Watch @ecoamerica's 2026 American Climate Leadership Awards now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdF0SDmn1xE
ecoAmerica has awarded over $200,000 to leaders advancing scalable climate solutions across the US, from healthcare to agriculture to youth sports. Meet this year’s winners, including CU Diploma in Climate Medicine, U.S. Farmers and Ranchers in Action, and the youth winner, Youth Eco Sports Scorecard (YESS). The awards also recognized Bill McKibben for his leadership on climate action.
If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...
Start helping with citizen science projects
Public participation in science is increasing, and citizen science has a central part in this. It is a contribution by the public to researc
What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!
You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases
Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.
Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.
Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.
Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.
Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.
Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.
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I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.
Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help
Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.
Our goal: to help create the best possible climate future. And dance in front of the Kelp Forest. Join Monterey Bay Aquarium and Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and participate in the possibility that we get it right. The future is counting on us.
Saturday, April 18
7–10 p.m.
Ages 18+
Tickets on sale now
Everything we love can thrive if we work together on climate.
Leveraging trust built over time, doctors hope to depolarize the issue and break through misinformation.
From the article:
Studies show that many Americans trust their primary care providers more than any other source for information on global warming. A joint study by Yale University and George Mason University found that those who are disengaged, doubtful, or dismissive of climate change tend to highly trust healthcare providers on the subject. They rank their primary care providers as their first or second most trusted source for climate change information — even higher than public officials from agencies like NASA and news organizations.
[...]
“Our research shows that when people learn about climate as a health issue, it’s depolarizing,” she said. “So, not only are primary care physicians effective messengers, but the topic of health is something that people can understand and it allows them to approach the issue of climate change in ways that aren’t polarized or colored by all their viewpoints or identities that they hold.”
[...]
The Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health and its 30 state-level affiliates, including Georgia Clinicians for Climate Action, are training healthcare providers on climate communication through fellowships, advocacy work, and educational materials.
[...]
In 2020, the National Academy of Medicine launched the multi-year Climate Grand Challenge, a commitment to improve the communication of climate change as a health issue as well as to address systemic issues such as the carbon footprint of the health sector. The American Board of Pediatrics has also officially recognized climate change as a health issue that requires dedicated education, implementing two modules on the topic that pediatricians can take as part of maintaining their board certification.
Biden’s climate jobs program will put young people to work starting this summer.
"Starting this month [June 2024], thousands of young people will begin doing climate-related work around the West as part of a new service-based federal jobs program, the American Climate Corps, or ACC. The jobs they do will vary, from wildland firefighters and “lawn busters” to urban farm fellows and traditional ecological knowledge stewards. Some will work on food security or energy conservation in cities, while others will tackle invasive species and stream restoration on public land.
The Climate Corps was modeled on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, with the goal of eventually creating tens of thousands of jobs while simultaneously addressing the impacts of climate change.
Applications were released on Earth Day, and Maggie Thomas, President Joe Biden’s special assistant on climate, told High Country News that the program’s website has already had hundreds of thousands of views. Since its launch, nearly 250 jobs across the West have been posted, accounting for more than half of all the listed ACC positions.
“Obviously, the West is facing tremendous impacts of climate change,” Thomas said. “It’s changing faster than many other parts of the country. If you look at wildfire, if you look at extreme heat, there are so many impacts. I think that there’s a huge role for the American Climate Corps to be tackling those crises.”
Most of the current positions are staffed through state or nonprofit entities, such as the Montana Conservation Corps or Great Basin Institute, many of which work in partnership with federal agencies that manage public lands across the West. In New Mexico, for example, members of Conservation Legacy’s Ecological Monitoring Crew will help the Bureau of Land Management collect soil and vegetation data. In Oregon, young people will join the U.S. Department of Agriculture, working in firefighting, fuel reduction and timber management in national forests.
New jobs are being added regularly. Deadlines for summer positions have largely passed, but new postings for hundreds more positions are due later this year or on a rolling basis, such as the Working Lands Program, which is focused on “climate-smart agriculture.” ...
On the ACC website, applicants can sort jobs by state, work environment and focus area, such as “Indigenous knowledge reclamation” or “food waste reduction.” Job descriptions include an hourly pay equivalent — some corps jobs pay weekly or term-based stipends instead of an hourly wage — and benefits. The site is fairly user-friendly, in part owing to suggestions made by the young people who participated in the ACC listening sessions earlier this year...
The sessions helped determine other priorities as well, Thomas said, including creating good-paying jobs that could lead to long-term careers, as well as alignment with the president’s Justice40 initiative, which mandates that at least 40% of federal climate funds must go to marginalized communities that are disproportionately impacted by climate change and pollution.
High Country News found that 30% of jobs listed across the West have explicit justice and equity language, from affordable housing in low-income communities to Indigenous knowledge and cultural reclamation for Native youth...
While the administration aims for all positions to pay at least $15 an hour, the lowest-paid position in the West is currently listed at $11 an hour. Benefits also vary widely, though most include an education benefit, and, in some cases, health care, child care and housing.
All corps members will have access to pre-apprenticeship curriculum through the North America’s Building Trades Union. Matthew Mayers, director of the Green Workers Alliance, called this an important step for young people who want to pursue union jobs in renewable energy. Some members will also be eligible for the federal pathways program, which was recently expanded to increase opportunities for permanent positions in the federal government...
“To think that there will be young people in every community across the country working on climate solutions and really being equipped with the tools they need to succeed in the workforce of the future,” Thomas said, “to me, that is going to be an incredible thing to see.”"
-via High Country News, June 6, 2024
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Note: You can browse Climate Corps job postings here, on the Climate Corps website. There are currently 314 jobs posted at time of writing!
Also, it says the goal is to pay at least $15 an hour for all jobs (not 100% meeting that goal rn), but lots of postings pay higher than that, including some over $20/hour!!
🍲🚮♻️ “Garbage cafes” across India are tackling plastic waste and hunger! In these cafes springing up around the country thanks to a larger sanitation initiative, people can collect and donate plastic litter in exchange for a hot meal. For many, the cafes mean the difference between food and an empty stomach, and they have already had an impact on the amount of plastic waste going to landfill – in one city, landfill-bound plastic waste fell from 5.4 tons per year in 2019 to just two tons per year in 2024!
Garbage cafes are springing up across India. The BBC visits the city of Ambikapur to find out how much impact they can really have on plasti
