Time To Become A Climate Activist

I have considered myself to be an environmentalist for as long as I can remember. I turn down the thermostat at night, drive high-MPG vehicles, avoid jack-rabbit starts, recycle, compost, and use canvas bags for groceries. But, until very recently, I wasn’t a climate activist. My journey to activism first took me out into the world, through a global climate initiative I got involved with; then I circled back home to New Haven, where, I’m convinced, we regular people working together can have a sizable impact on the future health of the planet and all living things.

I’m writing this article from Glasgow, Scotland, where, as a journalist, I’m covering activities surrounding the UN’s COP26 climate conference for Techonomy Media. My theme throughout the conference has been that civil-society and community groups and individuals can’t wait around passively for national and global leaders to solve our existential problem with an off-kilter climate; we must take action ourselves. I urge everybody who is reading this: Please, for the sake of future generations, become a climate activist now.

from Made in New Haven by Steve Hamm on Vimeo.

This week, I interviewed more than 40 young people in Glasgow, asking them to describe their dreams of a more sustainable future and telling what they’re doing about it. Above are two short films strung together that give a taste of their answers.

My journey into climate activism began 20 months ago when I got a LinkedIn alert that one of my former co-workers at IBM, Colin Harrison, had co-founded an organization with an impossibly long name that was aimed at helping to address the climate crisis. Colin, a retired IBM scientist, saw the COVID-19 pandemic as a wakeup call to humanity. COVID showed us that horrible, global calamities can strike, overwhelm the world’s hospitals and bring its schools, cities, supply chains, and economies to a grinding halt. The science is clear: Left unaddressed, climate change will be much more horrible than COVID. So, Colin thought, we have to act quickly to change the course of humanity. He reached out to his global network of professional colleagues and launched a unique global volunteer collaboration.

That’s where I came in. After spotting the LinkedIn alert, I contacted Colin, learned more about what he had in mind, and asked if I could be an embedded journalist within the group. He said yes. So, last April, I began attending many Zoom calls per week where the loosely-organized group, ultimately called Pivot Projects, went about its business. At one time or another, more than 500 people have been involved. People in Pivot Projects share the view that that collective intelligence, systems thinking, and AI-assisted research tools can help communities identify local actions that can make them more sustainable and resilient, and, if a lot of communities act, it could move the needle on climate change globally. I didn’t go into the enterprise with a clear plan, but, soon, I was convinced that following the journey of Pivot Projects would make a good book. I sold editors at Columbia University Press on the idea, and, last month, the Press published The Pivot: Addressing Global Problems Through Local Action.

(I’m going to be talking about the book and COP26 at a Books Sandwiched In Zoom event run by the New Haven Free Public Library on Friday, Nov. 12, starting at noon. Here’s the link for registering for the event.)

After several months of watching the group grapple with complex topics and struggle to get things done, I realized that the book wouldn’t be narrowly about one group of people taking on a daunting task. It was about the willingness of humans to pull together in a crisis, connect, and try to make things better — surely one of our species’ most admirable and endearing qualities.

I began the journey as a traditional journalist, standing to the side and observing. But, gradually, I gave up my fig leaf of objectivity and got progressively more involved in the group as a participant rather than just an observer. After I finished the book, I was totally committed. I threw myself into the work without reservation.

My first overt act as an activist was to make a documentary film. One of the subcommittees within Pivot Projects concluded that the best way to convince people that now is the time for action on climate is to tell them stories about things they care about — and which environmental degradation is harming. We spotted rivers as a promising candidate. Most people have rivers or streams near where they live, and, typically, they love their rivers. Yet they may not be fully aware of the damage that humans have done to our rivers in the past and the damage that we continue to do with our lawn fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide, leaky septic systems, over tasked sewage systems, and trash. So that’s what the film, A River Speaks, is about. The film has shown at a number of film festivals and is now available to be screened for free by libraries, museums, community centers, environmental groups, schools, and, frankly, anybody else who wants to do so. You can watch it on Vimeo.

While making the film, I came into contact with and joined a number of local environmental groups, including the Mill River Watershed Association, the New Haven Bird Club, and Climate Movement New Haven. Before leaving home for Glasgow, I asked Chris Schweitzer, one of the leaders of Climate Movement New Haven, for a short list of the group’s priorities. What should we New Haveners do as individuals and as a community to head off climate change? Here’s his list:

Individuals:

1. Advocate for climate solutions big enough to solve the massive challenge we face, like a Green New Deal. One action to take: Every time you hear a scary climate story, call or email the governor or your legislative representatives demanding action.
2. Switch as much energy use in your life as possible to electricity from fossil fuels to decrease GHG emissions and improve public health.
3. Talk about climate change and solutions with friends, coworkers, and family. It really helps people take action if they discuss it more.

City government:

1. Create a climate change office to coordinate/lead much bigger efforts to reduce fossil fuel use and pollution, improve public health, and create green jobs.
2. The mayor should organize a summit of key institutional leaders (Chamber, YNHH, UI, SCSU, Yale, RWA, etc.) to organize an ongoing coordinated effort to reduce fossil fuel use in buildings and transportation in New Haven.
3. Invest a significant portion of Federal Rescue Plan funds coming to New Haven in climate solutions that also improve quality of life and public health, create green jobs, and reduce energy and transportation costs for families.

Here are some of my own pet peeves: banning gasoline-powered lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and weed wackers, and planning ahead for sea-level rise.

The people in Pivot Projects developed a lot of great ideas and projects (which you can read about in the book!), but I want to mention one of them here because I think it would be a great thing for New Haveners to do. The project is called 146 Clubs. It was developed by Stephen Hinton, an environmental consultant based in Sweden, and Damian Costello, an innovation expert who lives near the west coast of Ireland.

These are buying and sharing clubs where the members pool their buying power to get discounts and to pressure product and service providers to operate more sustainably. Members of the clubs would also share tools, technologies, and expertise. Stephen and Damian chose the number 146 because 150 is thought by social scientists to be roughly the number of individuals or households that can operate as a truly cohesive community. (They chose 146 rather than 150 because they like the way it sounds.) ​“Starting at the local level, we can transform the current consumer culture into a planet culture,” says Stephen. ​“A planet culture is one where we, based on our understanding of the way nature works, share, exert our buying power, use our entrepreneurial ingenuity and as a group voice our true opinion.” 

The 146 Club idea is still nascent, but if any of you are interested in exploring the idea of creating one here, please get in touch with me .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

I want to go out on a very serious note. Another of the Pivot Projects volunteers, Gamelilhe Sibanda, a UN employee and biomimicry expert who lives in South Africa, had an epiphany one day early in the Pivot Projects’ journey. ​“It was my aha! moment,” he told me. ​“I realized the planet doesn’t need to be saved. We need to save ourselves from extinction. If we went extinct, the planet would heal quickly.”

While it’s unlikely that homo sapiens will actually disappear from the face of the earth, we’re flirting with a future where billions of people live in misery and society is thrown into turmoil. If you’re sick of COVID, don’t fail to fight climate change.

Steve Hamm is a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker based in New Haven. His new book about Pivot Projects, The Pivot: Addressing Global Problems Through Local Action, was published last month by Columbia University Press.