Spring 2025 Member Meeting Recap
Green The Bid's Summer 2024 Meeting welcomed Graham Hill, Founder & CEO of The Carbonauts and Founder of Treehugger, to lead a discussion on resilience and emergency preparedness in the face of climate disaster. Graham's organization, The Carbonauts, holds educational and community-building events for companies to address internal solutions for decarbonization. They have in-person and virtual events worldwide for large brands such as Amazon, Disney, Chanel, and AT&T, helping decarbonize these leading commercial powerhouses. In his previous role as the founder of Treehugger, he brought a revolutionary publication that combined sustainability and business – a first-of-its-kind project in the industry.
In his presentation, Graham kept returning to the word resilience, and the importance of a balance between maintaining realistic urgency and sitting with the positive progress when thinking about climate activism. He provided some instances of hopeful progress in our dark times – energy storage records are being broken globally, deforestation is down in many countries, 100 global brands are banned, and ocean plastic waste is stabilizing, just to name a few.
While hope is necessary to hold onto, he also drives home that climate disaster is here, and how important it is to be ready for the displacement and dysregulation that is set to come with it. We are in a moment of history where natural disasters are exponentially increasing with global temperatures, civil and political unrest is at a volatile peak, and emerging AI is actively perpetuating unemployment, anti-intellectualism, and misinformation. With this being said, Graham believes that taking on a calm mindset in the face of this uncertainty can allow daily life to maintain some semblance of normalcy – he believes it's not only possible, but pertinent to human survival.
We can begin to situate ourselves for survival in climate emergencies by planning in our homes, workplaces, and communities. "Disasters are definitely going to happen, and some of these are going to layer on top of each other…so you want to be prepared. It's coming, and it's okay. When you've got a plan, when you have the right tools, you can develop a calm mindset, you can be confident, you can be prepared," says Graham. "If you spend a little time, spend a little money, you can really be there for yourself to make your experience of the disaster more enjoyable, but also your family, your friends, your company, your community. It doesn't take much to do". He breaks these tips into small and large actions, and suggests everyone consider what they can do today to position themselves for better futures.
"Action, it's an 80/20 kind of thing. You don't have to do everything, but if you get started, that's a great step", says Graham. Some small actions suggested are making a first aid kit, storing shelf-stable food, keeping gallons of water, creating an emergency card, planning a to-go bag, printing physical maps, and arranging backup communication methods. Some of the more significant actions he suggests are implementing self-sustaining energy sources, super-insulating roofs, and ensuring the strength of physical infrastructures within one's home, workplace, or neighborhood. Having an open dialogue with family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers about a plan will allow for progress to be made in emergency preparedness.
Graham's presentation set in motion an important conversation around emergency preparedness and offered a valuable set of resources for GTB members to consider. Above all, it served as a much-needed reminder of our ability to take action in the face of climate disaster, even in our unruly and disorderly times.
