Climate action comes in waves

Check out Leah Stokes' Carbon Wave Calculator.

Find Leah on her website, Substack, podcast, Instagram, Bluesky, and X.

Thank you to Anne Cloud with ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Voice Over for the Planet⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for narrating this edition of Talking Climate. 

Post-production and mix by John Crowley at Loudmouth Studio.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.talkingclimate.ca

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to Talking Climate with Katherine Haho. Each episode, we explore how climate change is affecting the people, places, and things we love, and what we can do to make a difference. From science to solutions and stories that inspire, you're in the right place for real talk about real change. This week I'm excited to be handing this newsletter over to Leah Stokes. Leah is a fellow Canadian and University of Toronto grad who also lives and works in the States like I do. She teaches environmental politics at UC Santa Barbara, has worked and spoken tirelessly on U.S. climate policy and climate solutions for many years, and has just written a new book, The Carbon Wave, a story of democracy, parenthood, and the race to protect our planet. In recognition of her work on and advocacy for climate solutions, Leah has been named to the Time 100 Next List as one of the Business Insider's top 30 global climate leaders. When not talking climate policy on CNN, Leah likes to garden, go on canoe trips, very Canadian, crochet, chase her twins, and spoil her cat. Take it away, Leah. Good news. Pundits keep insisting that talking about climate change is a losing strategy for candidates in the U.S. As I recently explained in my newsletter, though, data show the opposite is true. My colleagues at UC Santa Barbara ran a national survey asking Americans to choose between two hypothetical political candidates. When one talked about climate change, voters were more likely to pick them, and candidates who made climate a top priority got a 4.5-point bump, bigger still among committed Democrats. Voters are not forcing a choice between climate and affordability, healthcare or childcare. Politicians shouldn't force one either. Talk about all of it. Talking climate wins votes. This program helps California schools electrify with heat pumps, putting air conditioning in classrooms because kids need a safe place to learn. Heat pumps cool classrooms, clean the air, and cut pollution for the whole neighborhood. I worked for years to save this program. The fund had almost 200 million sitting in the bank, money the state sat on and then let slip away. This happened while El Nino is already hammering Southern California, increasing the risk of autumn heat waves, and in the same week that half a million kids in Southern California had their school days shortened or even taken online by extreme heat. Failing to extend this program puts our kids at risk. I'm hopeful our state's next governor will pick this back up and finally electrify California's schools. So I built a tool to answer it: the Carbon Wave Calculator. This interactive tool shows how everyday people can change the fossil fuel system through clean electricity and electrification. As I've written previously, this isn't about your carbon footprint. Carbon pollution doesn't fall because individuals perfect their lifestyles. It falls when people create waves of change that transform our energy system away from dirty fossil fuels towards clean electricity and electrification. A footprint is what one person leaves behind, and the tide erases it. A wave is what people make together. Change starts at home, a heat pump, an electric vehicle, even an electric bike. Then it scales up to your community, your city, your state, even federal policy. That leap from your garage to the government can feel abstract. The calculator makes it concrete and helps you find your next step. Thank you, Leah, for creating this helpful tool and for reminding us that climate progress doesn't just happen on its own. It takes all of us working together to keep pushing for change. That's how we make it happen. Leah will be taking her book across Canada and the east and west coasts of the United States this year. You can also subscribe to her free Substack newsletter, listen to her podcast, A Matter of Degrees, and follow her on Instagram, BlueSkyX. Thanks for listening to Talking Climate, narrated by Ann Cloud. Post-production and mix by John Crowley at Loudmouth Studio. For more resources, links, and actions you can take, check out the full newsletter at www.talkingclimate.ca. Until next time, keep talking climate.