that change is good and non-traditional politicians will refresh the political scene. Phoenix thinks the single greatest threat to humanity is the climate change that’s creating natural disasters globally. She hopes that if elected, she can represent millennial scientists and add to the conversation that’s traditionally dominated by businesspeople and lawyers.
Besides taking her fight to Congress, Phoenix also has created the nonprofit Blueprint Earth. The organization works to understand and document Earth’s vast diversity of organisms and ecosystems. They have teams of volunteer scientists and students who are dedicated to the Earth’s preservation and documenting detailed studies of different environments. Their first study was looking at the Mojave Desert. Within 1 kilometer of the desert, 8,000 volunteers recorded 1,000 environmental observations. All of those observations created a blueprint of this desert, explaining how it runs.
When asked about some of the environmental concerns affecting millennials such as affordable housing, Phoenix has a plan that blends millennial solutions with ecological benefits. “We do need to incentivize developers to build more affordable housing … there’s a big burden placed on people to get into big cities because they live in the suburbs and they’re trying to commute, or they’re trying to live in these big cities,” she says. “Well, we need more companies to incentivize teleworking and telecommuting for their employees, because then you can work from home.”
Takeaway
Phoenix advises all young people who want to get involved in the political arena to “speak up for yourselves; no one is going to do that for you.” No matter the outcome of the election, Phoenix’s campaign can serve as an example for other scientists wanting to get involved in politics.
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