Episode 25

Broken Ground - Wrapping Communities in Climate Justice

SUMMARY

In this episode of The Carbon Connection, we hear from Heather McTeer Toney, who shares a story about a situation needing her attention after she was elected mayor of Greenville, Mississippi, in 2004.

Like many in the South, her community had a brown water problem, meaning that when you turned on the tap, the water was tinged with rust and sediment that were both public health issues and a deterrent to economic development. What started as a commitment to helping her community with a basic need evolved into a lasting commitment to environmental justice.

Heather McTeer Toney served under President Obama as the regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency's Southeast Region. Today she continues her work as the Climate Justice Liaison at the Environmental Defense Fund. She is a senior advisor to Moms Clean Air Force, where her work engages parents and caretakers in developing culturally responsive solutions to the climate issues that affect our children's future.

CONTRIBUTORS

Special Acknowledgment: 

  • Erin Malec, Director of Communications, Southern Environmental Law Center
  • Southern Environmental Law Center

Production Team: Jennifer Simpson

Senior Producer: Tania Marien

Supervising Producer: Jennifer Myers Chua

Music: Cool Carbon Instrumental, Paul Russell, Musicbed

Episode Art: Jennifer Myers Chua

Network Voiceover: Olabanji Stephen

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Carbon Almanac

When it comes to the climate, we don’t need more marketing or anxiety. We need established facts and a plan for collective action.

The climate is the fundamental issue of our time, and now we face a critical decision. Whether to be optimistic or fatalistic, whether to profess skepticism or to take action. Yet it seems we can barely agree on what is really going on, let alone what needs to be done. We urgently need facts, not opinions. Insights, not statistics. And a shift from thinking about climate change as a “me” problem to a “we” problem.

The Carbon Almanac is a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration between hundreds of writers, researchers, thinkers, and illustrators that focuses on what we know, what has come before, and what might happen next. Drawing on over 1,000 data points, the book uses cartoons, quotes, illustrations, tables, histories, and articles to lay out carbon’s impact on our food system, ocean acidity, agriculture, energy, biodiversity, extreme weather events, the economy, human health, and best and worst-case scenarios. Visually engaging and built to share, The Carbon Almanac is the definitive source for facts and the basis for a global movement to fight climate change.

This isn’t what the oil companies, marketers, activists, or politicians want you to believe. This is what’s really happening, right now. Our planet is in trouble, and no one concerned group, corporation, country, or hemisphere can address this on its own. Self-interest only increases the problem. We are in this together. And it’s not too late to for concerted, collective action for change.