TED Talk: The people who caused the climate crisis aren't the ones who will solve it

“Frontline communities are the only ones who can get us out of this crisis.”

This past December, Angela Mahecha, Program Director of the Environmental Justice Fellowship Program, participated in TED Salon: Fairness and Our Future where she shared firmly and unapologetically that frontline communities, those most impacted by the climate crisis, are the only ones who can lead us towards a just future.

In her TED Talk, Angela shares what climate and environmental justice leaders are all too familiar with: the climate crisis is a result of corporate greed and economic and racial injustices; and we cannot rely on those same corporate systems to solve the problem. Market-based solutions, such as cap and trade policies, continue to line the pockets of corporations, while low income, BIPOC communities in sacrifice zones around the world continue to be overburdened by air pollution, dumping, and extraction. Recent research done by the Tishman Center found that eighty-one percent of trash incinerators in the five states with the highest number of municipal solid waste incinerators in the U.S. are located within environmental justice communities. 

The solutions to the climate crisis are already being implemented by frontline communities. From Portland to Miami, Angela shares examples of building cooperatives, land trusts, and farm cooperatives that are proving a just transition towards a green, non-extractive economy is possible. As the new program director of the Environmental Justice Fellowship Program, Angela is leading the development of a fellowship that will support the capacity of leaders nationwide to develop, scale, and implement disruptive strategies to advance systemic solutions to the urgent crises of climate change and inequality. The fellowship will provide movement leaders, those already doing the hard, necessary work of advancing climate justice, with space, time, and resources to test and grow their solutions, and to create new ones in a generative community of leaders. The program is being designed by the Tishman Environment and Design Center and Social Movements + Innovation Lab in coordination with environmental justice leaders from across the country.

Watch Angela’s full TED talk below for more examples of how frontline communities are paving the way towards a climate just future.