Listen on Spotify / Apple / Anchor / scroll down for our podcast player!
Down the Rabbit Hole is our new miniseries dedicated to the deep dives, side trails, and themes that don’t quite fit into our normal episodes. This week we’re following up the excitement and exhaustion of Earth Day with an episode on how to get involved in climate action. We share our successes and failures, creative ways you can get involved, our criteria for assessing an existing climate action group, and how to support action even when you’re short on time and money.
While it’s great to have more eyes on climate work during Earth Week, so much of sustaining a climate movement and fighting for climate justice happens every day.
We know it can also be hard to find an “in,” so hopefully this minisode can help you find something that speaks to you.
We tried to cover:
- different age groups
- different personality types
- different limitations due to the pandemic
- social media users / non-online action items
To be clear, you will probably never feel like you know enough or are doing enough. That’s part of what you have to accept coming into the climate movement, or any movement really.
This graphic is a helpful way to evaluate where you’re doing well and where you have room to improve:
You’ll be in different circles at the same time!
Here are a few criteria that Olivia uses when she’s considering a new community/organization to join:
- Open, welcoming community
- Justice-oriented approach – meaning actively anti-racist and with a strong understanding of environmental justice – the expectations for the level of *structured* anti-racist language varies greatly depending on the organization size and age.
- Openness to change and critique
- Community to grow with and learn from – learn about local issues, nationwide policy, proposed solutions
We love the “no permanent friends, no permanent enemies” idea of Sunrise that Elise talked about our Movements episode.
The Big List of Climate Actions
- Fill your feeds – whatever those are: social media, email, Youtube, Tiktok – aim to find diverse voices and niches suited to your interests.
Take a look who through we’re following on World Is Burning social media (Instagram / Twitter) for a running list of who we think is cool in the climate space. We also mentioned Texas Foraging Group and @blackforager specifically in the episode. - Educate yourself – again, this can happen online! Or through books, documentaries, formal classes. You can make any class, from middle school science projects to your graduate thesis, related to climate in some way.
From Olivia: I’m studying media, and last semester none of my classes were climate-related, but I pitched a documentary about composting policy drama in NYC and wrote a media theory research paper about belief systems and climate change. And this semester in my media and social movements class, my final paper is on youth climate movements and the ways they integrate racial justice. And that’s not even to mention the potential to join clubs or make connections through formal school. - Bring it up! The more accustomed we get to acknowledging climate change in everyday conversations, the easier it is to understand where solutions lie. So if the company you work for has really wasteful policies, or a massive travel budget, or styrofoam cups in the office, talk about it! It makes it easier to have climate conversations that are interesting and generative, rather than weird and shame-inducing.
- Join an existing movement. This is the biggest one, but like we said in the episode, don’t feel like you have to commit your entire identity to one group–it’s okay to join temporarily, feel it out, and find where you fit.
- Facebook groups, follow groups on other social media, join their email lists, engage with them in person wherever possible, volunteer your time, go to trash pick ups.
From Olivia: I started off in the Zero Waste Nashville Facebook group when it was a baby, then I joined Tennessee Women in Green like a year before I moved out of Nashville (only attended one meeting since they were usually in the morning when I was at work, but I joined the book club and got that going) - So many options: Climate Justice Alliance member organizations, Sunrise Movement, Extinction Rebellion, 350.org and 350 chapters, anti-fracking action groups, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, The Climate Reality Project, Rainforest Action Network, La Via Campesina, Fridays for Future, your local community garden, environmental groups within organizations you’re already a part of – churches, schools, workplaces, hobbies
- Look up [Your location] [Your interest] group — guarantee you’ll find something.
- Facebook groups, follow groups on other social media, join their email lists, engage with them in person wherever possible, volunteer your time, go to trash pick ups.
- Support projects you like. This can be through time or money, like attending events (online or in-person) or donating to different campaigns, but this can also be through social media follows, clicking through on email petitions, reading campaign proposals, engaging with climate related articles. There’s nothing worse than spending so much effort to organize and event or project and then having no one show up.
- Do a climate audit of your own life and consumption! No need to get too caught up in individual action, but this is a helpful exercise. Do you know who made your clothes and what conditions they were living in? Do your purchases benefit your local community or large organizations? What are you buying? What are you using? What are you throwing away? Not about shame or self judgment. Look at it as anthropological evidence.
Go for it!! Join the dang Zoom, be a participant, try something else if your first try isn’t a home run.
Have some climate action success? Or an idea for a Down the Rabbit Hole episode? Let us know!
The World Is Burning bookshop is live! Help us come up with book list titles and bulk up our reading list.
Our World is Burning themed playlist is on Spotify.
You can keep up with us on Twitter and Instagram.
If you enjoyed this episode, considering reviewing us on Apple Podcasts and downloading/subscribing/following wherever you like to do those things. It helps us immensely.
Thanks for listening!
Ep. 82 – Cheese Caves and Banana Republics – World Is Burning
- Ep. 82 – Cheese Caves and Banana Republics
- Ep. 81 – Navigating Anger & Disinformation in Times of Conflict
- Ep. 80 – Something in the Water – Hurricane Sandy & Flint Michigan
- Ep. 79 – Disability & Climate: Greyhound fights the ADA and Lyme Disease
- Ep. 78 – Labor & Leisure – The First Strike & A Depression-Era Prediction
World Is Burning 