The environmental movement has more tools than ever, and also more burnt out people than ever. Brigid McCormack lives on both sides of this story. In this episode, the former executive director of Audubon California and current California Environmental Voters board member answers questions from listeners about what’s happening right now in climate and conservation organizations, why they need more "intense creatives" who don't fit in cubicles, and how to build the kind of resilience that lasts longer than a news cycle. We also talk about passing the baton, bird bingo, and a Zen master's advice on environmental burnout. Plus I nerd out on bird aerodynamics.

• Brigid's website: spindriftadvisors.com
• California Environmental Voters website: envirovoters.org

• Your resilience is a strategic imperative, not a luxury. Brigid quotes Thich Nhat Hanh: if you want to save the planet, you first have to save yourself. Cultivate the adaptive resilience of a mangrove swamp, and only then turn around and do the work.
• Stop sprinting. This is generational work. The climate movement has gotten communications wrong by motivating people through crisis and doom. People aren't moved by fear; they're moved by a hopeful vision of a future that's actually better. If you're a creative, that's your superpower.
• Leaders: let the intense creatives in. The best engagement ideas (Bird Bingo anyone?) didn't come from a strategic plan - they came from creative people who were given the OK to try weird things. If your team profile is all strategists and diplomats, you're missing something vital.

• Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet by Thich Nhat Hanh: The book Brigid credits with reframing her approach to burnout and resilience
• Dr. Ned Hallowell and the Hallowell Center: Brigid references his work on the brilliance of the ADHD brain and why intense creatives don't fit in boxes (drhallowell.com)
• The Enneagram: A personality framework Brigid uses with leadership teams. The "intense creative" maps to the Enneagram Type 4.
• Climate Collaborative Justice Fund: The collective donor-advised fund Brigid mentions that's funding shovel-ready clean energy on Native lands and in communities of color
• V-formation flight science: The original 2014 Nature study by Portugal et al. showed ibises precisely sync their wing flaps to catch updrafts in formation flight. Science magazine has a great accessible writeup: "Why Birds Fly in a V Formation." A 2001 Nature study by Weimerskirch et al. confirmed pelicans save significant energy in formation using heart rate monitors. The lead bird gets zero benefit, which is why they rotate.
• Podcasthon: The global event connecting podcast creators with the nonprofits they love. This episode spotlights California Environmental Voters. Learn more at podcasthon.org
  

Rosanna Xia is an environmental reporter at the LA Times, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of California Against the Sea, and first-time documentary filmmaker. In sixteen years of covering California's coast, she's developed a philosophy of storytelling that seeks to help readers not just learn something, but do something.

What if the answer to climate anxiety isn't more data, but more play? Lil Milagro Henriquez is the founder and executive director of Mycelium Youth Network, where she's helping young people build climate resilience through radical imagination. What I’m taking away from this episode:

• Dreaming isn't frivolous. In this moment of collective failure of imagination, making space to dream huge isn't a luxury. It's a first step in building the futures that we’ll want to inhabit.
• Climate education should prepare people for the world they'll actually live in. Our current system pretends the world will stay roughly the same for the next 20-30 years. What if instead, we created space to confront the grief of what we’re losing and then showed young people the hundreds of real solutions and careers they could pursue?
• Go ahead, let young people create solutions. It's "surprisingly radical" that if you give young people the opportunity to express a concern and create a solution, they will. So ... maybe we adults should ask ourselves why is this radical. Or better yet, we could just create more spaces where youth can actually do this work.

• Lil on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lil-milagro-henriquez-b5997391/
• Website: myceliumyouth.org
• Instagram: @myceliumyouth

• Mycelium Youth Network: Oakland-based nonprofit using gaming and traditional ecological knowledge for climate resilience education.
• Gaming for Justice: Mycelium Youth Network’s original immersive experience that is designed, drawn, and soundtracked by SF Bay area artists. Using a combination of oral storytelling, visuals, and music, the game explores the history (and future!) of the San Francisco Bay Area with a specific focus on Oakland, California.
• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline: The Indigenous futurism novel Lil references about people who retain the ability to dream in a world where most have lost it.
• 2017 California Wildfires: More than 10,000 structures were destroyed across the state, and more than 9,000 fires burned a total of 1,248,606 acres.

Leave me a comment (guest and topic suggestions welcome!) and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Visitwww.marinapsaros.com/earthworks for show notes, transcripts, and more.