The climate catastrophes around the world right now are devastating. But when we find ourselves asking, “What can I do?” We often think back to something Emily Atkin of HEATED says: “Anything.”
You don’t have to solve the climate crisis by yourself. You just have to find your thing, do it well, and bring your audience along. On that note, here's what Ground Crew’s month looks like:
📅 Events + Opportunities
☕️ Gifted Cacao Ceremony
Join our very own Christina (@missxtinab) for a climate week cacao ceremony honoring ancestral wisdom, featuring guided meditation and breathwork to help you drop out of your head and into your heart.
👠 Pattie Gonia @ Webster Hall
Do you and a friend want to have so much fun at Pattie’s Save Her! Show in NYC on 9/24? She’s generously offered Ground Crew tickets, so just reply to this email and we’ll set you up!
🎤 UndertheDeskNews x Ground Crew
Mark your calendars for October 1! We’re teaming up with UndertheDeskNews to talk community action ahead of the midterms (feat. Ground Crew’s @nikitadumptruck!)
💡 Book a Brainstorm
Working on a campaign? Stuck on a script? Lauren offers free 15-minute brainstorms to help turn your ideas into content that’s actually fun to make.
🎤 Creator Spotlight
This month we sat down with Ashley, aka @modernday_eratosthenes, to learn what it’s like discussing climate as a STEM creator, and why you absolutely do not need to be a scientist to join the conversation.
Whether she’s talking about new technology, data centers, or a scientific breakthrough, people want to know: What impact will this have on the planet? That expectation alone represents a huge cultural shift, and Ashley believes public pressure deserves a lot of the credit.
Her advice for creators who feel like they aren’t qualified to talk about climate? “You live here, don’t you? Then you can talk about it.”
Here’s what else she had to say:
How did you get into content creation?
I was actually in graduate school for mathematics when COVID hit. I decided to postpone my enrollment until we were back in the classroom. That didn’t happen, so, mostly to pass the time and hopefully find some other grad students, I started making TikTok videos. It blew up basically overnight. I’m not even joking - during that first week, every video I made even skimming the surface of mathematics went viral. Eventually I started veering away from strictly math content and more toward science because people seemed to enjoy it more.
What has your experience been talking about climate on the internet? How is it received?
Climate is definitely a regular guest on my channel. Sadly, it’s still one of the more hotly debated topics I talk about, but the fact that it comes up at all is an improvement. If I talk about a new technology or scientific breakthrough, one of the questions people now ask is what toll it could have on the environment.
Even if you’re a climate denier, you expect climate to come up. So I wouldn’t say it’s always well-received, but it’s increasingly expected. And I think that’s something.
You have a boundary around only reading comments for the first hour after you post. Why?
The first hour is usually fine because it’s mostly my followers, so I’ll engage during that window. After that, I don’t look. Because I’m a woman in STEM, my videos can end up anywhere, and once they do, it can become open season.
I know it would be catastrophic for my mental health to expose myself to online abuse every single day. Setting that boundary allows me to keep doing this work without letting the comment section consume me.
What would you tell creators who think they need to be scientists to speak about climate online?
You live here, don’t you? Then you can talk about it.
Climate affects everyone. It’s the air you breathe and the food you eat. You don’t need a PhD to taste dirty water. You can look at a graph and see that average global temperatures have been rising since the mid-20th century. You don’t have to be a scientist to pay attention, ask questions, or talk about something that affects your life.
What's something hopeful you're seeing around climate right now?
Today, when there’s a new invention or technological breakthrough, one of the first questions people ask is: What impact is this going to have on the environment?
It didn’t used to be like that. Companies could steamroll ahead without giving environmental impact much thought. Now, they know the public is going to ask hard questions. If data centers had come out in the 1950s, nobody would have given a sh*t about their water usage. But today, we ask. And because we ask, major tech companies are looking for alternative solutions.
The public did that. The public pressured them. I think that’s something worth feeling hopeful about.
Anything else you want creators to know?
Climate touches virtually everything we talk about already. The more of us who ask questions, bring it into our own niches, and expect companies and leaders to consider the environmental consequences of their decisions, the harder it becomes to ignore.
📰 Climate News & Prompts
1. What's happening in Nepal is another climate warning
Rapid warming is transforming glaciers across the Himalaya, putting mountain communities at risk.
🏔️ Prompt: When extreme weather strikes, share the story and offer ways for your community to take action, like our friend Tefi did.
2. The planet is heating up, but women are on fire
From Dolly to Gloria to Daisy Chain Festival, we’re reminded that women have long been at the forefront of climate justice, community building, and movements for a better world.
❤️🔥 Prompt: Spotlight a woman in your life who's shown you what it means to be brave, protective, or both.
3. Boulder is taking Big Oil to the Supreme Court
Boulder’s fighting to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the climate damages communities are paying for.
⚖️ Prompt: Whether your niche is law, health, finance, politics, or the outdoors, ask your audience: who should pay for climate damages - everyday people or the corporations that caused them?
❤️ Community Content
Mama Earth really did say “I told you so”
Everything hot already exists!
The post apocalyptic trillionaire hunting of my dreams?
We’ll leave you with a reminder from Wendell Berry:
“But if the love of your country doesn’t move you to do something to take care of it, no matter how small or unnewsworthy, then I don’t think you have any protection against despair at all.”
Your involvement in Ground Crew is your something! Every time you use your platform to talk about climate, you’re choosing action over apathy and reminding people that they’re not alone in caring about this planet.
And we see you ❤️
Louis + Marilla