What a game. The Green were down by one as the halftime whistle blew. The 1,200 rain-drenched supporters chanted, shouted, and urged the boys on as they headed to the locker room. The opposing team’s supporters were equally rowdy – ecstatic, cheering, smiling, and reveling in a hard-fought performance. They had come a long way over the years after all. Although the competition was fierce, the competitors were both hometown favorites. It was the Juba Star FC friendly, and our brothers were putting on a show for the crowd.
Juba Star FC is a Somali Bantu-led organization that has been operating in the state since 2006. The organization was established to provide a safe space for the growth and development of former refugee and immigrant youth in Vermont. The club has expanded over the years, hosting players who have immigrated from Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Yemen, Nepal, Sudan, and Burundi, as well as players born in the United States. The organization runs free soccer clubs for youth and adults, ages 14 and older, and provides assistance with transportation to games and practices, which can often be a significant barrier to participation in immigrant communities. Staff volunteer their time and provide coaching for on-the-pitch success and mentoring for off-the-pitch growth and achievement. They are truly a club for everyone. If a player cannot afford to pay club or tournament fees, others step in to cover those expenses out of their own pockets until the player can afford to pay.
We’ve been working alongside their club since our inception because they’ve been putting in years of work leading the way in making football more accessible and equitable in Vermont. Their years of dedication to a mission that is about more than football has been an inspiration, which is why we approached them about working together, learning from their efforts, and collaborating toward our shared vision of a more vibrant, safe, resilient, and culturally rich community. Gratefully, they agreed, and we found ourselves going toe-to-toe on the pitch once again this year. This friendly is turning into an annual tradition to advance both of our missions. If you missed the game, you can watch the replay.
Building toward greatness is a long-term process, a journey consisting of many small steps. Juba Star exemplifies this truth. At Vermont Green FC, we intend to follow a similar course. Working together, we’re carrying some important elements of last year’s friendly forward, and implementing some new initiatives that move us along the path to our vision of a more environmentally sustainable and socially just world. Financing Juba Star club operations is a perennial responsibility, one that is not always easy for its club members. Once again, we split ticket sales from the match to help put some additional funds into their coffers. Based on suggestions from Juba Star leadership, we also started collecting donated football boots and sneakers at our matches this season to provide gear to their club for players and youth who may not always have the money to pay for adequate gear after paying their bills.
As an outside observer of the club over the years, their success appears to be a result of a big vision and a spirit of collective support, reciprocity, generosity, hard work, and commitment to building long-term mental resilience with players. Off the pitch, many players have transitioned into personal and professional success due in no small part to their time with the club.
If you wish to directly support their club, you can donate here.
At this year’s match, we saw an opportunity to help build new relationships that support Juba Star’s mission in the community while advancing climate justice. Last year we discovered a community partner that serves individuals and families by helping them build financial resilience, improve health and wellbeing, and cultivate skills that can transform into a greater sense of agency and empowerment. It’s Tony Robbins! Just kidding, it’s actually the GreenSavingSmart program. (If you’re reading this Tony, have your people talk to our people – we’ve got some ideas.) Perhaps one day GSS will grow to the size of the Tony Robin’s empire, and the world will be all the better for it. However, at the moment this Vermont-sized organization is already doing essential and impactful work across the state to advance energy equity, a key element of environmental and climate justice. Their work is essential and demonstrates climate justice in action. With a boots-on-the-ground approach, GSS is an example of what’s needed to make the transition towards a decarbonized energy and economy a just transition. And their work couldn’t come at a more critical time as the impacts of climate change are being acutely felt across the U.S. and the world.
Climate Change Continues to Expose and Exacerbate Societal Inequalities
“It’s so far out of line of what’s been observed that it’s hard to wrap your head around,” said Brian McNoldy. The senior research scientist at the University of Miami is echoing a sentiment felt by scientists and citizens around the world in recent weeks: our environment is exceedingly weirder and more dangerous than it has been in human history. From North America to Antarctica, temperature records are getting smashed like it’s 1998 and Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa are trading at bats. If only we were talking about the juicy (ahem) details of that notorious slugfest rather than human lives and livelihoods, mass species die-offs and migrations, the destruction of entire ecosystems, and the potential breakdown of Earth’s systems. In Vermont, sinister-looking skies have been dumping torrential amounts of rain across the state and across the Northeast. Up to nine inches of rain has fallen in the state, inundating towns, businesses, and homes. Flooding of this magnitude will happen with more frequency and intensity as a result of our warming world. Tropical Storm Irene is on a lot of minds in Vermont right now, as flooding and damages in some areas of Vermont are in excess of that once-in-every-500-year storm event. Irene hit Vermont 12 years ago. Setting the angsty tones aside, there’s hope on the horizon and perhaps a couple more insensitively placed attempts at humor in the paragraphs ahead – reason enough to read on dear friend.
Vermont and the Northeast aren’t alone in feeling the effects of climate change as of late. Deadly heat waves are torching large swaths of the U.S. and millions have faced excessive heat for weeks. Texas, despite not being its first rodeo, has struggled to cope with the deadly conditions. Just as water breaks become increasingly common in football matches in areas unaccustomed to excessive heat (like Vermont), workers too require safeguards to protect their health from extreme heat. Over a dozen people have died due to heat-related illness in Texas so far this summer, including those required to work in the heat. Sadly, both in the U.S. and around the world, public and private support is not addressing the scale of the present challenge of heat weaves. In the U.S., heat waves are occurring more frequently, lasting longer, and are more intense than at any time since most major U.S. cities started collecting data. The heat wave season has grown 49 days longer over the last 50 years, leading to increased exposure and enabling more people to be caught off guard earlier in the spring and later in the fall.
Workers who toil in excessive heat are not the only group facing disproportionate heat stress. People who have been the targets of marginalization in the past and present suffer the worst from climate change-fueled heat waves, as well as the myriad challenges human-caused climate change dishes out with increasing regularity and severity. Research by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) found that the average Black resident in a major U.S. city is exposed to air that is warmer than the city average, while the average white urban resident lives where the air temperature is cooler relative to the same average. According to PNNL, “The findings reveal pervasive income- and race-based disparities within U.S. cities. Nearly all the U.S. urban population—94 percent, or roughly 228 million people—live in cities where summertime peak heat stress exposure disproportionately burdens the poor.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has come to similar conclusions, finding that intra-urban heat islands are often linked to demographic factors such as income and race.
Such disparities aren’t just a U.S. problem. The impacts of climate change target historically marginalized and more vulnerable populations around the world. The record heat hitting India is another recent example. India, like Texas, is no stranger to heat. However, extreme heat is especially harmful to those living in poverty and those who cannot afford to skip work. “We have no choice, we have to work to earn,” said an Indian construction worker speaking to the BBC who had traveled 800 miles to find work. Other groups, like women, are more vulnerable to loss of income and death due to heat waves. Due to long hours working indoors in sweltering conditions and cultural norms, women are less likely to take protective measures to avoid the health hazards of excessive heat. “I get headaches, nausea, and vomiting, and my capacity to work shrinks,” 44-year-old Jadav told TIME over the phone. “I lose so much in this extreme heat.”
The record heat hitting India and Pakistan is 100 times more likely due to climate change, meaning temperatures predicted to occur every 300 years could show up three times a decade now. A 2023 Cambridge University study found that since April 2022, 90% of the country has been at increased risk from hunger, loss of income, or premature death during the record-breaking heat waves. The current dangerous conditions portend an intolerable future in the region. “Long-term projections indicate that Indian heat waves could cross the survivability limit for a healthy human resting in the shade by 2050,” the Cambridge University report noted. And India isn’t alone in facing such a stark future. The IPCC has made it clear that parts of the planet will become uninhabitable if greenhouse gas pollution is allowed to continue at present rates. An excess of 250,000 deaths per year by 2050 will be attributable to climate change due to heat, undernutrition, malaria, and diarrheal disease, with more than half of this excess mortality projected for Africa.
Like the steroids that fueled the McGwire-Sosa home run race, humans are supercharging our atmosphere with greenhouse gas pollution. Unfortunately, nature doesn’t care, and is continuing its regularly scheduled El Nino climate pattern, which is setting 2023 up to be a year notorious for new extreme weather records and the human suffering that always follows. The planet saw its hottest day on record recently, a record that could fall more times in the months ahead. I know what you must be thinking, “this is what you call hopeful?” No, we’re not sociopaths. These are the atrocious realities of climate change and if you’ve read this far, you likely have at least a few compassionate neurons firing in that head of yours and can probably rule out that psychological diagnosis as well. Happy to have you on the team. However, if compassion fatigue has started creeping in at this point, take a breath, and join us on a more hopeful and pragmatic approach to dealing with the realities of climate change.
Hope and Human Nature
There are countless signs of hope in the world. And we’re not talking about news of the former U.S. women’s goalkeeper. Yes, our environment is really sick and only getting sicker by every tenth of a degree that humans heat our planet. Yes, time is of the essence. Yes, humans seem to be terrible at being proactive on big-picture issues. But humans are, however, resourceful, adaptable, and have shown consistent displays of our nobler instincts when faced with crises, like war and natural disasters. Indeed, the climate crisis has arrived for many and many more will sadly be forced to endure its impacts in the days, months, and years ahead. With the climate crisis already here, how can we remain hopeful, rather than give in to fear and anxiety? Excellent question, friend.
For those of you glass-half-emptiers out there, we recognize this section might not be your dissatisfying cup of tea. It could strike you as capitulation or naivete. Just hear us out, ok? In order to address the climate crisis, we have to dig a little deeper into the stories we tell ourselves about our fellow humans. We believe there is another story that holds more truth than the pervasive, toxic, and self-fulfilling narrative that humans are inherently selfish, greedy, and without integrity when the gloves come off. Want proof? Look no further than the ultimate testing grounds for our inherent humanity: times of crisis. The Disaster Research Center at Delaware University has studied nearly 700 disaster cases and found ample evidence of widespread, spontaneous acts of prosocial behavior, like altruism and charity during crises. During crises, disparate social group identities give way and adapt to the more pressing sense of shared identity with others experiencing crisis. Communitarian values and prosocial behaviors emerge as natural and optimal responses. Sadly, during stabler times, humans tend to revert to limiting the social groups we identify with and as a result, lose sight of the big picture of our shared humanity. Interestingly, many survivors look back on disasters with a surprising amount of nostalgia due to the levels of community, interdependence, and altruism that are difficult to find during normal times. That is not to say anyone would wish to be in crisis, but experiencing a feeling of interconnectedness is so lacking in our society that when it shows up, it’s hard to accept life has to grind on without it.
You may be thinking at this point, “Are you telling me that it’s a good thing the world is increasingly subjected to crises? And why the hell would we want to leave it to the moment of crisis to actually do something?” Excellent questions. The answer to both is that we can change the narrative that can hold back our prosocial capacities to accelerate change now. Clearly, as humans have shown in times of crisis, we are capable of greater levels of compassion, generosity, altruism, and cooperation. We can make that choice every day to take actions that align with our values. We don’t need to wait to be forced into action by a crisis. Small actions, regularly, are all that are required to facilitate significant change.
The Solutions at our Fingertips
The solutions to the climate crisis already exist and looking close to home is the best and most assured way to find actionable solutions that have a meaningful impact. And meaningful impact is in the eye of the beholder, so don’t discount every little victory in the fight against complacency, apathy, pessimism, cynicism, distractedness, busyness, or any other pathology that has been keeping you from taking action. If you’re struggling to start, look to your community to find groups you can get involved with or support financially. We’re fortunate in Vermont: we are rich with civically-minded people, organizations, and community groups. I’m sure your community is too, dear reader. Because our club can’t do everything, we looked to our community first to find others we can learn from and support, which brought us to the doorstep of the GreenSavingSmart program.
Launched in March of 2022, GreenSavingSmart provides free coaching services and assistance to low- to moderate-income individuals and families. The program is intended to advance energy equity by addressing energy burdens – a household’s energy expenses divided by its income – and financial literacy. Racial equity is a core element of its services, having expanded financial accessibility and prioritized individuals and households who identify as Black, Indigenous, Person of Color (BIPOC), as well as former refugees and immigrants. Historically, these groups have lacked appropriate and sufficient support navigating the complex landscape of Vermont’s energy and financial services and programs provided by energy efficiency utilities, financial institutions, local utility companies, fuel providers, and others.
GreenSavingSmart helps people address housing and transportation burdens, which are prime examples of basic human needs that intersect environmental stewardship and social justice. Lead and radon exposure, asthma risks from poor indoor air quality, safety risks associated with aging vehicles, and natural disaster preparedness are some of the burdens disproportionately harming low-income earners, those who identify as BIPOC, and people who have recently immigrated to Vermont. Addressing these inequities improves health, well-being, and financial security while reducing harm to our environment by decreasing the demand for fossil fuels, lowering carbon emissions, and lessening the use of and exposure to toxic chemicals. We can’t solve the climate crisis if we don’t solve the challenges of energy burdens, energy insecurity, energy poverty, and strengthen energy democracy.
GreenSavingSmart, alongside many other organizations and community leaders in Vermont, are contributing to the movement that addresses the challenges of our energy transition in a way that advances equity, equality, and well-being for all people. They do this by providing coaches for eligible participants. Coaches listen to the needs of participants and provide customized support and resources to overcome unique barriers, manage personal finances, cut costs, enroll in available programs, and continue strengthening skills that advance personal finance and energy goals. For more information on the program and to enroll, visit https://www.greensavingsmart.org/.
GSS joined us at our friendly match with Juba Star to foster more community connections with our friends and neighbors whom they are working to serve.
We are thrilled 1,200 of our supporters came out and joined us for this community-building effort. Although there is much more work ahead, we celebrate these small victories every step of the way and encourage you to do the same.