Shortly after I left academia to take a scientist position with a nonprofit environmental organization, a colleague from the Environmental Protection Agency – a key audience for my science-based advocacy – gave me some advice. 

“You need to understand,” he said, “that the government decision-makers you talk to don’t care about what you know. They care about how what you know can help them do their jobs.”

In 2022, I gave a presentation about climate change solutions to the Canadian Parliament. During that meeting, I had the opportunity to hear a presentation from a beef producers group about how they intended to rely on a new synthetic methane inhibitor (not approved in Canada at the time) as the heart of efforts to curb their greenhouse gas emissions. 

Unless you're deeply involved in climate policy, you may not be aware that crucial international climate negotiations recently wrapped up in Bonn, Germany. These annual talks laid the groundwork for issues to be discussed at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Despite their importance for global climate action, however, these mid-point meetings don’t get nearly as much attention as they deserve. 

I have worked in the sustainability space for almost a decade. In that time, I have witnessed my parents struggle to tell their friends what their daughter does for work; my friends who work in tech smile and nod when I talk about climate policy; and strangers apologize to me for not recycling. 

As North America electrifies to meet the challenge of climate change, leaders and engineers must simultaneously update our underprepared electrical grid.

Electricity demands on the North American grid are increasing: Buildings, vehicles, and industries are electrifying to reduce pollution; data centers are growing to meet the demands for AI, crypto-mining, and storage services; and new air conditioners are being added to stave off harsher heat waves. 

Climate change has given us some sense of how interconnected we all are. 

To stop climate and build a sustainable future, food matters – a lot! What we eat and how we grow it is responsible for around 20–35% of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. 

In this presentation, Project Drawdown executive director Jonathan Foley shares a new framework for addressing climate change from food, agriculture, and land use. In addition, he offers a glimpse into a Project Drawdown initiative launching this year that will bring sharper focus to solutions in this space.