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Season Five

Reverend Yearwood Keynote Speech @ The University of Maryland

Rev Yearwood was recently the keynote speaker at the University of Maryland’s Environmental Justice and Health Disparities Symposium. The symposium theme was “people, power, & politics,” highlighting energy justice, climate change, power dynamics in environmental justice, and the use of technology in environmental justice work.

On this episode of The Coolest Show, Rev Yearwood delivers an eye-opening message on the result of recent climate events impacting communities, and how big business is directly responsible for health emergencies for the people who inhabit these areas, and measures they use to continue the cycle.

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Season Five

Black Executives w/ Jahi Wise

The scale of the climate crisis requires unprecedented investments to combat its causes and impacts. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) allocated $27 billion to EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), composed of three grant programs designed to: reduce greenhouse gas emissions; deliver the benefits of clean energy technologies to “low-income and disadvantaged” communities; and mobilize financing and private capital to stimulate the deployment of additional clean energy projects. Jahi Wise is the Acting Director for the GGRF and Senior Advisor to the Administrator. In this episode, he speaks with Rev Yearwood about climate finance, GGRF’s three programs, and the future he’s committed to creating for his children.

Learn More: www.epa.gov/greenhouse-gas-reduction-fund/about-greenhouse-gas-reduction-fund

Our Black Executive series highlights Black folk in pivotal roles in the Biden-Harris Administration. Given the Administration’s investment in climate and clean energy and its relatively short timeline, we want to ensure those individuals who have been tasked with what could accurately be called an “impossible feat” are seen and supported. Like the rest of us, they have humanity and their own vision for the work. While the Administration might not bring the entirety of their visions to fruition, we want to archive it all so that in community, we can continue to support their efforts for our people and the whole planet.

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Season Five

In Memoriam: Green Deen w/ ibrahim abdul-matin

In Memoriam The Coolest Show presents a Tribute to ibrahim abdul-matin, Activist, Author, and Leader. Abdul-Matin passed away in California on June 21, 2023, and we would like to honor him this Labor Day by replaying his interview with Reverend Yearwood from Season 3. Remember to love yourself and each other.

It is important to be grounded when doing this work. For people like Rev Yearwood and Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, urban strategist and author, they ground themselves in their spiritual faith. They discuss extractivism vs regeneration, phases of the environmental movement, and the connections between Islam and the environment.