The green adventure continues
We're bringing you climate solutions from a new continent in 2024!
Thank you for reading The Green Journey!
As we head into 2024, our goal is to bring you more powerful stories of Climate Solutions + Green Adventures that inspire action and hope. We work tirelessly to keep these stories free — but if it wouldn’t cause you undue financial hardship to support our work, your help will go a long way!
Eight months ago, we stood by the side of the road in France, hearts racing and thumbs extended as we attempted to hitchhike the very 1st ride of The Green Journey, our project to discover and share climate solutions from around the world!
Truthfully, we didn’t get off to the best start. We waited nearly two hours — in the pouring rain — for our first lift. But thanks to the kindness of Mirza, a warm-hearted soul who brought us from Nantes to Orléans, eventually, we were off!
What followed was six months of incredible adventures through the European continent, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean. Since departure day, we’ve traveled more than 20,000 miles by bike, train, bus, sailboat, and hitchhiking, reaching 25+ countries and meeting with 30+ climate and nature leaders who are working tirelessly each day to make their corners of the world a better place.
We’ve been inspired by solutions ranging from youth-driven climate litigation in Sweden to community-funded wind turbines. We’ve advocated for change at local and global climate protests. We’ve shared our story on podcasts and around the dinner table.
And above all, at every turn we’ve been floored by the generosity of friends, family and strangers. From the Albanian activists who treated us to the best burek of our lives to the fellow sailors who bought us landfall beers, to the incredibly kind Greek railway staffer who helped us find a bus willing to transport our unwieldy bikes, it has taken an absolute village of people who have extended their kindness and asked for nothing in return.
If there’s one key takeaway from 2023, it’s that serendipitous human connection is the best thing about travel. We’ve witnessed once-in-a-lifetime sights and had incredible adventures, but it’s the moments shared with others that will last in our memories long after the 50,000 photos in Polo’s Adobe Lightroom have been lost somewhere on The Cloud.
What’s next for The Green Journey
Good news: despite occasional seasickness, crazy storms, and a last-minute boat change, we safely made it across the Atlantic Ocean!
From now until March, we’ll be making our way through the Caribbean Sea en route to Miami, where Polo has been selected to join the Aspen Future Leaders Climate Summit! Along the way, we’ll report on several stories of climate solutions from the Caribbean.
This will be an especially important chapter in our adventure because small island states contribute to only 1 percent of global GHG emissions, but they are some of the most vulnerable in the world to the effects of climate change — think rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and super-powered hurricanes.
The good news? Many Caribbean nations are going all in on climate solutions. We can’t wait to discover and share their stories with you! Then, following arrival in Miami, we’ll make our way through Central & South America before returning to the U.S. at the end of the summer for a very special, cross-country expedition!
As we look ahead to the next chapter, we’re particularly excited about what lies ahead because we plan on leveraging our backgrounds in climate tech and decarbonization pathways to challenge stereotypes about climate action across the Americas. If you’ve been following along for a while, you know that we’re passionate about bringing you under-reported stories that focus on change-makers of all backgrounds. A few of the plans we’re dreaming up include:
A sun-powered boat ride down the Amazon River;
A visit to a shade-grown coffee producer in Southern Mexico;
A deep dive into the green hydrogen industry in the Atacama Desert;
A bike ride across Megan’s home state exploring wind power in West Texas!
But we’re still in the planning stages and open to your ideas. So please send us an email or leave us a comment if you have suggestions of what we should do and where we should go in 2024!
Staying stubbornly optimistic
As we head into 2024 our New Year’s Resolution at The Green Journey is to stay stubbornly optimistic about the climate and nature crisis. It’s not always easy to do so, especially when 2023 was the hottest year on record. The year ahead holds many uncertainties: decisive global elections, aftershocks of this year’s El Niño weather event, rising global power demand — for both the dirty stuff and the clean.
It’s OK to cry, scream or throw your hands in the air when you read what feels like the 10,000th headline of the week about the shortcomings of COP28 or Kim Kardashian’s greenwashing campaigns. The news cycle can be demoralizing. And if you’re still exhausted from the year that’s passed, it’s OK to be. January is cozy season, and rest is a form of resistance. But once you’ve taken a moment for yourself, let your motto be action against depression.
Eight months on the road have imbued us with hope for the future, from peatlands restoration in Finland to the preservation of cultivated biodiversity in France. This year, we’ll bring you more hopeful, action-oriented stories from a new group of leaders, hard at work deploying solutions. And if we inspire you to make an impact in your daily life, all the better!
From the bottom of our hearts, we’d like to thank you for your support in 2023. When times have been tough, the online and in-person community we’ve been building around this crazy project has kept us going. We look forward to seeing you across the Western Hemisphere — online and hopefully, on the road, in 2024!
If you end up coming through CO let me know!