PODSHIP EARTH

Prepping for 2022: We’ve been through a year of climate emergencies. It's been terrifying to witness the Earth’s reaction to the destruction we have wrought upon her. We’re often ill prepared to cope with the resulting chaos and dislocation. When a storm takes out the power lines, or an earthquake ruptures the water pipes, or a mudslide blocks the road leaving your town, or a wildfire is moving towards your house, what the hell do you do?  Alexander Black is an urban prepper living in the heart of Los Angeles.

Art is fundamental to understanding who we are in context to the world. Artists translate and blend physical worlds with emotional landscapes, threading magic into our lives. No one embodies this journey more than Alex Nichols. She works with explosive vision and unparalleled focus to express her artistic voice. Alex's art focuses on translating the world inside her, the world around her, and the world between us all. Great art transcends the everyday, showing us who we are and who we aspire to be. Art is one of the most important tools we have for healing the planet. Alex has stayed true to that pursuit no matter how difficult the journey.

Nalleli Cobo grew up in South Central Los Angeles just 30 feet away from a polluting oil well. When Nalleli was nine she and her community started getting nose bleeds, nausea, headaches and asthma. Nalleli began a crusade to shutdown oil drilling in her neighborhood by focusing on the power of storytelling - shining a bright light on what was happening to her community. Nalleli fought a smart, tough campaign that eventually triumphed in getting the oil facility across from her permanently closed. Nalleli is now 20 and has spent more than half her life fighting oil drilling across LA. Nalleli’s willingness to share her story no matter how much pain it evokes is the embodiment of talking truth to power.  Nalleli takes each day as it comes - bringing everything she has to the struggle. She lost her childhood so that others wouldn’t have to.  In the process, Nalleli Cobo helped create the global climate youth movement, now the most powerful force for change on the planet.

As world leaders descended on Glasgow to agree on a plan to curb climate pollution, most of the obstacles to inking a deal centered on who pays for what. Not being discussed is the underlying financial framework of capitalism which has played an outsized role in getting us into this mess. Because capitalism focuses nearly exclusively on maximizing profits, the exploitation of both human and natural resources has never been part of the balance sheet. Dr Carolina Alves studies and teaches heterodox economics at Cambridge University.  Carolina is part of a new wave of economists bringing rigour and curiosity to answering fundamental questions about how markets operate and where reform is needed. In a discipline dominated by white men from the global north, Carolina's fight to make economics more equitable, representative and focused on social good comes not a moment too soon.

Talking about the rain, wind, sun, humidity, snow, hail, storms, heat, flooding and everything in between is one of our favorite topics of conversation. That’s now being amped up to a whole new level because of climate change. Today’s extreme weather is causing droughts, wildfires, mega hurricanes, atmospheric rivers and temperatures both so cold and hot that people are dying. Extreme weather cost U.S. taxpayers $99 billion last year, and it is getting worse. Weather is getting a lot more attention. That puts the spotlight on meteorologists who deliver daily weather forecasts. Monica Woods has been ABC10 Sacramento’s Chief Meteorologist since 2011. Monica's broadcasts go into the field with farmers, scientists, water managers and everyday Californians to find the stories that inspire action and even hope. Her message is that ultimately we protect the things we love.

Our nation is becoming more diverse thanks to growth among Latinx, Asian and multiracial Americans. Diversity is our nation’s single greatest strength. Nowhere is this more true than in California where the Latinx community is now the largest racial or ethnic group in the Golden State - representing 39% of the population. And yet, if you go to a national park or recreation area, the vast majority of visitors are white. Rather than get derailed by ridiculous racist tropes, like people of color don’t like the outdoors, José González started Latino Outdoors as a way of meeting communities, families and individuals where they’re at.

In England, climate protesters walked onto the M25 - the country’s busiest motorway - sat down and glued themselves to the asphalt. Traffic ground to a halt while the police unstuck them. Their demands: insulate all of Britain's public housing to stop more than 8,000 people from dying each year from the cold. The insulation would also help reduce climate pollution and create thousands of jobs. But, in a country known for their stiff upper lip, the public went bonkers over commute times getting longer. I meet up with Cameron Ford - to find out what the hell’s going on. Cameron was involved in many of the latest roadway demonstrations and he’s a carpenter working to insulate public housing.

We embark on an environmental justice tour of Richmond, CA with two Laotian community organizers.  Before Torm Nompraseurt managed to escape Laos, 13 members of his family had been killed, the U.S. had dropped 50 million tons of bombs on his country, defoliated the forests with agent orange, and he had been displaced 6 times. Torm moved to Richmond, CA to pursue the American Dream only to discover more than 350 toxic hotspots. Torm’s journey mirrors the creation of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), where Denny Khamphanthong is the next generation of APEN organizer in Richmond. We visit with the Laotian community, see way too many toxic sites, talk about the struggles to afford to live in the community in which you were raised, understand the power of organizing everyday people and finish by seeing a soon to be opened youth climate resilience center called RYSE Commons!

Saumya Roy is a journalist and activist from Mumbai India who spent eight years writing:  Castaway Mountain: Love and Loss Among the Waste Pickers of Mumbai. The book is so beautifully written, weaving together stories of how we can create something out of nothing with an examination of what it means to be human. The story centers on a family that lives on the slopes of Deonar waste mountain, the largest pile of trash in India. What emerges from talking to Ms Roy are stories of a shared humanity and struggle for dignity that we must harness if we are to avoid the worst of a climate uncertain future.

I grew up in this English village just outside the university town of Cambridge. Grantchester is surrounded by flat farmland. Along the narrow river Camb which connects Cambridge to Grantchester are the Meadows which for 800 years have been home to herds of cows and crowds of revelers. Just like the rest of the world Grantchester has changed.  The village has had to withstand the loss of the school, the village shop and the Green Man pub. And yet, the glue that holds the community together still exists. The Parish Magazine, remaining pubs, orchard, barrel races, art classes, church and the networks of neighbors that banded together to help during the pandemic, show the evolution of community.