Building Connection in an Isolated World: A Climate Talk Recap
A recap of our first lecture on how reconnection between people and with the planet can reshape the climate movement.
Last week, we launched On the Rocks: Climate Talks, our new speaker series designed to bring climate conversations into welcoming, community spaces. We gathered on the back patio of The Sycamore in the Mission to hear from David Jay, movement strategist, founder of Relationality Lab, and author of Relationality.
His talk, Loneliness and the Climate Movement, struck a powerful chord. It helped us see the connection between two seemingly separate crises: climate breakdown and the loneliness epidemic. More importantly, it revealed how rebuilding relationship, to each other and the rest of the world, isn’t a distraction from our work. It may be one of the most powerful levers we have.
If you couldn’t be there, here’s a deeper look at what we explored together.
🌍 From Isolation to Interconnection
David opened with a simple but radical truth: loneliness is not just being alone—it’s the absence of agency in our relationships. It’s the feeling that you don’t have the power to connect in the ways you need.
And it’s becoming more common. In 1991, about 1 in 3 Americans had 10 or more close friends, and only 1 in 30 had none. As of 2021, just 12% of people have 10+ close friends, while 13% report having none at all. The amount of time we spend with friends has plummeted—from 30 hours a week in 2003 to just 10 hours in 2021. These trends worsened with the pandemic and haven’t improved.
This deep social disconnection isn’t just an emotional issue—it’s physiological. Loneliness increases the risk of a host of physical and mental health effects, including:
Anxiety, depression, and substance abuse
High blood pressure, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s
Slower recovery from injury and cellular aging
Cancer through suppressed immune function
These impacts demonstrate how deeply our brains and bodies are wired for connection. It’s no wonder that public health officials, including the U.S. Surgeon General, now consider loneliness a public health crisis.
🧠 Our Brains Are Built for Relationship
Why does loneliness affect us so deeply? Because humans evolved to be in relationship.
The neocortex, the part of our brain responsible for abstract reasoning, is also the part most tied to navigating complex relationships. In fact, the size of the neocortex in mammals correlates with group size. Navigating these relationships is extremely cognitively demanding. Our brains have evolved to be literally structured to manage these many, meaningful social bonds.
And this connection extends beyond humans. Across human history, there was a wide range of cultural expression beyond hunter gatherer tribes or authoritarian monarchies. There were diverse, egalitarian societies that thrived by adapting to their ecosystems, not exploiting them. Which is part of the reason, we were able to survive in so many ecosystems without breaking the natural world around us. The myth that humans are inherently extractive confuses capitalism with human nature. In reality, humans are wired for kinship, not just with each other, but with the land, animals, and all living systems.
We’ve just forgotten.
📉 When Transaction Replaced Relationship
So how did we become so disconnected?
David pointed to 1551, a pivotal moment in the emergence of modern capitalism. That’s when investors began financing long-distance trade voyages, prioritizing return on investment over human or ecological wellbeing. One of the most infamous examples? The British East India Company.
This was more than colonial violence—it was a worldview shift. For the first time, your success depended on your ability to ignore relational harm. The better you were at un-seeing the destruction left behind, the more successful you became.
That legacy lives on. We now operate in an economy that renders relationships invisible. In this system, deep connection is seen as inefficient, mutual support is considered unproductive, and human beings are optimized as workers, not as whole people.
Our world is built to favor transaction over transformation.
🔥 So What Does This Have to Do with Climate?
Climate breakdown is also a crisis of disconnection from land, from each other, from the systems we’re part of.
We often respond to this with technical fixes or policy tweaks. But as David noted, “We could be living in a world that recognizes the power of connection, not just human-to-human, but with the more-than-human world.”
To truly shift the system, we must rebuild a culture of relationship. And we have proof that this works:
📍 During the 1995 Chicago heat wave, researchers found the best predictor of survival wasn’t income or emergency response. It was how connected residents felt to their neighbors.
📍 During COVID-19, the same patterns held. Communities with stronger social bonds fared better.
📍 Most powerful social movements, from the Montgomery bus boycotts to Stonewall to the disability justice movement, began in places of mutual support, like the AME Zion church, the Stonewall Inn, and the Center for Independent living in Berkeley. These were places where people went for support and to build connections.
“If corporations survive by creating the conditions for transaction,” David said,
“then movements survive by creating the conditions for relationship.”
✨ Loneliness as a Source of Power
What if our shared loneliness isn’t a weakness, but a starting point?
David proposed that places of disconnection can become sites of shared power, if we’re willing to gather, share stories, and build meaning together.
He offered the example of how Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta built the farmworkers movement by creating the conditions for relationship. They asked people to share their stories, why they were there. These stories built an environment of trust and collective care. Movements become powerful not through money or marketing, but by helping people feel seen, connected, and capable.
In the climate space, this is especially vital. We’re often told to act alone to buy the right thing, vote the right way, and offset our guilt. But that leaves us burnt out and isolated. When we act in community, we not only build resilience—we build momentum.
💚 This Is What We’re Building
At Climate Action Club, we’re not just interested in events. We’re interested in building a movement rooted in care and connection. That means creating spaces that allow for our community to listen, share, reflect, and act together in alignment.
We're grateful to everyone who joined us for our first lecture night, and we can’t wait to keep growing this space together.
With love + action,
Climate Action Club
Upcoming Events
🌱 Climate Picnic
Thursday, June 26 | 5:30PM–7:30PM | Salesforce Park
Join us after work for a fun evening of discussion with new (and old) climate friends! We’ll snack, unwind, and dive into what’s really at stake with the IRA and reconciliation bill, as well as how we can support each other in this moment.
🔗 RSVP here.
📖 Community Event: Book Club - The Righteous Mind
Sunday, July 12 | 2PM | Dolores Park
Join our next book club to discuss “The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt. All are welcome - even if you haven’t finished the book yet!
🔗 RSVP via Slack! Get access to all of our community events by joining the Climate Action Club Slack channel. Sign up here.
Job Board
AI Fellow at New Public ($40/h for 20-25h/week July-Dec, remote)
Program Manager at 11th Hour Project ($145,000-$155,000, SF/LA)
Operations Associate at Renaissance Philanthropy ($90,000-$135,000, NYC/DC)
Founding CTO at TMRW (Amanda Joy Ravenhill’s new startup)
Program Associate, Strategic Communications at Energy Foundation ($84,600-$93,600, SF/NYC/DC/LA/Boston/remote)
Clean Transportation Policy Associate at Energy Foundation ($84,600-$93,600, SF/NYC/DC/LA/Boston/remote)
Senior Fellow, Industrial Electrification at Center for Climate and Energy Solutions ($97,000-$122,000, DC)
Electricity Program Manager at Clean Air Task Force ($96,575-$140,000, remote)
Organizing Director at Climate Justice Alliance ($113,375, remote)
Mobility Program Coordinator at NY Department of Transportation ($60,889-$94,521, NYC)
CAISO Energy Markets Analyst at Voltus ($80,000-$115,000, remote)
Senior Manager of HR Programs at KoBold Metals ($150,000-$210,000, remote)