Welcome to the Crowdsourcing Sustainability Podcast! This podcast exists to help inform, inspire, and empower people to take action on climate. We'll do this by bringing on wonderful sustainability leaders, listening to their stories, and exploring meaningful actions we can all take. In this episode, get to know the hosts, Mikayla White and Ryan Hagen, as well as what the Crowdsourcing Sustainability podcast is all about!
Episode Outline:
0 - 0:33: Welcome to the podcast!
0:33 - 3:00: Ryan's introduction and how Crowdsourcing Sustainability got started
3:00 - 5:26: Mikayla's introduction and background in the environmental sphere
5:26 - 6:55: Why the climate fight is important to Ryan
6:55 - 9:10: Why others should join the climate fight
9:10 - 11:37: How listeners can get involved with Crowdsourcing Sustainability
Resources:
-Sign Up for the Crowdsourcing Sustainability Newsletter: https://crowdsourcing-sustainability.ck.page/c34a46ed01
-Check out the Crowdsourcing Sustainability Website: https://crowdsourcingsustainability.org
-Our Instagram: @crowdsourcingsustainability
Welcome to the Crowdsourcing Sustainability Podcast! This podcast exists to help inform, inspire, and empower people to take action on climate. We'll do this by bringing on wonderful sustainability leaders, listening to their stories, and exploring meaningful actions we can all take. In this episode, get to know the hosts, Mikayla White and Ryan Hagen, as well as what the Crowdsourcing Sustainability podcast is all about!
Episode Outline:
0 - 0:33: Welcome to the podcast!
0:33 - 3:00: Ryan's introduction and how Crowdsourcing Sustainability got started
3:00 - 5:26: Mikayla's introduction and background in the environmental sphere
5:26 - 6:55: Why the climate fight is important to Ryan
6:55 - 9:10: Why others should join the climate fight
9:10 - 11:37: How listeners can get involved with Crowdsourcing Sustainability
Resources:
-Sign Up for the Crowdsourcing Sustainability Newsletter: https://crowdsourcing-sustainability.ck.page/c34a46ed01
-Check out the Crowdsourcing Sustainability Website: https://crowdsourcingsustainability.org
-Our Instagram: @crowdsourcingsustainability
Hi, and welcome to the first ever crowdsourcing sustainability podcast. My name is Mikayla. I'm Ryan, and we're your co hosts. This podcast exists to help inform, inspire and empower people to take action on climate. We'll do this by bringing on wonderful sustainability leaders listening to their stories and exploring meaningful actions we can all take.
Ryan Hagen :Yes, I'm super excited for this. I think this podcast is going to be a fantastic tool to help accelerate our mission of helping to reverse global warming as soon as possible.
Mikayla White :So Ryan, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what crowdsourcing sustainability is?
Ryan Hagen :Yeah, absolutely. So the main thing to know about me is I'm a huge sustainability nerd. And I've been obsessed with addressing climate change for about eight years now. So I first heard about the climate crisis back in college and it was kind of shocked because nobody around me anyway, it was really talking about it. doing anything about it, even though it sounded like this massive problem. So I started learning everything I could. And as soon as I kind of grasped it as, as soon as I understood how consequential the climate crisis is, I couldn't really unsee that. And I just realized if we get climate wrong, pretty much nothing else is going to be right just because it's that big of an issue. So I picked up a sustainability minor to my economics major and made this promise to myself, that I would make a career out of stopping global warming. So after college, I worked for a few years in clean tech before deciding to start crowdsourcing sustainability because I felt like I could be doing more to help on the issue because I made that promise to myself and just saw that we weren't moving nearly fast enough as a society. So the idea behind crowdsourcing sustainability came from the fact that I'm only one person and can only do so much. But if I could get as many other people as possible working on these solutions together, then we could have a pretty big impact. So, crowdsourcing sustainability exists to help reverse global warming as soon as possible. And for the last couple years, I've been building this community by writing a newsletter. My aim really is to inform minds touch hearts and inspire action. So there's now 10s of thousands of people from over 100 countries who are reading this newsletter and we just launched a slack community so people can connect, collaborate and multiply our collective impact together.
Mikayla White :That's amazing.
Ryan Hagen :Yeah, it's it's been a great ride so far. For me, the coolest thing has been meeting so many amazing passionate people doing important work on this issue. And I'm just incredibly grateful and inspired by everyone. So Mikayla, how about you tell folks a little bit more about yourself and why climate change matters to you?
Mikayla White :Yeah. My name is Mikayla and I'm currently a rising junior at University of California, San Diego studying environmental policy and climate change studies. So the climate fight and saving the environment is right up my alley with what I'm studying. And I'd say that that's my biggest passion in life. So I just recently became an intern at crowdsourcing sustainability. And let me just say it's an amazing community that you've created. It's the perfect place for someone like me, you know, a student who wants to dedicate their life to sustainability, but I don't really have the means to do it yet. So I think crowdsourcing sustainability is such a beautiful environment you've created
Ryan Hagen :I really appreciate that. Let's tell people Let's share your story a bit. So what, what brought you into climate change? And how did you start going down this path personally?
Mikayla White :Yeah, so I grew up in a very, very nature focused area. I grew up in the Bay Area right next to Muir Woods National Forest. So, you know, when I was a kid, my parents would take me hiking in the forest and the redwood trees and we would go to the beach all the time and go skiing. So growing up, I really spent a lot of time in nature. And when I first started learning about climate change in high school, I kind of felt this, you know, this, this doom that all the environment all the beauty I've been seeing is going to go away at some point. And I really kind of got this feeling that it's, it should be up to me to help others experience those beautiful experiences I had as a kid, and to make sure that our Earth stays healthy for as long as possible. Also everyone can really experience it to its its full potential. So I think that's why the climate fight is so important to me.
Ryan Hagen :Yeah, protecting the beauty of nature really resonates with me too. And I can't believe you got to grew up around redwoods. That is so cool. I'm jealous.
Mikayla White :Definitely, yeah. So why is the climate fight important to you?
Ryan Hagen :So, for me, it kind of just, it goes back to this idea that if we don't get climate, right, then everything's going to be wrong. It I mean, it affects the the life support systems that we rely on. So you get to like the very basic building blocks of society. We're talking about food, water, a safe place to live and there's a huge justice and and more element to this issue, because it affects pretty much everyone on the planet and it hits lower income more vulnerable people and communities first and worst. So I'm especially concerned about suffering and really I'm trying to work to, to save and improve as many lives as possible. It's kind of what drives me. And I think the, the, the sunrise movement, if, if I know you've heard of them, but if anyone hasn't heard of them out there, I'd highly encourage you to check them out. But they have language that resonated with me so deeply. And they said something along the lines of this is about protecting the people we love and the places we call home. So that at its core, I think that's what it's really about.
Mikayla White :That's amazing. And why do you think it's so important that other people join the climate fight
Ryan Hagen :Yeah, I think it's super important that other people join because we really need help. This issue affects absolutely everybody, no matter who you are. And there's this vast difference between the best and worst cases scenarios. And where we end up on that scale is going to be determined by what we do today, this week, this year, the next the next few years are some of the most consequential in human history, which I don't think everyone really realizes yet because where we're locking in some climate impacts that will be with humanity for the next centuries and potentially thousands of years. So I think another key thing for people to try to grasp is that we all need to take action on this because it's not good enough to just be right. If that were the case, we would have solved this a long time ago before I was born. So that's not what this is about. This is actually about power. And there are very powerful forces and people who are, quite frankly, hell bent on maintaining this deadly status quo. That's because they're making unimaginable amounts of money by keeping things the way they are. And so to counteract those forces and this inertia, of transforming everything, we need as many people as possible to actively work towards these climate solutions. People need to step up and work towards changing the places they live and work so that we can rebuild a safer, healthier and more just world.
Mikayla White :Yeah, you know, I think that's why it's so important for organizations like crowdsourcing sustainability to exist to give people the resources they need, and a location for them to be able to have discussions about this huge topic. So, Ryan, how can listeners get involved with crowdsourcing sustainability?
Ryan Hagen :So if folks want to get involved or learn more about crowdsourcing sustainability, I think the best way to do so is by signing up for the newsletter. You'll stay up to date by getting that email newsletter. And I think the second biggest thing, and this is what it's really all about, is this community and collaboration, sharing resources, best practices, making connections with other people and working together towards sustainable solutions. And the place to do that is in the crowdsourcing sustainability, slack group. And so that's pretty new. But if you sign up for the The newsletter you'll get an invitation to join that slack group. And that's where I'm, I really think that the magic can happen. And I'm excited by what's going on. So far. There's, there's a ton of people from all over the world doing all sorts of different amazing things. And some I'm really excited about the potential of that and the projects. We're starting to work on there.
Mikayla White :That's wonderful. Well, thank you everybody, for listening today. This was our first podcast, so we really appreciate the support.
Ryan Hagen :So we're really excited and fortunate to jumpstart this podcast with some amazing guests. And just to give you a better idea of what's up next, our first episode is on finding a job in climate with Evan Hynes, who's the co founder of climate bass. Our second is on climate solutions and education with Dr. Elizabeth Bagley, who's the Director of drawdown learn. And our third is on eco anxiety with Rachel Melena Chan, who's the co founder of eco anxious story. So that is the end of our show. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you enjoyed this conversation, you may also appreciate signing up for the crowdsourcing sustainability newsletter that I write most weeks. This will also give you access to our CS slack community. And there's a link to that in the show notes along with several other links referred to today. Lastly, please do consider giving us a review to help us grow this community and get this information out to more people, we would really, really appreciate that. And I think that is all we've got for you today. So thank you again, take care and we'll talk to you soon