● “People in race and ethnicity categories are marginalized, LGBTQIA are also marginalized and there are brilliant minds in all forms of people's choices about how to live or lived experiences and I think Extension is not very welcoming in that way. ” (R12) ● “The culture of Extension itself …to the extent that it hangs on to past White supremacist viewpoints and ways is limiting its ability to welcome in a diverse and important voice of Indigenous people, People of Color, people who may be migrants today ...in terms of just inclusivity and feeling welcome.” (R12) Peer Skepticism & Climate Science Denial Respondents also commented on their experiences with climate denial and skepticism within Extension and the consequences for C/EW programs and initiatives. ● “In terms of colleagues, interesting discussions every now and then ...very collegial, very respectful, but certainly some skepticism within the Extension system, sometimes at surprising levels .” (R09) ● “We have an annual E xtension conference in (STATE) and the state Climate Office does a session there ...and an awful lot of the discussion was basically ‘I don’t think this is happening’ or ‘I read this thing that says it's the volcanoes’. I was genuinely on the verge of tear s. It was very upsetting. But the overwhelming sentiment of the room, which was made up of exactly the older, middle- aged, white male demographic was, as you would guess …was that direction. So it was very depressing.” (R03) ● “The next level was Extension e ducators and it was just finding those educators who found it appropriate to make this part of their education programming. There are certain educators for whom this just wasn’t something they were interested in or they were far on the political spectrum w here they didn’t see any reason to do that type of [climate] education .” (R07) ● “I was involved in a national Extension initiative ...related to climate education, and one of our Extension collaborators didn't believe the evidence on climate change. And so that was challenging to work on a climate change project with a colleague who just really didn’t buy in . He kept saying that it was just a correlation that we don't really have evidence of cause and effect. And I just couldn't move him off that point. But we worked together ...ultimately, we developed the content, but he was, you know, just a little grouchy about it.” (R06)
● “There were a lot of folks in Extension who maybe didn't agree with the climate science .” (R13)
Opportunities Moving Forward
Doing More & Being “Brave” Leaders Are we doing enough today? Could and should we be doing more climate and extreme-weather programming? There was broad consensus among interview respondents that collectively, CES could
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