Important, Not Important

This week: It’s been a minute. Thanks for your patience. Please check out my 2025 preview, and if you’d be so kind, share it widely.Here's What You Can Do:Donate to Everytown to support their efforts to end gun violence, community by community.Volunteer with Communities Responding to Extreme Weather (CREW) to build the supports your community needs to respond to climate impacts.Get educated about how you can run for a local office and make a huge, direct impact on peoples lives using Run For Something’s Local Office Guide. 2025 is your year, let’s go.Be heard about incentivizing heat pump installations and bring our Heat Pump Targets script to your local government meetings.Invest in affordable housing by becoming an investor with Enterprise, a non-profit working to increase housing supply and build community resilience.Get more:Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.comSupport our work and become a Member at importantnotimportant.com/upgradeGet our merchGot feedback? Email us at [email protected] us on Twitter at

What's the missing link in local journalism? That's today's big question, and my guest is Lyndsey Gilpin. Lyndsey is the Senior Manager of Community Engagement at Grist. Lyndsey was the founder and executive editor at Southerly, a nonprofit media organization that equipped people who face environmental injustices and are at most at risk of climate change effects with journalism and resources on natural disasters, pollution, food, energy, and more.It was very groundbreaking, and now she's brought that to Grist. Lyndsey was recently a John S. Knight Community Impact Fellow at Stanford University, focusing on information access in rural southern communities of color, where she is from, based in Louisville. And in an age of mass dis and misinformation it's more important than ever that we not only fund journalism and obviously read it, but local journalism and journalists and publishers, editors, photographers, documenters, and more that are of the communities they are based in, who have and continue to build trust in an ongoing, two way conversation to help people get information, to connect the last mile and make sure it goes back and forth.-----------Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to [email protected] here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com.-----------INI Book Club:The Quickening by Elizabeth RushFind all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-clubLinks:Read more about Lyndsey's community engagement work at GristKeep up with Lyndsey's workSupport Grist's nonprofit journalismFollow us:Subscribe to our newsletter at importantnotimportant.comSupport our work and become a Member at importantnotimportant.com/upgradeTake action at whatcanido.earthGet our merchFollow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ImportantNotImpFollow us on Threads: www.threads.net/@importantnotimportantSubscribe to our

This week: This entire (short!) episode is a call to action. It's time to do this thing...do the thing, but also take care of yourselves and your loved ones these next couple weeks. It's a lot right now.Here's What You Can Do:Donate to the groups that are on the ground every day organizing and fighting for a better, stronger democracy (go)Volunteer for democracy by picking up the phone and knocking on doors with the people who have mobilizing voters down to a science. Time’s ticking but it’s not too late (go)Learn about ways you can become a more active citizen (like running for a local office!) (go)Be heard about the issues you care about the most, like reproductive rights or clean energy, and find candidates in your district that support those causes.Invest in companies that are scaling climate solutions so we still have a planet where the privilege to vote is possible.Get more:Get more news, analysis, and Action Steps at importantnotimportant.comSupport our work and become a Member at importantnotimportant.com/upgradeTake Action at whatcanido.earthGet our

Is multisolving the future? Is it today? Should we do more? That's all today's big question and my guest is Dr. Elizabeth Sawin. Dr. Sawin is the Founder and Director of the Multisolving Institute, which is convenient for our conversation. She's an expert on solutions that address climate change while also improving health, well being, and economic vitality. She developed multisolving to describe such win win win solutions. Beth writes and speaks about multisolving, climate change, and leadership in complex systems for both national and international audiences. Since 2014, Beth has participated in the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, a continuing dialogue on issues of climate change and sustainability among a select group of humanities scholars, writers, artists, and climate scientists.Beth is a biologist with a Ph.D. From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, M. I. T. She co-founded Climate Interactive in 2010 and served as Climate Interactive's co-director from 2010 until 2022. Beth’s work has influenced me quite a bit, as you can see in the app.We've got co benefits all over the place, more on that soon and today. She's been on the list for a while here, and yet it took a couple recent hurricanes to actually get her on the show to talk about her journey, her mentors, her new book, and how we can most effectively deal with all of this.-----------Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to [email protected] here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at podcast.importantnotimportant.com.-----------INI Book Club:Always Coming Home and The Dispossessed by Ursula Le GuinFind all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-clubLinks:Learn more about multisolving at the Multisolving InstituteBuy Dr. Sawin's book Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured WorldCheck out the FLOWER AppFollow Dr Sawin on Bluesky and TwitterFollow us:Subscribe to our newsletter at importantnotimportant.comSupport our work and become a Member at importantnotimportant.com/upgradeGet our merchFollow us on Twitter: