Rebekkah Smith Aldrich

As we think through the lessons we have learned over the past four years, one thing is quite clear: the way “we’ve always done things” is not sustainable for the well-being of our communities. We need to seek out those patterns that are emerging to systemically change the policy landscape of our society, economy and the environment and respect that leadership may look different in the coming years.

There is a threadrunning through almost all major headlines in our country this year: racial injustice.

The massive change in life circumstances over the weeks since my last column have been strange, terrible, and beautiful—often all at once.

Unprecedented. Heartbreaking. Heartwarming. These three words have been most prominent in my mind as I observed and consulted with my colleagues, near and far, as they make tough decisions about how to keep their communities and staff healthy in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Three hundred thirty-eight days. That’s the length of time between August 2018, when we first saw the news coverage of Greta Thunberg, a young climate activist in Sweden who started striking in front of Stockholm's parliament every Friday to demand climate action from her country’s leaders, and September 20, 2019, when global Climate Strike Marches brought an estimated four million young people and their supporters onto our streets to demand meaningful action from adults on climate change.

While many view natural disasters as levelers—events that do not differentiate based on ethnicity or economic status—this is not the case. Low-income citizens are often hit harder by extreme weather events, due to everything from poorly constructed or aging housing to housing located closer to flood plains.

Sustainability is no longer to be relegated to the “green team” (as awesome as they can be!). It is no longer a once-a-year theme we address in April or on Earth Day. This topic is, or should be, front-and-center in how we think about everything we do.

The urgency behind sustainability work has been growing year by year and has picked up considerably with the issuance of two reports in fall 2018.