The third of our great Superpowers is “If you want to save the planet, Use Your Voice.”
This week I had the pleasure of attending advocacy training by The Climate Reality Project, in Denver. Sobering, yet extraordinarily energizing!
It included presentations by former Vice President and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore. Gore is the author of the upcoming book and film, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Speaking Truth to Power,” the ten-year followup to his widely-acclaimed film and book, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Former Colorado governor Bill Ritter gave a punchy, insightful keynote speech. He is the author of the recent book , “Powering Forward – What Everyone Should Know About America’s Energy Revolution.”
And there were superb talks by scientists and communications experts throughout.
Climate Reality Project is a group of very, very solid people and Global Warming for Busy People follows and supports them… please check out Climate Reality Project’s web site and perhaps consider donating or volunteering?
(Training was like drinking from a firehose, really, but that’s OK… tons of creative ideas and networking, along with sobering science and economics. But also hope, which as Al Gore says, “Is a renewable resource.”
One guest speaker was a young woman named Leah Greenberg, co-author of the explosively popular, million-download grassroots organizing tool, “Indivisible Guide.”
Practical beyond practical, and hugely timely for grassroots organizers and ordinary citizens. A tool to learn how to block the new Federal government from moving (without majority voter support), to gut the EPA, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Power Plan, NOAA and NASA for critical earth-science data collection, the Department of Energy’s research on clean energy, and to sell off long taxpayer-owned Western lands for fossil fuel development. All at the very time the clean advanced-energy economy is creating far more new American jobs than the fossil fuel industry.
Whew, a mouthful to be sure, but there it is.
Her team’s grassroots organizing tools, which copy the Tea Party’s successful approach, are proven and effective, and bear widespread use.
As much as I’d like Global Warming for Busy People to be bipartisan or nonpartisan, the scope of the harms noted above is historic and requires voter pushback at a matching level of vigor.
This is how I paraphrase the words Shakespeare put in the mouth of his character Malvolio, in Twelfth Night:
“Some achieve greatness, whilst others have greatness thrust upon them by events…” As former Reagan press secretary James Brady said about life in the White House, “Some days, we are just OBE: Overtaken by Events.”
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How does one get started saving the planet? Start by deeply knowing your own sources of personal power: 1) To save the planet, Change Yourself First; 2) To save the planet, Invest Your Working Life; 3) To save the planet, Use Your Voice and take advocacy seriously! Never miss a chance to vote, and never stop influencing your government and businesses locally, at the state level, and at the national level.
And in all cases and at all times, cast aside the learned-helplessness that infects so much of modern life…
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