What can I do about it? When it comes to the climate crisis, all of us have thought or expressed that sentiment, even—at some point or another—the most passionate environmental activists. It can be uttered out of well-meaning curiosity… or genuine bewilderment… or political frustration… or apathetic abdication. Regardless of which mindset it reflects, it is a universally valid—and perfectly understandable—acknowledgment of the overwhelming complexities of the problem of climate change. What can any of us, as individuals, really do about it?
Especially when individual efforts simply aren’t going to move the needle on this at the speed and scale required; we have ten years, per the IPCC, to halve our greenhouse-gas emissions if we’re going to keep global warming below catastrophic levels. By all means: swap out your lightbulbs, compost your trash, take public transportation whenever possible—but understand the time when “small” personal actions like that could’ve actually made a meaningful difference has passed.
Now this existential crisis must be addressed legislatively, with bold and effective public policy, hence the reason so much has been made of the Green New Deal resolution, and the less-publicized but no-less-crucial Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, a bipartisan bill in Congress that would (finally) put a price on carbon pollution. As exciting and promising as those steps are, though, in some respects they only make an answer to our intimate question—What can I do about climate change?—seem yet further out of reach.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey outside the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 7, 2019 (Saul Loeb/AFP—Getty Images)
Take me, for instance. A recovering screenwriter, I’m happy to illustrate at length the storytelling transgressions of Ghostbusters II, or mathematically quantify the similarities between Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger’s interpretations of the Joker (they’re precisely 60% alike, for the record)—ya know, intellectual stuff—but good luck putting those “skills” to use in service for environmental-policy initiatives, right?
Well, not so fast. Here’s how a bunch of ordinary laypeople banded together to do exactly that—to make a legislative difference in relatively short order—and how a few tricks I picked up in the Hollywood trenches actually came in handy.
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS
First—a quick primer on the Paris Accord:
In 2015, 195 countries and governments agreed to the United Nations Paris Climate Agreement (“Paris Agreement”), a historic international agreement aimed at reducing carbon emissions, slowing rising global temperatures, and helping countries deal with the effects of climate change. Signatories to the Paris Agreement committed to enact programs and policies to limit global temperature increase to well-below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with efforts to keep it to one and a half degrees. The United States ratified the Paris Agreement on September 3, 2016 and committed to its own target of reducing carbon emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
On June 1, 2017, President Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement despite the dire consequences of the planet’s rising temperatures and opposition from communities across the country and world. The United States’ withdrawal could result in an additional three billion tons of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere each year, and an additional increase of as much as 0.3 degrees Celsius in global temperatures by end of the century.
The Climate Reality Project, “County Climate Coalition”
In response, Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese established the County Climate Coalition (CCC), a nationwide alliance of counties committed to meeting the requirements of the Paris Agreement. His reasoning was simple: Counties set policy. So regardless of what the president tweets, Supervisor Cortese saw an ambitious opportunity to get the United States back on board… one county at a time.
His efforts came to the attention of former Vice President Al Gore, who, in September of 2018, adopted the County Climate Coalition as an official campaign of the Climate Reality Project. Since that time, Climate Reality Leaders across the country have been engaged in recruiting new counties to the fold; thus far, nineteen jurisdictions in states including California, Maryland, Colorado, Utah, New Jersey, New Mexico, Michigan, Arizona, and New York have made the pledge.
At around this same time, in August of 2018, Mr. Gore conducted a three-day Climate Reality Leadership Corps training in Los Angeles—his largest ever—and the L.A. Chapter’s membership ballooned to 500-plus activists overnight. The massive chapter is subdivided into committees and subcommittees, each devoted to various campaigns (Plastics Pollution, Renewable Energy, Wetlands Protection), and it can admittedly be challenging for neophyte Leaders to know where to direct their time and efforts.
Taking to heart the organization’s mantra of “Think Globally, Act Locally,” a modest group of San Fernando Valley–based Climate Reality Leaders formed our own “splinter” chapter, ready and willing to make a difference, and very much in search of a worthy project to rally around. As fate would have it, the California Campaign Organizer for Climate Reality proposed we work to bring Los Angeles County—the most populous in the United States by a wide margin—into CCC. It sounded exciting and challenging, and it was exactly the kind of project we needed to help us bond and develop an identity; it would be the West Valley’s Chapter’s 2019 initiative.
ACTS OF LEADERSHIP
In short order, our six-person Leadership Team—myself, chapter chair Diana Weynand, Vivian Deutsch, Tim Knipe, David Gaines, and Jeff Drongowski—went to work preparing a presentation and reaching out to the offices of our Board of Supervisors. Keep in mind: A few weeks earlier, we were all complete strangers to one another. (It turns out Vivian grew up less than a mile up the road from me back in the Bronx—on the very same street, no less—albeit at a different time.) None of us were seasoned activists, merely concerned citizens of the world. But we had a shared purpose, and now a direction.
Before long, we’d scheduled constituent meetings with the offices of Los Angeles County Supervisors Sheila Kuehl, Third District, and Hilda Solis, First District. We showed up, offered pastries (a little touch that never elicits an unwelcome response), and chatted CCC for an hour: the genesis of the campaign, why L.A. should be a signatory, and how to make that happen. In each meeting, the same name came up in conversation: Gary Gero—the county’s Chief Sustainability Officer. Yes, it turns out L.A. has its very own Chief Sustainability Office.
We set up a meeting with Mr. Gero (it’s as simple as asking for one), along with the CSO’s Sustainability Program Director Kristen Torres Pawling—the pair were a receptive and engaged audience if ever there was one—and within two weeks, it was a done deal: Los Angeles is now a part of the County Climate Coalition.
“In the absence of leadership from the federal government, regional and local leadership on climate will be critical to meeting the promises the US made under the Paris Agreement,” said Ken Berlin, president and CEO of The Climate Reality Project. “Counties have an opportunity to make significant emissions reductions and be an important part of solving the climate crisis. We’re thrilled to see Los Angeles County join this incredible movement.”
The Climate Reality Project, “Los Angeles County Joins the County Climate Coalition,” news release, March 25, 2019
By becoming a signatory, the largest county in the nation (the next most populous, Cook County, is half our size) has taken a prominent position of moral leadership on the issue of climate change that can and will inspire other jurisdictions to do likewise. And while I certainly appreciate that some counties won’t be as enthusiastically responsive to the campaign as eco-friendly L.A. has been, this should nevertheless serve as testament that ordinary people—that means you—can effect change with a reasonable degree of speed and scale by talking with your officials and making your concerns their concerns. Let me leave you with a few tips to do just that.
ADVENTURES IN THE GREEN TRADE
As West Valley was strategizing for our meetings, spirited debate ensued about just how much we’d need to know offhand re: facts and figures and science and policy. All that data can all be a little overwhelming, and it isn’t exactly like any of us have climatology degrees. Who were we to go into meetings with either elected or appointed officials and pretend like we were the experts on this stuff…?
Fortunately, having spent a career in the screen trade working directly with development executives and producers and agents and managers, I am blessed with no short supply of role models when it comes to taking meetings and feigning expertise. When a screenwriter meets with one of the above, we pitch whatever it is we’re currently developing in the hopes of finding a partner to take it on—not any different from what West Valley did, only the project we were presenting was CCC, and the prospective collaborator L.A. County’s Board of Supervisors.
What you don’t do when you take these kinds of meetings is charge in there like an overeager used-car salesman, which will only A) turn off a potential associate, and B) put way too much pressure on you to perform. Instead, you adopt the mindset that you’re going in to make a new friend—that’s it. You’re there to chat with a colleague (he got into the movie business for the same reasons you did, after all), identify common interests (cinematic touchstones that influenced you both), and see if there’s any chemistry upon which an ongoing creative partnership can be predicated; if you do that, the “sale” will take care of itself. In any industry—perhaps nowhere more so than Hollywood—people like to be in business with those they consider friends.
So, when a screenwriter takes a general meeting, he needn’t have watched every movie the exec has developed/produced, or even know every plot point of his own project; you simply go in and conversationally pitch the logline—the conceptual hook, the thing that prompts a visceral response—and then ideally you and that exec start riffing on the project’s creative possibilities together; it’s an exercise in bonding as much as it is brainstorming. It isn’t about having all the answers, merely having a vision—and getting the other person to share your passion for that vision. To that end, copious detail isn’t only unnecessary, it can even be counterproductive.
And that’s exactly how the West Valley Leadership Team approached our CCC meetings: We conveyed a vision—of Los Angeles County partnering with the Climate Reality Project on a campaign that would affect policy and serve as a much-needed moral declaration from both a major population center and economic powerhouse in its own right, whose chief product—entertainment—carries tremendous global currency. I wholeheartedly believe L.A.’s participation in CCC is going inspire other counties to formally commit to upholding the Paris Agreement, and restore faith that the United States will meet its obligations to the accord—not from the top down, but the bottom up. That’s the way real change happens, anyway. To think: We did that—our scrappy little spin-off chapter of average joes. And all it really required from us was a willingness to go make some new friends—to talk and to listen.
That’s what you—what any of us—can do about climate change. If it’s something you’re inspired to do, contact your senator’s office and urge their support for a Green New Deal. Or take a meeting with your congressperson and ask them to cosponsor the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. Visit the office of your county officials and make them aware of the County Climate Coalition—that the biggest jurisdiction in the nation just signed on, so what are they waiting for? Go make some new friends—and maybe make a big difference in the process.
The only bad news to come out of L.A.’s swift and decisive commitment to the County Climate Coalition? West Valley had wrapped up our yearlong initiative by March! So, we’re in search of a new project once again. Wanna see your county join the ranks of CCC? Reach out to me and let’s see if we can’t make that happen. Because What can I do about climate change? is a crucially misstated question. It’s we—what can we do about it? A small distinction—and you take my word for this—of big, possibly even world-changing significance.
Follow the West Valley Chapter of the Climate Reality Project on Twitter: @WVClimateLeader
I loved the response to Trump’s backing out of the Paris accord. So many parts of the country stood up and said, “We’re doing it anyway.” And why not when the alternative is already showing its face. I live in RED country where climate change is a hoax even as our forests dry up and burn. We (my county, not me) just voted to be a gun sanctuary, too. And would you believe we have 1200 people and 20 churches? Clearly I’m on a rant.
I’m hopeful that our nation takes the Green New Deal seriously and that the Washington slog doesn’t mire the vision. In the meantime, I agree that states and counties have to take the lead. That’s how gay marriage happened. And how legalization of cannabis will happen. Why not saving the planet. 🙂
This post made me smile, Sean. Thanks! And how’s the book coming??
Diana!
In its way, CCC has the potential to be even more meaningful than the Paris Accord for two key reasons:
1) The Paris Agreement is nonbinding; there are no penalties whatsoever for a signatory that fails to honor the emission-reduction goals it has verbally committed to. In order to qualify for CCC, on the other hand, a county is required to have formal policies in place that ensure it is meeting the standards of Paris. More than merely a moral declaration (or, worse, an empty promise), CCC is predicated on binding legislation that allows for each county to decide for itself, as it should, how to most effectively and efficiently reduce its own GHG emissions.
2) The Paris Accord risks becoming (if it hasn’t already) a political football: A liberal president says, “Yes, we’re in,” followed by a conservative president who says, “No, we’re not,” and round and round we go while the Earth continues to cook. CCC is about getting the constituents of every county in the nation — with their mix of liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, urban- and rural-dwellers — to say, “We are committed to living sustainably, in perpetuity, in accordance with the Paris Agreement regardless of what any one American president says.”
It’s the people taking back the power. Ideally, we get enough counties on board — hopefully all of them! — and our enrollment in Paris becomes a mere formality, because we’ll be meeting its requirements regardless, one jurisdiction at a time.
The nation is taking the Green New Deal seriously — if you haven’t already watched it, this hourlong interview with AOC is the ultimate GND primer — and already we’re seeing states (and municipalities) adopting the ideal regardless of what’s happening at the federal level: Local governments are seizing on a good idea; they’re refusing to be held hostage to partisan gridlock in D.C. It’s happening. The green movement is at an inflection point now, just like gay marriage and cannabis legalization before it. The ratification of both of those things took forever… and then happened overnight. You know what I mean? So will be the case with sustainable-energy policy.
On a personal note: You never need to issue an excuse for ranting — certainly not here! None of us are complainers, merely passionate activists (and, to be sure, fiction-writing can be a form of social activism) that occasionally succumb to bouts of Why does the world have to be this way? frustration. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that frustration, expressing it, and then finding strength in one another to fight on!
On the subject of encouraging colleagues, thanks for inquiring about the status of the novel! I finished the manuscript to my satisfaction last summer (I haven’t made any further revisions to it since), and have been trying — with mixed success — to find an agent and/or publisher to take the project on. I haven’t had any trouble finding literary agents to agree to read the manuscript… I just can’t seem to get them to, ya know, follow through and actually read it! That’s been the challenge I’ve yet to surmount. I think the project would be right at home with a small genre publisher — there are several I’d like to target — I just don’t have the “in” I need at any of them.
But… I am halfway finished with a new novella I’m very excited about — it fits squarely in the realm of dark fantasy (a 12-year-old boy comes by a magical object that brings big powers and big complications into his life) — and I wonder if I might have more luck getting prospective agents to read a 20,000-word novella versus a 120,000-word novel? Perhaps they’d be more inclined to sample the shorter m.s. (it’s a completely self-contained narrative) and get a feel for my creative sensibilities before they commit to the longer piece of work? I don’t know… but I’m gonna try!
Anyway, shopping Escape from Rikers Island, drafting the new project, generating blog content, and keeping up with my climate activism are the reasons I’ve been less engaged in our blogging community of late, so I really appreciate your dropping by to share your insights on this post and just say “hi” — it means a great deal to me that you did! Keep being the positive force you are in this community and the one outside your front door; that’s all any of us can really do.
Sean
I saw the AOC interview about climate change. She’s wonderful. I love her confidence and wit. She is so unfazed by the ridiculousness of the right’s noise machine.
Shopping for an agent/publisher is often a slog, but it sounds like you have a great attitude. And a new novella? You’ve been busy. 🙂 Happy Easter!
I’m a democratic socialist, so naturally AOC’s politics, message, and style resonate with me; I’ve spent my entire adult life watching the Democrats A) pay meaningless lip service to politically volatile issues like climate change (even Obama’s been guilty of this), B) apologize for their progressive positions, and/or C) distance themselves from political victories they should be bragging about (as they did with Obamacare in 2010). And here comes AOC — homegirl don’t play that! I’ve always said — having known my share of them — it would take a brassy Bronx broad to reform Washington! Haha!
Hyperbole aside, I don’t know if she’ll develop into a great politician — I refuse to indulge in the very cult of personality that’s consumed the right re: Trump, whereby the base was easily conned into anointing a New York billionaire and draft dodger as the working man’s messiah — but she’s already made a difference simply by bringing a twenty-first-century point of view to an institution clinging, hopelessly and dysfunctionally, to twentieth-century practices and ideologies. Give ’em hell, Congresswoman.
As for my writing: Yes, I continue to be persistent and pragmatic in the search for an agent/publisher, and, quite frankly, I’m too busy with new fiction to sit around “waiting for the phone to ring,” as the saying goes. Things’ll work out or they won’t. The benefit of having tried and failed at this for as long as I have is that the bestseller list is not my metric of success; success is simply the privilege to be able to spend every day trafficking in my own daydreams, to borrow a lovely turn of phrase from Richard Walter. And I get to blog, too, which isn’t some creative addendum or promotional obligation for me, but rather a joyous endeavor in its own right that lets me express myself, workshop ideas, and commune with other creative and intellectual souls like yourself! If that ain’t something to take satisfaction in, I don’t know what is.
Happy writing, Diana. Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts with me here.