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Rahima Nasa: Is there anything about our climate future that makes you feel optimistic?

Speaker 2: I feel like there are some people who are going for it, but still some stuff going on, so I'm split. I'm not sure that they'll actually save it in time, but they also could.

Speaker 3: I feel really unoptimistic. Ever since I was really young, I was scared about climate change. I don't necessarily feel like enough is being done to change that.

Speaker 4: I feel better about it, especially younger people, I think are talking about it more, with more importance.

Speaker 2: With COVID, everybody who could do anything about it was doing it, but with this, we have like six years, and no one's doing anything.

Speaker 1: Do you hope something happens by the time you're an adult?

Speaker 2: Yes, I do.

Speaker 1: Do you think it will?

Speaker 2: Maybe and maybe not.

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Kai Wright: It's Notes From America. I'm Kai Wright and welcome to the show. This week, we're going to revisit a conversation about the climate that we had in August of 2023. When we first aired this discussion, we were dealing with a cascade of climate disasters in the US. Maui was reeling from the deadliest wildfire in US history, hundreds were killed and thousands were displaced. Around the country from New York to Washington, the air was dangerously filled with smoke from fires raging in Canada.

That's before you get to the flooding and the fact that 2023 was the hottest year on record around the world, but it's only going to get hotter this year. As we continue to grapple with the fallout of these climate disasters, we're also going into an election year, not just in the US, voters in more than 60 countries will go to the polls in 2024. That's more than half of the world's population. Will climate change be as central to the conversation as it needs to be for us to survive at this point? Here's the thing, it's very easy to take all of what I just said and feel like our fate is sealed.

There is increasing concern among climate activists and experts that fatalism about the climate is as much of an impediment to action as denial has been in the past. In this conversation, we focus on potential solutions. Coming up, we're going to meet some people who share stories of what they consider to be progress in their communities, contributions they have made to both fixing our climate and adapting to the reality in which we live. First up, is Rikki Held. She's a 22-year-old native of broadest Montana, and the lead plaintiff in the historic lawsuit Held v. Montana, which made headlines last summer.

Rikki and 15 co-plaintiffs, all between the ages of 5 and 22, sued the state for violating their right to a clean and healthful environment, which is a right enshrined in the Montana State Constitution. A judge ruled in their favor, and the ruling was called by some, one of the strongest ever on climate change. Similar lawsuits have been filed, but this is the first case of its nature to go to trial, let alone to win. Here's my conversation with Rikki from a few days after her legal victory. Thanks for this time, Rikki.

Rikki Held: Thank you so much for having me.

Kai Wright: Your testimony as lead plaintiff was about your family farm. First off, just tell us about that farm, and try to make us all understand where you grew up and what that placement to your family, or means to your family.

Rikki Held: Yes, I grew up in Southeastern Montana, near Broadus like you said. We have a ranch and motels in town. Just growing up out there was amazing, and I'm right here right now. Just being really part of the ranching operations and even less for like out moving cattle horseback and being able to jump in the river, climb trees, or take care of barnyard animals. Yes, it's wonderful being from here.

Kai Wright: It's a cattle ranch for those of us not from Montana or from such areas. That's the idea, is this great big space where cattle are roaming. The Powder River runs through the ranch. You testified about a series of floods and droughts as the lead plaintiff in the case. The river is both your water source for the ranch and a threat when it floods. Can you explain what you told the court about how those events affected your family?

Rikki Held: Yes. Being a plaintiff in this case, I've gotten to tell my personal story, and that includes water variability. That includes the Powder River's dried up one year enough to stop flowing. It's also flooded, especially when there's higher than normal temperatures in winter, early spring, and then a bunch of ice melts, and there's flooding. That's undercut our banks and undercut fences. Yes, we do rely on water, we rely on snowpack in the hills, but that's not lost in the summer.

With wildfires, both directly and indirectly, sometimes they'll burn down power lines like we had this one time, it was 70 miles, the power lines were burned down. That affected our ability to get water up to our tanks in the hills to our cattle. There was drought, there's less grass, cattle have to travel farther. It all works together in this system, and especially being from a ranch community, we rely on the land so much for our livestock and our crops and just our livelihood. You can really see those impacts.

Kai Wright: What are the consequences? The flooding and the wildfires that you're describing, what are the consequences for the ranch when that happens?

Rikki Held: At one level, it's your home, and that's your whole life. Another it's just the basic financial economic losses. Ranching is hard anyway, and then facing all these changes and unstable climate system, that just furthers that. Sometimes the summers are just so smoky all the time and get air quality alerts and having extreme heat days. You just have to keep working through that. With our motels in town that's affected by the Yellowstone flooding that closed down highway, or less wildlife that effects our hunting season reservations. It all works together.

Kai Wright: An interesting factoid about you that I learned in reading about you was that you had been an environmental scientist since you were 15 years old. You participated in a long-term study of the Powder River. Since it runs through your property, you help take measurements for the study. You were cited in a journal article on this river, which is really cool, but I also read that as you were learning about climate change in that age, in high school, you didn't think it affected you personally because you didn't live near an ocean. Tell me about that, and what made you think differently about it?

Rikki Held: Right. When I was in high school, when I first learned about climate change, it seemed like this thing on the other side of the world, that was affecting glaciers, polar bears, and sea level rise. I thought it was a huge issue even then, but I guess I just learned more, did my own research, started connecting what I was seeing on the ranch to this very real issue, and I made it a lot more personal. Through this case, I've been able to tell my personal story and then understand it inside of this more broad global narrative, but everyone is impacted by climate change.

Sometimes it's hard to think about that way, but even with the wildfire smoke, like all you guys there are affected by the smoke from Canada this year. We're all affected because our societies depend on these stable environments.

Kai Wright: The lawsuit was possible because of an amendment to the state constitution from the 1970s that says, "Montana residents have a right to a clean and healthful environment." Before the lawsuit, were you aware that you have that constitutional right?

Rikki Held: No. [chuckles] I remember jumping in on the first call with OCT, Our Children's Trust after I reached out to them, and explained what the lawsuit was and that we had rights in our Constitution such as a clean healthful environment. Besides all the rights to life, and liberty, and land, and all that, and I just thought it was a perfect case, because of those rights protected by generations before us. In that 1972 constitutional convention, people from all over the state were there.

Ranchers, educators, clergy, and lawyers, and businessmen, they all came together to protect those rights because we care about our land and our people. I guess with this case, we're trying to continue that as the future generation to protect it for now, and future ones ahead.

Kai Wright: A lot has been made of your youth, the fact that you're all youth in this lawsuit and other lawsuits. Why is your age relevant to the conversation. Why does it matter that you are young people fighting for this right to you?

Rikki Held: Youth are disproportionately affected by climate change. We had experts in our court case testify to that with physical health for one more likely to be affected by air pollution and extreme heat for some examples. Then youth don't have a say in our government systems can't vote and aren't in positions of power. I was 18 when we filed this case, and so I've been lucky that I've been able to vote now and have more of a say, but we really are doing this case because young people don't have voices and future generations don't have voices.

We need the courts to protect those rights and our governments to take responsibility and do what's best for citizens.

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Kai Wright: We are listening back to a conversation I had with Rikki Held, a 22-year-old environmental scientist from Broadus, Montana. She's the lead plaintiff in Held v. Montana, a case brought by her and 15 other young people working with the legal group, Our Children's Trust. On August 14th, 2023, a district court ruled that the state had in fact violated Rikki's right to a clean and healthful environment. Coming up, we'll talk a little bit more about the case and hear from some of our listeners about what they see as victory in the fight against climate change in their communities.

We're not going to take live calls this week, but if you do want to share a story of a climate victory in your community, we'd still love to hear from you. This is a topic we will return to soon, and your story might even inspire an episode of its own. If you want to talk, just make a voice recording on your phone and email it to us at notes@wnyc.org. That's notes@wnyc.org. Stay with us.

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It's Notes from America, I'm Kai Wright. Welcome back. Before we return to our conversation about climate action, I want to draw your attention to the first in a series of conversations that we'll be having about the 2024 presidential election. Donald Trump emerged as the winner of the Iowa Republican Caucus, making it all the more likely he will be the party's candidate for president again. I'm really curious to hear from people who consider themselves conservative but are facing yet another election in which they don't feel represented as voters.

If you are conservative, but Donald Trump is decidedly not your candidate, where are you focusing your political energy this year? How do you see yourself fitting into the political landscape? We'd love to hear from you, particularly if you identify as a person of color who is conservative or if you're from an immigrant household. The easiest way to talk to us is to record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at notes@wnyc.org. That's notes@wnyc.org. Back to my 2023 conversation with Rikki Held, a 22-year-old environmental scientist who won a landmark legal case against her home state of Montana late last year.

Rikki Held, I want to ask you about the state's response to your victory. The State Attorney General's office is appealing the ruling and has called your suit a publicity stunt. They note that similar cases have been dismissed from state and federal courts, and they're confident they'll win on appeal to the State Supreme Court. How do you respond to that criticism that this is a publicity stunt?

Rikki Held: I don't know. I guess I just know that this is the right thing to do because the state of Montana's known about human cause climate change since the 1960s. We have technologies to switch to more renewables energy sources that would protect our state and beyond Montana as well. It would reduce electricity costs and health costs because people are being affected. I don't know how you can argue, but we presented a week of evidence and the state had their chance to do that, and they presented for part of the day.

You just can't argue with what our experts testified to because we had such a strong story with all the personal plaintiff testimony and with our experts talking about the science, the best available science we have on the climate science and what the impacts are to youth, especially with health and mental health impacts, and all of the opportunities we have moving forward, and that Montana can rely on. Like when water and solar and how much it would benefit our state. No, it's not a publicity stunt and this is coming out of our Montana values and our laws and our constitution.

Kai Wright: Where do you fall on this realm of optimism versus [chuckleas] doom and gloom and fatalism around climate change? This suit is an act of great optimism, so I think I know but for those of us that we're going to spend the rest of this show talking about how do we feel about climate change and what does it mean for how we then act? What would you say to folks who are feeling fatalistic about it?

Rikki Held: How I feel about it is it is terrifying, and sometimes when you let it all rush in and think about it-- I think about all of the things that you hear on the news all the time, and it just is still happening and we're in the midst of this crisis. We do need to do something about it, but sometimes it's good to let that fear sink in and realize that this is a problem, but that isn't going to help us move forward. We just need to think about actionable steps that we can take moving forward.

This case was a great example of that. It's the first time that a court has declared state fossil fuel policies unconstitutional, and there's going to be other cases going forward. Just there are actions that we can take as individuals or states or at a more global national scale. That we need to take because this is the world we live in and we want to protect it. It is good to stay optimistic, and I have a lot of hope for a future, especially taking action and be working with so many amazing people who are looking out for our future. That's what gives me hope.

Kai Wright: Rikki Held is the lead plaintiff in Held v. Montana, a case brought by her and 15 other young people working with the legal advocacy group, Our Children’s Trust that sued the state of Montana for violating their right to a clean and helpful environment. On August 14th, a district court ruled that the state had in fact violated Rikki's rights. Rikki, thank you so much for this time.

Rikki Held: Thank you so much.

Kai Wright: I have been asking for you to call in with your stories of other kinds of climate progress in your community. You have certainly responded. There are a great many of you on the phone. I'm going to just start taking a few of them now, and in a minute we'll be joined by Lizer Featherstone, who has written an article in The New Republic that is helping us think through this tension between optimism and fatalism as well. Let's start with Carrie Ann in Chicago, Illinois. Carrie, welcome to the show.

Carrie Ann: Thank you.

Kai Wright: Do you have a story of climate victory in your community, Carrie?

Carrie Ann: Yes. When I was in college in upstate New York, I organized with a bunch of other students on my campus and we pushed the college to join an international corp. The whole point of all of it was to talk about climate change in every single classroom regardless of the content area. We were successful. Our college joined the accord and what that wound up looking like in our community is for our college campus, we started talking about climate change and studio arts and in writing and in gender studies classes.

We started to build a more intersectional understanding of the solutions that exist and also the way we're approaching solutions and how lots of different roles in our community can help develop and bring in support for creating a resilient future together. It was really cool because even though we had only passed it at the college level, we were in such a localized community. A lot of the effects of starting to talk about climate change at that level made its way into high school classes.

Then also just there was a boom of work happening in the community all of a sudden where we were doing all types of cool stuff to help fight or mitigate climate changes effects for our local community.

Kai Wright: Wow. It was catalytic. You took one action, it had an advance, it had a victory, and that led to more action.

Carrie Ann: Yes. I think when we talk about how to build hope, it was like we were really loud about we want to talk about it. It was catalytic because we were talking loud enough, and that gave our community enough hope to be like, "Oh, we can actually do some of this stuff."

Kai Wright: Thank you for that, Carrie. Let's go to Scott in Longford, Connecticut. Scott, welcome to the show.

Scott: Hello. Thanks for having me.

Kai Wright: What's your climate victory story you want to share, Scott?

Scott: It's related to climate change, and it's also related to globalization, but here in Connecticut, we have the wonderful Connecticut River that runs all the way from practically Canada down through New Hampshire and Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. We're lucky down in southern Connecticut to have the Connecticut River as a tidal estuary. It's one of the most productive and unhampered with the river systems on the whole East Coast. Unfortunately, several large river systems on the east and New England, et cetera, have been hammered by an invasive aquatic plant called water chestnut that comes from Asia.

That's the globalization part, how that was brought in. Also, with water temperatures warming and water levels rising, it's spreading. We've got a bunch of us for several years who have been out harvesting this harmful plant. It puts out these crazy seeds that are the size of a walnut with these sharp thorns on them, really big. They would puncture a tire if a car rode over it, or certainly a water shoe or sandal, et cetera. They're really bad. Each seed can generate eight or so florets of plants, and each one of those florets will put out about eight more seeds.

Unchecked, they really go crazy. It's done a lot of damage in the Hudson River system. We've been harvesting. Yes, go ahead.

Kai Wright: You've been harvesting them, cleaning them out.

Scott: Yes.

Kai Wright: I have to say that it outstrips my understanding a little bit Scott, but the point is that there is an invasive thing and you've been able to get it out of the environment, right?

Scott: Yes.

Kai Wright: Thank you for--

Scott: We're getting out there in small boats. We have to lean over the side of the boat, haul that stuff in with our hands. It's dirty, it's ugly. Then you have to fill the boat up with it and go get rid of it. Sometimes we have some assistance with trucks, but it's a lot of hard work, but we're making the river a better place. We call ourselves unsung heroes.

Kai Wright: Now you are a song hero, Scott. We have sung you on the radio nationally taking care of your local river. Thank you, Scott. As we continue to take your calls, I'm going to be joined now by activist and author Liza Featherstone, who wrote an essay for The New Republic earlier this summer that really got my attention in which she argued "The Case Against Both Climate Hope and Climate Despair." That was the headline of the essay. She joins me to explain what exactly she wants us to feel if it's neither hope nor despair. Hi, Liza. Thanks for this time.

Liza Featherstone: Hi, Kai. Thanks for having me. I should say usually writers say, "Oh, yes, I don't write the headlines." I actually did write that headline. [crosstalk] I have to own that work.

Kai Wright: All right. Listen, well first off, anything that you heard in either Carrie or Scott there that you want to respond to in terms of how we're feeling about climate change right now?

Liza Featherstone: Yes. First of all, I think this is just so generative because we rarely ask the general public what is a climate victory in your community or something that you've been a part of and after just a couple minutes, we're hearing the most amazing stories. It definitely I think reflects how little of that is picked up normally in the media. For some good reasons and for some bad reasons, we tend to focus on the worst disasters that are happening because they are very newsworthy and important but then that piece of people are winning and doing something about this every day.

When we lose track of that, it's like, "No wonder so many people are suffering from climate despair and climate anxiety." The case against what many in the climate movement are calling doomism. Doomism is the sense that there is nothing we can do. The fixes in the climate apocalypse is coming. I think that that's a narrative that's been criticized for a long time and gained some respectability a few years ago with Jonathan Franzen and some other literary guys who started writing these essays about how they were just giving up.

Those arguments were widely criticized by climate scientists who argue absolutely not. There's a lot that we can do and are doing about this problem, but the affect is very contagious and pervasive and very understandable because we are seeing just almost a daily loss of life from some climate disaster or another and it's devastating. The case against climate hope, what I mean by that is there's a writer named Mary Louise Hagler has a great term, hopium, [laughter] which is the way that when faced with a serious problem, hope can be just an aesthetizing as the climate movement wants to motivate people, get their attention, how serious this problem is.

A lot of the positivity and especially coming out of the tech world that, "We can solve this, we can do anything," can have an aesthetizing effect. What we really want to see, I think, as a climate movement and as members of the human race is a realistic approach, which is recognizing our feelings of grief and anxiety are very valid that this situation is extremely serious but that that recognition should motivate us to take action like all the great people that you just talked with. That taking action isn't just an existential Sisyphean thing that we do to make ourselves feel a little better.

Taking action is actually really working. Not that we can stop the worst effects of climate change. Those are already here, but we can save many of our civilizations, we can save many lives. We can save many ecosystems and many species, and we are doing that. It's a balance. Our feelings need to lead us to this balance.

Kai Wright: To this balance, but you argue in the piece and give me the thumbnail version of this in just maybe a minute or so that we've made progress in the last couple of years that were unimaginable in the recent past. Make that case in 60 seconds.

Liza Featherstone: Completely. In past, even democratic administrations if we got a regulation that saved a species or two, the environmental movement would be like, "Yay, this is an amazing victory." We have seen the Inflation Reduction Act, and also the Bipartisan Infrastructure Acts, which invested billions and billions of federal money into decarbonizing our economy. We're going to be seeing the effects of that more and more as that comes online. New York State, we just won a significant victory in the Build Public Renewables Act to use public money.

Actually, that builds on the victory of getting so much investment from the Inflation Reduction Act because we can use that money to build public renewables in New York state, and it creates a blueprint that other states can use as well. I would say these are the kinds of things that really couldn't have been anticipated. Five years ago, the scale of that would not have been imaginable. The good news is we're way beyond this building awareness. If you think about it like five years ago, a climate victory would be like, "We created some awareness."

That is totally not good enough. Fortunately, we are actually way beyond that. I think that that's really important.

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Kai Wright: I am Kai Wright and you're listening to my 2023 conversation with Liza Featherstone, whose essay in The New Republic argued The Case Against Both Climate Hope and Climate Despair. More with Liza just ahead.

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Regina de Heer: Hi. I'm Regina, a producer here at Notes from America with Kai Wright. I know you're loving this episode. I promise I won't hold you long, but I have to ask, have you seen what we're up to on Instagram? That's where we post questions to you that help shape the conversations that we have on this podcast. Plus, it's a great way to keep up with the show. Follow Notes With Kai on Instagram that's @noteswithkai, and we'll talk to you there. Thanks for listening.

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Kai Wright: It's Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright. Welcome back. This week we are revisiting my 2023 conversation on climate change with writer Liza Featherstone and listeners about how we shake off the paralyzing eco-anxiety that many of us have developed. Here's the rest of the conversation. Liza, and I want to hear more of your stories of climate action. Let's start with Wes in New Hampshire. Wes, welcome to the show.

Wes: Hi. Thank you for having me, Kai.

Kai Wright: Thank you for calling. Do you have a climate victory to share?

Wes: I'd like to hope it's a victory.

Kai Wright: Good enough.

Wes: I spent 35-plus years teaching environmental science and I started an energy program that trained students for careers in energy efficiency. I saw what you're talking about firsthand from many students who went from either not understanding or denial to throwing their hands up in the air. To me, I've always felt better about things, what I could take responsibility for myself. That's what I've tried to teach. I wrote a book called Warm and Cool Homes about five net-zero houses that heat cool and electrify for less than $500 a year in New Hampshire and made a series of videos which basically show people how they could do some or all of these things to their houses and take responsibility for their own actions.

One of the things in writing a book I found was that all of the people I interviewed who had houses like this felt really proud that they were doing something positive. A lot of times people think, "I can't solve the problems, so there's nothing I can do." What I'm trying to point out to people is there is something you could do by taking responsibility for yourself and the carbon you do or don't emit. I go around to schools and libraries and speak about this.

Kai Wright: I'm going to stop you there, Wes, just for time because we got a bunch of callers. Thank you for that contribution. Let's go to Lawrence in Chicago. Lawrence, welcome to the show.

Lawrence: Hey. Well thank you very much my friend, and I appreciate your time. I just want to first say, if I may, very briefly, I want to thank Liza and Rikki for their contributions to this thought effort and where we go. On one hand, as a 65-year-old man, I apologize that my generation didn't do enough early to bring this to a head such that with climate change occurring rapidly, we would give the new generation an opportunity to be at the seat of the table to change this paradigm. That being said, victories in my ward in Chicago, I'm in Berwyn.

We recently were declared a natural disaster based on rain and flooding. One of the things I've been encouraging our people to do is plant more trees and vegetation to absorb the water runoff. That being said, that is a victory. Subsequently, on the carbon footprint, I've been studying my own home to learn how to naturally ventilate the house, even with a 108-degree heat index to still be comfortable without using air conditioning. Then the other thing, as a architect for the federal government, one of the things that I've been concerned with, my friend, is that the models to reduce energy footprint are outdated.

They're 4, 5, maybe even 10 years old. That has got to change. The data as we're occurring right now is very at a critical level if you will. I'll say it that way. We're not modeling that when we try to reduce footprint for energy use [crosstalk] and consumption stuff.

Kai Wright: Just because I'm short on time here. Just too quick on that last point, is there a victory in that, that you want to share in terms of fixing that problem?

Lawrence: Well, as an advocate, because part of it is I think about my grandson and where the next generation is going. I keep telling the federal government that the data is outdated if you will, and we need to update that.

Kai Wright: I'm going to stop you Lawrence, but advocating for a change, which I agree advocacy is itself progress. Let's go to Joyce in Portland. Joyce, welcome to the show.

Joyce: Hi. Thanks for having me on. There's many things that have been victories here. I'm part of a group that for 50 years have worked to get nuclear power out of this state. We're still working on that and have been successful so far. I was part of a group that planted 10,000 native trees in Oaks Bottom and created what was a landfill into a wilderness area. Personally in my own home by taking this 100-year-old house and insulating the walls, putting solar on the roof, I went from using 1000 gallons of oil a year to heat this house.

To this year it was 100 and I'm sure I can even do better.

Kai Wright: Go Joyce. Thank you so much for that contribution. Then one more person we asked to call in this week is Jesse Marquez, who created the Coalition for a Safe Environment in Wilmington, California. Jesse, welcome to the show. Are you there for me?

Jesse Marquez: Yes. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Kai Wright: Jesse, first off, Wilmington is right in the path of the tropical storm that is bearing down on Southern California right now. I believe you are currently traveling and not in the area, but are you in touch with people back there? How are people feeling and preparing in Wilmington?

Jesse Marquez: Actually, I arrived last night, so I'm back in town. Not a problem.

Kai Wright: Are you safe?

Jesse Marquez: Just to clarify, Wilmington is a community within the city of Los Angeles.

Kai Wright: Got you.

Jesse Marquez: We are one of the harbor coastal communities and the Port of Los Angeles is physically located and borders Wilmington.

Kai Wright: All right. How are things right now? What are you concerned about or ready for for the community?

Jesse Marquez: On the good side, in 2018, our organization received a grant to prepare a Wilmington Emergency Preparedness Plan, which was finished in 2020. In preparing a plan, it addresses all aspects of potential disasters, natural disasters, industrial disasters, climate change impacts so that we have had a campaign now for a couple of years in sharing the information that we've learned, sharing how to prepare, sharing how to address these things once they occur, how to network with other people.

By having this document available, all this outreach has worked with our community in understanding what did they needed to do. I'm happy to say that yes, residents paid attention. Yes, they've been listening to the news, and that they were preparing for the tropical storm. Even doing simple things like taking down a canopy in the backyard, your umbrella with a table, and where you have your little breakfasts in the morning, stocking up on extra water. Then we also brought out to them, when power goes out, you have to be prepared with power.

Make sure you have flashlights backup, batteries for the flashlights. If you have a heater that's electric, then you might need to make sure that there's enough power for that. If you don't have electricity, there's other alternatives for that.

Kai Wright: There's all kinds of things that folks had to do. They did them. We had a climate victory story from you there even as disaster comes at you. Wilmington is right by the Port of Los Angeles as you pointed out. It's surrounded by refineries, by major freeways, and other environmental hazards. The community is overwhelmingly Latino. Part of why we wanted to talk to you is that over the past 20 years, you and your neighbors have been effectively organizing on behalf of environmental justice for your community.

I wanted to bring that into the conversation. I know in particular, one of the projects that caught our attention was the Wilmington Weather Station. Can you describe what that is and why you would consider it a victory?

Jesse Marquez: Remember I just mentioned the Wilmington Emergency Preparedness Plan. In the process of researching that, we realized that our community needed to have access to information in real-time as it's happening now. What happens if the TV stations, radio stations go out. Does the community have any other resource to go to? We do. We have our own weather station in our office. We have backup power, so we don't need to be on the grid. We will always know what is available here. Even our weather station is collected to the website and connected to the internet.

We even have backup power to the internet so that we can keep on ticking as long as possible. From the weather, we also realized when we were putting it together, we wanted to have a website, but no one ever goes to a weather station website. [laughter] Okay? We made it a web. We needed to make sure that we had things that people needed to know, and that's where climate change also came into it, and natural disaster. We have links. If we're talking about tropical storms, there's a tropical storm link, there's a hurricane link, there's an earthquake link.

We have all these resources there on our website and in our station that people, students, in fact, even a teacher told us one time when she looked at our agenda of what links we were having, "You don't have anything for teachers and students." Then we had to go back and we found nine more links for teachers and students, and we added that to our weather station. We also had another little community science victory in terms of research. We wondered, what is the average temperature of Wilmington? What's the average temperature of Los Angeles?

What's the average temperature of California? What's the average temperature of United States? Then when we got the numbers, we had found a little state of shock because it showed that Wilmington's temperature was higher. Now, how can Wilmington's temperature be higher? We're right by the ocean. We're by the coast, winds blow in. Then we realized the industries around us on three corners of Wilmington's border we have a refinery, on the south end we have the Port of LA and Port of Long Beach, on the northwest we have the sanitation department there.

We discovered that we are an example of a heat island effect, which means all these industries generate more heat in your community so your temperature is higher. We're talking about climate change and increasing heat. Then our community is going to suffer more because we are already above average on what our heat impacts. Then heat impacts not only affect us in terms of public health, the dangers because we have four refineries in Wilmington. Every one has exploded anywhere from two to five times in the last 20 years.

Kai Wright: Exploded as in had caught fire?

Jesse Marquez: Caught fire and exploded. When I was 16, I lived in Wilmington on the border of Carson. See if Carson had an oil refinery there and at 5:00 PM that afternoon, there was an explosion. Mama just called us kids to come and have dinner. As we were running down the hallway to get to the dinner table, we all fell because of that shockwave from the earthquake. Mom and Dad said, "Hurry up, let's go in the car. We got to leave because we're not going to stay to see what's going to happen. Go grab grandma next door."

We started getting our car, a second one exploded. Now we were trapped. We couldn't get in our cars, we're going to hold hands, run to the corner, and keep on running for the next seven, eight blocks to get to our auntie's house. Then a third one exploded larger than the others. We had to run to the backyard. My father yells at me to help my three brothers over the back wall fence. My dad was helping my grandmother, my mother, who was also seven months pregnant over that fence.

I jumped over as the last person I get ready to run away, I heard a woman's voice, "Boy, boy, please turn around. Boy, please turn around." I turn around. There's this blonde woman holding a baby in her hand. That baby's blanket was burning.

Kai Wright: Oh no.

Jesse Marquez: That baby's face was burned.

Kai Wright: Oh no.

Jesse Marquez: She threw the baby over the wall like a football. I caught the baby. She yells at me, "Please, please run as fast as you can. Don't turn around and save my baby's life." There is no hospital in Wilmington. I eventually ran to a clinic in Wilmington.

Kai Wright: Jesse, I'm going to have to cut this dramatic story short because we're running out of time. Because I know that that is your origin story as an environmental justice activist. Can you in 60 seconds or so, give me, because a story like that reflects just how hard it is to have optimism in the face of environmental injustice. In particular, the equity questions in particular. What is your takeaway for people who care about that issue? About how we stay not fatalist? Again, I got about 60 seconds for you here.

Jesse Marquez: Okay. You do what we did. We thought, what could we possibly do? An emergency preparedness plan was the solution we had needed to understand the dangers. We needed to know what were the recommendations for each one. We prepared charts, posters, handouts so that our community would be aware of what they could do. Then we got involved in public policy where we supported AB 32 in 2006, the Global Warming Solutions Act. Then we became part of the advisory committee.

As part of the advisory committee, I made a recommendation that came as a result of our China Shipping lawsuit, all ports to plug into electric shore power. Now we [crosstalk]

Kai Wright: I will have to stop you with those examples, Jesse. I appreciate it. The point is political action. That is an excellent segue for final thoughts from you, Liza because a lot of your work is in electoral politics. From a perspective of political action here as we close the show, what fatalism in that category, that seems like a place where I feel quite fatal in terms of the inability to make elected officials care.

Liza Featherstone: I think that is actually changing. It was certainly conventional wisdom for a long time among Democratic operatives. Even among further left people that you can't really make elected officials care about climate issues because voters don't care enough, was the conventional wisdom. I was just looking at some polling going back for the last 11 months when people say, "What is the most important issue to you?" people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 for the last 11 months, climate has been their most important issue.

Kai Wright: For these past 11 months?

Liza Featherstone: For these past 11 months. I don't think this has ever happened before. It seems like a very good opportunity to build on all the kinds of victories we've been discussing because if this is really-- given this is the most salient issue to Democratic voters right now, more than inflation. More than all the things that we believe are more important than to people. I think that this is a lot to build on. The politicians are going to start caring because the voters are going to vote on this issue.

Kai Wright: We got to leave it there. Liza Featherstone's essay in The New Republic is titled, The Case Against Both Climate Hope and Climate Despair. We'll put a link in this episode description for the podcast drop of this episode. Liza, thanks so much for this time.

Liza Featherstone: Thank you. What an honor.

Kai Wright: Thanks to everyone who called in. You can keep talking to us at notesfromamerica.org. Just look for the green record button and leave us a voicemail. I'm Kai Wright and I will talk to you here next week.

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