Part IV I’d like to tell you a story… I called my daughter and said, “Your son is home from the ER now, and he is going to be OK.” Imagine that you are driving in Atlanta rush hour traffic. In the middle lane. Your eight-year-old grandson is in [...]
(originally published July 2020) Part III I am giving testimony to an administrative law judge on the impact of climate change on Minnesota crops, and why we shouldn’t allow a dirty tar sands pipeline to be built in our state. There are three hundred people in the room. To [...]
Part II One day a friend of mine was helping me refine my climate talks approach. He asked me why I was interested in working in the climate movement. It’s easy I said, “I want to help others.” Then he did something very valuable for me. He asked me [...]
Part I I am frustrated. Walking out of my talk on the climate crisis, I know that I have failed. I’d prepared, rehearsed and had lots of facts about climate. The audience was polite, but at the end, their applause was tepid. While they likely care, they are unlikely [...]
I spend a lot of time around climate activists helping them with climate communications. Like most of us, their perceptions of where others are in their climate journey are based on where they are themselves. This is a common human characteristic. But if we want to move people to [...]
It’s possible. If your campaign isn’t boring, then don’t read this. But boring can be deadly. We live in an attention-based economy. 1000 messages a day compete for our attention and we respond to buzzes, rings, and the crisis of the minute, to say nothing of commercials of fat [...]
Chance are if you’re posting about climate on Facebook, you have positive intentions (deniers excepted) and want to avert the worst effects for our families, communities, and the planet. But sometimes the way we post has unintended consequences. Here are the three top mistakes we all make, and what [...]
When my granddaughter Sol was five, she asked me a simple question, “Abba, where do babies come from?” “Hmmm?” I thought I knew the answer to this one, but my internal dialogue as a babysitter was “I should probably leave this to her mother?” As a grandfather, I was [...]
Utah Phillips was a musician, a labor organizer, a story teller and a poet. Born in 1935, he spent part of his early life riding the rails. This quote of his is a favorite of mine. I believe it's a commencement address. It still rings true and is even [...]
I’ve seen dozens of climate and environmental campaigns over the last 10 years. Almost every one falls into the issues trap. It’s the tactic of fighting a climate or environmental problem with facts and reason, rather than calling out the underlying violation of our values and telling a story. [...]
