Cooler Earth

The youth climate and environmental justice movement has entirely reshaped the landscape of climate policy and change-making. Young leaders from around the world have been central in not just leading mass mobilizations to demand action on climate and racial justice, but also in redirecting the public narratives and perceptions of the climate crisis and our roles in solving them.Gabriela Rodriguez and John Paul Mejia are the co-hosts of House On Fire, a youth-led podcast powered by the CLEO institute. They are both Latinx activists, educators, and leaders for change in their community; we talked about all things climate activism, radical imagination for a better future, and our shared Colombian heritage. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Insights into human psychology have provided the climate movement with a wealth of information about how different demographics interpret, process, and behave in regards to messaging and communication strategies. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Mathew Goldberg about his work at Yale’s Program on Climate Change Communication, his research on message persuasion and fossil fuel money in politics; and his insight into how we can better integrate knowledge of human psychology to strengthen support for climate action. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Genevieve Guenther is a former Shakespeare and renaissance literature scholar, who is now using her extensive knowledge of language and the power of communication to provide tools to strengthen how we talk about the climate crisis. In 2018, she founded End Climate Silence, an organization dedicated to push the media to connect news stories about extreme weather and climate impacts directly to the climate crisis and its causes. For too long, the coverage has been silent about climate science, especially when it comes to already reported stories that are undoubtedly connected to climate.In this episode of the podcast, we talk with Genevieve about what drove her to become active in the climate space, using literature to inform stronger climate communications, and why we need to hold the media accountable when it comes to this crisis, the greatest challenge of our time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Surviving the climate crisis will require collective action on a grand scale; but this action must be led by the communities facing firsthand the impacts of climate change. It is these voices from the frontlines who are most valuable to the movement, and community leaders who are best positioned to make a change and have lasting impact in correcting for overlapping justice issues and lead us to a planet that is not only livable, but just.Mayra Cruz works to build and foster leadership on climate change and climate resiliency in Miami. As the Climate Resilience Program Coordinator for Catalyst Miami, Mayra works with communities to solidify leadership and advocacy skills in order to advance justice and equity in the county. In this week’s episode, we talk with her about building resiliency from the local level, and creating a strong civil society that is equipped to address climate change along with other, most pressing social justice issues. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

While there is an urgent need to mitigate the climate crisis and the impacts that accompany it, we also need to be thinking about how we plan for and recover from these climate-fueled disasters. Samantha Montano is what you call a “Disasterologist.” She has a doctorate in emergency planning and is currently a professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Dr. Montano is heavily invested in researching and working on achieving equitable policy around how we plan, prepare, and recover from disasters. For this episode, we sat down with her for a conversation around the climate crisis, the lessons that can be learned from the coronavirus pandemic response, and how our systems are woefully underprepared for the impacts of climate change. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Lauren Kurtz is the Executive Director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF), where she works tirelessly to preserve the integrity of scientific research and defend the livelihoods of scientists facing legal battles. In this episode, we talk with Kurtz about the importance of the legal fight for science in the face of mounting, concerted attacks to suppress, invalidate, and intimidate scientific researchers and the parallels of science denial we’re seeing between climate science and COVID-19. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It’s hard to overstate both the chaos and the stakes surrounding this year’s election. We’re currently facing the overlapping crises of an ongoing pandemic that has shifted the way we can carry out the electoral process, an economic crisis greater than we have seen in over a decade, and the ever-present realities of living in a climate altered world like the wildfires in the West, and this year’s hurricane season. As the climate crisis continues to climb as a top concern for likely voters in the U.S., we sat down with Sara Singh of Sunrise, and Nathaniel Stinnett of the Environmental Voter Project to understand the growing impact of climate and environmental justice in electoral politics. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali is a long-time advocate for social and environmental justice. He is currently the Vice President of Environmental Justice, Climate, and Community Revitalization at the National Wildlife Federation, as well as the founder of Revitalization Strategies, an organization dedicated to addressing climate and economic issues in vulnerable communities. In this episode of the podcast, we speak with Dr. Ali about the role faith has played in his work for social justice, the need for community-led solutions, and the inextricably linked relationship between social and environmental justice. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Wielding the power of the law to change these current realities, and to advance justice and environmental protections is a powerful way to create and codify meaningful, long-lasting change. That is what drives EarthJustice, a nonprofit public interest law organization committed to preserving natural places and wildlife, advancing clean energy, and combating climate change.Today on the podcast, we talk with Adrienne Bloch and Kim Smaczniak of EarthJustice, who are harnessing the power of the law to fight climate change. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Earlier this year, in May, we had Bill join us for a special webinar series we put together in response to the coronavirus lockdown, as we adjusted to life at home. We thought we would bring that conversation to you in this format, and as a way to kick off the fourth season of our podcast.Our conversation was so salient that we decided to make the audio a special edition for our podcast, Cooler Earth. In 2008, Bill founded 350.org, an organization focused on bringing together a movement to end fossil fuels, build community resilience, and address environmental justice issues at their roots. As the world grapples with the intersectional crises that are systemic racial, economic, and environmental injustice, his message on organizing and grassroots power-building is as important as ever. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For the last episode of this season, we are doing things differently, Michael Green, Executive Director of Climate XChange is interviewing our host, Maria Virginia Olano. She speaks on the need to more intentionally craft and deliver innovative and engaging communications strategies and messages to move people to action in the climate space. What decisions drove the episodes, the questions, and the selection of guests, as well as what we can learn from the experts in moving the movement and the conversation forward. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week on the podcast is John Schwartz, a science writer for The New York Times, focusing on climate change; he provides us with a look into the editorial and journalistic process of covering climate change, which is the story of our lifetime. The New York Times, as have many other institutions made deliberate decisions around this coverage, which include tossing out the idea that there are two sides to this story, and the pressing need to include multimedia and creative visuals to attract new audiences. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week on the podcast, we are doing things a little differently. Our guest does not work in the climate field, but is the Executive Director of the organization awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016. Beatrice Fihn leads the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which was awarded the prize for its work in in highlighting the humanitarian cost and consequences of nuclear weapons. Once again this year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists have identified the two most existential threats facing humankind as being climate change and nuclear weapons, for this reason our conversation with Beatrice is relevant, and incredibly useful in how we conceptualize and advocate for these issues.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week on the podcast, is Susan Joy Hassol, the Director of Climate Communication, a non profit organization aimed at assisting scientists and journalists in communicating climate change effectively and efficiently. She has built a career around the question of how to best communicate climate change, including broad outreach as well as one-on-one coaching. She brilliantly identified the schism between scientific communication and every-day understanding of certain terms, which causes a lot of misunderstanding around climate change. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week on the podcast, John Kotcher, Ph.D, a Research Assistant Professor at George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication, where he conducts research on science and risk communication. We speak about the role of academic research in furthering advocacy and informing best practices to communicate climate change in a way that does not aim to scare people, but rather mobilize them into action. Climate change perceptions have shifted dramatically among Americans in the past five years, with a double-digit increase in the perception of this as an important issue. The next step, is how to translate that concern to political action. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Andrew Jones is an expert on international climate and energy issues, he is a system dynamics modeler, keynote speaker, and designer of simulation-based learning environments. He is also the co-founder and co-director of Climate Interactive. On this week’s episode, he speaks about the motivations that led to him start his non-profit, and why he now understands that we need to go beyond simply showing people the research. After spending his own career as a systems modeler who knew the impacts of climate change in the long term, as well as the limitations in science communication to large audiences, he decided to find a different way. His simulations and tools now reach thousands of people across the United States and around the world, and have inspired them to understand and want to take collective action in finding solutions. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Atyia Martin is the former Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Boston, and is the Founder and CEO of All Aces Inc. a consulting firm with a mission to further critical thinking in advancing personal and organizational resilience. On this week’s episode of the podcast, Dr. Martin talks to me about the importance of critical thinking and humility in approaching systemic issues such as racism and climate change, and finding our individual roles in perpetuating those systems. This, she believes, is a critical step in beginning to change those systems and organizations that we are a part of. Without approaching the work we do through a lens of equity, we run the risk of perpetuating the systems of oppression that impact the most vulnerable among us. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Boston native Reverend Mariama White-Hammond recently started her own congregation in the city, with a hope to make climate justice a central pillar of her message. I talked with her about the role of faith and spirituality in conveying the message about a changing climate, the forces that keep her going in advocating for social and environmental justice, and why to her, giving up is just not an option. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A lot of writing and advocacy on climate change these days gets it right about the risk, but wrong about how we try to accomplish the critical goal of raising public concern and moving people to action. That’s because it appeals to reason, and reason is not what drives human behavior.We are sitting down with experts in field for this new segment of our podcast: Now What? Learn with us from faith leaders, professors, campaigners, community advocates, and other awesome humans doing the work, and get a fresh new outlook of the future and your role in shaping it. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Protest is nothing new to France, but over the past month, Paris and some other cities in the country have seen escalating protests, sparked by an eco-tax on fuel due to come into effect in January. Anti-carbon pricing pundits have been quick to point to Paris as a reason why carbon taxes do not work. We think differently, so this week we once again sat down with our Executive Director Michael Green to chat about the significance of the protests in France for climate policy. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.