For decades, the waters edging northern Queens, a borough in New York City where I’ve lived several times throughout my long history as a proud New Yorker, carried the forgotten weight of industrial disregard. Abandoned boats, half-sunken barges, rotting docks, and tangled metal debris choked Flushing Bay and Flushing Creek, turning a vital tidal waterway into an urban blight.
These vessels did far more than ruin the view. The boats leach motor oil, toxic antifouling paints, microplastics from decaying fiberglass, and heavy metals directly into the mud and water. They trap plastic waste, smother native marsh grasses, and block natural water flow, creating stagnant, low-oxygen conditions that choke out fish and marine life. For surrounding communities—largely working-class, immigrant-rich neighborhoods that have historically borne the brunt of environmental neglect—the shoreline became an obstacle as well as a health hazard.
Now, a major cleanup and removal effort spearheaded by local advocates and supported by federal funding led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is finally clearing this neglected waterway from the bottom up.
Removing the Ghosts of Industry
Hauling decades-old derelict vessels out of shallow tidal water is meticulous, physical work. It requires specialized cranes, marine salvagers, environmental containment booms, and coordinated stewardship across federal, state, and local agencies. This web of cooperation is difficult to assemble and even harder to manage, and it is through the incredible efforts of organizations such as the Guardians of Flushing Bay, Riverkeeper, and the DEC, along with elected officials and the residents, that this is happening. The physical salvage work on the ground is being run directly by NYC Parks through their newly launched Office of Marine Debris Disposal and Vessel Surrendering, funded in partnership with NOAA and bolstered by Representative Ocasio-Cortez.
Each extracted hull delivers an immediate win for the local ecosystem:
Unlocking the Natural Tidal Circulation: Removing massive obstructions allows natural currents and tides to flush sediment and oxygenate the water, reversing chronic stagnation and literally bringing the waters back to life.
Stopping Chemical Leaks: Lifting out old fuel tanks and the vessels that have peeling lead paint along with chemically treated lumber removes continuous sources of toxicity that are poisoning this waterway and those who live there.
Restoring Shoreline Habitats: Clear mudflats and shorelines give native plants, sea life, and foraging shorebirds space to return and anchor natural coastal resilience.
Restoring Community Access: Clearing navigational hazards opens the water safely to human-powered boats, youth rowing programs, community science projects, and vital environmental research.
Ecological Health is Community Justice
A waterfront cleanup is never just about aesthetics. In a city where water surrounds us every day, access to clean, thriving shorelines is a core issue of equity and public health. A healthy waterfront also provides joy, curiosity, wonder, and positive experiences with nature.
When we leave waterways in working-class neighborhoods clogged with industrial trash, we send a subtle message about whose neighborhood deserves beauty and care. Reclaiming Flushing Creek and Flushing Bay proves that urban ecological repair and community dignity walk hand-in-hand. When dedicated neighbors, grassroots advocates, and elected leaders refuse to accept neglect, even our most damaged waterways can breathe again.
The Togetherhood Takeaway
Restoring our shared natural spaces begins with noticing the neglected corners of our neighborhoods and demanding better for the ecosystems that sustain us.
Support Local Waterway Advocates: Follow and support grassroots groups on the frontlines of NYC waters, such as Guardians of Flushing Bay, Newtown Creek Alliance, and Bronx River Alliance. Their tireless monitoring and organizing drive large-scale cleanup efforts.
Join a Shoreline Cleanup: Hands-on community cleanup days give you a direct, intimate look at the health of your local waterfront while keeping plastics and debris out of marine food webs.
Advocate for Equal Waterfront Access: Speak up at community board meetings and civic forums, or write op-eds and letters to the editor, to demand that waterfront revitalization projects prioritize public park space, natural shorelines, and water access for frontline communities over private luxury development.
Our urban waters are not dumping grounds—they are the living network of our city. When we clean up the debris of the past, we make room for life to flourish.
A Gulf Coast storm followed by snowmelt in January 2025 temporarily increased the Mississippi River’s outflow, sending a surge of sediment through the delta and into gulf waters. NASA.
We often talk about climate change in the future tense, but the physical reorganization of our world is already happening in real-time. It is a story of where we can stay, where we must leave, and how we might restore the land and waterways that connect all species that share this planet. For more than a century, people have built rigid concrete defenses against rising sea levels and in an attempt to dam and direct rivers to suit our immediate needs. But the physical reality of our planet is now demanding a total reorganization of where—and how—we live together as part of an ecosystem that is far bigger and more powerful than us rather basing our construction on the belief that people can dominate nature.
As we face this transition in mindset and practical living, we are guided by a fundamental climate choice first formulated by physicist and former presidential science advisor Dr. John Holdren:
We basically have three choices when it comes to our changing climate: mitigation, adaptation and suffering. Holdren acknowledges that we’re going to do some of each. The question he asks us is what the mix is going to be. Increase one of the three, and we will do less of the second and third. To many minds, this is the goal: the more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required and the less suffering there will be.
Following on from his framework of these three pie pieces, I’ve been thinking about three distinct pieces of research that point us toward where the climate transition is leading us.
1. The Physics of Departure: The Sinking Gulf
A new study recently published in Nature Sustainability brings the urgency of Dr. John Holdren’s triad into sharp focus for the American South. In the Gulf Coast, specifically around New Orleans and the surrounding delta, researchers have identified a compounding crisis: the land is physically sinking (subsidence) at the same time the ocean is rising. This is a perfect storm that threatens one of the most culturally rich cities in the U.S.
The Acceleration of Relative Sea-Level Rise
Using high-resolution satellite data and GPS monitoring, the study reveals that the land in this region is moving downward at a rate significantly higher than previously estimated. This creates a Relative Sea-Level Rise that is often double or triple the global average. While the world discusses centimeters of rise over decades, communities in the Gulf are dealing with inches of lost elevation in just a few years.
This subsidence is driven by a combination of natural sediment compaction and human activity, including the extraction of groundwater and fossil fuel. Because we have dammed the Mississippi River (as discussed in our next section), the natural delivery of new sediment that used to replenish the delta has been cut off. The land is starving for the very silt that used to keep it above water.
The Limits of Adaptation
When the land physically disappears, the limits of adaptation are breached. We reach a point where holding the line with higher levees and stronger pumps becomes a mechanical impossibility. We cannot prevent a flood with a tablespoon while the tap is turned up to full blast. This is rapidly shutting down the option mitigation. Therefore, it forces the zero-sum choice Holdren warned us about: New Orleans must choose between managed retreat—a proactive, planned relocation—or unavoidable suffering for those left behind.
Relocation in this context is not just a logistical move; it is a cultural crisis. To avoid mass suffering, we need a framework for place-making that moves entire community networks together. If we don’t plan for the transfer of the community—the music, food, heritage, and social bonds—we risk losing the soul of the Gulf to the rising water.
2. Working With the Water: America Undammed
While the coast sinks, our inland arteries are being liberated through a radical shift in infrastructure policy. As reported by theNew York Times, the United States is currently undergoing a massive effort to dismantle thousands of obsolete dams—many of which have outlived their 50-year lifespans and now pose significant safety risks to downstream communities.
This is proactive adaptation in its purest form. For over a century, we treated rivers as plumbing—static pipes to be redirected, blocked, and controlled. Now, we are learning that a free-flowing river is a far superior neighbor than one trapped behind aging concrete.
The Multi-Species Dividend of Restoration
When a dam is removed, the results are often instantaneous and transformative. By restoring the natural flow, we allow for the return of sediment—the literal building blocks of the land—which has been trapped in reservoirs for decades. This sediment is what naturally replenishes deltas and keeps coastal lands from sinking, directly impacting the crisis seen in and around New Orleans.
Furthermore, removing these barriers restores migratory paths for fish and wildlife that have been blocked for generations. It is an act of biological reconciliation that allows species to move toward cooler waters as temperatures rise, a key component of the Deep Adaptation required in a changing climate.
The Safety and Financial Calculus
Beyond ecology, the Undammed movement is a response to the mechanical failure of the 20th-century model. Aging dams are increasingly unable to handle the 1,000-year flood events that are becoming more frequent. Removing them is a strategic choice to avoid the catastrophic suffering of a dam failure. By restoring natural floodplains, we create massive, landscape-scale sponges that can absorb and slow down water surges, protecting human infrastructure by working with the water’s energy rather than trying to stifle it. We’ve made water a foe when we’re much better off giving it the room it needs to be our friend.
3. The Nomad Century: The Infrastructure of Global Movement
If the sinking Gulf represents the limits of adaptation and the undammed rivers represent the liberation of nature, then Gaia Vince’s book Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World represents the inevitable human response: The Great (Human) Migration. We are moving toward a reality where the map of human habitation must become as fluid as the climate itself.
To manage this transition without catastrophic suffering, we must move away from the 20th-century model of fixed borders and toward a 21st-century model of managed movement. Given our current geopolitics, this is getting more complicated (and contentious) by the day. There’s no doubt that this requires a radical rethink of our global systems across three specific pillars:
The Digital State and Portable Identity
In a world of mass movement, your identity cannot be tied to a physical piece of paper in a desk drawer that might be lost to a flood or a fire. We need a global framework for Digital Identity—portable, secure, and internationally recognized credentials that allow migrants to carry their medical records, professional certifications, and legal standing with them. This ensures that a doctor from a submerged coast can become a doctor in a receiver city on day one, rather than being trapped in a cycle of structural suffering and economic, intellectual, and talent waste.
The Rise of Receiver Cities
The green zones—latitudes in the north that will remain temperate—must proactively prepare to become Receiver Cities. This is the ultimate test of Holdren’s triad: by investing in massive adaptation now (housing, high-speed transit, and sustainable food systems), these regions can prevent the mass suffering of unplanned, chaotic arrivals. These cities must be designed as expandable machines, utilizing modular architecture and circular resource loops to integrate millions of new residents while maintaining ecological balance and social structures.
Deep Adaptation and the Preservation of Culture
Scholars like Jem Bendell have expanded on this reality through the framework of Deep Adaptation. It acknowledges that because global mitigation failed to prevent significant warming, we must now pivot toward valuing what we want to keep. As communities move, we must build systems to archive and carry forward the culture of humanity—languages, traditions, and social structures—so that when we relinquish the land, we do not lose the soul and the history of the people who lived there.
The Togetherhood Takeaway
We cannot command the planet to stay still. Our survival depends on our ability to move with the land and the water, rather than against them.
Audit the Mix: Look at your local climate initiatives. Are they focused on mitigation (reducing the cause), adaptation (living with the effect), or is your community opting for future suffering by ignoring the problem?
Audit the Choice: Demand that your leaders explain their Holdren Mix. Are they spending on adaptation now, or are they effectively budgeting for future suffering?
Map Your Resilience: Research the topography of your own region. Understanding whether your land is rising or sinking changes every conversation about long-term infrastructure and property.
Map Your Role: Research your own local geography. Is your community positioned to be a receiver of migration or a sender? This changes every conversation you have about local infrastructure and zoning.
Advocate for the Flow: Support local river restoration projects. Undamming a waterway is an act of long-term climate insurance for your entire watershed.
Practice Fluidity: In a Nomad Century, the most valuable skill is the ability to form deep community connections quickly.
Redefine Home: In a Nomad Century, home must shift from a static point on a map to a commitment to community resilience, wherever that community ends up.
The map is changing. To honor the planet and each other, we must have the courage to move with it. Will we each find it within ourselves to do the mitigation and adaptation needed to limit suffering? That remains the most potent question on the table today for every country, policy maker, and person. Eventually, nature will demand an answer.
This Friday, the world celebrates a staggering milestone as Sir David Attenborough turns 100. For a century, he has served as one of nature’s fiercest advocates and storytellers, moving from showing us the beauty of the wild to imploring us to take a stand for nature’s survival and our own. His career proves that meaningful change is rarely a sprint; it is a relentless, lifelong commitment to shifting how we see the world and our place in it. I, like so many other people, have been profoundly influenced by him and his passion for our natural world. Graduating from University of Cambridge, as he did, after studying Sustainability Leadership set my life and career on a new course.
Doubling Down on the Blueprint
I have been thinking a lot about this long-term perspective lately, especially with the publication of my latest feature in Smithsonian Magazine. I spent months diving into the story of Hammarby Sjöstad, a neighborhood in Stockholm that set out with intensely ambitious sustainability goals in the 1990s.
When the project initially fell short of its targets, the community did not abandon the mission. They doubled down. A group of neighbors got together and created ElectriCITY Innovation. They treated their failures as data points and evolved their strategy, eventually creating a circular-economy blueprint that cities across the globe can adapt and apply. You can read the full story of their decades-long journey toward resilience in my new feature:
Whether we look at Attenborough’s hundred-year legacy or Stockholm’s thirty-year urban experiment, the lesson for our own communities remains clear: sustainability requires the stamina to stay in the game when things get difficult.
Celebrate the storytellers: Take a moment this Friday to watch a piece of Attenborough’s work and reflect on how his perspective shaped your own understanding of nature.
Audit your long game: Look at a sustainability project in your own neighborhood that feels stalled. Instead of viewing a missed goal as a failure, ask how you can double down and pivot the strategy like Stockholm did.
Share the blueprint: When you find a solution that works, document it and share it. Evolution happens when we learn from each other’s experiments, failures, and triumphs. Sustainability is not a one-and-done task. It’s a process of continuous improvement.
Nature and our cities both require us to think in decades, not just days. To honor Dr. David Attenborough and the beings with whom we share this planet, let’s keep building for the next century.
Poppies in California. Photo by Sarah Wood on Unsplash.
The California poppy is a masterclass in resilience. As a universal symbol of remembrance and hope, this delicate flower possesses a rugged secret. It thrives in some of the most challenging environments on earth, specifically germinating and flourishing in the harsh, scarred soil left behind by wildfires.
While a desert superbloom relies entirely on the unpredictable rhythms of weather, one community in Southern California decided not to wait for perfect conditions. They chose to actively orchestrate their own recovery.
The Ashes of Altadena In January 2025, the devastating Eaton Fire swept through the foothills of Altadena, California. The blaze destroyed thousands of structures, claiming homes, businesses, and irreplaceable personal histories.
Among the survivors was René Amy, a longtime community activist. The fire consumed his home and, in a cruel twist of irony, his native wildflower seed business called Altadena Maid Products. He lost his entire inventory to the flames. But instead of surrendering to the devastation, he immediately began volunteering at local shelters and looking for ways to heal his neighborhood.
The Great Altadena Poppy Project Understanding the deep psychological toll of the fire, René launched the Great Altadena Poppy Project. His vision was breathtakingly simple but massively ambitious: blanket the fire-scarred town in vibrant color by planting poppies – millions of them.
A century ago, golden poppy fields covered Altadena so densely that tourists traveled from across the country just to witness the bloom. René wanted to restore that legacy and offer his neighbors a tangible sign of life returning to their barren lots.
He initially purchased 120 million seeds with $20,000 of his own money and invited fire-impacted residents to sign up for free seeding services on their impacted properties. The response was overwhelming. Hundreds of homeowners asked to participate. Thanks to an outpouring of community support and anonymous donations, the project expanded its goal to sow a quarter of a billion seeds across more than 700 properties.
Orchestrating a Bloom This effort is the ultimate example of community orchestration. René and his crew of volunteers traverse the burn zones, spreading seeds across empty lots and blackened earth. Local scout troops pack envelopes of seeds to distribute globally, allowing friends and family far away to plant their own flowers in solidarity.
They are not just planting flowers; they are actively rehabilitating the degraded soil, preventing erosion, and providing a massive food source for local pollinators. Most importantly, they are giving traumatized residents a reason to look forward to the spring.
The Togetherhood Takeaway When we face immense loss or walk through a difficult season, it is easy to look at the scorched earth and assume nothing will ever grow there again. The residents of Altadena remind us that we do not have to passively wait for healing to arrive. We can plant the seeds of our own recovery.
Perhaps the most inspiring aspect of this entire project is its absolute lack of formal bureaucracy. René Amy did not wait to incorporate a nonprofit, assemble a board of directors, or build a complex fundraising platform. He just bought seeds and started asking his neighbors to help. This operates as pure mutual aid. It proves that you do not need a massive organizational apparatus or a corporate budget to orchestrate a community transformation. You simply need a good idea and the willingness to do the work.
Imagine what our country would look like if we all took this grassroots approach to our local ecosystems. A nationwide sight of vibrant, resilient flowers pushing through the cracks would be a powerful testament to our collective strength.
You can get involved with the Altadena project directly and bring this exact DIY energy to your own neighborhood right now.
Fund the recovery: While the poppy planting operates informally, the community still needs immense support for ongoing rebuilding and soil rehabilitation. Donating to the Altadena Community Preservation Fund provides direct financial assistance to the fire survivors.
Send seeds of solidarity: The project actively encourages people nationwide to purchase and plant native seeds in their own yards in solidarity with the residents, creating a networked superbloom across the country.
Plant a local blend: While California poppies thrive out West, creating a resilient ecosystem locally requires native species adapted to our specific climate. Instead of planting poppies, source a specific wildflower blend native to your area. In New York, that blend could contain Lanceleaf Coreopsis, Purple Coneflower, and Black-Eyed Susan. Scattering these in tree beds, empty lots, or window boxes around NYC creates a vital food source for local bees and birds.
Support local restoration: Channel the energy of the poppy project into ongoing efforts in our home area. In New York City, volunteering with the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative or local community gardens helps build the exact same kind of resilient infrastructure René Amy is building in California.
Be the orchestrator: Do not wait for someone else or a formal organization to beautify your street. Organize your neighbors, share resources, and create the conditions for your community to thrive.
Nature teaches us that even the most devastating fires eventually give way to new growth. We just have to be willing to do the planting and ask others to join us in our efforts.
Death Valley is the hottest, driest, and lowest place in North America. Most of the time, it looks like a barren, windswept land. Unforgiving. Hopeless. On the surface, it looks as if nothing could ever survive here. In line with its name, dead.
And yet, out of sight, millions of tiny seeds, bits of magic, lie in wait for just the right conditions to fulfill their potential. Patiently, they track rainfall, temperature, and wind. They have one shot to show us what they can do so they wait for the odds to be ever in their favor.
November 2025 – January 2026 set the stage for them to shine. In those months, a year’s worth of rain fell. The record rains leached salts from the soil and that triggered massive germination. The temperatures were exceptionally mild without becoming scorching hot. A mild winter and early spring temperatures gave the seeds the exact level of warmth they needed without burning them. The winds were calm, allowing the seeds to anchor themselves and root into the soil at their earliest growth stage rather than being blown away.
The patience of the seeds was rewarded, and so were we. The 2026 superbloom of wild flowers in Death Valley was the most significant in a decade, and on par with those in 2016, 2005, and 1998. Desert Gold, Poppy, Verbena, Golden Evening Primrose, and Purple Phacelia bloomed in such density that they looked like swaths of color rather than individuals flowers. The monotonous, dry land of Death Valley was transformed into a thing of beauty that rivals, and I would argue exceeds, any work of human art.
Bees buzz. Hummingbirds hover. A light wind carries the perfume of the flowers. Sights, sounds, and scents for sore eyes, weary souls, and hearts that need to be made whole in a way that only nature can provide. It will not last forever, and will be gone all too soon. But while it’s here, in all its blooming glory, we revel in it.
The Togetherhood Takeaway Long after the flowers wilt and Death Valley fades back to its seemingly empty landscape, we can carry the superbloom’s lessons into our lives, communities, and careers.
We don’t do anything alone The context and environment in which we find ourselves impacts our growth and progress. I’m obsessed with settings and orchestration. It’s my favorite thing to work on. How can I create the conditions to thrive, for myself and for others? How can I help us all to grow together?
Timing matters We are so quick to judge our own efforts and the efforts of others as if we solely control how successful something is. While we have control over our own efforts, we do not own the results. That is a difficult lesson for creators of any kind to learn and accept. It’s why I spend a lot of time and effort on creating environments and ecosystems where the people I work with can become the best versions of themselves. Some of our experiments work right out of the gate. Some of them don’t. And many times, our successes and failures are truly a matter of timing. The good news is we can always learn and try again. Improvement, no matter where we start, is a continuous process.
Quiet work is foundational It’s healthy to take a break, regroup, reflect, and come back stronger and more well-rested, and perhaps in a totally different form. Just because someone isn’t showing off what they’re doing doesn’t mean they aren’t building something worthy. In a world that is addicted to social media and recording every single moment for public consumption, there’s a profound sense of peace to be found in doing work in our own space without outside distractions. We don’t need to accept that all eyes have to be on us all the time. Underground work has immense value. We can choose the time to bloom when it’s right for us.
March 20th marks the spring equinox and World Rewilding Day. Around the globe, conservationists and community leaders are celebrating this year’s theme: Choose Our Future.
We often operate under the assumption that we have to engineer our way out of every crisis. We build concrete seawalls to stop flooding and pour chemicals into the soil to force crops to grow. But the rewilding movement offers a radically different approach to leadership and resilience. It suggests that nature already holds the solutions. When we step back, relinquish a little control, and restore the natural balance, the ecosystem heals itself.
We can see this extraordinary transformation happening right now across diverse landscapes and communities.
The Affric Highlands In the central Highlands of Scotland, a groundbreaking, community-led coalition is leading the largest rewilding project in the United Kingdom. For centuries, intensive grazing and logging severely depleted the region, fragmenting the ancient Caledonian pinewoods.
Instead of forcing a heavily engineered recovery, the Affric Highlands project focuses on natural regeneration across 200,000 hectares of land. A diverse group of local landowners, businesses, and volunteers work together to remove barriers and simply allow native birch, rowan, and alder to reclaim the bare hillsides. As the trees return, so do the red squirrels, golden eagles, and black grouse. They are proving that large-scale nature recovery works best when deeply rooted in local collaboration, creating a landscape where both the wildlife and the rural economy thrive together.
The Naval Cemetery Landscape Rewilding does not require thousands of acres; it happens in the densest urban environments. Right here in Brooklyn, a forgotten piece of history recently experienced a profound ecological rebirth. For almost a century, a plot of land at the Brooklyn Navy Yard served as a hospital burial ground before the military decommissioned it.
Instead of paving it over for commercial development, the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative transformed the site into the Naval Cemetery Landscape. They planted a 1.8-acre meadow teeming with over fifty native plant species like milkweed, asters, and switchgrass. Today, this formerly restricted land is a public haven buzzing with native bees, moths, and migratory birds. A raised wooden boardwalk allows visitors to experience the vibrant ecosystem without disturbing the soil. By bringing abundant life to a space that memorializes the dead, the community created a powerful sanctuary honoring the cycles of nature.
The Saw Mill River Daylighting In Yonkers, New York, city planners buried the Saw Mill River under a concrete parking lot in the 1920s. For nearly a century, the waterway vanished from the community. Recently, a coalition of residents and environmentalists championed a daylighting project to tear up the concrete and bring the river back to the surface.
Today, a thriving aquatic ecosystem runs right through the downtown plaza. American eels, snapping turtles, and migratory birds returned almost immediately. Uncovering the river revitalized the local economy and proved that removing artificial barriers allows life to rush back in with incredible speed.
The Snowchange Cooperative In Finland, decades of industrial peat mining severely damaged the boreal forests and wetlands. A network of local villages and Indigenous Sámi communities formed the Snowchange Cooperative to buy back the degraded land and restore it.
They block the old drainage ditches and allow the water to flood the peatlands once again. This simple act creates vital habitats for nesting birds and traps massive amounts of carbon. They combine traditional ecological knowledge with modern science, showing that the people who live closest to the land are often its most effective healers.
Green Forests Work Across the Appalachian region of the United States, legacy coal mining left behind millions of acres of compacted, barren land. Traditional reclamation simply planted non-native grasses, creating ecological dead zones.
An organization called Green Forests Work takes a completely different approach. They use heavy machinery to deliberately rip up the compacted earth, loosening the soil so water can penetrate. Then, volunteers plant native hardwood trees like American chestnut and oak. By breaking up the hardened surface, they allow a diverse, native forest ecosystem to replace an extractive wasteland.
The Togetherhood Takeaway Rewilding is more than an ecological strategy; it is a mindset for community building.
When we look at our own neighborhoods, our workplaces, and our creative projects, we often try to force outcomes. We exhaust ourselves trying to micromanage every detail. Rewilding teaches us to focus on the environment instead. When we cultivate healthy soil, encourage diversity, and remove the toxic barriers, we do not have to force growth. It happens naturally.
This spring, consider how you can rewild your own life. Plant native species in your window box. Support local ecosystem restoration projects. If you have a lawn, let it grow wild and free – better for you and better for the planet. Give yourself permission to grow, thrive, and create joy even in times of difficulty. Save room in your life for the unexpected and the not-yet-imagined. Be a joiner and link arms with those around you. Nature teaches us that when we uplift others, we create the conditions for everyone to rise together.
The news cycle frequently reminds us how fragile our extractive energy systems truly are. When we rely on distant supply chains and volatile markets to power our homes, a disruption on the other side of the world immediately impacts our local stability. We tether our daily lives to global anxieties.
But true energy independence looks entirely different. It comes from making nature an ally.
When we build symbiotic systems that harness the sun and the wind, we stop relying on extraction and start cultivating true resilience. Renewable energy does more than lower carbon emissions; it insulates our communities from global market shocks. The sun does not care about international borders, and the wind does not respond to market panic. They simply provide.
Across the country, communities are already proving that the best way to weather a global storm is to build a strong local energy ecosystem.
Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Right in our own backyard in Brooklyn, a grassroots organization called UPROSE is transforming the industrial waterfront. They spearheaded the creation of New York City’s first cooperatively owned community solar project on the roof of the Brooklyn Army Terminal. This massive solar array—a system that links hundreds of individual solar panels together so they function as one unified power plant—provides discounted, clean energy to approximately 150 local households and small businesses. Instead of traditional corporate ownership, UPROSE and the developer Working Power co-own the system alongside the community. They direct the revenue generated by the array into a community wealth fund, allowing residents to finance additional local projects based on their own priorities. This structure empowers Sunset Park residents to vote on spending the profits, such as funding additional local solar initiatives. Instead of waiting for top-down solutions, the neighborhood is building its own climate resiliency and keeping the economic benefits firmly rooted in the community.
Shungnak, Alaska
Inside the Arctic Circle, the remote Iñupiat village of Shungnak historically relied entirely on shipped-in diesel fuel to run its generators. This dependence made energy incredibly expensive (sometimes as much as $15 per gallon) and vulnerable to supply chain issues. Recently, the community installed a hybrid microgrid featuring a 225-kilowatt solar array and an advanced 384-kilowatt-hour lithium iron phosphate battery system. These batteries are grid-forming, meaning they seamlessly take over the electrical load without a flicker. They provide a safer, longer-lasting alternative to standard lithium-ion options. This technology allows the village to completely shut off its diesel engines for hours at a time during the long summer days. The community has recorded stretches of up to 11 straight hours running purely on solar and battery power. The system saves the community 15,000 to 25,000 gallons of diesel fuel annually. This translates to well over $125,000 in savings each year, bringing true energy independence and resilience to the region. This project won Solar Builder Magazine’s Project of the Year Award.
Buffalo, New York
Upstate in Buffalo, New York, a non-profit called PUSH Buffalo transformed a vacant 1927 public school building into a thriving community hub. The renovated School 77 now houses 30 affordable senior apartments, a neighborhood gymnasium, and a local theater company. They installed a 64-kilowatt community-owned solar array on the roof to supply energy to the local grid. PUSH Buffalo offers the resulting energy credits directly to the buildings low-income tenants at a steeply discounted rate compared to the standard utility company. Furthermore, the tenants engage in a participatory budgeting process to decide exactly how to spend any excess revenue generated by the system. While they initially lacked the funding for battery storage, PUSH Buffalo actively plans to add this capacity. This future upgrade will officially turn School 77 into a microgrid and resiliency hub during extreme weather conditions.
The Togetherhood Takeaway These communities are not just changing how they get their power; they are fundamentally changing their relationship with the natural world. They are moving from an extractive model that leaves them vulnerable, to a symbiotic model that makes them remarkably strong.
When we make nature our ally, we stop being passive consumers of a fragile global market and start becoming active builders of a resilient local ecosystem that benefits all beings who call it home.
Taking Action in Your Own Ecosystem Building a resilient local grid starts with small, deliberate steps, and you do not need to own a roof to participate. Here are four ways to start cultivating energy independence in your own community right now:
Find a Community Solar Farm: Platforms like EnergySage allow you to enter your zip code and find local solar arrays looking for subscribers. You simply connect your utility account and start powering your home with local sun, often at a discount.
Join a Solar Co-op: Organizations like Solar United Neighbors help neighborhoods band together to bulk-purchase solar installations, driving down costs and building collective community power.
Advocate Locally: Connect with local chapters of the Climate Reality Project to organize around local infrastructure changes and demand clean energy investments from your elected officials.
The Golden Tanager, a high-flying bird native to the Andes Mountains in South America. Photo by Bird Bird on Unsplash.
Last week we looked at why our dogs are sensitive to toxins. This week, we look up. Why birds are the most efficient breathers on Earth—and what they can teach us about stress, stamina, and clearing the air.
Last week, I wrote about how our dogs act as “biological sentinels” in our homes. Because they live on the floor and groom their fur, they are often the first to show the effects of the invisible toxins in our home environment.
But there is another biological sentinel we have relied on for centuries: The canary in the coal mine.
We often use that phrase to describe a warning sign. But have you ever stopped to ask why the canary dies first?
It isn’t just because they are small. It’s because they are superior breathers.
As I was digging into the research on environmental health last week, I learned that birds extract significantly more oxygen from the air than mammals do. While that makes them more vulnerable to pollution, it also makes them athletes of the sky.
The bar-headed goose (Anser indicus) is renowned for its ability to fly directly over the Himalayas during its biannual migration between Central Asia and India, with sightings recorded at altitudes exceeding 28,000 feet, nearly reaching the peak of Mount Everest. The air is so thin at that altitude that it would kill a human. Birds can not only survive but can exert themselves that high in the air because of the unique way they process breath.
Since February is often a month where we feel stifled by the cold of winter (especially this year!), I wondered: Can we learn to breathe like a bird?
The Science: The Circle vs. The Tide
The difference comes down to flow.
Humans breathe like the tide. We have a tidal breath system. We breathe air into an enclosed sac (our lungs), and then we have to push it back out the same way it came in. The problem? We are terrible at emptying the tank. We often leave “stale” air trapped in the bottom of our lungs, mixing fresh oxygen with old carbon dioxide. It’s inefficient.
Birds breathe in a circle. Birds have a system of air sacs that act like bellows. They push air through their lungs in one continuous direction.
When a bird inhales, it gets fresh oxygen.
The Mind-Blowing Part: When a bird exhales, it moves stored air from a rear sac into the lungs, meaning it gets fresh oxygen again.
They get oxygen on the inhale and the exhale. They never stop fueling the engine.
(If you want to see this in action, watch this 2-minute animation. It completely changed how I visualize breath: https://youtu.be/_NnBgM41jp0)
How Can We Adapt the Breath of a Bird: Focus on the Exhale
We cannot physically grow air sacs (unfortunately). But we can mimic the bird’s efficiency by changing one simple habit.
Most of us are shallow breathers. When we are stressed, we take tiny sips of air, leaving that stale air stagnant in our lungs.
To breathe like a bird, we don’t only need to inhale more; we need to exhale more.
Try this Biomimicry-inspired Bird Breath:
Empty the Tank: Instead of just letting your breath go, actively push the air out until your lungs feel completely empty. Squeeze the abs. Get rid of the “tidal” leftovers.
The Recoil: Once you are truly empty, your body will naturally reflexively gasp for a deep, full breath of fresh air.
Repeat: By focusing on the out, the in takes care of itself.
Nature designed birds to never waste a breath. We might not be able to fly over the Himalayas, but by clearing out the stale air, we can definitely navigate our day with a little more altitude.
We feel guilty for being tired in January. But for apple trees, squirrels, and bears doing nothing is the most productive thing they do all year.
I grew up on an apple farm in New York State’s Hudson Valley.
Because of that, my relationship with winter is a little different than most. To the casual observer, an apple orchard in January looks unproductive. The branches are bare, the ground is frozen, and it appears that nothing is happening.
But if you ask a farmer, they’ll tell you January is one of the most critical months of the year. It’s the month that decides the harvest.
We have a tendency in our culture to treat rest as a sign of weakness—or at best, a reward you get only after you’ve burned out. But nature has a different rulebook. She doesn’t ask herself to earn her rest. In the wild, winter isn’t a pause button; it’s an active biological process of repair.
If you’re feeling slow, foggy, or tired this week, I have good news: there’s nothing wrong with you. In fact, you’re doing everything right according to nature. You are just wintering.
Here are three examples of how nature uses the cold to build the future—and how we can adopt a few pages of her playbook.
1. The Apple Tree: Counting the Cold
On the farm, nature and farmers alike live by a concept called “Chill Hours.”
We tend to think trees just “shut off” when the temperature drops. In reality, they’re actively counting. Apple trees have a strict biological requirement to endure a specific number of hours (usually 800 to 1,000) between 32° and 45°F (0° and 7°C.)
If they don’t get those hours—if the winter is too warm or too short—the hormone that suppresses blooming won’t break down. They literally cannot produce fruit in the spring unless they have rested enough in the winter.
The lesson? The productivity of the harvest is biologically impossible without the stillness of the winter. You aren’t losing time by resting; you’re banking your Chill Hours for when the light and warmth of spring return.
2. The Arctic Ground Squirrel: Renovating the Brain
If you’ve felt a bit of “brain fog” lately, you’re in good company.
When the Arctic Ground Squirrel hibernates, their body temperature drops below freezing, and they essentially disconnects their neural pathways. Their brain synapses wither and retract—like pruning a tree—to save energy.
This sounds destructive, but it’s actually a renovation. Research shows that when they wake up, their brains undergo a massive “regrowth” phase. They regenerate those connections stronger and more efficient than before, similar to how muscle fibers when broken down by exercise knit themselves back together when we rest to become stronger.
The brain fog isn’t a failure; it’s a remodel. Sometimes the brain needs to disconnect to clear the clutter and build new pathways for the year ahead.
3. The Black Bear: The Miracle Healers
Finally, there’s the bear. We know they enter a deep sleep in the winter, but what happens while they sleep is the real miracle.
Research from the University of Minnesota found a stunning capability in hibernating black bears: they are super-healers. If a bear goes into hibernation with a wound, the bear will heal faster and with less scarring during their dormant state than they would during the active summer months.
Even with a metabolism running at a fraction of normal speed, their immune system shifts into a specialized repair mode.
It’s a powerful reminder: We heal best when we rest.
A Permission Slip for January
If nature—in all her wisdom and efficiency—requires a season of dormancy to prepare for fruit, rewire the brain, and heal wounds, why do we think we are exempt? Why do we insist on pushing through when what we really need is the sleep and rest that will help us be better versions of ourselves in the long-run? Sleep and rest are powerful tools. Use them. Appreciate them. Luxuriate in them. Your future self will thank you.
So, if you’re struggling to get into high gear this winter, stop. Take a nap. Read a book. Laugh with friends. Eat nourishing food. Breathe. Let the ground freeze knowing you’re giving yourself your necessary Chill Hours. Spring will be here soon enough. Don’t rush it. Rest.
Sugar kelp can grow in the waters around NYC, and thrives during the cold winter months
I recently read a fascinating piece in Smithsonian Magazine about the “underwater forests” returning to life off the coast of California. It details the restoration of Giant Kelp—towering, 100-foot strands that form cathedrals of biodiversity, sequester carbon, and shelter marine life.
It’s an inspiring success story of ecological recovery. But as I read about the Chumash people and marine biologists working together in the Pacific, I couldn’t help but ask a question closer to home: Could we apply this to the waters of New York City?
The answer is a resounding yes—but it looks a little different here. And it’s already beginning.
Different Coast, Different Kelp
In California, the focus is on restoration: bringing back wild Giant Kelp forests that have been decimated by urchins and climate change.
In New York and the broader Northeast, our opportunity lies in regenerative ocean farming. We don’t have the deep-water Giant Kelp; we have Sugar Kelp (Saccharina latissima). This golden-brown algae is shorter, but it is a powerhouse. It thrives in our cold winter waters—growing rapidly when most marine life is dormant—and acts as a “scrubbing brush” for our harbors.
Sugar Kelp absorbs carbon dioxide (fighting ocean acidification) and, crucially for NYC, it soaks up excess nitrogen from urban runoff, which is the main driver of harmful algae blooms.
We aren’t just “restoring” nature here; we are building a blue economy. Here are the local pioneers turning this idea into reality right now.
1. The Indigenous Lead: Shinnecock Kelp Farmers
Just as the Chumash people are leading efforts in California, the Shinnecock Indian Nation is leading the way on Long Island. The Shinnecock Kelp Farmers are a multi-generational collective of Indigenous women leveraging thousands of years of traditional ecological knowledge to heal the water.
They have established the first Indigenous-owned kelp farm on the East Coast in Shinnecock Bay. Their work proves that kelp isn’t just a crop; it’s a tool for sovereignty and survival, actively filtering the waters that sustain their community.
2. The Science: It Works in the East River
You might think kelp needs pristine, open ocean to survive. Think again.
Researchers Dr. Christopher Gobler and Mike Doall from Stony Brook University have been running pilot studies to see if kelp could survive the urban waters of the East River. The results were surprising: the kelp didn’t just survive; in some cases, it grew better in the nutrient-rich waters of the harbor than in cleaner, deeper waters. This suggests that NYC’s “working waterfront” could double as a biological filtration system.
3. The Pioneers: Breaking the Regulatory Barrier
The technology exists, but the permits have been the hard part. The industry is so new that New York State didn’t have a regulatory framework for it until very recently.
In 2023, Violet Cove Oyster Co., led by former WNBA star Susan Wicks, secured the first-ever commercial permit to grow kelp in New York state waters (Moriches Bay). It took years of advocacy to get there. Her success paves the way for oyster farmers across the region to become “multitrophic” farmers—growing shellfish and seaweed together to maximize the environmental benefit.
The Vision for a “Blue” NYC
Organizations like GreenWave are already training the next generation of ocean farmers, with a goal of creating thousands of jobs. Imagine a future where the New York harbor isn’t just a transit lane for ferries and cargo, but a grid of regenerative farms.
These farms would provide local food, sustainable fertilizer, and bioplastics, all while cleaning the water and capturing carbon.
California’s underwater forests are a reminder of nature’s resilience. NYC’s underwater farms could be a testament to our innovation. The seeds (or rather, the spores) have been planted. Now, we just need to support the regulations and organizations that will let them grow.
Christa Avampato 