I am not Al Gore. I’m not a politician and have never run for office. I don’t have a globally respected voice. I don’t have Mr. Gore’s stage presence. I don’t have his in-depth knowledge about global economics and environmental policy. I don’t have years and years of climate action under my belt like he has. But, what I do have in common with Al Gore is really the core of MY CLIMATE STORY.

Wait, why am I telling my climate story? Writing the story of why I was drawn to learning about taking action on climate change was one of the exercises of the Climate Reality Project’s Global Training that I have recently completed. This training had all the elements: climate science, real time examples, realistic solutions, best practices for presentations, social media tips, advocacy tools, coalition building techniques and many other great topics. The Writing Your Climate Story skills exercise had me thinking about some of the actions I’ve already taken and what is motivating me now. That’s when I started seeing the direct line from my personal actions to the much bigger picture that Mr. Gore is presenting to the world.

Al Gore and I understand the power of multiplication. Climate Reality Global Training events are attended by hundreds of people and to date over 27,000 people from around the globe have been trained at live and now online events. After identifying his passion for educating others about the existential threat of climate change, Mr. Gore knew that he could spread his important message by giving others the tools to help even more people understand climate change. What started as a small group of people in 2006, is now a global training program that has participants from all over the world. Similarly (but obviously on a much smaller scale), I had a revelation one day in the summer of 2009 when I looked at the food scraps that I was putting in my kitchen trash bag. I had just learned that as a community, we were transporting tons of food waste into the landfill; a place where the food waste would never have the proper environment to break down and become the useful soil nutrients that it was meant to be. Looking at 10 lbs. of my family’s one week’s worth of compostable waste on the scale that day was the very moment that changed my life. I realized that if I encouraged my friends to start backyard composting at the same time, then it’s simple math to see how that impact is multiplied. Soon after that, we purchased and delivered 20 backyard compost bins to friends and neighbors. My 10 pounds per week x 20 families composting x 11 years = 114,400 lbs. (~57 tons) of compostable waste has been diverted from having to be transported to and dumped into the landfill. Even if some of those original families are no longer composting for one reason or another, I am certain that many have spread the word and shown others the magic of backyard composting, doing their own multiplying.

Al Gore and I are not scientists. But when Al Gore presents his Climate Reality slideshow, it’s deep into the science behind how we got here and how we can get out of this mess. Can I be comfortable enough to present science-based information to anyone who is willing to listen to me? Well, yes, I think I can. In my personal and Greenish Neighbor communications, I always double check the reliability of the sources I share information from. I don’t share a news article without reading the whole entire text and I try to pull out the simple points that will resonate with my audience. Mr. Gore has a long list of reliable references that he has based his presentation on and he works with a vast network of respected scientists. Personally, I work under the following basic assumptions when I do outreach to others about all things “green”: I believe in climate science when it comes to climate change. I believe in health science when it comes to the covid-19 pandemic. I believe in social science when it comes to environmental equity and systemic racism. To me there is no denying the science so my conversation starts with “what are the solutions?” You don’t need to be a scientist to work toward solutions.

Al Gore and I have the same fears about 4 more years of climate denial. We simply don’t have the time to try to convince the outliers on this topic. 62%* of Americans believe that global climate change was affecting their local community in some way. They see it and many of them fear it. But I believe fear can be turned into power. I also firmly believe in the power of positive messaging. So, instead of focusing on four years lost to climate skepticism, environmental protection rollbacks and outright ignoring scientific facts, my plan is to tell anyone who will listen about the next four years of opportunities to take climate action. How will we tell our kids’ kids that we didn’t fight the good fight when we had the chance? We won’t. We’ll talk about solutions like the well-being of our community depends on it. We’ll vote like the Earth depends on it. And I’m committing to speak truth to power like the world depends on it. Because it does. Al Gore and I are in complete agreement on that.

*Source: Pew Research