On this season’s last episode of Heat of the Moment, we head back to South Africa, where reporter Elna Schutz hears firsthand from a former coal worker who relocated across the country to take a job in the solar industry.

Then, host John Sutter is joined by Katharine Wilkinson, climate activist and co-founder of the All We Can Save Project, to discuss how gender and climate justice intersect. This conversation was taped live as a Twitter Spaces, and you can listen to the full conversation here.

For more on Wilkinson’s work and to listen to her podcast, click here.

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On this episode, we head to Ghana, a place which is fast losing one of the world’s most vital weapons against the climate crisis, trees. According to Global Forest Watch, from 2002 to 2021, Ghana lost 20% of its forest cover. Among those responsible, illegal miners. 

In the first part of the episode, reporter Elodie Toto travels to the West African country to better understand why illegal mining persists and what can be done to better protect forests.

Later, host John Sutter speaks with Pamela Coke-Hamilton the executive director of the International Trade Centre about the link between bolstering better paying jobs in the Global South and confronting the climate crisis.

Programming alert! For our final episode this season we are hosting a special live Twitter Spaces conversation with Katharine Wilkinson, one of the world's foremost activists on climate and a leader of the The All We Can Save Project, 

The free live Twitter Spaces event takes place Wednesday, March 8th at 3pm. Join the conversation here.

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This week on Heat of the Moment, we head south to America’s Gulf Coast, an area with a long history of fossil fuel extraction and a number of health problems that come with it. 

We first hear from Columbia University's Melissa Lott about how climate justice dovetails with goals of just transition. Next, James Hiatt discusses his evolution away from the petrochemical industry. In the second part of the episode, host John Sutter speaks with Roishetta Ozane about her personal experiences seeking environmental justice for African Americans and other communities negatively impacted by Louisiana's petrochemical industry.

For more on James Hiatt and his work click here.

For more on Roishetta Ozane and her work at Healthy Gulf click here.

Follow to Dr. Melissa Lott's podcast The Big Switch click here

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Today we explore the unintended consequences of going green. In the first part of the episode we head to Bolivia where Amy Booth reports on the country's nascent lithium mining and electric car industries and the country's goals of expanding affordability and accessibility to electric vehicles. Amy talks to both locals and those involved with this transformation to see how the overall green plans for Bolivia are being balanced with the needs of individual communities.

Then host John Sutter speaks with Melissa Lott, the Director of Research at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. She talks about how the emergence of electric vehicles and getting to net zero carbon emissions is really all about giving us more choices as we transition to greener ways of doing things.

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In part four of our season, we hear how the idea of just transition goes beyond jobs, it’s about protecting communities that are on the front lines of the climate crisis, as well.

This episode begins in Bolivia where reporter Amy Booth shares a new agreement is encouraging local farmers to not clear cut forests which is helping to protect vital water resources as well as help lock in carbon emissions.

Then we hear from indigenous youth activists “Erika” Xananine Calvillo Ramirez, a student in Mexico City who in her spare time she pushes for change through her youth collective and works to get a seat at the table during national climate talks.

Finally, John Knox, UN’s first ever special rapporteur on human rights and the environment explains why it's vital to include indigenous and local voices when planning for a just transition away from fossil fuels.

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Much of the global south is on the front lines of climate change, and countries are calling on the global north to help fund the fight. At the 2021 United Nations climate change summit (or COP26), countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the European Union launched the Just Energy Transition Partnership by pledging South Africa $8.5 billion to help it move away from fossil fuels in a just and equitable way. Although this is certainly a step in the right direction, the scale of funding required to move the global community to a greener economy is immense. And developing countries typically lack the resources to make this change alone.

This week, Heat of the Moment revisits COP27—held last year in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt—where Foreign Policy and the Climate Investment Funds convened a panel on just this question. Foreign Policy’s editor in chief, Ravi Agrawal, was joined by Climate Investment Funds CEO Mafalda Duarte; former British COP26 envoy John Murton; U.S. Treasury Department Climate Counselor John Morton; and Rodrigo Ventura, an advisor at the National Council on Climate Change and Clean Development Mechanism in the Dominican Republic.

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A Just Transition has the potential to create millions of new jobs globally if we implement the Paris Agreement in a way that takes the social and economic well-being of whole communities into account.

On this episode of Heat of the Moment, we hear from Moustapha Kamal Gueye, the global coordinator for Green Jobs at the International Labor Office on how the term Just Transition went from a niche idea in the American labor rights movement, to a global call for economic, social, and environmental transformation.

Then reporter Elna Schutz heads to coal community Emalahleni, South Africa to hear how the local and national government is working to make sure all voices are heard as they make this transition.

And finally, the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Sandeep Pai joins us to discuss how the fourth largest carbon emitting country in the world, India, plans on decarbonizing.

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