A Climate Solution Hiding in Plain Sight

In November, U.S. voters handed Donald Trump a decisive victory, awarding him and many climate-denying leaders in the Republican Party control of every lever of the federal government.

Several high-profile Trump supporters, including the authors of the conservative policy treatise Project 2025, have made their disdain for climate efforts clear. Among other things, the Project 2025 authors have suggested that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are superfluous and evidence of government bloat. Trump has also indicated that he wants to jettison any involvement in international climate action, including removing the United States once again from the landmark Paris Agreement — which cast a heavy shadow over the U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP29, in Azerbaijan.

For anyone who cares about the future of the planet, these views are deeply troubling. The fact is, wading through reams of scientific data is no longer necessary to prove that the climate crisis is a clear and present danger. All we have to do is look out the window.

So why doesn’t the philanthropy community, which recognizes the existential nature of the threat, treat climate change with the urgency it deserves? As of 2023, funding for climate solutions still constituted less than 2 percent of overall philanthropic giving, with just 4 percent of that going to grassroots climate-justice groups. Meanwhile, leaders at COP29 called for significantly more funding for climate action in global communities, asserting that meeting climate goals is “near impossible” without it.

One possible reason for the head-scratching discrepancy between philanthropic support and the dire nature of the crisis is that while the problem is clear, the solutions are less understood.

Between the two of us, we’ve been active in the climate movement for more than 20 years: Mark as a climate advocate and co-founder of the Solutions Project; Gloria as a community organizer and now the president and CEO of the Solutions Project. During that time, we’ve repeatedly heard that the problem isn’t a lack of solutions to the climate crisis, but a lack of political will. It’s hard to argue with that, given both the outcome of the election and how little attention was paid to the issue during the campaign.

But why is there so little political will? Isn’t political will just another way of saying community buy-in?

Success Stories

When the Solutions Project launched in 2015, we were one of the first collaborative funds focused on community-led climate-justice solutions. We modeled our grant making on the assumption that the people experiencing the worst effects of climate change are the true experts — that they are best equipped to both understand and solve the problem. That includes adopting the renewable-energy technologies that work best for their communities and sharing their success stories widely. Nearly a decade later, we now have proof that this approach works.

For our grantees, the climate crisis is personal and local. As such, solutions are developed in the context of other challenges in their communities, including housing, health, jobs, and race and gender equity. They understand that you don’t solve one problem by ignoring another or by expecting policy leaders in Washington, D.C., and purveyors of the latest climate-tech solutions to save you. Their success proves that climate justice — the idea that climate solutions should also address the many interconnected problems affecting people — is not just a theory. It’s a winning strategy for creative problem-solving.

In 2021, we received a $43 million, flexible, three-year investment from the Bezos Earth Fund. The scale and flexibility of this funding allowed us to turbocharge our strategy. Since then, we’ve invested in more than 300 community climate groups across the United States, 90 percent of which are led by women or people of color.

To assess our approach, we hired outside researchers to conduct three separate reports: an impact assessment of our work; an analysis of policy achievements driven by grantees; and an evaluation of how our grantees’ efforts contributed to carbon dioxide reduction. The reports, released this spring, found that the nonprofits we supported provided more than 1 million people with climate solutions, such as affordable environmentally sustainable housing or disaster-response services. Their work also led to 53 legislative, corporate accountability, or community climate victories, benefiting 106 million people at the national level and 43 million at the state and local level.

In New York City alone, the work of three of our grantees is projected to reduce carbon emissions by 1.15 million metric tons, the equivalent of taking more than 250,000 cars off the road. If these policies, including replacing natural gas with wind power, electrifying schools, and banning natural gas in new buildings, were adopted throughout New York state, they could eliminate a whopping 27 million metric tons of carbon emissions. Imagine what such efforts could achieve on a national scale.

Climate Resilience

The groups we support have also proven especially effective at responding to climate disasters. For example, when devastating hurricanes pummeled Florida this fall, our grantee Smile Trust quickly set up more than 20 hubs across the state to provide neighborhood-level disaster-response services, such as food, drinking water, electricity, clothing, and emergency medical supplies. Such climate-resilience work will become even more critical in the coming years and needs to be scaled up to meet the demand.

With dramatic reductions expected in federal funding for climate solutions during the Trump administration, philanthropy must play a much larger role, especially at the community level. The work of grassroots climate organizations is at heightened risk at the very moment it’s needed most.

We understand the calculus funders make to ensure that every dollar spent has the greatest possible impact. In supporting the climate solutions and innovations of grassroots groups, we believe we’ve found one of the most effective paths to making that happen. Funders who still need to be convinced should check out the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which found that the fastest path to a livable future is through prioritization of climate justice.

Time is running out, and the stakes have been raised exponentially by the election of Donald Trump. Our grantees have proven that with sufficient resources, local climate groups can lead the way to a livable future. They’ve shown they can expand community climate resilience and reduce emissions. And they’re just getting started. What’s needed now is philanthropic will and action. What more proof do you need?