Dear Friends,

Here’s one simple thing you can do this week for our planet: Check out the New York Times’ “Postcards From a World on Fire.”

Climate change protesters march in Paris streets, by Jeanne Menjoulet (licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0)

Meeta Agrawal of the NY Times joins us to discuss the project and climate change. That conversation starts at the 2:00-minute mark.

“Postcards” presents a brilliant and compelling montage of the changing climate’s impacts on 193 nations. The US display lets you search for your home county to discover the biggest local climate threat.

Well … there’s a glitch. When I click on “Polk County, Iowa,” I learn that our biggest threat is hurricanes. Hmm, guessing they got us mixed up with Polk County, Florida.

Glitches aside, “Postcards” is a fantastic summary of the many, many ways in which the climate crisis is already kicking humanity’s collective butt — especially poor and marginalized communities across the globe who contribute the least to the problem yet experience some of the most devastating impacts.

I also asked Meeta for her take on Don’t Look Up, specifically how she felt about the film’s skewering of the mainstream media. Her response is clever and candid. It’s a good conversation, and I hope you’ll check it out.

Also on this week’s program, Joe Henry and I discuss the unprecedented attack on voting rights and democracy. Joe’s the Iowa political director for the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), which is taking the state to court over highly restrictive changes to Iowa’s election laws enacted in 2021. Across the US, dozens of similar voting-rights lawsuits have been filed. That conversation starts at the 14:20-minute mark.

Thanks to Del Jones, Ben Stone, and Tom Leffler for calling in during that portion of our program.

Also, Kathy Byrnes and I review our 2021 New Year’s eco-resolutions. Kathy, ever the teacher, gives us a B+. That conversation starts at the 51:00-minute mark.

Back to the climate crisis. I’ve heard a few people insist that Don’t Look Up is about a comet, not climate change. No, sorry. The comet is a metaphor for the climate crisis. How do I know? Well, listen to what one of the film’s lead actors, Leonardo DiCaprio, has to say.

The film is an “analogy of a giant comet heading toward Earth and how the human race would react to it from a political level, a scientific level, what we would do about it. It really reminded me what it’s like for climate scientists. We have this very finite window to make this transition. If we’re not voting for leaders or supporting everything that has to do with climate mitigation, we’re going to have a fate similar to these characters [in the film]. We’re already feeling the ramifications of the climate crisis. It’s not that we’re not listening, it’s that we’re not taking the necessary action.” – Leonardo DiCaprio

Thanks for reading, watching, caring, and taking action. As always, your feedback and support are welcome.

Ed Fallon

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Ed Fallon