Danielle Deane-Ryan Transcript

 

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Kirk: And we’re back. Welcome into another edition of Let’s Hear It. It’s gonna be a somber one, folks. It’s gonna be more somber, but we’re here. And I wanna say, as we get [00:01:00] started, Mr. Brown, glad to see you.

Eric: Hi, Kirk. We are not defeated.

Kirk: No, that’s the theme of the next couple of conversations we have ahead on Let’s Hear It. We are not defeated. So how you doing, Mr. Brown?

Eric: Yeah. So the problem with me is that I’m an optimist, and it sucks to be an optimist—

Kirk: Yeah.

Eric: When you’ve had some bad news. But I don’t know. I—I feel crappy, but we’re gonna get through this, and we’re gonna do what we need to do, and we’re gonna take advantage of what we have and all sorts of stuff. And we got into that in the conversation with Danielle.

Kirk: But yeah, we’re gonna get there. Set this up, because we talk a lot on this podcast about the arc of history, the long arc of history of justice, and this is a conversation that really sits at the center of that consideration. And many thanks to Danielle for coming on the air, because Danielle’s been a great leader in that consideration for years. Set this up for everybody. We’ll listen to it, and as usual, there’s gonna be a lot to talk about when we come back.

Eric: Well, I had a conversation with an old colleague and friend of mine, [00:02:00] Danielle Deane-Ryan. She is a senior advisor in the Office of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund—long may it live—at the Environmental Protection Agency. She’s a senior fellow at The New School in New York and former Director of Equitable Climate Solutions at the Bezos Earth Fund.

And we worked together at the Hewlett Foundation a long time ago. So, Danielle has some serious climate chops. She’s a huge part of the climate justice movement, and she’s in the middle of many conversations about how do we fund a just future that engages all people.

Kirk: Incredibly bright, incredibly personable, incredibly dedicated, very effective. Let’s listen to Danielle Deane-Ryan, and then we’ll come back. So this is Danielle Deane-Ryan on Let’s Hear It.

Eric: Welcome to Let’s Hear It. My guest today is a key ally of the climate justice movement and a very old and dear friend, Danielle Deane-Ryan. Now, Danielle is Senior Advisor in the Office of the Greenhouse Gas [00:03:00] Reduction Fund at the Environmental Protection Agency. She’s a senior fellow at The New School in New York, former Director of Equitable Climate Solutions at the Bezos Earth Fund. And quite honestly, we’d spend the rest of this episode just listing your accomplishments, Danielle. On this kind of crazy week after the election, thank you for coming on and talking to us about what the future could hold.

Danielle: Thank you, Eric. It is such an honor to have you ask me to be on your podcast. Eric taught me everything I knew about communications. And as—Eric, what was it, 20 years ago or so? You had to drag me into a briefing on communications because at the Hewlett Foundation, I was focused on—I’m director of this Egypt program, I’m focused on my facts and my policy and my key things, and then I’ll hand it over to you to do comms. You turned me around on that, and you created a monster. So wonderful, Eric. Thank you. You’re a bright spot.

Eric: After the last week? Aw, I hate to think that I dragged you. I thought I just used my excellent powers of persuasion to encourage you to—

Danielle: Of course, as you walked around into everybody’s office reminding them that it was time to come. Yes, sure. We can frame it that way.

Eric: Here we are. Yep. It’s a weird time to be talking about the climate justice movement, but maybe it’s a great time to be talking about the climate justice movement because the movement and the work never ends. But I wanna go way back to that time when we were working together at Hewlett. Low those many decades ago. And yet we haven’t changed a bit. How do you think philanthropy thought about climate funding back in whatever it was—the early 2000s?

Danielle: Luckily, there’s a great before and after story here. When I was at the Hewlett Foundation, environmental funding was seen as something we need to grow—a little bit of a silo of what we were doing. Let’s [00:05:00] add some of this environmental justice piece of it. And the fraction of dollars across philanthropy, especially the foundations that had the biggest checks like the Hewlett Foundation, was lower than it is now.

That after story that we have now is that while of course, the percentage of dollars from big foundations needs to go up, we’ve got environmental justice and climate justice being seen as something you have to weave into any of your grantmaking as a strategic priority and as you are supporting policies similarly.

So, for instance, I have a leader I admire tremendously that I helped give one of his first big grants from a big foundation 25 years ago. Wonderful guy. He was a mechanic on the side. He had formed this organization to rally his community, where too many people were dying of cancer [00:06:00] because of pollution.

That individual over the last four years was on a White House Environmental Justice Council. I couldn’t have imagined that. I’m sure he could, ’cause EJ leaders have vision.

Eric: I remember the old days. Correct me if I’m wrong, but especially when Hewlett was getting into the business, people were saying, “Let’s just get carbon outta the atmosphere, and the rising tide of carbon will lift all boats.”

Danielle: Yes, exactly. It was trickle-down mainstream environmentalism. We see how trickle-down goes. And now what you’re seeing, and what we’ve seen especially under the last four years of the—over the last four years of the Biden-Harris administration, is a policy called Justice40 that across the federal government says 40% of the benefits of these tax dollars we’re spending to address environmental issues must benefit [00:07:00] underserved communities.

And what you are seeing in strategies of some of the biggest foundations is we have to make sure that we are listening to, as a priority, environmental justice grassroots leaders that are closest to the problem. And foundations pledging to be much more transparent about the fraction of the dollars that they’re spending on—supporting organizations that are—that they’re spending and investing in environmental justice organizations whose mission includes, as a central tenet, environmental justice, and that are run by communities of color and grassroots leaders that are most affected by environmental ills.

Eric: So Justice40 is this big thing—federal government, let’s ensure that a sufficient amount of money is going towards environmental justice. What happens in the future is entirely up for grabs and obviously likely to change, to be challenged. But it seems to me that on the funding side, in philanthropy and in the key environmental organizations, that understanding is taking root. Is that a fair assessment—that these organizations now understand the power and the necessity for environmental justice in regular environmental funding and that, notwithstanding the federal government’s, what changes are going to happen in the future, that we’re starting to see this way of thinking taking hold? Is it a fair assessment?

Danielle: Yes. The only thing I would qualify is the philanthropy sector is not monolithic. So, in—absolutely embedded, right? I wouldn’t want to say the environmental funders as a whole, but that it is starting. And there are some key signposts that you can point to over the last 20 or so years that have led to that change.

Eric: Okay, that—you anticipated my questions, so that’s good. We’re cooking with gas here. Actually, we’re cooking with electricity here—much better. Let’s talk about some of those signposts. What were some of the important things that happened that began to build environmental justice into the environmental funding world and the environmental activism and nonprofit community?

Danielle: Sure. There are a number of specific campaigns and actions that are common to these particular signposts over the last 20-something years. We always have to emphasize that the environmental justice movement has been there for decades and that this is not something that somehow began a few years ago.

What you saw were a couple of campaigns, some of them I was pleased to help support, that combined—as you would always advise, Eric—excellent, irrefutable data with great comms strategy and engagement. And as you know, Eric, strategic communication sometimes means knowing the times to shut up and the times to go loud to the press.

One of them was Green 2.0. Professor Dorceta Taylor, one of the best environmental scholars in the country—one of the best environmental justice and environmental scholars in the country—wrote a report highlighting how god-awful diversity was among the boards and the senior staffs of the organizations that were getting most of the money from environmental philanthropy. She included their stories. It wasn’t just numbers, right? It was not just numbers. She included stories of the revolving doors, sometimes, you were seeing of people of color going in and out and the experiences they were having with a culture that was not very welcoming.

The guidance on how to make that issue not a dusty report that sat somewhere, but that made the Washington Post pay attention to it and write a long article on it. The advisory group was a diverse mix of individuals in terms of expertise, class, and race. What you saw after that was a jump in, at foundations and at NGOs, individuals that were more charged specifically with addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion issues within those foundations and those NGOs. And also a jump in the number of leaders from diverse communities—diverse executives at the board level and at the director level—which is where you needed it for change to happen. So that’s one. It got a lot of press.

And then in the—under the Obama administration, we know that was a first attempt at comprehensive federal climate legislation. It failed. There were postmortems. One of the postmortems was that the environmental leaders that were looking to push this at the policy level did not include enough at the table environmental justice leaders and efforts to make sure that policies integrated environmental justice efforts. So that was a critical moment as well, because those postmortems were done by a lot of very respected scholars.

One of the [00:13:00] other signposts was something called the Climate Funders Justice Pledge. The advance from Green 2.0, as I mentioned, was for these organizations that have the most money: let’s try to make sure they’re paying more attention to equity. The Climate Funders Justice Pledge looked at what the biggest environmental funders were spending directly on environmental justice organizations that were formed by, led by, and whose majority boards and staff were communities of color.

And again, talking, Eric, about what you shared with us about facts plus communications. It is an excellent scholarly report where you couldn’t argue with the numbers, by Professor Ana Baptista at The New School—another extraordinary environmental scholar—who found that the numbers were embarrassing. And they did not match what the foundations themselves were saying. So by this point, most of the philanthropic foundations and most of the biggest NGOs on their websites said, “We care about diversity. We understand this needs to be integrated into the work we do, not siloed.” That wasn’t translating into the amount of funding that was going into these organizations.

And the campaign asked for two things—and you could do either or both of these if you were a foundation, especially one of the top 40 foundations, which was a strategic decision. One, it said, “Will you pledge to tell us—the environmental community, the environmental movement—what percentage of your dollars are going to environmental justice organizations?” And you could stop there. If you wanted to do more, the second ask was, “Whatever that number is, pledge to increase it to 30% of your budget.” So then we’re not having wishy-washy conversations about, “We need more,” or, “Is there a problem?” We’re saying to foundations, as they ask of their grantees, “We want rigor. What’s your number?” A lot of them didn’t even know their number.

And getting back to Eric, some of the consistent characteristics of another campaign that got a huge amount of press is: one, we had dedicated money for communications support. Secondly, the design of the campaign included and was driven by environmental justice leaders. For those that might not be aware, one of the tenets of environmental justice leaders is: “Nothing about us without us.” We don’t want superheroes coming in to save us. We know the solutions here and want to be partners with you.

The third one was, before this campaign ever went public, a tremendous amount of work was done behind the scenes to reach out to the very foundations that we were asking to make a change. Because the campaign was funded by the Donors of Color Network, and they started by saying, “Donor to donor, funder to funder. Let’s talk about this.” And the campaign, when it launched—the day the website went up—had three or four influential funders that said, “Sign me up.” Kresge Foundation, Pisces Foundation, JPB Foundation. And no, this was another strategic decision—no big foundation could say, “Why’d you guys not talk to me first?” We called, we asked, we spoke to some of you. And those strategic decisions helped the campaign itself and the journalists pay a lot more attention and focus. And a lot of people say foundations aren’t accountable. Foundations—they’ll want to look like they’re doing the right thing. And if you say you’re saying one thing, but you’re doing another, what gives? Prove that.

Eric: It’s an amazing story about really gentle but highly effective persuasion, and so we’ll talk more about that after the break. We’ll be right back with Danielle Deane-Ryan.

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Eric: Welcome back to Let’s Hear It. My guest today is Danielle Deane-Ryan. She’s an advisor to the EPA, a fellow at The New School, and a phenomenal ally to the environmental justice movement. She’s really helped drive so much of what we are seeing right now—and she’s a pal. But I want to go back to your roots. You’re from Trinidad. What does coming from a small island nation in the pathway of many large weather events teach you about how you approach your work?

Danielle: I’m happy to be a proud Trini. Yes, I’m from Trinidad and Tobago. When I was growing up, the attention on climate change impacts, per se, was not at all close to where it is now. One of the unique things about Trinidad and Tobago compared to a lot of other islands is that we are an oil-producing nation. The geology that leads to us having oil is similar to Venezuela—we’re off the coast of Venezuela—and our government invested our oil revenues in free education for so many after independence from the British. So, I had the opportunity to go to one of the best schools in the country for practically free.

So, we were very—especially at that time—pro-oil, for at least seeing oil as something that brings in revenue that has good benefits. But for me and others, we also saw we’ve got the most beautiful coral reefs in the world. We’ve got wonderful ecosystems. We saw what the pollution was doing. And so, before I had language like “environmental justice” or “sustainable development,” the question for me was: how do we get the money and resources we need for education, for free healthcare, for all these good things without wrecking the very island and home that we love? And so, for me, that was a driving question and something that still is the basics of what drives me today.

Eric: Yeah, it’s really interesting to see, particularly now. Now, I know growing up you didn’t really think about climate change and hurricanes and big weather events as being as linked as they are now. But if you live in the Caribbean, it’s just a roll of the dice from year to year, it feels like, because—

Danielle: Oh, it’s absolutely that. And you’re having to work on adaptation and resilience, not just trying to get emissions down, because climate change is here. The amount of flooding we’re seeing is much higher. The impacts on the ocean, on fishing, on a number of other sectors is being driven by waters that are warming. The way in which pollutants are affecting ecosystems is also huge. And as my mom will tell you, it is hotter than it used to be. Sometimes as you’re moving along, you wonder, “Gosh, is it just me?” And I was home just this past summer and went to the beach that I’ve gone to every summer. It’s one of those beaches that usually you dive into, and you get that little shiver before you get accustomed to it. And there was none. It was like bathwater. It’s worrying, to say the least.

Eric: That’s an understatement. All right, so let’s look ahead. We just had an election. It didn’t go well. Clearly, there are going to be challenges all along the way. Where do you see the environmental justice movement building on what it has learned? What do you say to these organizations that are really worried that we’re going to see retrenchment and challenges? How do you—A, what sort of pep talk do you give them (and I hope you do), and B, where do you start? Where do you start to think about the things to build upon and to grow over time?

Danielle: Sure. And just a reminder of the context of the last four years and that progression in thought that we saw in the environmental movement. One of the things the Biden administration made sure to do was outreach to environmental justice organizations during the campaign phase, not just after. And that led to, as I mentioned, a White House EJ Council and policies that said we have to make sure that 40% of the dollars that we are investing benefit communities of color.

And within the Inflation Reduction Act, what you saw was the single biggest infusion of funds for clean energy this country has seen—$27 billion going to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which is where I’ve been embedded as an advisor. And in the statute, it made clear that a particular percentage had to go to underserved communities.

So, as we look ahead—you said, Eric, hey, what might you be saying to the environmental justice movement? The question is: what are they saying to me?

Danielle: The question is: what are they saying to me? Okay. These are incredibly resilient leaders that have seen so much forward movement in the integration of environmental justice and mainstream organizations in a way that is at a high watermark. And I would say there are three things I’m hearing.

One is: once you embed—or make a lot of progress embedding—thinking about environmental justice and the importance of clean air and water, you can try to roll that back, but you can’t rip it out. And what you’re going to see partly as well, just like the last time that we had an administration that wasn’t so friendly, is taking advantage of state-level policies, local-level policies that are going to become a bulwark against efforts that might be made to roll things back.

You’re going to see foundations and others, many of them, pushing to keep their environmental justice commitments strong because they know if people in the country can’t see how addressing these environmental issues is going to benefit them, it’s not at all going to help.

One of the other things that we have seen, and this is even in the language coming out of the administration that just got elected, is you don’t see politicians these days saying, “Look, you have to choose between jobs and a clean environment.” What you see, even from this administration, is, “Hey, clean water, clean air—we’re going to keep that going for you, but don’t worry, we can get that while we tweak and have a system that has more oil.” We know that’s not the case, but it is a sign of progress that language and that narrative has to be there, even if the policies that underline it are problematic.

You’re going to see, hopefully, deeper investment in organizing across the country in a way that doesn’t say, “Let’s not worry with those red states. We’ll just focus on the blue and the purple.” And hopefully we see a scaling up of funding to environmental justice organizations.

The one other thing I would say, Eric, is one of the things I hope I see—and I know many hope we see—is greater spending on exactly what you’re so great at, which is communications. And we can say more about that, but I know that the leaders within the philanthropy sector that are supporting embedding communications efforts want to see way more. They have been frustrated and have seen the ways in which the weaknesses in communications led us to this point, even though some of the policies were groundbreaking.

Eric: You just—as we’re sitting here, again, I’m always mad at Kirk for making me do this stupid podcast because it takes too much of my time—but I also learn a lot from folks like you. And as I’m sitting here listening to you talk, it is just a reminder to me—you’re right about the value of communications. There’s a lot of money in the pipeline right now. The next administration is threatening to rip it out, and I think that this is an opportune moment to remind the people in those communities and those constituencies that money is there, it’s programmed, and it’s ready to go. And if the other guys take it away, it’s on them. And we have to help remind people that this stuff is happening. There are jobs to be had; there’s a better world to be had as a result. And just hold their feet to the fire because I think a lot of people are saying, “Oh, all that money’s going to go away because the new administration doesn’t want it.” It’s not too late. And you—at the very least, you have to make it hurt to take away all this great investment that has the opportunity to be transformational for communities across the country. So someone is saying that there’s a Georgia plant—a multi-billion-dollar Georgia plant—that is a swing state. It’s a community where they could use those jobs, and it just feels like this is the moment to bang hard on the accelerator about talking about the value of this investment, about all of this great legislation that got passed. It’s not too late, people. Do you—is that a reasonably functional idea?

Danielle: Absolutely. And one of the excellent things that this administration made sure to do is get the majority of the funding out to institutions and coalitions that are going to be implementing clean energy policies while simultaneously making sure that underserved communities benefit from it, and as they try to attract more financing from the private sector.

This is an important point: the money that got passed by the IRA isn’t just sitting in some government budget somewhere waiting to be slashed. In particular for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, it was a big competition, a lot of stakeholder engagement—from the private sector to the environmental justice sector, to science, to finance folks—and you have billions now out the door to support solar energy across the country. That will go through state and local governments. That will help support additional capital on the balance sheets of community lenders, CDFIs, the types of institutions that have been economic drivers and embedded in underserved communities—not just the Citibanks of the world. And that one is out the door. It’s very hard to claw back some of it, even if you try to mess with it. So that is some good news that people should hold onto.

Eric: Thank you for that silver lining. But it’s also a reminder that funders, activists, forward-thinking government folks, policymakers built this in, and we can do it again. I firmly believe that as well. Things are going to happen—

Danielle: What do you think? I just talked about so many things that got done right. Let me share with you something on communications that definitely could have been done better. All this great work happened, and these funds are out the door. If it’s not appreciated by communities—particularly those that are going to benefit most from it—it means you had a communications problem.

Danielle: And I’ll give you an example.

In the aftermath of the last week, I’ve heard from some of the most senior communications leaders that have been in government saying, “When you’re sitting in government, your job is not necessarily to communicate about the movement. It’s to act.”

Eric: Wait—I throw up a little bit in my mouth.

Danielle: There you go. And you had leaders across the country who were flagging that and who were saying last year, “This is not going to work.” And we’ve heard from other politicians across the country who were sounding the alarm on this last year.

And so, one of those leaders said, when you look at the policies that tend to be coming more from the Democratic Party—about how historic this program was, about how it’s going to benefit people, about the ability to grow the economy and have jobs as you get a cleaner energy economy and reduce climate change—one of the comments he had, because you’re seeing support for this in every state, red states, blue states, purple states, is he said, “We have a good product and terrible packaging.” And I thought that was spot on.

I heard it inside government. I heard it in offices where I was advising. And while there are so many other factors that contribute to what we’re seeing today, as I talk to my friends that are in the communications space, they’re so frustrated because we’ve learned a little bit from the days of Solyndra, which was not a crisis solely of a project that went bad—it was a failure of good crisis communications and preparation.

And so now here we are, trying to batten down the hatches rather than getting a second wind in our sails. And so, the amount of attention paid to communicating what you’re doing is so important. And that’s not just through mainstream channels. As you’ve said, Eric, if you’re a typical citizen, you’re not going to the EPA’s website to read a press release and see what they’re doing for you.

Eric: You may be right.

Danielle: It’s possible you’re correct.

One of the things we were able to do as I was embedded within the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund is an example of what a better approach looks like, though it’s not as well-funded. That’s an institution like Ethnic Media Services. It’s a network of media organizations across the country that are embedded in their communities. And they have simultaneous translation of any webinar they’re doing about a particular issue. They care a lot about climate.

And so, at the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, we had a webinar for them that included the head of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, coupled with members of the community that had benefited from saving money because they were able to get investments to make their house more energy-efficient, and a couple of these institutions that had gotten awards for these billions of dollars. And, by the way, you can find that list on epa.gov/ggrf.

Eric: Because these listeners actually do go to the EPA website.

Danielle: Yes, they do. And this wasn’t an approach of, “Let us do a webinar for you to listen to.” This was the leaders and organizations I just described saying, “We want to share with you how we think this is going to help your community. And we now want you—the 60 or so journalists on this webinar—to tell us and ask us questions so that we, who have the trust of our communities, can go forth and help connect the dots.”

That’s an institution—and if there are any foundations listening, throw more money at them. One session that was national—they can do this at regional levels. There was simultaneous translation in Spanish, Korean, Chinese. Those are the institutions that are going to be there, that are resilient, that need more funding, and need to be listened to more if we are to help communities understand and support the excellent work that is being done.

Eric: I think that we can certainly take away from this last period of time that the ability to not just do the work, but to tell a story, to help people connect about the value of this work and their lives, and to remind folks of what’s happening—to help them understand their role in it, to help them understand where they connect. It’s obviously something that was missing, and we need to do more of it. We need to do better at it. I would say to foundations, you need to continue to invest in these kinds of communications and the kinds of work that you’ve been doing over your career—not just gathering the data, but to produce ways to help people be accountable to it, and to begin to engage folks on issues that really matter in their lives and that will bring great benefits. That’s so obvious. You’ve taught me that. We’ve seen it. It’s really been an important lesson that we need to continue to learn.

Danielle: Yes. And again, on the plus side, because we have to see the balance: we saw so many foundations stepping up over the last few years to help environmental justice and economic justice organizations even apply for this funding. Because you say, “Hey, the bank’s open,” doesn’t mean people have the ability to complete government applications—which tend to be short and clear. No.

And what you also saw was stakeholder engagement at a scale that I have not seen as these applications for the billions of funds got evaluated by organizations across the federal government. This wasn’t just EPA. These were the consumer protection folks, the folks in transport, those in buildings, Treasury, et cetera. You saw the stakeholder engagement inform the design of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

So, you don’t just have clean energy finance organizations that could have gotten these funds. And as environmental or economic justice organizations, it also would’ve been difficult to be successful applying for these funds without the clean energy finance pieces of it. So, what you saw were coalitions coming together that had the best of both worlds.

Danielle: So what you saw were coalitions coming together that had the best of both worlds. Because if you are going to be saying to a community, “This can help you get good jobs, this can help businesses in your community get more business, which helps to create wealth,” you can’t go in as some organization and say, “I have money, and you don’t know me, but let’s chat.”

So what you saw was one chunk of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund that is putting a lot of funding into community development finance institutions that are trusted by those communities. Those communities know they’re not going to fleece them. And that we hadn’t seen at this level before. And as a result, again, of some things the Biden administration did really well in terms of outreach. But again, you can’t tell your boss, “Hey, I am working so hard for you that I don’t have time to tell you what I’m doing.”

Eric: It doesn’t work.

Danielle: It doesn’t work.

Eric: Well, I think we’ve made the case for communications here. I really appreciate all of your work over the years. I appreciate you as a friend. Danielle Deane-Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Danielle: Thank you, Eric. It’s a joy to have had you go from not just being a mentor to a friend. Thank you so much for all the work that you’re doing.

Kirk: And we’re back. So the timeliness of this, of course, having this conversation in the shadow of this election result that has landed as a punch in the gut for many of us. I will say your earlier note about optimism, Eric. If there’s anybody who can vouch for the capacity to take an impossible idea and turn it into a central driving strategy—not just for philanthropic interventions, but for basically shaping the global conversation about how we make substantial change—I would say that Danielle Deane-Ryan is not a bad personality on the podcast to talk about things like that in this moment. Because this work that Danielle has done around environmental justice and making sure that it’s not at the margins, not at the fringe, not forgotten, not ignored by philanthropy, but it actually sits at the center of philanthropic investments and then subsequently some of the largest public sector investments in history—Danielle has seen it all.

Eric: She’s been there at the birth of a lot of important policy, a lot of important philanthropy. And she will join with a lot of folks to try and figure out what to do next. And that’s really important. In hearing her talk about this work, I found—I find it to be, like I said, I’m an optimist, so I see the positive things in everything, but I have a sense that so much of what her work has involved—which is ensuring that we have actual justice in the policies around climate that we’re trying to advance—so much of that work is embedded. It’s working its way through the system. It’s in the system. I think it would be very hard to unwind. And if it weren’t for the work of her and funders who have been thinking about this for a long time, we’d be in a lot worse shape than we are.

Kirk: Well, and those investments, efforts—this is $27 billion that’s being driven to organizations and projects and institutions that are led by people of color, led by people representing communities that have been at the margins of these issues for so long. The dollars have already been released. And so I think this is the key consideration. Whatever happens in terms of, “Let’s reduce government,” this part of what we’re talking about is actually outside—it’s past the umbrella we think of what those efforts could be about. And so that gives us some hope. And I gotta say, like the story you tracked through with Danielle about the work that she’s done—the phrase “trickle-down mainstream environmentalism,” man, that landed. Like the environmental justice just will kind of grow as a kind of a thing that happens as we get all the carbon cleaned out of the atmosphere, right? And Danielle goes, “No, actually. Let’s agree to put a toe—let’s take a look actually at what’s happening. You know what? Where’s the diversity in our boards, in our senior staff of these large environmental organizations?” And guess what? There were issues. And those issues have started to be cleaned up.

Eric: Okay, so I have two things that I want to talk about.

Kirk: Yeah.

Eric: One has nothing to do with the conversation with Danielle, but I think is valuable in the context of this election. I just had a drink the other day at this bar in San Francisco called The Interval at The Long Now. And it is run by a charitable foundation called The Long Now Foundation, which looks at the world in terms of the next 10,000 years. And whereas there is a curve, and the curve can bend in one direction or another, in 10,000 years, no one’s gonna give a rat’s ass in flaming hell about what happened in this election, I don’t think. And I think in our own minds, we have to start thinking about things in these longer timeframes. And it gave me great solace to have a beautifully constructed cocktail at The Interval at The Long Now. If you’re in San Francisco—and please, welcome to the bubble—you are all welcome to come to the bubble here. Go there and think about the world in terms of 10,000 years, and it’ll make you feel better. I guarantee it. And so will the cocktail, unless you don’t drink, in which case they have some beautiful non-alcoholic cocktails. It’ll also make you feel better.

Kirk: Perfect.

Eric: And so that’s the first thing. The second thing—this is something that Danielle inspired me with—is that in the next period of time, this $27 billion and other money that’s programmed through all sorts of things is going to land. And to the extent that the next administration tries to claw that back, communications has to make those folks suffer.

We have to tell the story about how this money is improving lives, creating jobs, creating a future for our kids. That money is going in there, and if those folks take it away, they will have to pay politically. And I think that is the opportunity that sits right in front of us right now. Danielle talked a lot about communications—and, frankly, the failure to do the kind of communications that would’ve been effective to help tell this story—but it is not too late, people. We should not put our tails between our legs and just wander off and say, “Woe is me.” We have to tell the story of how these investments are going to improve people’s lives. And like I said, if they don’t do what they need to do, they’re gonna have to pay.

Those are my two totally disparate things that I’m sitting with right now as I think about this conversation that I had with Danielle.

Kirk: Let’s double down on this a little bit. Let’s do our own post-election postmortem because, to your point, Eric, I think one of the things that’s been striking to me about the kind of post-election deep grief that everybody’s going through—and first of all, let’s just acknowledge that piece, that there is profound, gut-wrenching grief about what could have been versus what looks to be coming.

One of the things that’s interesting for me, though, is as a community, I think we gotta pause and let’s do a hard stop and admit where and how we were wrong. And it’s been interesting to see our whole industry of punditry—it’s like they can’t wait to admit how right they were. They spent years ignoring these central threads that are being surfaced now in terms of the exit polling, where people were at, et cetera. Nobody was talking about it at all. Suddenly we get this election result, and now everybody admits how they were not talking about any of that stuff.

So can we just pause for a second? And I think that’s actually important because Danielle’s work actually shows us what this arc can look like. The Green 2.0 work that Danielle did, the effort within the Obama administration to try to pass cornerstone climate rules and then missing the environmental justice component, which actually cut that effort off at the knees—and so you end up with the Climate Funders Justice Pledge as a result. Then Danielle helping organizations think through how to make climate justice the center of their strategies. All of that progress, all of that work starts with this evidence-based, careful cataloging of what was missing, what was wrong.

And so, to your point about how we need to be integrating communications more profoundly going forward—and by the way, can you believe that we are still having this conversation? And you’ve seen me lose my mind in meetings. In fact, our last podcast was so great because it was all about this thread, this discussion about how important it is to pull these stories forward. And if you don’t have the right communications framework in place, yes, we have $27 billion headed out the door, but without a story to hold it, this is water going through the sand. It just vanishes, even though it’s so incredible.

Eric: So, here’s the thing. Do you know what a McGuffin is?

Kirk: Yes, of course, as a huge Hitchcock fan.

Eric: Don’t you think—so to me, I think our whole politics—actually, you have to explain the McGuffin to the non-Hitchcock fans out there.

Kirk: Well, you explain the McGuffin because you’re the trained professional here. So what—explain the McGuffin in a scene.

Eric: The McGuffin is the excuse to move the scene forward. So Alfred Hitchcock would put something in a scene, and that would be—and I can’t give you a good example right now because it’s late—but it was the thing that got you into the scene that engaged the moviegoer, and then he would take them where he wanted them to go. So the McGuffin is almost like a shiny thing that would make it interesting.

Kirk: And it seems important—

Eric: It seems important.

Kirk: —but it’s not really critical to the plot.

Eric: Correct.

Kirk: But it gets your interest.

Eric: Correct.

Kirk: Don’t you think that politics in America is really about the McGuffin? It’s McGuffin politics, like all of these topics, all of this noise—it’s all distraction from the central issues. And you’ve heard me talk about this many times: I think energy is the central issue of our time. Energy politics—this is all about the future of energy, but we have all this noise. And again, I think what Danielle rightly points out is that when we actually do the thorough work, the analysis work, understand what interventions are needed, and then follow up and do that work, deliver on it, we can move the needle.

If you can make environmental justice a centerpiece of philanthropy and public investment from where it had been, we can take this conversation further, and we can make these conversations around our future—what it’s going to look like and how it’s going to benefit everybody. If we just invest in the right things and do this work with communities leading us along the way, we’re going to be able to have that payoff too. But we need to do that work. We need to commit to that work.

Eric: The fact of the matter is we have work to do, and Danielle and her colleagues point the way to the work.

Kirk: That’s it. That’s right. That’s right. One hundred percent. And this is the work that can be done, must be done, should be done, and will be done. And it’s going to take time. It’s going to take time to build up these possibilities.

Kirk: It’s going to take time to build up these possibilities. I will say, I loved your conversation with Danielle about Trinidad and growing up in Trinidad. Like, this is—we start with the most unlikely of stories. And Trinidad is a place where we see all of these climate impacts expressed in real time. We also see the importance of interventions. Okay, if you’ve got a bunch of revenue from oil, drive it into education, you’ll produce these great, talented, gifted people who can actually come out and make the world a better place.

And I just love Danielle’s experience of, “God, we’re seeing flooding, there are impacts on fishing, and guess what? It’s hotter than it used to be.” The water’s like a bathtub these days. So I just—I don’t know—I love that. I love that reflection from Danielle, where Danielle got started.

Eric: It’s a great story of somebody who has created this phenomenal career and is using those opportunities to engage funders, engage government, to be in the kinds of conversations that she needs to be in, in order to move these ideas forward. And for that, we’re really grateful. And she’s just such a—she’s also just such a great booster for communications because she sees the value.

Kirk: Yeah.

Eric: That’s really helpful if you’re out there listening. Hey, could listen from somebody who’s been in the middle of all of these things. She says, “Look, we need to do better on communications.”

Kirk: We’re hearing it from the inside, the halls of power—that observation that, “We’ve got a great product, just terrible packaging.” And that comment from the internal conversations: “Our job is to act. It’s not to communicate. Our job is to just be out there acting.” Oh, man.

Eric: I know.

Kirk: Oh, man. It’s—yeah. Okay. Woe is us, the underappreciated communications mooks.

Eric: Let’s assess what’s wrong so we can understand the interventions that we need to drive toward to get to what’s right. And I think that you and I have experienced—and many of us have seen—that 10% of action matched with 90% of effective communication really can change the needle.

Kirk: I was going to say, I think that’s what this entire conversation is about. But that’s fine. We’ll move on. No, this has been such a great discussion, Eric. I really appreciated your conversation with Danielle. She was just phenomenal.

Eric: Thank you. And I hope it inspires people. We have the ability to get through this. Danielle shows us how you take what seems impossible, and with patience, strategy, and persistence, you make progress. And, yes, communications helps. So, if there’s a lesson here, funders, activists, government—invest in telling the story. It’s how we get people to see the value of the work and make it stick.

Kirk: Well said, Mr. Brown. Well said.

Eric: Thank you, Kirk. And thank you, Danielle.

Kirk: Thank you, Danielle. And we look forward to what’s ahead for her in her career. And, Mr. Brown, once again, thanks for another really excellent conversation on Let’s Hear It.

Eric: You’re very welcome, and you’re welcome for my pulling you out of your crazy, quirky spiral.

Kirk: There’s more to come. You’re welcome.

Eric: We’ll see you next time on Let’s Hear It. Oh, goodie.

Kirk: Okay, everybody, that’s it for this episode. Please let us know if you have any thoughts about what you heard today or people we should have on this show—and that definitely includes yourself. And we’d like to thank—

Eric: Our indefatigable producer, Harper Brown.

Kirk: John Ali, the tuneful and inspiring composer of our theme music, and our sponsor—

Eric: The Lumina Foundation. Please check out Lumina’s terrific podcast, Today’s Students, Tomorrow’s Talent. You can find that at luminafoundation.org.

Kirk: And we certainly thank today’s guest. And of course, all of you.

Eric: And most importantly, thank you, Mr. Brown.

Kirk: Oh, no, no, no, no. Thank you, Mr. Brown.

Eric: Okay, everybody. Till next time.