Why a clean(er) media diet is an important way to prepare for climate change
*I edited this blog on 1-27-2025 to keep it more focused on mutual aid. I removed a lot of content about my anger/anxiety at our new-old president and everything I was seeing in the news.
Blog cover image by Scott Clause, “Millions of Americans think they’re safe from flood waters. They aren’t.”
If you’ve been paying any attention at all to the series of climate disasters around the country, there’s one thing that is common to all of them: neighbors helping neighbors. Governments and non-profit organizations certainly have a critical role to play, but, increasingly, the speed and scope of many of these disasters is exceeding the capacity of our current system. It’s also quickly becoming apparent that the amount of money that is going to be needed to help people recover is gobsmacking and that insurance companies will increasingly make the decision not to insure people in certain places because the risk is too high.
I’ll get back to the main issue, “neighbors helping neighbor,” also referred to as mutual aid, in just a second. I’m sure this comes as no surprise to you: we’re not currently in good place as a society and we have a lot of work to do to fix ourselves. Preparing for disaster does not mean just assembling a go-bag. We can be better prepared to cope with more frequent disasters by intentionally building the capacity of our communities to do so.
Dean Spade defines ‘mutual aid’ as “…the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world.” That definition makes clear that mutual aid is not just what people do in the aftermath of a disaster, but that it’s an ongoing process where we’re concerned and proactive about the wellbeing of people, even if we don’t know them.
The cover of Mutual Aid by Dean Spade
Unless you’re careful, your lizard brain plus all the crap in your social media feeds is likely to lead you somewhere where, if you stopped and thought about it for a second, you’d rather not be.
According to Spade, there are three key elements to effective mutual aid systems. For each of these elements, ask yourself if your current media diet actively works against achieving this element:
Mutual aid projects work to meet survival needs and build shared understanding about why people do not have what they need.
Mutual aid projects mobilize people, expand solidarity, and build movements.
Mutual aid projects are participatory, solving problems through collective action rather than waiting for saviors.
At the core of this idea of mutual aid is that you agree to help someone who is not like you because of our shared humanity even though you may disagree with or dislike them. It means checking your internal dialogue and ensuring that you don’t wish harm to others; that you want to see people be happy and that they can successfully deal with their own struggles; that you will help them even if you get absolutely nothing in return. That means we need to cultivate a steady-state empathetic orientation towards the world. I believe many of us have a media diet that works actively against that.
More reading:
Conscious (and conscientious) media consumption
Meta just flipped the switch that prevents misinformation from spreading in the United States
Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Storm Edition | On the Media | WNYC Studios
Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Migration Edition (At Home) | On the Media | WNYC Studios
Stories about the inadequacy of insurance in our climate changing world
Efforts to eliminate DEI
