The Change Report™: Leah Thomas
Speaking with the acclaimed environmentalist and author on the state of sustainability — and the importance of joy.
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What is the sustainability movement in 2025? Better yet: what was the sustainability movement, which felt so omnipresent in the 2010s but now seems to have taken on a quieter expression of itself?
These two questions have been clawing at me day and night, to understand how one of the most pressing issues of our lives effectively became “unimportant.” Be that because certain despots want people to ignore the relationship between impact and disaster or because reducing your impact means the rich can no longer get richer, the results are the same: floods, droughts, fires, extreme heat, and a planet that gasps to survive which means we too are left breathless. Factor in the xenophobia and the fascism and the genocides and the inequality and we can see why the conversation shifted from paper straws to saving innocent humans from evil humans: bigger, more immediate issues came up — and that means the needs of planet and people alike don’t feel as important.
It would be easy to clock out now, to indulge nihilism — and it would be easy to shrug off the “Keep smiling!!!” calls as both out-of-touch and toxically positive. But let’s stay in the more positive end, the giggling while the oppressor tries to keep you down: that shifts the moment, doesn’t it? There is a joy in rebellion, there is a power to tapping into every emotion you have during difficult times, as reminder that you are human and that to lose such a connection with yourself and with others is a form of defeat. It takes a village and that village should be haha and heheing instead of self-dehumanizing.
Instead of — umm — sitting with these feelings, indulging useless worrying, someone came to mind as the perfect expert to help understand the state of the sustainability movement, the doom and gloom vibes of the now, and why it’s important to never let anyone rob you of your happiness: Leah Thomas. An environmentalist, an author, and a social media sensation, Leah has long been a figure in the new wave of sustainability voices, fitting in with the larger collection of young figures fighting to save the planet like Mikaela Loach, Xiye Bastida, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, and Greta Thunberg. Leah, like her peers, has grown up in this space and she, like her peers, has evolved, adding her voice to other movements and efforts that feel more pertinent now. This isn’t that the environment has been left behind, no, but that so many of us have changed with the times as the movement (or the way the movement expressed itself) stayed the same.
To understand the state of the sustainability and the need to hold onto the human, I hopped on a call with Leah where we chatted for a full thirty minutes about all the aforementioned items — and then some. Read on to understand where sustainability is now and where it might be going along with an urgent call to quite literally help those in your backyard.
KRF: What does change mean to you? And how do you see change happening in this moment?
LT: I feel like change, to me, is synonymous with community because I don't think we can have change without true community. Recently I've been really inspired by movements of the 60s and the 70s, as I'm sure many of us are, because things just keep paralleling, like in the 60s and 70s, we had the biggest Earth Day movement and this hippie-dippie flower power movement and civil rights organizing. When I think about now — or most of my 20s — we've also had a huge movement for racial justice and huge climate movements. I think my favorite thing that I learned from the past is rainbow coalition building. That's one of the many reasons I put rainbows everywhere, on the work that I do. Right now, there's a lot of grief and healing, even within progressive movement space. We can heal by coming together and realizing the power of community. And, you know, I've realized coalition building is hard because there's so many disagreements, even across cultural groups trying to figure out what or how we can enact change. But I think, right now, we have to have to forgive and come together. We need the people power to dismantle the systems.
KRF: That’s an amazing answer because what you’re saying is so very timely. It’s so easy to be distracted or seduced by critique, meaning — and I tell people this all the time — it’s so much easier to critique something than to give it love or give it care. Not that everything is without critique or shouldn't be critiqued, but it’s so easy to go to, say, a local art show and maybe the art's not-great and you're maybe gonna critique it, or you’ll be much faster to critique it than to point out what went well. We're trained to do that because of social media, to have a take. I appreciate being more thoughtful and we really need to be more thoughtful now.
LT: There’s so much critique online. Existing as a person that advocates for the planet and people while also intersecting with being a content creator, I'm constantly witnessing even my fellow activist-influencer peers fighting with each other. I understand, but I feel like we need something new.
KRF: That is, unfortunately, the point of the Internet, to flatten anything with depth so that you’re fighting with people that you’d otherwise agree with in real life. That brings us to another question, which you already touched on in a way: you’ve been working so much more in community, which gets not only at intersectionality and offering tools to people to be more autonomous, from making food items to gardening to dyeing items, but it seems like such a smart way to connect people to the environment by connecting with other people — and yourself. Because of technology and because of Covid, we became divorced people from each other and now we're sort of trying to figure out ways back. I would love to hear more about how you approach community building. How is that a tool for change? Because I think it's so overlooked, or easy to forget that community takes work.
LT: So, I started a Crafting Club accidentally like two months ago. I've been spending a lot of time crafting in the last year, to heal the trauma of everything that's going on in the US right now and to get inspired. I realized how incredible it was for my overall well being, from ceramics to learning how to sew, learning how to make bread and plant based dyes. It makes me feel so empowered and me more into the earth. It’s a kind of activism — or a form of craftivism — because I am resisting capitalism and making things with my own hands.
But I was crafting at home and I started to share bits and pieces on social media, which is distinctly different from how I showed up probably three or four years ago, where most of my content was around racial justice and environmentalism, which was just the vibe in 2020 and 2021. I was surprised that I was receiving so many people saying “I really want to do that!” or “I learned how to dye with plants too!” So I decided to just start, posting on Threads if anyone wanted to meet in a garden and do arts and crafts together. There were hundreds of responses, of people saying, “I would love like that!” So I had it at one of my favorite gardens in Pasadena, Arlington — and it was insane. Like 200 people showed up in a park to do crafts together! I started realizing how we need these third spaces, where people can come together in community with other people and do activities together. In some ways, I feel like it connects with activism because when we're in these spaces we can almost radically imagine what the future could look like. Like, “Oh, the future could be a situation where I'm in a garden and I'm doing crafts and I'm learning skills and sharing skills with the community.”
To answer your question, I think having these kinds of third spaces or places that people can come to meet new people is a rebound to what 2020 was, where we were really inside and online. It's helping us remember that we need to actually touch grass, to get inspired, and be in community with one another, to brainstorm how to get us out of this.
KRF: The times have definitely changed — and some of this also has to do with people in their twenties evolving too. Did you feel this is a part of your evolution too? I remember you making those posts in the early 2020s too but, as humans do, we change. You change, I change, we’re all becoming ourselves in every moment, which is what tech companies want because they want us to stay in one place and stay the same.
LT: I completely agree with that — and I feel like my Saturn has returned. I've just turned 30 and I feel like I'm getting older. There are certain things where I'm like, “Oh, I guess I kind of understand why people chill out a bit.” when, maybe a couple years ago, I was more black and white. It feels like, the older I get, the more nuance there is. I’m still firmly planted and rooted in my beliefs — but I feel like I am changing in some ways too. It’s also something specific to being a Black woman in this country, at this time. I think there's a lot of sentiment with Black women activists that I've spoken to, that we didn't want this man as president and we keep fighting and we keep telling people — and they're not listening. How can we build resilient communities then? I have dedicated a lot of my life — and I'll continue to do so — but maybe in this role I can support other organizations. So I'm volunteering a lot more, but I don't want to lead in the same way that I did. If I do lead, it's maybe teaching people how to be well during this time, how to be supplementary or complementary to activism. We need to be well in order to sustain the movements that we care about! That's the pivot I'm in right now. I'm not just crafting to be mindless but to make moments of disconnection in nature, to be a voice that can show people “Hey, it's okay to laugh a bit right now!” while the world is on fire because, if we are scared and afraid and anxious, everybody's gonna be depressed and non-empathetic.
KRF: That’s something I wanted to ask you about: the importance of joy in dark times. Obviously when things are not their best, when they are rough, when they are as bad as they can be, there is an importance to having access to the whole pie chart of possible emotions — and joy and happiness are such a crucial part of that. I think a lot of the early 2020s, and or maybe mid-2010s and or now, there was a moment where you could not be happy when someone else somewhere was suffering. You cannot have joy when you know there are people being detained by ICE or that there's conflicts in Palestine: because that is happening, you can't be happy. Bad things happen and you are supposed to feel bad too, as if you are atoning for the sins of others, which forces you to ignore your own reality.
I’d love to hear about why you think there is a need for radical joy. In these tough times, when fascistic and oppressive forces worldwide want to see you down, be it because you're a person of color or queer or of some difference, these forces don’t want to see you smiling or getting together with people, and living and being visible — but all of those things are a great point of departure for change. How is joy revolutionary? Why is it so needed now? Why is it taboo to not let whomever put you down?
LT: I get so annoyed when I see certain hot takes about how joy can’t be the only form of activism. I'm not saying it is — but not allowing yourself to have joy or practicing joy as an act of persistence or practicing gratitude as a form of resistance is just, like, working and grinding. Isn't that what we don’t like about capitalism? That's the thing that we're saying we don’t want, that grinding. Capitalism is ruining us! We can't have our movement spaces also be something that is basically causing us to feel like a cog in the machine. If you’re in a space where people are not allowing you to have joy, find community, and be goofy together, then that's not a sustainable space. It's almost you’re being looked at only as a body and not like an individual, that you have to sacrifice yourself for the cause.
I love Black American history because the best music came out when segregation was still in effect, even during the Jim Crow era: we were able to have beautiful, soulful music coming out of it. I feel like Black Americans have always been very creative people that always found joy. We’re singing spirituals! And we weren't going to let anyone take that away! Our activism or our artistry or creativity has always been a part of our resistance, oftentimes resistance happening through song and dance. My great grandmother, who unfortunately passed away a couple years ago who I was able to grow up with, was so joyful even with everything she went through. I'm not going to sit here and act as though I shouldn't show up and let these systems take away my joy, my silliness, my goofiness. “Whimsical” is a word we're seeing a lot lately, and I love that. Whimsicalness. Whimsy! I feel like my practice is — I don't know — maybe moderately whimsical. As a neuro-spicy person, I show up as that too. Even the way that I'm posting on social media now I'm being a little bit more myself, or showing things that are a bit more whimsical because I think it is important. If the Black Panthers understood this and had yoga classes, I don't want anyone to tell me otherwise. We can agree to disagree.
KRF: One hundred percent. I love that and it’s so easy to forget the importance of every aspect of life, despite the circumstances. Last question, which I’m curious about from you given your work in environmentalism, is what you think the state of the environmental — or sustainable — movement is now? Things have felt a bit uneven lately and I wanted to get your take as someone who has worked in this space for such a long time. We’ve already had such a hot summer and, despite everything else happening in the world, the climate part of the equation seems to get dropped as far as movement and activism to take up.
LT: It's weird. It's definitely in a weird place. Greta Thunberg is 22 now! The Youth Climate movement as we knew has aged. There seems to be a new movement that's bubbling, which — in my opinion — is a return to the grassroots because…how are we going to do certain things now that democracy is up for question? That's going to be difficult to maneuver. I think a lot of people are getting more local, encouraging people to connect with grassroots organizations because that's something that we do have control over.
But there are certain things I feel are set in motion because of the way people voted in this country that I think will take a long time to undo. I'll continue to advocate, to make sure that this president doesn't pump more oil into this country, but I would say there are certain things that are in motion that we might have to we might not be able to prevent. We can clean up ten years from now to the best of our ability but, maybe in the meantime, we can get as local as possible, showing up for grassroots organizations in our communities so they can capacity build — and we can try our best to take care of each other.
I think the movement’s in a weird place because it's kind of hard to think about the carbon in the atmosphere when people are getting fired left and right, when basic human needs aren't being met. The environmental movement can seem off now because, in some places, people don’t have water to drink. I'm from St Louis, Missouri and 4000 homes were just destroyed. How can we be focused on that when we’re met with “My home was just ruined by a natural disaster and I'm not even polluting that much”: what am I supposed to do? It’s hard and I feel like we need a new movement. I don't know who's gonna start it, but I'll be there to support.
KRF: I was gonna say that, fortunately, a big win of the modern movement is that what was fought for was adopted by so much of culture, things like not using disposable bags and shifting away from paper straws. Big brands and big businesses are changing because people know that polyester is bad and plastic bottles are bad, which is how you end up with something like the Stanley Cup. That trend was bad, yes, but it was a reaction to people knowing to not buy plastic bottles of water. It feels that the movement, much like a tree, now has roots in so many places, that it became so much of culture even if it wasn’t enough. Thus…it’s ina weird place.
The thing that comes to mind for me — and this is obvious — is that there is a direct line being drawn from heatwaves and droughts and water scarcity to the use of technologies like AI. I don’t use AI for that reason, because it’s morally and philosophically bad for people — and I care deeply about the environment. To me, it feels like the climate movement will be couched with a larger anti-tech movement and the anti-AI movement, a pro-people intersectional moment that is against these forces ruining jobs and communities and the planet.
Do you think that’s a possible future for the movement? Do we need to decenteralize climate in activism?
LT: I like that. Spreading those values into other movements is kind of what's happening right now. Because, again, you don't have to be an environmentalist to take issue with AI. And I think a lot of people right now are wondering how these tools will threaten their jobs. Even as an author — I'm working on my second book right now — I remember thinking, “Oh my god…Am I going to be able to write a book after my next book?” Obviously yes, I can, but the world is going to change in major ways that I think a lot of people are really uncomfortable with, especially when it seems like there's like a handful of tech billionaires that are running the show, not really thinking about the loss of jobs and economic turmoil and environmental degradation. Resisting this strange billionaire agenda is going to inherently also become pro-environment. I like that there will be a pro-environment layer baked into these larger movements, which will show just how the environment is always relevant.
For more on Leah Thomas, be sure to check out her Instagram and website along with her earth friendly guides and craft meet-ups. Subscribe to The Trend Report™ for more interviews and cultural deep dives.