Citizens’ Climate Radio Ep. 34: Students demand climate action

Citizens’ Climate Radio is a monthly podcast hosted by CCL volunteer Peterson Toscano. Browse all our past episode recaps here, or listen to past episodes here, and check out the latest episode in the post below.

Recent months have brought a growing global student protest movement around climate change. In a past episode, Peterson chatted with Quaker author, speaker, and activist Eileen Flanagan, who described the four different roles change agents take: Helper, Organizer, Advocate, and Rebel. This month, we dig deeper into the role of the “Rebel”—groups and individuals who disrupt business as usual in order to bring about systems change. Peterson captures voices of protesters from the recent student walk-out in Honolulu, Hawaii, which was one of more than 2,000 similar actions around the world.

Peterson also chats with Robin Boardman, from a British group called Extinction Rebellion. Robin and his friends are planning major disruptive actions in London and other parts of the UK in mid-April. What are their goals, values, and methods? Check out the the insightful and moving conversation in the episode here:

Listen now!

The Art House

Returning to the Art House is Hope Clark. She is a dancer concerned about climate change. In a past episode she told us how she decided to engage her community in the Washington, D.C., area through a public art project. To do so, she used giant parachutes.

Hope Clark

Creating an art piece can help us process our thoughts and feelings about a topic as large and challenging as climate change. No surprise then, once she completed the Make a Movement Parachute Community Project, Hope began to go deeper into her own feelings. She found herself returning to an old comfort—an addiction to cigarette smoking. Hope is making powerful connections between her own addictions and society’s addiction to fossil fuels. Through spoken word and dance, she is exploring the comforts we seek that have failed us.

Puzzler

Listeners have been sending excellent answers to the current puzzler question, so the deadline to respond has been extended for another month. Peterson looks forward to hearing from you!

Here’s the scenario: You are at a family dinner when you mention your excitement about more and more people becoming concerned about climate change. Your Uncle Ralph interrupts, “Global warming? Seriously? What about all this record cold weather we have had? It doesn’t seem it’s warming at all.” So what do you say? How can you open up a conversation about climate change that doesn’t just turn into a debate?

Send Peterson your answers by April 15, 2019, along with your name, contact info, and where you are from. You can email your answers to radio @ citizensclimate.org or leave a voicemail of three minutes or less at 518.595.9414 (+1 if calling from outside the USA).

Dig deeper

• Some young CCL volunteers participated in the recent school strike for climate. Read about them here.
• Extinction Rebellion on Twitter @ExtinctionR
• Erica Chenoweth, author of Civil Action and the Dynamics of Violence, inspiration to Extinction Rebellion
• Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience
• Environmental Organizations Outreach Training
• Addiction as a Metaphor for Climate Change: An Interview with Charles Eisenstein (The Fix)

You can hear Citizens’ Climate Radio on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, SoundCloud, Podbean, Northern Spirit Radio, Google Play, PlayerFM, and TuneIn Radio. Also, feel free to connect with other listeners, suggest program ideas, and respond to programs in the Citizens’ Climate Radio Facebook group or on Twitter at @CitizensCRadio.

If you listen on iTunes, please consider rating and reviewing us!