CLIMATE WRITING: IS IT HOT IN HERE OR JUST ME?

Climate writing, climate change writing, global warming writing, are all stories to tell.

The problem is those telling aren’t doing a very good job.

Could I do better? Me? Hell, no.

But maybe you could.

Maybe you could tell it so it gets under the thick skin of big decision makers?

I have ideas to get you started, ideas, and that’s it.

First, I like stories that start with a large view, an establishing shot of where things are.

“There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.”

There are eight billion stories on the naked planet. Your’s is one of them.

The numbers are too big to conceive in normal thinking.

Millions and billions (1000 million) of people are too many to fit under one cozy blanket, but here we are.

This is an establishing shot:

If you want your climate writing to reach millions and billions and inspire change, don’t start with science.

As we’ve seen with the covid pandemic, solid science conclusions and peer-reviewed opinions aren’t shared equally.

What is shared? Self-Help.

Should this be a surprise? Self-Help?

If you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system.

Now we’re all on the same page: We’re not the problem.

This comes from the 3 million-seller Atomic Habits at the front of Amazon’s best sellers of 2021.

From my extensive single-search research I feel compelled to say your climate writing project should focus on the habits of climate killing behavior.

But don’t start with the major violators. Again, the size and numbers throw readers off.

In the establishing shot above, molten bronze pours into a cast on a property entirely designed for extreme heat.

Your potential readers may not be scientists or metallurgists, but they understand super-heated metal, or lava flow, or hot water out of the kitchen faucet.

More important, the shot shows the protective gear used to handle the melted metal’s horrific-on-the-hand heat.

If you’ve burned yourself on a hot oven rack pulling out that splatted chicken you know what I’m talking about when it comes to a bad burn.

Pain radiates out of a heat-burn like the hot thing that made it.

Good heat protection and fast medial treatment for heat related injuries matters more when it’s personal. All theory and science goes up the chimney when it’s you saying, “OH FUCK I’M ON FIRE.!

Molten metal sun for climate writing warning

Your climate work needs to remind readers there’s still hope before the inevitable super-nova turns the sun into a black hole burn out. (Don’t tell the Mars exploration team it’s their sun too.)

The audience for the scheduled pours at Cosanti stand behind a barrier, but you still feel the heat wave on a baking Arizona afternoon. It’s a safety measure against possible heat injury.

(And your climate work is all about heat injury.)

No matter what the Snow Bird neighbors say, no one likes extreme heat, not even all-year residents, but they find ways around it.

I did an inventory job in an estimated 140 degree locked-down warehouse during a 120 degree day on property with a large asphalt footprint. Maybe 150? I lasted twenty minutes, cooled off in some AC across the parking lot, then another 20 minutes.

My hair got hot, my eyes dried out, and I thought of my Boy Scout first-aide training: If the face is red lift the head, if the face is pale lift the tail.

I found a mirror, took a look, and knew I had to change

If you’ve never tried to change anything, this is a good start to a rewarding trip.

Your story will change climate change just a little bit more than before.

Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change.

Slow change, and accepting slow change in a fast change world, is the speed of progress.

From climate writing to Jan. 6 investigations, to getting more people vaccinated, to ending a continuing human meltdown, it’s a slow ride.

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Let’s take a small step together since we’re still here:

In America, citizens vote for candidates who address problems they both see.

Call them ‘issue voters.’

In America, citizens vote for parties that address problems they both see.

Call them ‘party voters.’

Also in America, citizens vote for a sham-man handing out Presidential Medals Of Freedom like paper towels to Puerto Rico, who screwed up enough to get twice impeached, and finished big, the biggest, with an insurrection at the Capitol and a continuing flow of democracy poisoning spew for his base of followers to slurp up.

Here’s the jump-with-me part.

One more jump? Okay.

People vote with their heart. It means something whether is mailed in, in-person, or absentee.

And they will vote for climate help with your climate writing.

Get started, writer.