Hi, is Forest Whitaker, guest hosting today? You want to learn how to take real lasting climate action like I do? I won't invite you to join Countdown to its new global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis challenges in open place.

It draws on a diversity of perspectives to help us shape global and local solutions that make sense of the immense array of energies that the world has to offer. Now here's a talk from the countdown global launch event featuring climate activists, role comedian and the difference. And one more special thing about this talk. You hear actor Don Cheadle at the beginning, in the end, discussing the importance of community powered climate solutions, to hear more of these ideas and get involved.

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It's where we celebrate our triumphs, make our memories and confront our challenges, and these days there are plenty of those in historic pandemic wildfires. Floods and hurricanes all threaten our basic safety. These challenges hit even harder in communities that have been cut out of equal opportunities in the U.S., unfair and racist housing policies called redlining have for decades forced black, brown, indigenous and poor white families into areas rife with toxic chemicals that make people sick. They're surrounded by concrete that traps heat, extreme temperatures demand more cooling, more money, more energy, more carbon.

Our problems are interconnected. Imagine all we can do when we realize the solutions are to. At the Solutions Project, we've seen that some of the people most impacted by covid-19 least likely to have a steady place to call home and most affected by the damage to our climate are already working on effective and scalable solutions.

Take Buffalo in Miami, where affordable housing has become a community solution to the climate crisis.

Buffalo, New York, is the third poorest city in the United States and six most segregated. But our people power is strong. Over the last 15 years, my organization pushed. Buffalo has been working with residents to build green, affordable housing, deploy renewable energy and to grow the resilience and power in our communities when we saw heating bills soar over the last decade. We organize to pass state policy to help small businesses and to put our people to work weatherizing homes.

We responded with equal landscaping and green infrastructure. When record rainfalls flooded our neighborhoods, we replaced the concrete that overwhelmed and made heat waves unbearable. Let us visit schools seventy seven and eighty thousand square foot public school building that was closed and abandoned for nearly a decade, but pushed Buffalo in the community, transformed it into solar power, affordable senior apartments and a community center. This is what the community wanted when private developers were in that school building for high end loft apartments.

Eight hundred residents mobilized and came up with a plan. We became New York State's first community solar project during the coronavirus pandemic, a volunteer run mutual aid hub. At Catalyst's Miami and the Miami Climate Alliance, we work with dozens of other organizations to enact policies that provide safe housing and protect the climate here in Miami. We've seen a four hundred percent increase in tidal flooding between twenty six and twenty sixteen, and I've seen forty nine additional 90 degree days per year since 1970.

We fought for the Miami Forever Bond to fund four hundred million dollars for affordable housing and climate solutions. Yet every day we continue to see luxury high risk condos being built in our neighborhoods, adding more concrete and heat on the ground. Some of our members are taking matters into their own hands, literally. Conscious Contractors is a grassroots collective that formed during Hurricane Irma to protect, rebuild and beautify our communities, all while increasing energy efficiency. They don't think that anyone should have to choose between paying a high AC bill and living in a hot and moldy house that will worsen respiratory illnesses such as asthma or coronavirus.

They fix problems at the source. Advocates across the country are holding their governments accountable to climate solutions that keep their communities in place, we need to push for more affordable housing, green infrastructure and flood protections because these are the solutions that solve many problems at once.

Climate change is the epic challenge of our lives, but we're confident we can solve it. Community leaders like Rabois and Zelalem are already doing it. We can create the future we want, but getting there is going to take everyone contributing around the world wherever we call home. PR ex.