Moving Stories: What I learned from talking about commutes and air quality

How do you get around every day? How might your commute be impacting - or impacted by - air pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions? These are the kind of questions I asked while working on my Climate Change and Society course’s final project, the co-requisite course for the life-changing trip to COP29 I took through the Emory Climate Hub in November, 2024.

For almost ten years, Emory has brought students to the annual United Nations climate change conference known as the Conference of Parties. For its 29th year, Azerbaijan was the host of this massive event. So, in November, 2024, I and the five other Emory students selected to attend flew to Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku. Besides the conference itself, the most incredible part of the experience was visiting this fascinating city and seeing how it had been transformed to host tens of thousands of visitors.

Unfortunately, despite three decades of international conferences and negotiations, global climate policy barely keeps up with scientists’ dire warnings. Communicating a policy’s rationale is an essential tool to actually making change happen. Therefore, the Climate Change and Society course revolved around learning the principles of climate science while completing projects that communicated that information. The course also focused on the connections between climate change and air pollution. Greenhouse gases and air pollutants often share the same origins, such as vehicle tailpipes and other fossil fuel combustion processes, but precisely this overlap can be confusing and lead to misinformation. For example, vehicles emit both carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. It is important that governments that set vehicle emissions standards clearly communicate the potentially confusing distinction that the former is an air pollutant (which can harm us in enclosed spaces), while the latter is a greenhouse gas (that contributes to the climate system).

Our final assignment was to create a multimedia communications product on air pollution and climate change. I collaborated with two incredible fellow COP29 attendees, Aidan Conley and Catherine Wang, also fourth-year Emory students majoring in environmental sciences. We focused on transportation, which exemplifies the connections between air pollution and climate change, and investigated it through interviews. We planned to conduct interviews both in Baku and among our networks to create a visually compelling story of the way transportation, as experienced by individuals living in cities around the world, shapes our air and climate, and therefore provides opportunities to reduce those emissions. Our chosen medium was the ArcGIS StoryMap, a platform that would allow us to display both text, images, and maps in a compelling way, so we could highlight the geographic diversity of our interviewees.

The featured interviews are distilled into the images in this blog post, but our project is best viewed in this ArcGIS StoryMap, primarily designed by Aidan, with the text primarily edited and organized by Catherine, though we all wrote and structured it. Our project can also be found on the World Health Organization’s BreatheLife website, with immense thanks due to Dr. Saikawa’s collaboration with their team.

While the prospect of attending COP29 was incredibly exciting, it was nerve-wracking to attend a conference without a specific goal or research interest. I realized that this project could provide direction and motivation to choose certain events and to talk to new people. It was even another way to strengthen the bonds within our Emory group. Conducting interviews helped me build my confidence in approaching new people on a topic I care about, and feel like I had a place in climate policy. It was an opportunity to converse with the lovely Baku locals we interacted with, whose daily life had changed with the conference that had brought us there but led to the local government encouraging most locals to leave. And, I even gained two extra badges from one of my interviewees so our entire Emory delegation could be together on the final day.

Throughout these conversations, it was fascinating to learn about the distinct challenges faced in each locale and individual lifestyle, underscoring the importance of good climate policy at all levels of government, not just the high-level international climate policy associated with the Conference of Parties. Good international policy includes applications and considerations for subnational policy and local implementation. Interviewing people at the conference also invited them to consider the relationships between their commute and environmental issues at home, even while they were working with a global outlook.

So how do I get around? In Atlanta, I relied on the university shuttle system and the privilege of living near campus, until recently when I moved and had to rely on MARTA, Atlanta’s rapid transit system. Living in a car-centric city for four years was key in developing my passion for improving transportation, as I grew up using the DC Metro system to commute. I think the journey is as important as the destination, both for those particularly interested in transportation, and for all who care about human and planetary health.

It is daunting to approach problems as complex as air pollution, responsible for approximately 7 million deaths annually,; and climate change, linked to heat, hurricanes, drought, and even increased air pollution. Daily travel decisions present opportunities to take action, learn from others, or notice where more powerful decision-makers must take their own action. For example, months after COP29 I testified virtually against the EPA’s proposal to repeal their ability to regulate vehicle greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Months before COP29, all the applicants and I were tasked with explaining why the journey on a heavily-emitting plane was worth attending the conference. Ultimately, I think it was. Whether or not the questions are so difficult, taking the time to reflect on my own story and learn from others continues to prove worthwhile.