The Climate Movement Has Blind Spots. We're Here to Expose Them.

"Most Americans know the climate crisis through statistics: degrees of warming, billions in damages, acres burned. But numbers don't tell us whose lives are cut short, whose futures are being stolen, and whose voices are ignored. That erasure isn't accidental. The climate movement has blind spots, and they line up with the blind spots of our democracy. The people most harmed by the poisoned rivers, food apartheid, and ecological violence are usually the least represented in the stories we consume about climate change."

"Their struggles and wins are treated as side notes-if they appear at all. That's why A People's Climate, a podcast launching in partnership with The Nation on September 27, exists. Each week I sit with people who aren't usually invited into the "mainstream" climate conversation-community organizers, farmers, movement builders, and cultural workers who make the crisis visible in ways numbers never could. The show is both a critique and an act of repair: It exposes the omissions in climate coverage while amplifying the visions of resilience and solidarity that point us forward."

"But Representative Pearson shows us it was something else: a warning about what happens when elected officials, especially young Black ones, are punished for standing with their communities. In South Memphis, those same communities are now battling Elon Musk's xAI Colossus: a data center powered in part by 35 unpermitted methane gas turbines that emit more pollution than the city's airport."

Climate impact is often framed through statistics that obscure who suffers, whose futures are stolen, and whose voices are ignored. Erasure aligns with democratic blind spots, leaving poisoned rivers, food apartheid, and ecological violence to fall heaviest on underrepresented communities. A People's Climate centers community organizers, farmers, movement builders, and cultural workers to reveal lived impacts and uplift resilience and solidarity. Representative Justin J. Pearson's expulsion illustrates how young Black officials can be punished for standing with their communities. South Memphis communities face the xAI Colossus data center with 35 unpermitted methane turbines, high water withdrawals, elevated pollution, and limited regulatory oversight.

Read at The Nation