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Many Americans probably haven’t heard of the Gwich’in people. Most of us may not know how these natives live off vast lands in Alaska—and how they’ve done so for centuries. We may not know the Gwich’in language, history, art, customs—and their reliance on the ecosystems of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and how that land may soon be opened to fossil fuel extraction.

Real-world peoples like the Gwich’in remind us that what’s happening a half a world away at international climate talks in Bonn, Germany, as well as what's happening in Washington D.C., matters more than we may know. It’s realities like the Gwich’in desire to protect their lands that remind us what it means to care for the least among us—and for our common home.

The name Gwich’in means something akin to “one who dwells.” They are people of the land—a trait that modern communities would do well to imitate.

And now their land is threatened by our nation’s need for oil—for energy independence, some say. For security and economic development. And because of that, the Gwich’in are in a fight for their life.

I first heard the cries of the...

Chilling. That was the word used most often today to describe what many are calling the silencing of Environmental Protection Agency scientists by the Trump administration.

As reported Sunday by the New York Times, the rollout of a report by the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program (NBEP) was to have included a keynote address by EPA researcher Autumn Oczkowski, but sometime on Friday the NBEP was told that Oczkowski could not attend. Most speculate that Oczkowski’s work on climate impacts to Narragansett Bay was incompatible with the Trump administration’s denial of climate change, and she was thus removed by EPA headquarters from the rollout.

Two other EPA scientists were also to have spoken on panel discussions, but like Oczkowski were told by EPA that they could not do so.

The event, which I attended, went forward anyway. Standing in for Oczkowski’s keynote was Dr. Robinson “Wally” Fulweiler of Boston University. While Fulweiler noted afterward that her talk was not the specific address that was to be given by Oczkowski, it was nonetheless based on research that Oczkowski, Fulweiler, and others had undertaken on the complex estuary of Narragansett Bay, and the many impacts, including climate...