The Phoenix + Currently

It's official!

The Phoenix is now part of Currently!! The vote was overwhelming, with more than 98% of The Phoenix members agreeing to join forces with Currently, a weather service for the climate emergency. We've spent the past few weeks getting everything ready to go, and now we're ready to bring you a new and improved organizing space for climate revolutionaries. 🔥

(There's a lot of info here, and I'll be following up over the coming days with more about our plans at Currently, like the fact that we're giving away ebikes this week only... 👀)

If all you'd like to do is keep getting The Phoenix, you don't need to take any action — we'll make sure we never add you to any additional features of Currently without your permission.

The Phoenix will continue with our same weekly format of a discussion topic about a single issue that needs deconstructing and holds potential for radical change. We'll have a weekly live guest that will help share skills on that topic, and we'll post the full discussion for you to read or listen to on your own time. And we'll keep building a community for people who want to burn down the system and build something better in its place that works for everyone.

But I'd like to take this very special occasion to also introduce you to Currently.

Currently: A weather service for the climate emergency

Currently is very much the same vibe as The Phoenix — except focused on weather, and all the layers of joy and injustice that the weather brings. We've assembled a collective of meteorologists, journalists and activists that intuitively understand that timely weather and climate information can be truly transformative. Our goal at Currently is to be a weather service for the world, in the truest sense of the word service.

Currently is not content with simply reporting the weather, we want to transform the system of inequalities that makes climate change a life-and-death issue for too many people every day. In addition to fostering safety in the climate emergency, Currently also has an equal mandate to foster joy — connecting people around our joyful desire for good weather, and helping you live your best life on nice days.

Our daily flagship newsletter offers one big timely weather global story of the day and one big timely climate story of the day, no more than 300-400 words total — and our local weather newsletters do the same, but specifically for your city — all sent daily at 8pm local time.

If you'd also like to sign up for one of Currently's daily weather and climate newsletters, they're free:

For me, Currently is personal. Currently is the weather and climate service I knew needed to exist in the world, so I built it. Our mission is to "cultivate timely and accurate weather information that supports community resilience and safety during the climate emergency." As nerds who care, it's directly in our wheelhouse to support the kinds of revolutionary changes across the weather-dependent parts of society from the bottom-up.

To do that, Currently partners with emergency managers, community-based organizations, small businesses, and climate-focused employers and brands to provide our audience with weather forecasts that not only help keep people safe, but provide joy and encouragement to keep fighting the biggest problem we've ever faced as a species. We've got about 2 million people that pay attention to us every month, so we've got a huge net we're casting to help change the world.

Lack of access to reliable weather information in people's first language is one of the main drivers of adverse outcomes when weather and climate disasters strike, and when it comes to who has access to weather info, that inequality is infuriating:

Now I've got nothing against Alaska, but there's no reason that a US state of less than 1 million people should have vastly more weather stations than India — one of the most populous countries in the world.

This is what climate injustice looks like: systematic underinvestment in the people and places that are most affected by a disaster they didn't create.

We can and must do better.

Currently's 2022 Membership Drive

This week we're kicking off Currently's first annual membership drive. All this week, for every 100 new Members and every 25 new Sustaining Members we'll give away a free ebike of your choice (more details coming soon, ebike limit $1000).

If you're already a paid member, we'll be announcing a special way for you to win by referring your friends and family — more soon on that!

In the meantime, I'd love to invite you to become a member of Currently at one of our special transformative Member Tiers, being announced for the very first time in this email.

As a fast-growing climate startup, we're also seeking people who want to become direct investor in Currently. Our goal is to scale up our unique two-way interactive weather service to dozens of countries around the world over the next five years, partnering with local organizations to make the weather safer and more enjoyable for everyone, everywhere, no matter what language you speak. You can view our investor pitch deck or book a call with me to chat about it.

We'll also be hosting a live Twitter Space conversation this Tuesday August 2 at 7:30pm ET where we'll chat about all our new Currently membership tiers and partnerships, doing merch giveaways, and a whole lot more.

That's a lot of info, and if you're read this far, you're probably pretty excited about making this community a success. Over the next week or so, I'll go back over everything Currently offers again in follow-up newsletter posts on The Phoenix, just to make sure nothing gets missed.

That's it for now. Thank you so much for joining us on this journey, and being part of a community that's creating lasting change amid the climate emergency.