Surprise! This newsletter is more time-sensitive than usual so I wanted to get it out as quickly as possible.

Two things for you today:

• Check out our latest podcast episode on how to effectively advocate for climate policy & the important policies up in the air right now in the US with Eliza Nemser and Gabrielle Jorgensen of Climate Changemakers!
• Opportunity for meaningful action: Join the Climate Changemakers community for 1 hour of action advocating for strong US climate policy and/or stronger pledges from businesses going into COP26!

Did you know?

A whopping 29% of Americans say they would “definitely” or “probably” join a campaign to convince elected officials to take action on climate if they were asked to by someone they like and respect.

But only 1% are currently active in such campaigns.

That means there are 93 million people in the US (28% of the population) who are sitting on the sidelines right now, waiting for their name to be called.

It’s time to start calling on these wonderful people – our friends, family, and broader networks – to join us.

And if you’re one of the people who simply hasn’t been asked to help yet, consider this your official invitation 🙂

Climate Changemakers

This is a core part of Climate Changemakers’s theory of change.

Climate Changemakers is an organization for anyone who is concerned about climate change and wants to take effective climate action with others. You don’t need to prepare or have any prior experience to join them. In fact, 67% of volunteers have never taken action before joining Climate Changemakers!

It’s a community of people striving to spend one hour a week advocating for strong climate policies and working to elect climate champions.

And they’re good at what they do!

They’ve gotten policymakers to make commitments and co-sponsor bills, newspapers to publish their Letters to the Editor, key stakeholders like CEOs to hear their customers’ concerns, and much more.

Perhaps key to their success, they’re committed to being non-partisan and focus on high-leverage, no-brainer policies that are science-based and rooted in justice.

Take action with the Climate Changemakers community

There are some awesome actions lined up for today, tomorrow, and next week!

From Gabrielle:

“On the 27th and 28th we will continue to advocate for the removal of fossil fuel subsidies and the inclusion of climate provisions in the Build Back Better Act that will lead to 50% emissions reduction by 2030. We will offer two ways of doing this:

1) scheduling and preparing for meetings with congressional staff, or

2) calling and emailing our members of Congress.

On November 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, we will be hosting a special week of action centered on the COP26 conference in Glasgow. We will reach out to local businesses we know and ask them to sign onto a joint letter pledging alignment with the COP26 emissions reduction goals as a business and calling on elected leaders to do their part.”

You can find more details on the events and them to your calendar here!

I’m personally excited to be joining for an hour of climate action tomorrow, Thursday the 28th at 5 pm PT.

Hope to see some of y’all there!

The podcast!

In this episode with Eliza Nemser and Gabrielle Jorgensen, we cover the awesome work Climate Changemakers is doing, tips for crafting and personalizing your climate story, the reconciliation bill, eliminating fossil fuel studies, democracy reform, and more!

(Eliza is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Climate Changemakers. And Gabrielle is the Advocacy Director. Recorded on October 14th.)

It was an absolute pleasure getting to know Eliza and Gabrielle.

Hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did! (Watch | Listen)

Timeline

0:00 Intro.

1:00 Eliza’s and Gabrielle’s climate stories.

7:35 Climate Changemakers’s theory of change.

10:30 Examples of work – what’s it like to participate in action with Climate Changemakers?

15:20 Gabrielle’s advice for people on how to craft and personalize your own climate story (super important!)

19:25 How can people get involved and what does that look like?

22:45 The reconciliation bill (aka the climate bill).

30:15 How can people help now? What actions are coming up and what’s the strategy behind them?

33:30 Policy priorities! Eliminating fossil fuel studies, democracy reform, voting rights, keep it in the ground act, and the filibuster.

46:15 Final messages and calls to action.

Favorite quotes

“This is the moment we need to actually roll up our sleeves and get involved.” – Eliza Nemser

 

“Effective advocacy takes longer than a couple clicks. It just does…This is a practice of civic engagement – in the name of climate action.” – Eliza Nemser

 

“You start from this building block level of being able to put climate advocacy into your own words – take a policy issue and kind of find yourself in it and that will give you the confidence to really speak from the heart…really speak about it in a way that touches the people in your community or whoever your audience is.” – Gabrielle Jorgensen

Gabrielle’s advice on crafting and personalizing your climate story:

“Think of the space that you occupy, and how you identify yourself. So maybe it’s your profession, maybe it’s your relationship to other people – like you identify as a parent or a granddaughter or whatever relational space you occupy. Your geographic area – maybe you live in a coastal city, maybe you live in an agricultural community where you’ve been experiencing drought lately.

Orient yourself relationally and geographically and vocationally and think about all of the ways that climate change could really touch your life in any of those circles. If you’ve oriented your reason for caring about climate change in that personalized way you can then just pretty simply connect it to the policy issue.” – Gabrielle Jorgensen

 

“Finding yourself in a policy – figuring out your why you care, how it impacts you – that is incredibly important work, in part, because there are empirical data showing that, in terms of an end goal of influencing decision maker opinion, what works is personalized authentic messages. What doesn’t work is high volumes of generic messages…it also really just helps you become a more effective communicator in your daily life and and then do that work of getting the people around you to care more and be more motivated to to join in as a change-maker.” – Eliza Nemser

 

“We all need to get involved and be part of the solution…those of us who are really climate conscious, climate concerned need to do more than vote.” – Eliza Nemser

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Again, hope you enjoy the convo and hope some of y’all check out an hour of action with me and the Climate Changemakers community!