By Rebecca Randall for Earthbeat.
Broadcast version by Trimmel Gomes for Florida News Connection for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration.

Nuestra Señora del Carmen Parish in Cataño, a town bordering the San Juan Bay in Puerto Rico, installed solar in March to prepare for the threat of coming storms and serve as a centerpiece for a climate resilience hub.

Dominican Sr. Lissette Avilés-Ríos, a member of the Parish Pastoral Council, explained that the parish wants to help the community organize and respond in future disasters. Cataño's coastal location makes it vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as hurricanes like María in 2017. Rather than rely on the electric grid in Puerto Rico, which is unstable and frequently experiences power outages, the church opted for the independence offered by solar - a move supported by many Catholics.

In 2017, the one-two punch of Hurricane Irma and Hurricane María left 100% of the island without electricity, limited access to food and clean water, and caused 4,600 deaths. When María hit, Avilés-Ríos chose to stay in her convent on Calle Ocean Drive, right in front of the bay, in order to help neighbors who were older or living alone.

"The level of the bay rose with the storm surge and reached the convent hall," she said. "The second floor flooded when water entered through the balcony doors."

Eventually the power went out that September and didn't come back until November. "Thank God we did not have major damage to the structure; it is made of cement," she added.

David Ortiz, the Puerto Rico director of Solar United Neighbors (SUN), said the experience of Hurricane María and Hurricane Irma left lessons to apply in becoming more resilient for future storms.

Since then, Archbishop Roberto González Nieves has encouraged all 142 parishes to switch to solar by 2030 in a pastoral letter on implementing the teachings of Pope Francis' 2015 encyclical Laudato Si' in the Archdiocese of San Juan de Puerto Rico.

For SUN, that letter signaled the commitment they wanted to see before awarding funds earmarked for frontline communities to create resilience hubs in Puerto Rico. Both Nuestra Señora del Carmen and Centro Buen Pastor, a Catholic nonprofit eco-spirituality center in Guaynabo, received enough funds to cover the cost of equipment and installation.

What is a resilience hub?

The term "resilience hub," coined by the Urban Sustainability Network, includes coordinating community networks of care that provide a safety net in case of an emergency. A resilience hub often begins with identifying a stable source of renewable energy.

Ortiz said this is because access to electricity affects communication - if people can't charge their phones or connect to Wi-Fi, they can't contact their loved ones. It also impacts vulnerable community members, such as those needing medical devices or refrigeration for medicine, or a simple fan to keep an infant cool on a hot day. Clean water fails, too, because pumps need electricity to run.

Avilés-Ríos explained that the church wants to amplify the impact of its solar to be available to the community. "This gives us the security of being able to provide help for those people, parishioners or not, who can charge their cellphones, refrigerate medications or receive respiratory therapies," she said.

To Ortiz, it's a logical choice to provide solar to entities like churches that have proven they are poised to leverage resources to disadvantaged community members. During past hurricane response, "the churches and community groups in many cases were the first ones there to help, because government still couldn't get there or couldn't reach that mountain, but outreach organizations, community organizations, and churches were able to throw stuff on their back and make it up the hill," he said.

Understanding the energy system

Resilience hubs need durability and stability amid an emergency situation to keep power running to meet neighborhood needs.

Ortiz said the solar panels installed at Nuestra Señora del Carmen are made to sustain winds for a Category 3 hurricane. "They tend to hold on," he said.

The panels in the church's system each have micro-inverters, which take direct energy from the sun and turn it into electricity. This means the whole system will keep running even if one panel blows down. In contrast, if damage occurs on a system with a central inverter for all the panels, the power may go down for the whole system.

Either way, getting a panel back up isn't too complex. Ortiz remembers how those with solar fared after María. "I saw it firsthand in my neighborhood," he said. One neighbor's panels stayed intact, and the other had two fly off, but both had electricity.

Additionally, if the grid is down, the local internet company might go down as well. Since most systems rely on a Wi-Fi connection to keep users informed about the amount of storage left on their battery, Ortiz recommends satellite internet.

Another key is having enough storage, said Ortiz. Most solar systems in Puerto Rico are connected to the public electrical grid via net metering, which feeds surplus solar energy back to the grid in exchange for customer credit. But U.S. electric code requires the panels to shut down when there is a power outage to protect workers who are trying to restore the lines in the electric grid. With an inverter, the panels can send electricity to your battery instead.

Nuestra Señora del Carmen already knows that its system works. The system stayed up and running during a recent six-hour power outage.

But the key is still knowing how much storage you will need or how to conserve energy when you're relying only on your solar system. "Sometimes people overconsume when they know a hurricane is coming," said Ortiz. "They wash all these clothes ... and only have half a battery left."

Plus, cloudy days - which are likely during a storm - will generate less electricity. So, a resilience hub might want to decide ahead of time what usage to prioritize, said Ortiz.

Building a community plan

Avilés-Ríos, who is appointed by the bishop to advise on ecological pastoral matters, said the community is in the meeting phase of deciding what resources the resilience hub can offer and how it will operate.

"We still lack details of the plan, but there is a lot of enthusiasm in the community," she said. "We must establish a protocol for when there is a lack of electricity in Cataño."

The hub plans to identify other families in the parish who have solar and create a community map, so everything is not dependent on the church. It will also decide how they might offer other resources beyond electricity, such as food and water.

Avilés-Ríos sees the parish in Cataño as a model for others. "We will guide and motivate the parish communities of the entire archdiocese to establish their ecological action plan," she said.

Of course, while two parishes received full funding through grants, other parishes have not yet accessed funds for solar. Ortiz and Avilés-Ríos said opportunities for federal funding, such as Inflation Reduction Act tax credits, are more limited for churches in Puerto Rico. Unlike churches in the states, the parishes in Puerto Rico cannot directly receive the tax credit.

"We know that there are funds allocated," she said, but "the structure does not make it easy for us to access those funds."

Once the panels and installation are paid for, Ortiz said, net metering could help pay for other aspects of a resilience hub. However, there's been a hiccup. Nuestra Señora del Carmen is still waiting for the meter to be switched to net metering, so that it can earn energy credits. If it saves money on electricity, the church could invest it back into the resilience hub.

Ortiz further pointed out that officials in Puerto Rico have made moves to remove net metering despite its recent extension of the policy. As more electric customers go solar, utility companies worry about lost revenue.

"Although there are economic challenges to establishing photovoltaic systems with backup batteries, we cannot lose hope of achieving it," said Avilés-Ríos. "It is not a merely economic matter but a Christian matter to make good use of the resources of creation and to be a place of help for everyone who needs it."


Rebecca Randall wrote this article for Earthbeat,
a project of the National Catholic Reporter covering faith and the environment.





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A Detroit suburb is undergoing a transformation with funds from the American Rescue Plan Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Canton Charter Township is 31 miles west of Detroit with more than 98,000 residents. It is investing in downtown revitalization, infrastructure upgrades and future industries such as EVs and clean energy.

Anne Marie Graham-Hudak, supervisor of Canton Township, highlighted the energy-efficient projects, which include buildings following energy policy.

"We also are building a fourth fire station," Graham-Hudak pointed out. "We're going to utilize geothermal and solar. We are going to be the first in Michigan headed for zero energy, hopefully, carbon emissions. That's one of our goals."

For three years, Canton has earned Michigan's Green Community Gold status, a prestigious award recognizing communities for their significant efforts in environmental sustainability.

Nearly $23 million is being invested to expand electric vehicle charging stations across Michigan, with more than 40 stations planned for the Canton area. Graham-Hudak noted in her lifetime, she has never seen this level of federal funding come directly down to the community.

"Right now we're doing a groundbreaking for a downtown area to stir economic development in and that was part of ARPA funds," Graham-Hudak added. "We were able to fund during the COVID, we were able to fund our first responders."

The money is also expected to create significant job growth by upgrading infrastructure and supporting the expansion of new industries.


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By Jessica Scott-Reid for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Kathryn Carley for Maine News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Last month the U.S. Department of Justice indicted two employees of Russian-state funded news outlet RT, formerly known as "Russia Today," for paying a content creation outfit called Tenet Media to push a wide range of climate misinformation on social media. Included in the raft of misinformation are false social media posts downplaying the very real climate impact of meat, according to a new report from the group Climate Action Against Disinformation, CAAD.

The Russian government wants no part of climate action - including the kind that shifts diets from meat-heavy to plant-rich - political researchers surmise. While Tenet's site has since gone dark, these influencers continue to post misinformation on social media channels, including Rumble, X, YouTube and TikTok.

Social Media Influencers Spread Misinformation About Meat's Climate Impact

In the report, the climate disinformation researchers looked at 69 websites and social media accounts belonging to Tenet Media and its founders, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, and six affiliated content creators, from September 1, 2023, to September 23, 2024. During that time, influencers with over 16 million combined total followers and subscribers made 183 total posts nabbing 23,555,000 views and 1,048,902 shares and likes. According to the indictment, Chen and Donovan were aware the funds were coming from Russia. Still, the influencers characterize themselves as "victims" of the campaign.

Some of the misinformation content was, and continued to be monetized, according to the report. Some examples include mocking prominent climate activists, such as Greta Thunberg, as well as standing up against "disruptive" lifestyle changes, like replacing gas stoves with electric models, and eating less meat. Eating a more plant-forward, less meat-heavy diet is one of the most effective forms of individual climate action, according to Project Drawdown, a non-profit aiming to help the world reduce carbon emissions.

Other posts feature the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates is trying to rid the world of animal farming and replace livestock with lab grown meat and bug burgers, while others claim Americans are "revolting" against the United Nations' call for western countries to cut back on meat consumption.

From Buzzfeed Reporter to Pro-Trump Influencer

One notable content creator associated with Tenet, Benny Johnson, posts often, though not accurately, on the topic of meat-eating. Johnson falsely characterizes voluntary recommendations to shift diets towards eating more plants as authoritarianism. In his 2023 video regarding the UN's food system road map, Johnson said that "fascists" want to rid Americans of their self-governance and autonomy, in part by taking away their meat.

"The purpose of this is control," Johnson said. "If they can control your food supply, if they can control your energy supply, if they can control your transportation, then you don't have freedom. You are a slave."

The facts: meat has a massive climate impact. Meat and dairy production are responsible for between 11 and 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and is a documented drain on our planet's water and land reserves, and a leading cause of deforestation and ocean degradation. But efforts to change meat consumption are not mandatory.

At the same time, Johnson creates branded content for meat companies, while telling followers to "Eat like an American," and offering discount codes. Meat companies use Johnson as a spokesperson to sell their products, and just last month, Johnson shared a video entitled "Women eat raw steak to support Trump."

Johnson wasn't always a right wing influencer. He was once considered a credible journalist, working for Buzzfeed covering "viral" American politics. He was fired by the outlet in 2015, for plagiarizing 41 articles. One year later he was accused of plagiarism again, by the conservative outlet Independent Journal Review.

Why Russia Wants Climate Misinformation to Proliferate

Russia is the world's fourth greatest emitting country, and is warming four times faster than the Earth. Yet according to its own government, Russia benefits from climate change and from maintaining global reliance on fossil fuels - an approach debunked by scientists.

Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, the RT staffers named in the U.S. indictment, allegedly paid out nearly $10 million to the Tennessee company to "create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging," by contracting online influencers with big audiences. They have since been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Though the company is not named in the indictment, it is described as "a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues" - which is also how Tenet is known to describe itself.

For now, the named content creators - Matt Christiansen, Tayler Hansen, Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Lauren Southern (who traveled to Russia in 2018 to meet with and make content with neo-fascist philosopher and Putin ally, Alexander Dugin) - all say they didn't know their efforts were being paid for by Russian operatives. They describe themselves as the "victims" of the Russian scheme. But the evidence continues to stack up. CNN reports the creators were specifically recruited for their right-wing leaning content, as the RT employees hoped to "plug in to the commentators' vast network of fans to exploit divisive narratives that achieved the Kremlin's goals."


Jessica Scott-Reid wrote this article for Sentient.


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By Jessica Kutz for The 19th.
Broadcast version by Alex Gonzalez for Arizona News Connection, reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Hazel Chandler was at home taking care of her son when she began flipping through a document that detailed how burning fossil fuels would soon jeopardize the planet.

She can't quite remember who gave her the report - this was in 1969 - but the moment stands out to her vividly: After reading a list of extreme climate events that would materialize in the coming decades, she looked down at the baby she was nursing, filled with dread.

"'Oh my God, I've got to do something,'" she remembered thinking.

It was one of several such moments throughout Chandler's life that propelled her into activist spaces - against the Vietnam War, for civil rights and women's rights, and in support of other environmental causes.

She participated in letter-writing campaigns and helped gather others to write to legislators about vital pieces of environmental legislation including the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, passed in 1970 and 1972, respectively. At the child care center she worked at, she helped plan celebrations around the first Earth Day in 1970.

Now at 78, after working in child care and health care for most of her life, she's more engaged than ever. In 2015, she began volunteering with Elder Climate Action, which focuses on activating older people to fight for the environment. She then took a job as a consultant for the Union for Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy organization.

More recently, her activism has revolved around her role as the Arizona field coordinator of Moms Clean Air Force, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group. Chandler helps rally volunteers to take action on climate and environmental justice issues, recruiting residents to testify and meet with lawmakers.

Her motivation now is the same as it was decades ago.

"When I look my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren, my children, in the eye, I have to be able to say, 'I did everything I could to protect you,'" Chandler said. "I have to be able to tell them that I've done everything possible within my ability to help move us forward."

Chandler is part of a largely unrecognized contingent of the climate movement in the United States: the climate grannies.

The most prominent example perhaps, is the actor Jane Fonda. The octogenarian grandmother has been arrested during climate protests a number of times and has her own PAC that funds the campaigns of "climate champions" in local and state elections.

Climate grannies come equipped with decades of activism experience and aim to pressure the government and corporations to curb fossil fuel emissions. As a result they, alongside women of every age group, are turning out in bigger numbers, both at protests and the polls. All of the climate grandmothers The 19th interviewed for this piece noted one unifying theme: concern for their grandchildren's futures.

According to research conducted by Dana R. Fisher, director for the Center of Environment, Community and Equity at American University, while the mainstream environmental movement has typically been dominated by men, women make up 61 percent of climate activists today. The average age of climate activists was 52 with 24 percent being 69 and older.

Part of the gender shift, she says, can be traced back to the mass demonstrations and protests that flourished in response to former President Donald Trump.

"Starting with the Women's March and the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump ... women are more engaged and women are more likely to be leaders," Fisher said.

"Which is nice, because especially in the environmental arena it has historically been quite the dude fest."

A similar trend holds true at the ballot box, according to data collected by the Environmental Voter Project, a nonpartisan organization focused on turning out climate voters in elections.

A report released by the Environmental Voter Project in December that looked at the patterns of registered voters in 18 different states found that after the Gen Z vote, people 65 and older represent the next largest climate voter group, with older women far exceeding older men in their propensity to list climate as their No. 1 reason for voting. The organization defines climate voters as those who are most likely to list climate change, the environment, or clean air and water as their top political priority.

"Grandmothers are now at the vanguard of today's climate movement," said Nathaniel Stinnett, founder of the Environmental Voter Project.

"Older people are three times as likely to list climate as a top priority than middle-aged people. On top of that, women in all age groups are more likely to care about climate than men," he said. "So you put those two things together ... and you can safely say that grandma is much more likely to be a climate voter than your middle-aged man."

In Arizona, where Chandler lives, older climate voters make up 231,000 registered voters in the state. The presidential election in the crucial swing state was decided by just 11,000 votes, Stinnett noted.

"Older climate voters can really throw their weight around in Arizona if they organize and if they make sure that everybody goes to the polls," he said.

In some cases, their identities as grandmothers have become an organizing force.

In California, 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations formed in 2016, after older women from the Bay Area traveled to be in solidarity with Indigenous grandmothers protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

"When they came back, they decided to form an organization that would continue to mobilize women on behalf of the climate justice movement," said Nancy Hollander, a member of the group.

1000 Grandmothers - in this case, the term encompasses all older women, not just the literal grandmothers - is rooted at the intersection of social justice and the climate crisis, supporting people of color and Indigenous-led causes in the Bay Area. The organization is divided into various working groups, each with a different focus: elections, bank divestments from fossil fuels, legislative work, nonviolent direct actions, among others.

They make frequent appearances alongside other climate activist groups at protests in front of banks like Wells Fargo, which finances oil and gas infrastructure, as well as participating in the annual Anti-Chevron day, protesting at the Chevron Refinery in Richmond, California.

For Hollander, 85, the work has been energizing, a continuation of the political activism she was a part of throughout her life. It's also helped her mentally cope with the multiple crises the world is currently experiencing.

"It facilitates a sense of agency and of me being in concert with my values and my ideals. It also puts me in touch with other people, other human beings, who are motivated by similar desires and commitments," she said.

Many of the activists emphasized how important that sense of community is, especially when the work can lead one into a sense of despair over all that has been lost. Action, they agree, is an antidote, a way to cope with that feeling and show their care. Much of their work centers on protecting the younger generation - from the threats of the climate crisis, but also in activist spaces.

"There are women in the nonviolent direct action part of the organization who really do feel that elder women - it's their time to stand up and be counted and to get arrested," Hollander said. "They consider it a historical responsibility and put themselves out there to protect the more vulnerable."

But 1000 Grandmothers credits another grandmother activist, Pennie Opal Plant, for helping train their members in nonviolent direct action and for inspiring them to take the lead of Indigenous women in the fight.

Plant, 66 - an enrolled member of the Yaqui of Southern California tribe, and of undocumented Choctaw and Cherokee ancestry - has started various organizations over the years, including Idle No More SF Bay, which she co-founded with a group of Indigenous grandmothers in 2013, first in solidarity with a group formed by First Nations women in Canada to defend treaty rights and to protect the environment from exploitation.

In 2016, Plant gathered with others in front of Wells Fargo Corporate offices in San Francisco, blocking the road in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline, when she realized the advantages she had as an older woman in the fight.

As a police liaison - or a person who aims to defuse tension with law enforcement - she went to speak to an officer who was trying to interrupt the action. When she saw him maneuvering his car over a sidewalk, she stood in front of it, her gray hair flowing. "I opened my arms really wide and was like, are you going to run over a grandmother?"

A new idea was born: The Society of Fearless Grandmothers. Once an in-person training - it now mostly exists online as a Facebook page - it helped teach other grandmothers how to protect the youth at protests.

For Plant, the role of grandmothers in the fight to protect the planet is about a simple Indigenous principle: ensuring the future for the next seven generations.

"What we're seeing is a shift starting with Indigenous women, that is lifting up the good things that mothers have to share, the good things that women that love children can share, that will help bring back balance in the world," Plant said.

The coordination between the two groups is one instance of intersectional work happening in the climate activism space. Though younger climate activists tend to be part of a more diverse movement, Fisher notes the movement is still predominantly White.

"People of color are mobilizing, but in many cases, they're not mobilizing and engaging in activism that is specifically focused on climate," Fisher said. "They may be engaging in work that is more climate justice, frontline community focused or against systemic racism, but it's framed really differently than in most of the groups that are doing this kind of climate work ... so there's still a very big gulf there that needs to be crossed."

Some of the older generation of activists see working on issues surrounding the climate as a way to try and correct some of their generation's historical wrongs.

Kathleen Sullivan, an organizer with Third Act - a national organization started by environmentalist Bill McKibben - said that's part of what has motivated her to become a climate activist in her later years.

"I couldn't live with myself if I didn't because I've been gifted with so much in life, and those gifts have come at a huge price," she said, reflecting on how resource extraction, slavery, genocide, have built this country and led to the climate crisis. "And, when you wake up to that, first you weep and and then you say, 'Oh my God, there's a whole other way to live a life, another way to understand how to be on this planet.'"

Sullivan is one of approximately 70,000 people over the age of 60 who've joined Third Act, a group specifically formed to engage people 60 and older to mobilize for climate action across the country.

"This is an act of moral responsibility. It's an act of care. And It's an act of reciprocity to the way in which we are cared for by the planet," Sullivan said. "It's an act of interconnection to your peers, because there can be great joy and great sense of solidarity with other people around this."


Jessica Kutz wrote this article for Inside Climate News.


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