This year has been…. well, a lot. We have witnessed the emergence of a global pandemic, which has disproportionately killed African Americans and people of color, and triggered an economic crisis on a scale not seen since the Great Depression. Against this backdrop, we’ve also experienced the devastating loss of life through acts of violence and racism that continue to fuel feelings of anger, hopelessness, frustration, and calls for action throughout our communities. 

It’s both seemingly senseless loss and, at the same time, the very predictable and foreseeable results of systems rooted in oppression and marginalization. These systems serve very few among us, while yielding outcomes of institutionalized violence, as well as a climate and ecological crisis, both of which impact the most overburdened among us in massively disproportionate ways. 

For many months, it felt hard to find the right words, the right way forward, the way to use our organization and resources to best serve the movement for justice — in all forms of the word. We have long known that economic justice, climate justice, and racial justice will never be standalone outcomes, but are instead interconnected and mutually supportive goals that aim to deliver true justice in a way that rectifies the historical (and still prevalent) obstacles to the attainment of the rights of all human beings. 

It can however, be hard to imagine the actualization of the goals of justice, resilience, and climate solutions, especially when our headlines seem to be inundated with stories of the very opposite. But learning about the people and the organizations that are committed to this work each and every single day has always been a source of inspiration, hope, and purpose for me. Once you realize just how much work is already being done, and how many opportunities for action are still left, solutions become much more attainable, and the world seems just a bit less horrifying. 

For that reason, we decided to record a new season of our podcast, Cooler Earth, to bring those stories to you. This season, like in those previous, we talk with those seeking solutions to the climate crisis, only this time with a heavy focus on understanding how the global pandemic, the economic crisis, and renewed calls for racial justice have influenced their work. These are the people leading the movement to keep this planet a livable one. And they’re doing so in ways that ensure equity and justice for all people, specifically those who have been at the frontlines of this crisis. 

In the years we’ve been doing this, it has become apparent that there is (amazingly!) increasing awareness of and concern about the climate crisis and its impacts. And yet we’ve also found that the depth of understanding about currently available solutions to heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere and their consequences for communities around the world, has not been as prevalent in popular discourse. 

Telling the stories of the wide-array of readily available solutions, and the people actively working to make them a reality, is what can get us from deep concern for the future to mass mobilization in working to materialize action at the scale we need them. I hope you gain as much value in listening through this season as we did creating it.

Featured Image: Amanda Griffiths, Climate XChange