Eaarth Feels

After four years of a climate denier as President, Americans have selected a new leader. President-Elect Joe Biden has vowed to make the Climate Crisis a top priority. He is already injecting climate into congratulatory conversations from Global Heads of State. Tying economics and climate will be key to the Biden plan for unity in combating the existential threat of our lifetime.

The newly elected Biden-Harris administration has made Climate Change one of its top priorities. Reading from their Build Back Better website, Rose details the ambitious plans as the USA transitions their position from "Hoax" to Leading By Example.

With the final outcome of the election was still undecided at the time of recording, Rose and Christine debrief about the disappointment and implications of over 65 million Americans supporting Donald Trump and his anti-science agenda.

As trees mature, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving global heating.

In this episode Rose juxtaposes global tree planting projects against the recent Trump administration rollback of development and logging protection for Alaska's Tongass National Forest.

This year Amazon PRIME members spent more than $10.4 Billion in two days. In this episode Rose and Christine explore our need to buy "stuff" despite the toll it takes on our planet, and ask the question: Who are we if we are not consumers?

"We need a just transition to renewable, sustainable energy, not expansion of fossil fuel extraction...We demand respect for our rights and sovereignty as Indigenous Peoples so that we can control our own lands, futures, and job opportunities."

A group of Indigenous women leaders, supported by 158 organizations, released an open letter urging the heads of major global financial institutions to respect Indigenous rights and to stop propping up the tar sands industry. It's time, the leaders stated, to sever all ties with the sector's "climate-wrecking pipelines, as well as the massively destructive extraction projects that feed them."

Dr. Kriss Kevorkian, thanatologist and visionary who coined the terms ecological grief and environmental grief in 2001 joins Rose and Christine to offer coping strategies for our grief.

"Where is the love when it comes to protecting nature? We won’t solve the climate crisis without consciously evaluating whether we love the planet even more than we fear losing it."

In this week's Best in Climate article, Renee Yaseen asks us to expand our circle of those that we experience love for during a time of climate crisis. Originally published on ndsmcobserver.com.

Does climate change leave you feeling powerless?  Rose and Christine offer four simple specific superpowers that each of us have at our disposal to create the world we want to see.

You don’t have to wait another four years to cast a vote, or change the world. Every bite you take, and every dollar you spend, casts a vote for the type of world you wish to live in.

Jackie Day author of The Vegan Way, reminds us "The power is in our hands."