Climate Innovation and Sustainable Solutions with Michael Scanlon

Climate change is an imminent crisis, fueled by escalating greenhouse gas levels and altering rainfall patterns. The consequences, from disrupted seasons in Guatemala to devastating forest fires in Canada, are evident worldwide. The alarming shift demands a collective focus on adaptation and resilience. Can we navigate the impending challenges, such as water scarcity in Colorado and the relentless fury of unmanageable wildfires, to secure a sustainable future? In this episode, I interviewed Michael Scanlon, the Founder of ClimateCon. ClimateCon was a conference that celebrated climate innovation and encouraged actionable solutions through breakout sessions and workshops. Our conversation revolved around recent advancements, climate sustainability, transportation solutions, and the looming threat of ecological collapse.  Moreover, we delved into the impact of greenhouse gasses, citing examples from around the world, including Guatemala, Syria, and Canada. Tune in and take a step towards a greener future! --- Listen to the podcast here: Climate Innovation and Sustainable Solutions with Michael Scanlon Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Now, I’ve been studying quite a bit about what’s gone wrong with society a little bit psychologically, why so many people are in a terrible emotional state, why there’s so much depression and anxiety, and a couple of themes have come around in many of the things that I’ve read, many of the things that I’ve watched, many of the things that I’ve heard from people, and that is what’s lacking in our current society that we used to have plenty of at some point in the past, and that is community and purpose. And so, as a result of hearing this and seeing this, I’m here wanting to support any time people can gather together a community, especially if they can gather together to serve some kind of a purpose, and that’s why I’m here to showcase to you an event coming up here in Denver in roughly two months from when this podcast will initially air called ClimateCon!, and to share a little bit about this event, I’m here with ClimateCon! founder, ClimateCon! organizer, Michael Scanlon.  ---   Michael, welcome to the program.   Thanks for having me, Steven. It’s an honor to be here.   Well, thank you for coming on and talking about it. I mentioned in my intro, we all need community and we all need purpose, and one of the things that’s going to help get us out of what I refer to as the little dark age of the last 15 years, a period of time in which we’ve been lacking it, is to bring more people into something like that. So, let’s start from the beginning. Michael, what first brought on ClimateCon!? Because I know you’ve been planning this for several months at least by now.    Yeah, yeah. It launched in April 2023, started it in Earth Month. So my background, I had been doing increasingly larger and bigger events leading into the pandemic. In 2019, I actually founded a conference company and I was doing major conferences. I had a conference on March 5th and 6th 2020. The governor was going to come and then the security guy came back and said, “The government can’t come, he has to tell the world coronavirus is here,” and so that company kind of scattered into the wind with the coronavirus. And as I was literally driving rideshare to make a living. I kept thinking at some point, I got to get back into conferences. The series of conferences previous had been around cannabis, cannabis policy in particular, and I wanted to do something more impactful, something more meaningful, something that could have big impact and I kept coming back to climate so that’s where the climate came from was it’s something I’ve been obsessed with for 30 years now and I keep thinking why aren’t we doing more about climate? Why aren’t I doing more about climate? And so, finally, I am.