Ellie Johnston
Climate solutions | En-ROADS | systems thinking | Appalachia
Director of Programs, Climate Interactive
- Wrote this while at COP30. You can make a global climate scenario like this yourself with En-ROADS. See what action is needed. See the climate impacts we can avoid.
- Reposted by Ellie JohnstonThe data is in. 2024 was the warmest year on record, and probably in the whole of human history – about 1.6°C warmer than the pre-industrial period. More than 1 billion individual thermometer measurements, made by thousands of people over many decades, have been condensed into a single number.
- Reposted by Ellie JohnstonCannot stop thinking about how Octavia Butler wrote a book in 1993 about climate change. It opens with deadly fires in LA in 2025. In the story, a fascist President has just won office with the campaign slogan "Make America Great Again." She was a modern day Nostradamus. If only we'd listened.
- Favorite book I've read of 2025 so far: Orbital by Samantha Harvey. Honestly, it's going to be tough to top it. Winner of the 2024 Booker Prize. Novel that spins together questions of planetary thinking, humanity, and the awkwardness of life in space. thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-l...
- Here's a nice positive story about the big growth in solar worldwide ☀️ www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12...
- Of all the stories from Helene, the Craig family’s losses stand out - 11 members of this closeknit family lost their lives www.nytimes.com/2024/12/29/u...
- Fascinating episode to learn that George Mitchell, the “father of fracking,” was really passionate about sustainability but didn’t build his company to evoke the environmental standards he espoused. And he had 10 kids but was also very worried about overpopulation. open.spotify.com/episode/5DA6...
- @volts.wtf do you still do a year end music playlist? Remembering downloading the songs years ago, but it hasn’t come across my radar in ages.
- The podcast that’s getting me through the holiday drives this year - Boomtown: about the people and political economy of the Permian Basin open.spotify.com/show/6flJdBI...
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- Seeing lots of positive remarks about the earlier session of this interactive health-climate webinar. Catch the 3pm EST version in 4 hours!
- In 2009, I spent several weeks in the Cordillera Blanca and heard stories in the indigenous communities about how the glaciers were melting & seasons changing. 15 years later, it’s only gotten worse 💔 www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/s...
- Top notch lineup of @hausfath.bsky.social @deke-arndt.bsky.social and Drew Jones of @climateinteractive.org offering the hometown crowd here in Asheville the scoop on the latest climate science tonight
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- Congress needs to act: Helene is the 2nd deadliest hurricane to hit our nation since Katrina. And one of the costliest natural disasters in US history. www.bpr.org/bpr-news/202...
- As eviction notices start to appear and bills pile up in the 2 months since Helene, one church has stepped up to quickly provide people cash to cover rent wapo.st/3CWCOiw
- Helene decimated communities. Residents are still picking up the pieces. apple.news/AaiiKMIr3QQm...
- Ooh, look who is here! 🤗Definitely give @climateinteractive.org a follow!
- So good.
- #COP29 UN climate negotiations entering the final most tense stage…
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- Powerful imagery collected from satellites is illuminating harmful methane emissions that were previously going unseen
- The rise of AI and its voracious need for energy is undermining plans to decarbonize electricty markets that looked viable 6 months ago wapo.st/494Z6dF
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- In a clear illustration of the insufficiency of the current global climate finance goal of $100 billion dollars per year, the price tag for disasters in the US this year exceeds that amount (and we're just 4% of global pop) #COP29
- It's a mixed bag of headlines coming out of COP29 so far - couple good things I'm seeing today: (1). UK, NZ, and Colombia coming together to phase out fossil fuel subsidies (2). Increased efforts to cut methane from waste Hope the words are followed by action. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
- It’s great to see how big the climate community has grown—illustrated by the number of Katherine’s focused on climate here! I joined Twitter in 2009 to follow climate people as prep for COP15. The size of that space then was a fraction of what this is now.
- My latest starter pack is entirely subjective, joyfully curated for my personal satisfaction. It features my partner-in-climate-action former 🇨🇦 Env Min @cathmckenna.bsky.social and an elite squad of climate-focused K’s and C’s. Who'd I miss? Let me know—it's not a party without the whole crew!at://did:plc:u3qtwr3xni67et44ip5vov2z/app.bsky.graph.starterpack/3lbah4gqykk2j
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- Good news for the day! We have drinking water again after 53 days! www.bpr.org/bpr-news/202...
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- In this hot chaotic world we live in we must plan and prepare for things we haven't experienced. Yet, we often fall into the trap of basing our preparation for future extremes on our experience of past ones. The author Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls this the Lucretius problem.
- Current vibe in Asheville—captured in three books #shoplocal
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- News has moved on, but here in Asheville it's been almost 7 weeks since Hurricane Helene knocked out drinking water for over 150,000 of us. At this point, we're hoping we'll be off bottled water by Christmas and more businesses can reopen.
- Good news: Asheville water department announced yesterday that they are hoping to lift the boil water advisory early, maybe before Thanksgiving! Apparently they've figured out how to filter the loads of sediment and treat the 25 million gallons of water needed per day from our North Fork reservoir.
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- At Climate Interactive we just updated our En-ROADS simulator the we built with MIT Sloan, so you can explore how we can avoid worsening impacts from climate change worldwide. Check it out: www.climateinteractive.org/blog/major-e...
- 7 weeks since Helene. I took this video today heading out to gut some homes that had flooded. The road I’m on was completely destroyed and rebuilt in record time, along with the main pipe for Asheville’s water that runs underneath it. Some progress, still further to go.
- Here's a list of Hurricane Helene recovery GoFundMe's to get cash into the hands of people/groups airtable.com/apps0uyKtdXU...
- Reposted by Ellie JohnstonA long view of global absolute temperatures really highlights just how much the world has warmed since the mid-1900s. Here are daily global temperatures in the JRA-55 reanalysis product since 1958; this year really stands out!
- My very first job at 15 was with the Youth Conservation Corps at a historic battlefield building trails, so this announcement about the Climate Conservation Corps is very exciting. Hopefully the jobs entail less poison ivy than what I faced! www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo...
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