Michelle Parker
Vice President and Executive Director of Audubon Great Lakes, leading conservation, policy, education, and field-office work across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Previously led environmental and disaster-response programs at Crown Family Philanthropies and spent 12 years leading Shedd Aquarium’s Great Lakes Initiative.
Water Makes Climate Risk a Fight Over Access and Control
Water is where climate risk becomes an immediate political question: who absorbs flood losses, controls public systems, pays for resilience, and decides how a shared supply is used. In this Aspen Ideas: Climate discussion, organizers and water-policy advocates Alaina Harkness, Melissa Roberts, Colette Battle, and Ryan Strode argue that water can unite people across political divides because its consequences are felt in homes and communities—but that durable resilience depends on local authority, public investment, and organizing that turns opposition into a plan for stewardship.
Midwest Climate Development Faces a Test of Cost, Trust, and Local Power
Midwest climate and energy development will endure only if it lowers household costs, reduces local risks and gives residents a meaningful say over projects reshaping their communities, according to Anika Goss, Stephanie Lawson and John Mitterholzer. They argue that data centers, solar buildouts and land reuse should be judged not simply by their climate claims, but by their effects on electricity and water bills, heat, pollution and neighborhood control. The practical task, they say, is to equip local governments and residents with the information, financing and leverage to set better terms before opposition hardens.