“To address our climate emergency, we must rapidly, radically reshape society. We need every solution and every solver. As the saying goes, to change everything, we need everyone. What this moment calls for is a mosaic of voices – the full spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can turn things around.”
– Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson, All We Can Save
Things take longer to happen than you think they will, but then they happen much faster than you thought they could.
If we look back, we have already witnessed radical shifts in public opinion and attitudes that have led to major changes in our culture and our legislation. For example, laws preventing discrimination against gender, race, or sexual orientation. All these changes were possible only because citizens and grassroots organizations have used their democratic rights, voiced their opinions, and refused to accept the status quo. And by doing so for an extended period of time, they gained traction, opinions changed, the culture changed, and new laws were made. It was never easy or fast, but it doesn’t mean it was not worth it.
It was the same for the civil rights movement, the abolition movement, the women’s suffrage movement, and the movement for gay rights. It was never easy—all these movements have encountered a tremendous number of no’s before making progress. But they persisted and made it through. This highlights the fact that political change requires social movement. This is why YOU matter in this climate crisis.
You, a single individual, have more power than you think you have.
In this chapter, we’ll see the simple (but not easy) steps you can take to have an impact on climate change.
- Your Voice Matters
According to the Yale Climate Communication Center report, about seven in ten Americans (72%) think that the climate is changing. And about the same number agree that it will harm plants and animals (71%) and harm future generations (71%). However, when you ask people, “Do you ever hear someone you know talking about this at least once a month?”, more than three-quarters (66%) of people say “no”.
This is a big problem.
Why?
Because we don’t care about things we don’t know about. As Jacques Cousteau would say, “People protect what they love, they love what they understand and they understand what they are taught.” The number one thing that we can do to help the climate crisis is to start talking about it.
I don’t think we need more science. We have enough of that. More science won’t convince more people. We need to tell people we love, tell people we know, tell people around us why we care about the climate crisis. The most powerful source of information for people is from people they know.
When we do, it is important that we do not try to convince people to adopt our own views or try to “convert” them to be a new climate evangelist, but we should speak about our shared values with them, from our hearts, and express why it is important to us. We should have a real conversation with the person in front of us and understand what their values are and validate them. Only then can you connect the dots and explain how climate change relates to those values.