Climate Check: Stories and Solutions

We're back from a winter break, and gearing up to bring you new episodes! In the meantime, here's a quick intro to the team and some insights from our work so far to hold you over until our next drop.

Featured in this episode:

"I won't wait for the apocalypse to bring you clementines" by Julie Rochlin. Originally published in Chautauqua, Issue 13. 

Meet our team!

Michael Dondero, Editor

Brynn Fuller Becker, Communications & Marketing

Barbara Schroeder, Communications & Marketing

Alyssa Kropp, Producer

Learn more at www.climatecheck.fm 

In episode 4 of Climate Check, host Eva Dean chats with Vanessa Barrios about what it will take to make transportation carbon neutral. She emphasizes the need to vote and hold our representatives accountable to make subway and public transportation systems safe, affordable, and reliable as well as to pass congestion pricing.

Barrios, an urban planner with the Regional Planning Association, talks about car culture, the role of racism in transportation, and the impact of local climate policies on people who migrated to New York out of necessity. She speaks eloquently about the need for systemic change to achieve climate justice.

In episode 3 of Climate Check, host Eva Dean chats with Dr. Genevieve Gunther, founder and director of End Climate Silence, a volunteer organization dedicated to help the media cover the climate crisis with the urgency it deserves.  Dr. Gunther is a literary and Shakespeare scholar who deep dives into language used in the media about the climate crisis.  She also discusses how reading poetry can be useful in making connections between abstract ideas into concrete manifestations that is useful for the kind of systems thinking that is needed to counter the climate crisis.  Spoiler alert, this episode ends with a poem by Andrew Marvell recited by Dr. Gunther.

In episode 2 of Climate Check, host Eva Dean chats with Ceci Pineda on how we can work with nature to combat climate change.  Ceci Pineda is the Executive Director of BK ROT, an organization that offers a youth and bike powered food waste collection and composting service. In this episode you will hear how composting helps counter increased storm surges, carbon dioxide, as well as cooling our streets by nourishing plants and trees.  Ceci shares how working with the land connects us with deep ancestral wisdom that nourishes social resilience and cohesion while facing the Climate Crisis.

Learn more about the resources mentioned in our episode:

About our guest: Ceci Pineda (they/them) finds hope in community practices that further land regeneration and that reciprocally heal our communities. Ceci is the executive director of BK ROT, which offers a youth-and-bike-powered food waste collection and composting service. Ceci has pursued community driven agroecology and land regeneration work in Puerto Rico and Mexico and co-facilitated a Climate Resilient Farming workshop at Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York.  Through apprenticing at SoulFire Farm and volunteering at Hattie Carthan Herban Farm in Bedford-Stuyvesant and home-growing, they deepened their relationships with plant friends. Ceci is a co-coordinator of Interlocking Roots, a network of (QT*BIPOC) farmers and land workers. They have also worked with leaders of these organizations on initiatives to make them more inclusive of queer and trans* folks.

In our premiere episode of Climate Check, we chat with Sara Gronim, an early member of 350 Brooklyn and pivotal organizer of the Williams Pipeline battle. Eva and Sara discuss the growing movement against creating non-renewable energy infrastructure in New York City, the success of a community-based organizing effort assembled to resist this infrastructure, and how one panel discussion led to years of crafting for a viable future for all Brooklynites.

Learn more about the resources mentioned in our episode:

Welcome to Climate Check: Stories and Solutions! 

Climate Check is a podcast from 350Brooklyn, a grassroots, community organization of ordinary people who come together to fight the fossil fuel industry, promote sustainable energy and green jobs, and work for climate justice. Join host, Eva Dean, a Brooklyn-based choreographer and climate activist, as she has conversations with activists and experts to break down the climate crisis and explore local strategies and solutions. 

We hope the stories you hear will inspire you, wherever you live, to take action in your community.