We’re Back, International Mountain Day, Project Mushroom!

AND, WE’RE BACK!

Thanks, everybody for your notes and DM’s of understanding. We really felt your support while dealing with our family emergency. As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic is still with us, which complicates everything.  I’m just glad we’re back researching and delivering stories of strength, hope and courage in the era of climate change!

PROJECT MUSHROOM

When Twitter began to implode, you know the day Elon Musk fired half of Twitter’s staff in a day, and the next day when he told the remaining staff they better work long hours or quit, or later that month when Musk tweeted so many heinous things—we at The Climate Daily began looking for a safe space to share community with our followers and other like-minded, positive action climate change people. We think we may have found it in Project Mushroom, thanks to one of our favorite listeners and collaborators, Penny, host of Bristol, England’s “One Love, One Planet” podcast. Project Mushroom is a community platform for justice and action, created by Eric Holthaus and a team of inclusive BIPOC enviro justice creators and moderators, on the Mastodon social media platform. 

According to their website, although the platform is being built not just as a replacement for Twitter, but to fit creators’ and communities’ broad needs for safety and community, the concept really caught fire with Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and making it a privately-held company. The site will offer at least four types of creator services: Newsletter hosting/publishing, Live events hosting (audio, video, in person, and creator support), A curated Mastodon-based social media network with paid moderators,  Onboarding assistance for your followers to join you

Why does Project Mushroom matter to us? One because it’s time for better self-governance in social media + truth-telling + journalism that’s not run by billionaires. And secondly, because Project Mushroom is doing this for us. The name ‘Project Mushroom’ comes from the concept that a mushroom is the visible fruit of the work of billions of mycelium connections waiting for the perfect moment to rise up together. PM has a Kickstarter campaign trying to raise $200K by December 15th. The campaign has raised about $150K so far. Click on the link in the Deeper Dive Section of this story at TheClimate.org/episodes to help fund this great idea. We did. Or go to kickstarter.com and search for project mushroom.

DEEPER DIVE: Project Mushroom, Kickstarter

INTERNATIONAL MOUNTAIN DAY!

Because we were off the latter part of last week, we weren’t able to extoll the virtues of International Mountain Day, held December 11 each year. Mountain Day refers to three different and unrelated events: (1) Mountain Day, a student celebration in some colleges in the United States in which classes are cancelled without prior notice, and the student body heads to the mountains or a park, (2) International Mountain Day, held each year on 11 December, which was established by the UN General Assembly in 2003 to encourage sustainable development in mountains, and (3) Mountain Day, a national holiday in Japan as of 2016.In 2023 mountain day will happen on August 11th. 

Mountain Day in the USA apparently began back in at least 1838, when the students of Mount Holyoke College headed off to Mount Holyoke. Mount Holyoke’s bitter rivalsa at Smith College declared their own Mountain Day in 1877. “International Mountain Day”, was designated by the United Nations General Assembly in 2003. The General Assembly “encouraged the international community to organize events at all levels on that day to highlight the importance of sustainable mountain development.” Why does International Mountain Day (past) matter to us? Think of Josué Lorca, president of Venezuela’s National Parks Institute, who in 2018 traveled to the mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Mérida in Venezuela to announce measures intended to lengthen the life of Venezuela’s last remaining glacier. Mountains aren’t just rocks. They’re entire ecosystems which, for the sake of biodiversity and climate resilience, deserve preservation.

BTW, we’ll get to celebrate International Mountain Day again soon. The UN is moving it from December 11 to August 11th in 2023!

DEEPER DIVE: Wikpedia