We’ve all heard of the Elevator Pitch concept, right? Well, we at SD350 have adapted the idea to serve our passion for taking action against climate change. Given the opportunity to tell a friend or a stranger why we care about climate change, we must be prepared to provide a brief, powerful and motivating testimonial.
Read the words of some of our members, and prepare to be inspired: to act against climate change and perhaps to craft your own Climate Elevator Pitch.
By Peg Mitchell
“Her name is Jillian. In 2070 she will be 60 years old, my age now. She is my youngest of 6 grandchildren. She is smart, outgoing and absolutely sure to be a future climate warrior. But I don’t want her to have to be a warrior – I want her to be happily looking forward to her retirement and time to play with her grandchildren. But on today’s status quo trajectory of human caused – us caused – climate change – she may be faced with fighting for her own survival if she even makes it that far. We can’t let that happen to the children of today’s world. We made this mess, we refused to accept the responsibility and now we are facing the truly overarching issue of our time. Will we step up, own our folly and change before it’s too late?”
By Jeanne Peterson
“I care about climate change because of my children. I simply cannot leave them such a mess, and make them live in a world that is uninhabitable and where our weather is so unreliable that we can’t even grow our own food. For me it is a question of justice and morality.
I don’t trust the politicians – any of them – to protect our interests because they get so much money from gas and oil companies. I look at this battle like a David and Goliath situation. Even so, I think we have a chance to turn this around, because there are so many great social movements that started out just as small as we are, and they still make their voices heard.”
By Dwain Deets
“The industrial revolution brought a new kind of climate change — but it wasn’t recognized for generations. The change was detected starting 55 years ago, when Charles David Keeling first measured carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Recently, severe weather events have increased notably in frequency and magnitude. Climate scientists now, with a 97% consensus, say this change is caused by human activities.
With powerful supercomputers, climate models project average weather over coming decades. If our use of fossil fuels follows a “business as usual” pattern, this will be catastrophic. This is NOT something humans can adapt to.
But the market system offers a solution. If an appropriate fee is collected on fossil fuels when taken from the ground, with receipts returned to the public, then use patterns will change automatically away from “business as usual,” the economy will grow, and catastrophic results will be avoided. “