It’s Getting Hot In Here

For 1.5 million lucky people in the United States,  the month of May is pretty damn sweet.  On college and university campuses from coast to coast, May means Commencement.  With a Capital C.  It’s a memorable day for all: loved ones gather, snapshots are taken, fond friendships are sealed, and whole chapters of our lives close and open on this critical milestone.  It’s a day to reflect on our past and our future, and perhaps more importantly, to wear crazy square hats and a big black dress.

At the nation’s premier institutions, Commencement can be quite the star-studded event.  Each May, celebrities descend on the ivory towers and give a speech to provide graduates with a little boost as they venture out of their collegiate bubbles and into the big scary world.  The Class of 2008 brought two heavyweights to the floor. Gracing Wesleyan’s campus in place of Senator Ted Kennedy was the one, the only, the inimitable hopemonger from Illinois…Barack Obama!  And at Duke University, Barabara Kingsolver unleashed her jaw-dropping eloquence on an audience that included her graduating daughter.

Both of their speeches gave some serious air-time to climate.  Obama’s semi-predictable patter was subtly elegant, and enough to make you excited about him totally owning that bully pulpit in ‘09.

But it was Kingsolver whose words rang truest for me.  Her potent speech, “How to Be Hopeful,” takes on many of the big things: Wisdom, Happiness, Love, Economics, Community, Climate.  Please, go read it. But only click through when you have time to absorb it–it’s not really the kind of thing you want to skim.

Speech teasers and an open call for inspiration after the jump…

Continue reading ‘How To Be Hopeful: Obama vs. Kingsolver’

One of the climate movement’s most important (and most neglected) questions is this: how do we tell our story? We’re all taking part in a seriously bad-ass and inspiring tale: people of all stripes, motivated by a wide variety of reasons, coming together with a fierce passion for taking action on the biggest challenge of our day. At the Step It Up action center, we were sitting around trying to figure out new ways to tell the story of the rumbling global movement around climate change. And we were sort of stumped.

But the more we thought about it, the more we started to realize that our culture’s primary mode of communication is becoming more digital, more visual, more personal, and more collaborative. Keeping this in mind, here’s the storytelling idea we just came up with:

The Green Finger – What Are You Voting to Protect?

It’s an ongoing, evolving video project, and if it’s going mean anything at all, we need you to add your voices (and, um, fingers) to the video. So take a minute and let the world know where you’re at—What Are You Voting to Protect? What’s Under Your Green Finger? Post Your Video Response Here. People have already started responding–this group in New York City just took the idea and ran with it. At hundreds of Step It Up actions across the country on November 3rd, fingers will go green and videos will be made…anyone want to transform more fingers at PowerShift?

Personally, I’m fascinated by new ways we can tell our story. What really works? What gets heard outside the choir? What engages people deeply, and what’s just a distraction? What do you all think?

So here we stand at the dawn of 2007: our erratic climate has the American public positively freaked out, Congress is abuzz with talks of carbon caps, the burgeoning climate movement is better networked than ever before, and the scientists are telling us we have less than ten years to turn it all around.

We’re at the climate precipice folks, no doubt about it. The view from here makes one thing abundantly clear: to make our political leaders take action on what has been called “the greatest threat civilization now faces,” the climate movement must come together in a way that is more united, synchronized, and widely distributed than ever before. In other words, the time has come to Step It Up.

To that end, environmental journalist and all-around climate badass Bill McKibben is working with a crew of youth climate activists to create a new kind of political advocacy. We’re inviting communities across America to take part in Step It Up 2007: a single day of coordinated grassroots action pushing for bold national climate legislation. On April 14^th, there will be hundreds of actions—there will be people rallying on mountaintops, at churches, in city parks, and on Campus Climate Challenge campuses nation-wide. We’ll all be demanding the same thing: that Congress pass laws to cut carbon 80% by 2050. With the latest technowizardry on our side, we’ll be using the internet to funnel our photos, audio, video, and text messages into one strong message to jumpstart Congress to pass climate legislation that is actually informed by the latest climate science.

Continue reading ‘Announcing. . .Step It Up 2007!’

If we’re going to convey the urgency of acting on climate change to a diverse audience, we need to start coming up with creative new ways to get our message out. Writing letters to the editor is still a worthwhile and necessary pursuit, but we must take advantage of every medium available to us. This means sometimes working outside of the important but traditional channels of newspapers, radio, film, and even the internet. Tonight, one London group that calls themselves The Prophets of Hope is executing what they call “a daring night time art attack” by turning urban icons into canvases for poignant messages about climate change. The group will use powerful light-projection equipment to emblazon otherwise drab and underused concrete with glowing, thought-provoking text. A bad ass action, and inspiration to get us all thinking a bit more creatively about grabbing people’s attention…

What other overlooked media can we use to get our message out?

(Guest Post by Will Bates)

For years now we have been calling for action on global warming. We have been calling for a movement to stir up change and demand leadership on this, the most urgent and pervasive of issue of our time. Throughout many of those years, hope was a limited resource. Global warming is showing no signs of subsiding. But this past weekend, we learned that neither are the people. Hope is increasingly becoming infused into our lives and our action.

This past Labor Day, hundreds of Vermonters completed a five day trek across west-central Vermont on a walk called “From the Road Less Traveled: Vermonters Walking Toward a Clean Energy Future.” (For Bill McKibben’s notes from the walk check out his dispatches in The Grist. The walk was a success on every level. Continue reading ‘A Few More Travelers on the Road Less Traveled’

Perusing the archives of It’s Getting Hot In Here, one thing becomes abundantly clear: there is no single perfect way to raise a ruckus about climate change. Every direct action, every media campaign, and every political initiative is shaped by the talents of the activists, the nature of the audience, and the resources of the specific environment. Ruckus, in other words, has many interpretations. Australia is surrounded by water, so they raise a ruckus by kayaking for clean energy. In Montreal, they have an unhealthy appreciation for ice hockey, so their ruckus demands us to “Drop The Gloves On Climate Change.” In Ontario…well, in Ontario, they have an abundance of natural groove, so they all shake their collective ass.

Here in Vermont’s Chaplain Valley, we have a disproportionate number of beautiful roads, and are blessed to have central outdoor meeting spaces in every major town. So, it only make sense that we would come together on labor day weekend to embark on a five-day walk, stopping at five towns along the way to hold community discussions about climate change on each town’s green. It’s a journey Gandhi would be proud of…

The walk, dubbed “From the Road Less Traveled: Vermonters Walking Toward a Clean Energy Future” (we can’t get enough Robert Frost in Vermont), will take place from August 31–September 4, and everyone’s invited. Walkers can expect a good deal of blisters and body odor, and…oh yeah, incredible discussions about climate change, live music, and the chance to stand with your neighbors next to guys like Bill McKibben and John Elder to grill some politicians about climate change and a clean energy future.If you need more convincing, Bill McKibben has taken the time to pass on this personal invitation. If you’re already sold, click here for a detailed schedule or click here to sign up. Join us to raise a uniquely Vermont-style ruckus, and fall into step on the road less traveled…