Doom. Denial. ‘Hopium.’ What About Climate Action?
Notes from America with Kai Wright
WNYC Studios
4.4 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 21 August 2023
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
More people consider climate change an urgent concern than ever. But people in the climate movement fear that our collective anxiety about the end of the world has paralyzed us from taking action. In this episode, Kai collects stories of climate victories.
Kai talks with Rikki Held, the 22-year-old lead plaintiff in Held v. Montana, a lawsuit brought by the group Our Children’s Trust. Held and her co-plaintiffs won an historic victory recently when a court ruled that the state violated their right to a “clean and healthful environment.” Then, author and activist Liza Featherstone shares insight from her essay “The Case Against Both Climate Hope and Climate Despair,” in The New Republic. And Kai and Liza collect listener stories of progress they’ve witnessed in their own communities.
Send us your song for our summer playlist! What’s a song that represents your personal diaspora story? Go to notesfromamerica.org and click on the “RECORD” button to leave a voice note with your answer. Tell us the name of that song and the artist, and a 1-minute story that goes along with it. We’ll gather all of the songs and your stories in a Spotify playlist that we’ll update all summer.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Is there anything about our climate future that makes you feel optimistic? |
| 0:06.3 | I feel like there are some people who are going where they put still some stuff going |
| 0:10.3 | on and like split and I'm not sure if they'll actually save it in time. |
| 0:15.1 | But they also click. |
| 0:16.1 | I feel really unoptimistic ever since I was really young. |
| 0:20.1 | I was scared about climate change. |
| 0:22.4 | I don't necessarily feel like enough is being done to change that. |
| 0:26.2 | I kind of feel better about it, especially younger people. |
| 0:30.0 | I think are talking about it more with more like importance. |
| 0:33.3 | With COVID, everybody who could do anything about it was doing it. |
| 0:39.0 | But with this we have like six years and no one's doing anything. |
| 0:43.5 | Do you hope something happens by the time you're an adult? |
| 0:46.3 | Yes, I do. |
| 0:47.3 | Do you think it will? |
| 0:48.3 | Hmm, maybe and maybe not. |
| 0:56.2 | It's notes from America, I'm Kai Wright, welcome to the show. |
| 1:15.1 | Maybe and maybe not. |
| 1:18.4 | Will humans seriously face the facts of our changing climate before those young people |
| 1:22.9 | you just heard become adults? |
| 1:25.0 | That is certainly the question of our time. |
| 1:27.0 | Let's just take stock of a few lead stories in the news right now. |
| 1:31.7 | Southern California was put under its first ever tropical storm warning this weekend. |
... |
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