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A weather service for the climate emergency
We are in a climate emergency. And you were born at just the right moment to help change everything.
I hope the weather is wonderful today where you are.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been devoting time and energy into a project that is an outgrowth of everything I’ve ever done: I created Currently, a weather service for the climate emergency.
Currently is a weather service unlike any that’s ever existed, a community of people sharing resources and delivering justice, hope, safety, and resilience in a world in urgent need of systemic action. It’s part of what needs to exist for us to re-discover how connected we all are.
I started Currently because I think talking about the weather is the best way to connect with people, and for people to connect with each other. Checking the weather is one of the primary activities of the internet, a primary reason people use mobile devices, and it directly affects a huge portion of the economy. It's also the primary way that we experience the climate emergency — the existential injustice of our lifetimes.
For years, we’ve all watched as weather disasters have grown more severe, alongside the intersectional crises of housing, public health, systematic racism, and so many more consequences of centuries of extractive exploitation of people, the land, and the countless species we share this beautiful planet with.
Currently is a meteorological cooperative, a group of scientists, journalists, and everyday citizens working to make our cities safer, teach each other the wonder and beauty inherent in being alive at this moment in history, and provide mutual aid to each other when disasters strike.
Practically speaking, subscribers to Currently receive daily weather updates for one of 25 cities around the world. These updates are written for you by a real person — and unlike your phone’s weather app or the mainstream news, they’re delivered to you in the context of climate emergency, with stats, science, and perspective for our rapidly changing world. We’ll also send you periodic calls to action for ways you can help your neighbors across the street or on the other side of the world. All this is free.
In the coming days, we’ll be launching an interactive SMS weather service for members to make our weather updates even more accessible, giving you the option of texting back and forth with one of our meteorologists when you find yourself in the middle of a weather emergency, or just when you see an interesting cloud and want to know more about it.
For $200/year, founding members of Currently will get all this, plus a gift basket of founders-only merch (including a t-shirt and sticker featuring the design above, created just for us by Moroccan climate activist Zakaria Seffadi using the tagline from every email of The Phoenix). Founding members will also serve as an advisory group for Currently, and help plot our direction forward. In that capacity, you'll have direct access to me, Eric, for periodic chats and brainstorm sessions that will help us build a weather service that can truly change the world.
To make Currently possible, we have a goal of 500 founding members. That’s all the founding members we’ll ever have. And we'll need to hit this goal in order for us to keep operating and to keep Currently newsletters freely available for anyone who wants to read them.
Members are the only source of funding for both The Phoenix and Currently. Both of these publications are completely independent, ad-free, and member-funded. My primary goal for both of these projects is not to make money, it's to provide critical weather and climate information to folks that need it, everywhere in the world, and to build communities while we're doing it.
The bottom line is: I can't do this without you. We are in a climate emergency. And we were born at exactly the right time to change everything.
Join our group of founding members, I can't wait to build Currently with your help.