“Are there really glaciers in Glacier National Park?”

My co-worker Jennifer asked this question during a lunch break while we worked at the gift store at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon in July 1992. This was my first summer working at Crater Lake. The scenery was magnificent with the cobalt blue lake with the snow-capped mountains surrounding it.

The employees, including me, loved working, and living at this marvelous national park. It was a fun park to hike and explore. During our breaks, we chatted about our hikes we completed at Crater Lake. Working at Crater Lake for the summer sparked an interest in us to swap information about other national parks.

When Jennifer asked that question during one of our national park discussions, we busted out laughing. We thought, ‘Of course there’s glaciers in Glacier National Park!’

Jennifer prided herself on being ditzy and knowing as little as she could. She skirted through life on her bubbly personality and her cute attractive looks. She honestly did not know if Glacier National Park had glaciers. She knew by asking this question it would provoke a strong reaction by the deep thinkers and the worldly park enthusiasts in the break room.

I knew nothing about Glacier National Park since it was probably close to 1,000 miles away in Montana. I assumed that it had glaciers by the name of the park. A co-worker who knew much more about Glacier than me sighed and informed Jennifer that Glacier did have Glaciers.

Jennifer’s question sparked an interest me to learn more about the glaciers at Glacier National Park. However, her question faded in my mind as I continued to work seasonally at Crater Lake during the summers for 25 years. Sadly, I worked long enough at Crater Lake to see climate change firsthand. With my own eyes, I could see the annual average snowpack diminishing and the summer wildfire season becoming smokier and more intense. I became so worried about climate change that I started giving my evening campfire ranger program in 2011 on the impacts of climate change on Crater Lake National Park.

At the beginning of this ranger talk, I talked about how climate change impacted other national parks such as Everglades in Florida, Kenai Fjords in Alaska, Joshua Tree in California and Glacier National Park in Montana. While researching this program, I learned climate change is erasing the glaciers at Glacier National Park. During this ranger talk, I showed images of the Shepard Glacier in Glacier. I had a park photo of what that glacier looked like in 1913, compared another photo from 2005. On top of that, I stated to the audience that the “National Park Service and NASA scientists believe the park’s glaciers could no longer exist in 25 years.”

Over the past 30 years, I visited nearly all of America’s most scenic national parks, such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Mt. Rainier, Olympic, Sequoia, Death Valley and others. However, Glacier alluded me because it was just too far out of the way on my cross-country trips in northwestern Montana to visit. I was just not sure if I was ever going to reach it.

This year, my wife’s parents, planned a big family trip to Glacier National Park in September. My in-laws wanted Tanya and I to join them this 10-day trip. Fourteen of us total met in Seattle on September 5th and traveled to Glacier National Park on September 9th and 10th and then returning to Seattle on September 15th.

We were crammed in three large vehicles. It took us several days to drive from Seattle across eastern Washington, northern Idaho and into Montana to reach Glacier National Park.

When we reached Glacier, we had our jaws open with the beauty of the Going-to-the-Sun Road, the road that cuts through Glacier National Park. Nothing prepared us for the magnificent scenery as we climbed in elevation towards Logan Pass of the jagged mountains and deep forested valleys at Glacier.

We had a picnic lunch at the Wild Goose parking and picnic area. Most of our group, including Tanya and me, hiked 2.4 miles one way to St. Mary Falls. We walked the trail along St. Mary Lake with the towering rocky peaks of Glacier National Park dominating on either side of us.

As we hiked, something seemed odd. I noticed it the next day when we were at another area of the park, Many Glacier. None of the mountain peaks had any snow or glaciers on them. It felt eerie. Yes, all these mountains probably get a good snowpack for the winter that melts by mid to late summer. From my 25 years working at Crater Lake and visiting other national parks, I understood seasonal winter snowpack is gone by late summer. At the same time, this was Glacier National Park. Shouldn’t there have been some sign of a glacier somewhere?

A sign on the Going-to-the-Sun Road near the high point of the road point to Jackson Glacier at a distant mountain, but I found it hard to see. As I spent more time in the park, it felt like we were at an excellent party where the host disappeared long ago. The party was fantastic. I would go to this party again. However, it seemed like it was nearly impossible to get a glimpse of the guest of honor.

The next day, I asked a park employee, Captain Nicole, who drove and narrated the boat tour at Many Glacier, “Are there any glaciers are left in Glacier National Park?”

She responded there are currently 25 glaciers in the park. The glaciers are predicted to disappear by 2030, if not earlier. Nicole defined a glacier as a mass of ice so big that it flows under its own weight and has a size about 25 acres. She then commented that around 1850, an estimated 150 glaciers existed within the present boundaries of the park.

Even though I knew for over a dozen years that the glaciers were disappearing in glacier national Park, it was still sad for me to hear this from a Glacier Park employee. I shared with Nicole my analogy that my visit to Glacier felt like we were at an excellent party where the host disappeared long ago. She had no pushback or objections to my observation.

Because of my concerns seeing climate change in the national parks, I stopped working as a seasonal park ranger in 2017. I organized for climate action in Portland, Oregon since then. Barely seeing any glaciers in Glacier National Park in September has inspired me to double my efforts to organize for climate action.

If I ran into Jennifer today, she still might ask: “Are there really glaciers in Glacier National Park?”

My answer would be “Yes! However, they are nearly gone due to climate change. The good news is that can we reduce our pollution that causes climate change. If we switch to 100% clean energy by 2050, we can save our civilization. We can then ensure that we will not then disappear like the glaciers that are nearly gone in Glacier National Park.”

For over 30 years, I had a life goal to visit Glacier National Park in Montana. As a child growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, I dreamed of living somewhere far from my hometown. I considered the local scenery with the rolling Ozark Mountains and the wide dominating Mississippi River to be lovely, but also bland. I wanted to live close to dramatic high snowcapped mountains.

Fortunately, after I graduated from William Jewell College in Kansas City, Missouri in May 1992, I took a summer job working at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon. This was my dream came true to live at a high elevation of over 7,100 feet surrounded by majestic mountains topped with glistening snow. It was a magnificent national park to work, hike, explore, and live in for the summer. Working at Crater Lake during the summers from 1992 to 2017, I craved to see other American national parks with spectacular scenery.

When I worked at the Crater Lake National Park gift store from 1992-1994, I would thumb through their picture books of other national parks longing to see those places someday.

Crater Lake was only a summer job. Thus, I worked during the winters in Everglades National Park from 1992 to 2008. During the months of May and October, I traveled across the United States from Oregon to Florida to reach my seasonal jobs in these parks. These cross-country journeys allowed me to see so many iconic national parks multiple times.

One of the best perks as a park ranger was meeting friends who worked and lived in other national parks. It allowed me to stay with friends in their ranger houses for multiple days while I explored these parks. This saved me a lot of money. Even more, it allowed me to reconnect with friends who knew these places well and could easily recommend the best highlights in these parks. I stayed with friends in national parks such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Redwoods, Canyonlands, Death Valley, Capitol Reef, and Sequoia.

One national park alluded me on my cross-country road trips, Glacier National Park in Montana.

Glacier was always too far off my routes to reach it. Even more, the Going-to-the Sun Road that cuts through Glacier National Park was open for the year from mid June to early October. This road had a similar season for when it was open to vehicles as the Rim Road at Crater Lake National Park. Crater Lake’s Rim Road is typically open for vehicles from late June to sometime in October. Therefore, it would be too risky for me to take a very long drive for me in early May or mid-October up to northern Montana to try to see Glacier, only to be turned around with the Going-to-the-Sun Road closed for the season.

I never gave up on my dream to see Glacier National Park. I just never found a way to logistically make it happen as a seasonal park ranger.

Climate Change made me curious to see Glacier National Park

In 1998, I started giving ranger talks in Everglades National Park. Visitors then asked me about this global warming thing. Visitors hate when park rangers tell you, “I don’t know.” Visitors expect park rangers to know everything. Don’t you?

Soon afterwards, I rushed to the nearest Miami bookstore and to the park library to read all I the scientific books I could find on climate change.

The information I learned really scared me, specifically sea level rise along our mangrove coastline in Everglades National Park. Sea level rose 8 inches in the 20th century, four times more than it had risen in previous centuries for the past three thousand years. Because of climate change, sea level is now expected to rise at least three feet in Everglades National Park by the end of the 21st century. The sea would swallow up most of the park and nearby Miami since the highest point of the park road is three feet above sea level.

It shocked me that crocodiles, alligators, and Flamingos I enjoyed seeing in the Everglades could all lose this ideal coastal habitat because of sea level rinse enhanced by climate change.

I was so worried about climate change that I quit my winter job in the Everglades in 2008. I started spending my winters in my hometown of St. Louis Missouri to organize for climate action. Up until 2017, I still worked my summer job Crater Lake. I loved the incredible scenery there and wearing the ranger uniform with pride while engaging with park visitors.

In in the spring of 2008, I first mentioned to my superiors at Crater Lake that I wanted to give a ranger program about climate change. My Crater Lake supervisor, Eric Anderson, and the lead interpretive ranger, David Grimes, supported and encouraged my idea. I just did not feel like I knew enough or was brave enough to do such a program. Finally, in 2011, I felt I was ready. David helped me with the information and images about climate change that he had wrote about for years in the park newspaper. I used the PowerPoint graphs and information I received from the park scientists that they had shared with the ranger staff during seasonal training.

After months I of putting it together in my spare time, I debuted my climate change evening program at campground amphitheater on August 3, 2011.

My evening program title was The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. I stole the title from the old Clint Eastwood 1966 spaghetti western film. With the subject of climate change, I talked about how the lake surface temperature has gone up in recent years due to climate change. However, the lake’s overall condition is “good.” Rising air temperatures from climate change have been “bad” for pikas, a mammal closely related to rabbits living at Crater Lake and in the western mountains. Finally, the “ugly” mountain pine beetles are destroying white bark pine trees at Crater Lake and other trees in the west. Historically, very cold winters kept those insects in check. However, rising temperatures from climate change allows more of them to survive the winter.

I blogged about my Crater Lake climate change evening program elsewhere. David Grimes videotaped the program on September 22, 2012, so I could upload it to YouTube. It’s not easy to travel to Crater Lake. Furthermore, I stopped working at Crater Lake in 2017. It is great to have this program on YouTube so that you can watch it.

Basically, from my 25 years working at Crater Lake National Park, I saw climate change firsthand. With my own eyes, I observed the annual average snowpack diminishing and the summer wildfire season becoming smokier and more intense.

At the beginning of my Crater Lake climate change evening program, I mentioned other national parks experiencing climate change. I gave the examples from Kenai Fjords National Park, with the loss of the Bear Glacier 1909 to 2005, Pederson Glacier 1909 to 2005, and the Northwestern Glacier from 1940 to 2005. I had contrasting photos of the glaciers receding starting from 1909 or 1940 (in the case of the Northwestern Glacier) and 2005. The Northwestern Glacier was especially troubling for me since both of my parents were born in 1940. It was stunning to see the disappearance of the Northwestern Glacier in 65 years.

At the other extreme, I shared that scientists are concerned we could lose all the Joshua Trees in Joshua Tree National Park over the next 50 years due to rising temperatures from climate change. I then talked how climate change would lead to sea level rise in the Everglades.

Among these national park examples, I showed the Shepard Glacier in Glacier National Park, Montana. I had a park photo of what that glacier looked like in 1913, compared another photo from around 2010. On top of that, I stated to the audience that the “National Park Service and NASA scientists believe the park’s glaciers could no longer exist in 25 years.”

In addition, I heard statistics from fellow park rangers and from the NPS that the glaciers in Glacier National Park might be totally gone by 2020.

Thus, from hearing this alarming news about the glaciers disappearing in Glacier National Park, I wanted to see this national park before the glaciers were totally gone.

I stopped working in the national parks after the summer of 2017 so I could organize full time for climate action. My wife and I moved to Portland, Oregon in February 2017. Glacier was too far of a drive from Portland. Before the pandemic, I was too busy with my climate organizing to travel to Glacier. During the 2020-21 COVID pandemic, it did not seem safe to travel to places like Glacier. In recent years, I was uncertain how I would ever see Glacier National Park.

A possible family road trip presents to see Glacier National Park

As I wrote previously, I met my wife Tanya after local businessman Larry Lazar and I co-founded the St. Louis Climate Reality Meet-Up group (now called Climate Meetup-St. Louis) in November 2011. I recall Tanya attending one of our first meetings in January 2012. I asked her out for coffee in February 2013. My pickup line was, “Maybe we could meet for coffee sometime and I could practice my climate change talk with you.”

The line worked! We started dating soon afterwards. As I joke in all my climate change talks: “If you join the climate movement, you might meet the person of your dreams.”

The audience always laughs and an older person in the audience typically responds with humor: “Sign me up!”

Tanya invited me to her parents’ house for dinner in April 2013 so they could meet me. Around that time, I dropped 7 Mentos into 2-liter bottles of diet Coke to make 25-foot fountains to demonstrate how volcanic eruptions work when I was a guest speaker for St. Louis area schools. Tanya has a quirky sense of humor like me. She thought I should bring the Mentos and Coke to demonstrate to her parents in their backyard after dinner. Her parents, Nancy and Rex Couture, didn’t say much. They seemed to enjoy the demonstration and they liked meeting me.

Tanya’s parents have always been very supportive of my climate organizing. They attended a climate presentation I gave that December at a county library in north St. Louis County. They came to see a couple of my Toastmasters speeches on climate change when I was an active member of South County Toastmasters. Even more, my mother-in-law, Nancy Couture, gave a heartwarming toast at our wedding reception on November 1, 2015. In the speech, she said,

“We admire you, Brian and welcome you in our family. The passion that drives you is admirable. You (are) working hard at making people understand the seriousness of climate change and we thank you for this.”

Tanya’s parents, Tanya, and I have always enjoyed our trips together. They typically come visit us for several days every August. We then take day trips to go hiking in nearby areas. Tanya and I visit St. Louis once or twice a year to see them and my parents. Nancy and Rex drive us to great day hikes in Missouri and nearby in Illinois. Nancy is originally from Denmark. All her siblings and cousins still live there. Tanya and I travel to Denmark every other year to see her relatives. We arrange to be there when her parents travel there to attend family events together. While we are there, we like to do some hiking and exploring local sites together.

In August 2022, the four of us enjoyed traveling on a road trip from Portland OR to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state to see Olympic National Park. We had ideal warm clear summer weather to see the highlights of this splendid national park, such as the Hoh Rain Forest, the ocean beach at La Push, Cresent Lake, Marymere Falls, and a panoramic view of the Olympic Mountains at Hurricane Ridge. The last couple nights on this trip, we stayed with Nancy’s cousin Peter and his spouse Karen, in Sequim, WA. At Peter and Karen’s home, we ate outstanding sea food they caught nearby in Sequim Bay.

In addition, the four of us, plus one of Nancy’s older sister, Sonja and her spouse Erik, plus Nancy’s cousin Nils and his spouse Hanna, 8 people total, traveled to Yosemite National Park, California in May 2018. We had a terrific time hiking on the Mist Trail to see Nevada and Vernal Falls, driving to see Glacier Point, and a short walk to see the base of Yosemite Falls up close.

Nancy’s siblings and their spouses are getting up in years. Before the pandemic, it was a loose tradition that Nancy, Rex and Tanya visited Denmark every other year. In the year in between, Nancy’s siblings, their spouses, and some cousins came to the U.S. to explore areas, such as Missouri and Arkansas, the Pacific Northwest, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia.

During our June 2022 trip to Denmark, Nancy asked her siblings if they would be open to traveling in the U.S. in 2023. She thought that they would probably not be interested. Surprisingly, they expressed an interest to see America again. They reached a quick consensus to do a big family road trip to see Glacier National Park in 2023. Tanya enjoyed these big family trips. Thus, it looked like this would be my big opportunity to finally see Glacier National Park.

Traveling from Seattle, WA to Glacier National Park, MT in September 2023

Tanya’s parents, Nancy and Rex Couture, made all the arrangements for this 10-day trip. Their plan was to meet in Seattle, WA and travel to Glacier National Park, MT from September 5th to September 15th. She called me to help her book one of the hotel reservations, such there was a limit of how many rooms at one hotel could be booked under one name. In addition, she asked me contact Glacier National Park to see if I could book one of the days for their vehicle reservation system. Like her, I did not have success booking a vehicle reservation for one of the days. I knew nothing about Glacier National Park, so I left all the planning for the trip up to them.

On September 5th, Tanya and I took the Amtrak Cascades train to the Seattle area to meet up with the group. It was a pleasant 3-hour train ride. We got off the train at the Tukwila train station, not far from SeaTac International Airport. Tanya and I figured that getting off at Tukwila would put us closer to SeaTac than the downtown train station. All of the participants on this trip were flying into SeaTac and picking up their rental cars around that area.

Tanya and I stepped off the train at the Tukwila station at 11:30 am. When we arrived, we saw no restrooms, no Amtrak staff, or other services as we waited for several hours for one of Nancy’s cousins to pick us up by car. This commuter parking lot and station, also used by the local Seattle Sound Transit light rail, was a mile walk to the nearest gas station to use the bathroom. Tanya and I ate our lunch in the shade on the commuter lot benches and read our books. I periodically ran up to the train platform to see the freight and passenger trains roll past the station.

Finally, Nancy’s cousin, Jørgen and his wife Marianne picked us up after 3 pm. The plan was to retrieve Tanya and me after 1 pm, but it took a lot longer at the rental place to obtain their car. We then met up with all 14 people at the scenic Snoqualmie Falls, located about 45 minutes east of Tukwila and SeaTac Airport. Tanya and I saw Snoqualmie Falls on June 30, 2018. However, it rained hard that summer day, making it awkward to stay warm and dry while trying to enjoy the waterfall. After eating an early dinner at the Snoqualmie Lodge, the 14 of us went by our three vehicles to drive an hour and a half east to spend the night in Ellensburg, WA.

From that point forward, three vehicles (a large minivan, a Chevy Tahoe SUV, and a jeep) transported 14 of us towards Glacier National Park over the next three days. We stopped many times over the next three days for sightseeing. Our first stop was Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park for a view of the Columbia River and Native American petroglyphs. These petrographs are some of the best examples of petroglyphic art in Central Washington. They were removed from their original site, below which is now covered by the Wanapum Reservoir.

From there, we drove along Lenore Lake and Banks Lake on Hwy 17. We stopped at the Dry Falls overlook for a picnic lunch. After lunch, we headed up to Grand Coulee Dam to take a guided tour of the reservoir. The dam is one of the largest concrete structures in the world and the largest hydro-electric producer in the United States. We spent the night in nearby Grand Coulee, watching a laser light show projected on the dam that evening.

The next morning, we watched a 45-minute film at the Grand Coulee Dam Visitor about the construction of the dam. Tanya and I felt a bit restless that we wanted to move on to see other sites along the route to Glacier National Park. I worked at Crater Lake National Park as a seasonal ranger for 25 years. Crater Lake’s Park film only takes 17 minutes to explain the Mazama volcano, the climatic eruption, and the collapse of volcano that created Crater Lake. Tanya and I thought, ‘Why would it take 45 minutes to explain the construction of a dam?’

Others in our party wanted to see the film. Tanya and I were stuck at the visitor center since we did not drive our own vehicle. Thus, we watched the film. The film surprised us that it was good. It showed a different time when the U.S. built huge civil projects to improve the way of life for business, farmers, and provide electricity for citizens. It sparked good conversations in the vehicles afterwards why doesn’t the U.S. build massive projects like that anymore.

From Grand Coulee, we drove to take a short hike at Hawk Creek Falls State Park and had a picnic lunch on a tranquil spot near Fort Spokane along the Spokane River. That evening we made it to Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho, way up north in the Idaho panhandle. Bonner’s Ferry is less than 30 miles from the Canadian border. I was excited because the next day we were scheduled to travel to Glacier National Park, Montana. Since working at Crater Lake National Park in 1992, I wanted to see Glacier for over 31 years. We were now only about 180 miles or a 4-hour drive away from Lake McDonald Lodge in Glacier National Park. My in-law’s itinerary had us eating dinner there the next day. My dream to see Glacier was coming true the next day. Or so I thought…

My disappointment of not making it to Glacier National Park on Friday, September 8th.

We woke up on Friday morning to have a continental breakfast in the lobby of the hotel. The food available was some toast, cereal, and some fruit. It was minimal for a breakfast, but I was fine with it. I was eager to see Glacier and whatever sights we would see along the way.

Basically, everyone in our group was ready to leave the motel in Bonners Ferry around 9 am. The first item on the agenda was the Boundary County Historical Society Museum in downtown Bonners Ferry. However, the museum did not open until 10 am. Therefore, we had time to kill.

The owner at the hotel at Bonners Ferry recommended that we visit the Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge, located near the city center, while we waited for the museum to open. We went to the Wildlife Refuge took some pictures of the Kootenai River as it meandered and made a sharp curve by the boat dock. We saw a Bald Eagle in a close by in a tree next to the road. However, we saw no other animals as we drove the loop road through the refuge. One member of our party was accidentally left behind at the boat dock as we made the loop drive through the refuge. He was fuming as we returned to pick him up. It was a bit chaotic and not much to see at this refuge. It served the purpose to kill time, but that was all.

In my mind I thought: Can’t we just drive towards Glacier? Why all these distracting side trips?

The Boundary County Historical Society Museum in downtown Bonners Ferry was mildly interesting when we walked inside at 10 am. I enjoyed chatting with the official volunteer greeter of the museum. His name was Howard. He was a lifelong resident of Bonners Ferry in his late 70s or early 80s. Howard sat in a chair and recounted Bonners Ferry stories for anyone who was interested. I was anxious to see Glacier, but the others seemed content walking around the crowded contents of the museum. I made the best of it by having an engaging conversation with Howard and I liked hearing his lifelong account of living in Bonners Ferry. At the same time, I was eager to see Montana and Glacier National Park, the goal of this trip.

It was around noon that we left Bonners Ferry. We did not cross the Montana boundary until around 12:30 pm. At 1 pm, we stopped at the Kootenai Falls Park right along Hwy 2, which was 22 miles east of the Idaho border. We had a picnic lunch there. Afterwards, our more agile group members hiked over a mile to the Kootenai waterfalls and then another mile along the Kootenai River to the “swinging bridge” that spanned the river. The main falls dropped over 30 feet with a series of loud roaring rapids around it that looked too dangerous to kayak or try on river rafting. The river, the falls, and swinging bridge was nestled against a steep ridge of a mountain covered in pine trees that felt like we officially arrived in western Montana. It got me more excited for what we might see that day in Glacier National Park.

After the able-bodied hikers in our group, such as Tanya and I, returned to the parking lot, the Danish relatives gathered at a picnic table having a coffee break and eating ice cream. I was not interested in food or any drinks since we ate lunch less than two hours ago, but I was hungry to see Glacier National Park. We left the Kootenai Falls Park sometime after 3 pm.

We had a two-and-a-half-hour drive to Columbia Falls, Montana to the house we rented for the next three nights. We arrived after 5:30 pm. The original plan was to unload our luggage and then drive to Lake McDonald Lodge inside Glacier National Park for dinner.

We arrived in Columbia Falls to a bright blue sky with no clouds or haze. The weather was in the lower 70s. It was the perfect weather to visit a national park on a late afternoon. The sun was lower in the sky which would make for perfect photos. The park boundary was only about 19 miles away, about a 30-minute drive. It was so close I could almost taste it. I was pumped full of energy to see Glacier National Park. I was within minutes of reaching a life goal.

Then I received the bad news. Almost everyone in our party were tired and did not want to go to the park. My wife Tanya was interested, as well as my father-in-law Rex, but that was it. Everyone else felt worn out from being a car passenger or driving that day. I was livid. I wanted to scream at someone, but I knew it would not do any good.

Instead, I immediately went for a long walk to “cool my jets” and with all the adrenaline I felt in the moment. We stayed at a large house at the back end of the Meadow Lake Resort. I decided to take a long way around the resort area. I regretted I did not drive my own car on the trip to take off at that moment to explore the park on my own with possibly my wife Tanya and my father-in-law Rex. I visited many national parks on my own, so I felt trapped on this trip. I was at the mercy of the group with the coffee breaks, side excursions, slower members taking longer to get ready, and long conversations about how to meet at the next rendezvous point.

Yes, we would travel to Glacier National Park the next day. However, we would never have that chance again to visit Lake McDonald and have dinner at the scenic lodge that Friday afternoon when the weather was perfect. The park enticed me to visit, but I had no means to get there.

My wife texted me that they were walking to the Meadow Lake Bar and Grille for dinner, which happened to be a few minutes away from the spot I just walked past. I turned around to walk to the Bar and Grille. I waited for my wife and the rest of the group to arrive.

The long walk did help exhale those feelings of anger, disappointment, and hurt. By the time Tanya and others met me at the restaurant, I put on a happy face and resigned myself to the situation. I would see Glacier National Park, but it would not happen until the next day.

Finally seeing Glacier National Park for the first time on Saturday, September 9th

The day finally arrived for our group and me to see Glacier National Park. To my ongoing ire, we got off to a slow start that morning. We bought gas, which always took time to figure out the gas pumps at each location. We then ran into a long line of vehicles proceeding to the entrance station. Fortunately, the traffic moved somewhat quickly through the park entrance. It was a relief that it moved much faster than when Tanya and I visited Mt. Rainier National Park in July.

Minutes after we entered the west entrance of Glacier National Park, we stopped at the Apgar Visitor Center. I was on a sole mission to get a tri-fold park map. I asked inside the visitor center store, but they directed me to a box outside that had maps. The box was empty. I then wanted to ask a ranger, but there was a long line to ask the ranger questions. Three different rangers were behind outdoor desks to answer visitor questions. However, the visitors were very longwinded asking the rangers to plan their trips and to go over the junior ranger badges with the kids. Our group was leaving the visitor center to head back to our vehicles. I gave up my place in line to catch up with them. Thus, I could not get a map. My day was not off to a good start.

On the bright side, we had fabulous weather that day, as we did throughout our trip. The weather was sunny and partly cloudy. It felt like a perfect day to go hiking and explore a national park. There was a hint of an autumn breeze in the air to prevent the day from feeling too hot.

A long stretch of the Going-to-the-Sun Road by Lake McDonald for several miles was stripped of pavement and in the process of getting repaved. We were lucky no road crew worked on this Saturday morning to delay traffic and impede our time to travel through the park.

All of us in our group had our jaws open with the beauty of the Going-to-the-Sun Road. I worked 25 years at Crater Lake National Park, traveled to Yosemite several times, driven through Yellowstone more than once, drove along the south rim road at the Grand Canyon, etc. Nothing prepared me for the magnificent landscape as we climbed in elevation towards Logan Pass. The jagged mountains and deep forested valleys of Glacier National Park were mesmerizing.

We had a picnic lunch at the Wild Goose picnic area. Tanya and I, and the more physically able in our group, hiked 2.4 miles one way to St. Mary Falls. We walked on the trail along St. Mary Lake with the towering rocky peaks of Glacier National Park dominating all around us.

As we hiked that day, something seemed odd. I noticed the same thing the next day when we were at another area of the park, Many Glacier. None of the mountain peaks had any snow or glaciers on them. It felt eerie. Yes, all these mountains probably get a good snowpack for the winter that melts by mid to late summer. From my 25 years working at Crater Lake National Park and visiting other national parks, I understood seasonal winter snowpack is gone by late summer. At the same time, this was Glacier National Park. Shouldn’t there have been some sight of a glacier somewhere?

A sign on the Going-to-the-Sun Road near the high point of the road points to Jackson Glacier on a distant mountain, but I found it hard to see. As I spent more time in the park, it felt like we were at an excellent party where the host disappeared long ago. The party was fantastic. I would go to this party again. However, it seemed like it was nearly impossible to get a glimpse of the guest of honor.

We had one more day to visit Glacier National Park on Sunday, September 10th. I was determined to ask a park ranger or a park employee to find out what’s happening with the glaciers.

Visiting Many Glacier area in Glacier National Park on Sunday, September 10th

I must give Tanya’s parents, Nancy and Rex Couture, full credit for planning an excellent itinerary for every day of our trip from Seattle, Washington to Glacier National Park, Montana, and back September 5-15. Sometimes we did not make our marks for places to visit because arranging 14 people to travel together is like herding cats.

Sunday, September 10th was one of the best planned days of the trip. We left the house we where we stayed around 9 am. We arrived at the West Entrance Station for Glacier National Park around 9:30 am. This time, we were stopped for road construction around the Lake McDonald area. With winter coming soon to the mountains, I figured the road construction crew would be under pressed to complete their road re-pavement work soon. The good news was that it was only about a 5-to-10-minute wait.

It was an ideal beautiful day to visit Glacier with just a few clouds and a bright blue sky. The plan was to drive across the park on the Going-to-the-Sun Road and then travel to the northeast area of the park to known as Many Glacier. From Many Glacier, we would have a picnic lunch, travel on two different boats, and then allow folks in our group the option to do some hiking.

On the way to Many Glacier, we stopped at the Lunch Creek pullout on the Going-to-the-Sun Road. This pullout is just past Logan Pass, the highest point on the road and the spot where the Continental Divide crosses the road. The view of the mountains, the cascading creek, and the pine trees was magnificent at Lunch Creek.

My father-in-law, Rex Couture, wanted to look for a specific rock there, called stromatolites. These rocks are the fossilized remains of algae dating back a billion and a half years ago. At that time, Glacier National Park looked more like the modern-day Bahamas, with clear waters holding some of the most primitive life forms on earth—cyanobacteria (blue-green algae)—which these rocks preserve in great abundance. Rex could not locate those rocks, but it did not matter. It was very sublime to taken in the scenery at Lunch Creek before we had to drive further.

From there, we drove to Many Glacier without stopping. Correction: we stopped once so I could take a picture of the Glacier National Park entrance sign at the east entrance on the Going-to-the-Sun Road. When we arrived at Many Glacier, the panoramic view blew us away with the pointy jagged peaks and an emerald dark green reflective lake in front of the mountains. In the foreground was the Many Glacier Hotel. The Great Northern Railway built this hotel in 1914-15 as a Swiss-style lodge. The Many Glacier area is known as the “Switzerland of North America.′′ I have never been to Switzerland to compare it to Many Glacier. However, I could have spent hours staring at the scenery there from the back porch of the Many Glacier Hotel.

The Boat Tours to see Grinnell Lake in Glacier National Park

My in-laws, Nancy and Rex Couture, arranged for all 14 of us to take a boat tour that departed from behind the Many Glacier Lodge on Swiftcurrent Lake. A month before the trip, Nancy emailed the itinerary to all the trip participants. Her description for Sunday, September 10th:

“We have a boat tour scheduled for 2 pm. This is a guided tour. We need to plan on being at Many Glacier 1 hour prior to tour. We will sail one lake then traverse up a relatively steep hill to the next lake. The incline is described as a 5 story climb. Should this be too much for some,
the boat will return to Many Glacier and hikes can be taken there.”

For 20 years of working in the national parks, I narrated boats in the Everglades and Crater Lake National Parks. It felt weird for me to take a boat tour in a national park without narrating the tour. The boat was different than any of the tours I led in the Everglades or Crater Lake. It had an enclosed wooden top and glass windows. Tanya and I sat in the very back away from the others in our group. I wanted the flexibility in the back to take more photos and a chance to be away from the others to enjoy each other’s company during the tour.

Sadly, sitting in the back of the boat, we were right next to the noise of the gruff humming engines. This made it hard to hear the tour. This was my pet peeve giving boat tours in national parks. Why don’t they design the boats to be quieter so visitors can hear the tour narrations?

The boat captain narrated the tour. I never piloted a boat at Crater Lake, with the rare exception of one emergency at Crater Lake. The battery died on the boat and the engine would not start. However, we put the passengers in PFDs to be safe, we got towed back to the dock on the National Park Service research boat. The boat captain secured and monitored the boat lines tied to the research while I boat steered the boat while it was getting towed.

That always seemed like too much mental work for me to be operating a boat while giving a tour narration. Our boat captain was Nicole. I was pleased with the narration that I could pick out over the loud boat engines. Like it or not, some visitors want park employees to have some humor in their tour narrations. Other visitors just want the facts without any corny jokes. With that said, I thought that Nicole nailed the one joke I could hear over the boat engines.

She talked about the Many Glacier Hotel how mountain goats occasionally and accidentally cause damage to the hotel roof during the winter. To monitor the lodge during the winter, she said there was one individual on site all winter. She then dryly remarked, “You might have seen a documentary about this on Neflix. It’s called The Shining.”

I laughed as well as several of the boat passengers. I thought she nailed that joke.

We then reached the other end of Swiftcurrent Lake. Three of the oldest members of our party stayed on board the boat to return to Many Glacier Hotel. They sat in the Hotel’s Great Hall to have cocktails and read while they waited for the rest of us to complete our hikes and return.

The other 11 members of our group walked up the hill, which seemed more like a two- or three-story building to take the other boat tour on Lake Josephine. The boat then let us off on the far side of Lake Josephine for an optional hike 3.5 mile hike to see the Grinnell Glacier up close, a 1.1 mile hike to see Grinnell Lake, or ride the boats back to Many Glacier Hotel. Captain Nicole announced she would lead a guided walk to Grinnell Lake.

Tanya and I decided to hike on our own to Grinnell Lake. The late afternoon sun angling to the west made it hard for us to see the Grinnell Glacier high up on Grinnell Peak as we looked towards the west. I could barely make it out with the dark shadows that the wide shoulders of the mountain refusing to let us get a good look that time of day. From what I could see, it looked like the glacier was hanging on by its fingernails, doomed to disappear soon.

Tanya and I enjoyed the hike out to Grinnell Lake. It was nearly a flat trail through the woods as it headed towards the lake. The lake had a mint green hue from the glacial silt in the water. It was captivating color that I had not seen in a lake before, even glacial lakes that I might have encountered previously. Tanya and I enjoyed taking lots of photos and appreciating the view of the lake with the silhouette of the towering Mount Grinnell directly behind the lake.

Talking to Captain Nicole about the glaciers receding in Glacier National Park

On return hike, we ran into Captain Nicole. She finished her guided walk to Grinnell Lake and spent this time casually chatting with visitors. We talked for close to 15 minutes. As we got off the second boat at Lake Josephine, I asked her a quick question about the glaciers and mentioned that I used to be a national park ranger. She was curious to hear about my story.

I told her that I worked 25 years at Crater Lake and the Everglades as a seasonal interpretive park ranger giving public talks, such as boat tours. I shared how I discovered climate change over 20 years ago working the in Everglades. Even more, I saw the diminishing annual snowpack and a more intense wildfire season working 25 years at Crater Lake National Park. Seeing climate change in the national parks caused me to spend my winters organizing for climate action in my hometown of St. Louis. This was how I met my wife, Tanya, who was standing next to me.

I then elaborated that I started giving evening ranger campfire programs about climate change at Crater Lake over 12 years ago. I began that program by talking about how climate change impacted other national parks, such as Glacier. I gave the example of the Shepard Glacier in this park. In that presentation PowerPoint, I showed a park photo of what that glacier looked like in 1913, compared another photo from around 2005. I relayed my understanding from over 10 years ago that all the glaciers in Glacier National Park might be gone by 2020.

I asked Captain Nicole if she heard that same fact. She affirmed that she had. Nicole said that she was originally from Minnesota and she is 25 years old. She first visited Glacier National Park when she was 9 years old, which would be around 2009. She remembers hearing that fact then and she recalls seeing a difference in the glaciers in the park from 14 years ago until now.

Nicole stated she is very worried about climate change. She likes to share information about climate change at Glacier National Park during her boat tour narrations. However, she struggles internally how much knowledge to share since with park visitors since they are on vacation. She is uncertain the amount of climate change facts to give visitors if they would be truly open to listening to the information.

I had that same dilemma when I wanted to talk about climate change in the national parks over 12 years ago. Some audiences were very receptive, other audiences just wanted to be entertained since they were just on vacation. I then asked her the key question: how many glaciers are left in Glacier National Park?

She responded the park currently has 25 glaciers. She defined a glacier as a mass of ice so big that it flows under its own weight and has a size about 25 acres. She then noted that around 1850, an estimated 150 glaciers existed within the present boundaries of the park.

Even though I knew for over a dozen years that the glaciers were disappearing in Glacier National Park, it was still sobering and sad for me to hear this from a Glacier Park employee. I shared with Nicole my analogy that my visit to Glacier felt like we were at an excellent party where the host disappeared long ago. She had no pushback or objections to my observation.

Nicole announced on the boat tour that it was her final tour of the season. I wished her success in whatever she did next. Nicole informed Tanya and me that she did not know what she was doing for the winter. I understood that feeling 100%. Many seasons when I left my summer job at Crater Lake National Park, I did not know what I was doing for the winter.

Nicole told us that she had an excellent summer. She loved working there, even more than the previous summers. The snow from wildfires was not bad, except for the beginning of June with the Canadian wildfire smoke than impacted much of the eastern U.S. Nicole liked her roommates, but she could almost hear them recite each other’s boat narrations in their sleep. She hoped to return to Glacier next year.

I gave Nicole my business card just in case she wanted to learn more about my climate change comedy. I felt old chatting with her since I was around her age when I started working at Crater Lake in 1992. I turned 24 years old that July. Many of my co-workers at the Crater Lake gift store in 1992 were around my age if not a year or two younger. I am now old enough to be Nicole’s dad and old enough to be a parent of the new generation now working in the national parks.

My conversation with Nicole felt like the future is in good hands, especially with the next generation of park employees. She loved Glacier, enjoyed interacting with the park visitors, cared to share accurate information about the park, and was deeply concerned about climate change. I apologized for taking up to 15 minutes of her time. However, she indicated that I was not interfering with her work, and she liked her conversation with Tanya and me.

Leaving Glacier National Park to see Mt. Shuksan at North Cascades National Park

We hiked all the way back from Grinnell Lake to Many Glacier Hotel. It was a 3.5-mile hike with not much elevation rise or fall. The hike skipped taking the boat tours back. The trails skirted along Lake Josephine and Swiftcurrent Lake. The scenery was astonishing as we stopped frequently to take pictures. Our goal was to pace our walk to return about the same time that Tanya’s parents and others in the group returned to the Many Glacier Hotel riding on the boats. We achieved success that we showed up the same time their boat arrived. Tanya and I were delighted with all the exercise we received that day hiking on the trails.

I felt a bit of sadness that our 10-day trip to Glacier National Park had reached its climax. We were now getting ready to leave the park for the two-hour drive to return to the house we rented Columbia Falls, Montana. The next day, Monday, September 11th, we dropped two members of our group at the Kalispell City Airport. We then had 12 people to travel the next couple of days to North Cascades National Park, Washington.

On Wednesday, September 13th, we reached the Mt. Baker Ski Area at 6 pm to see Mt. Shuksan. The low afternoon western sunset lit up the mountain brilliantly as we saw it. We spent the night at a large house in Glacier, Washington, about a 40-minute drive from the Mt. Baker Ski Area. We then returned to the Mt. Baker Ski Area the next day to drive to the of the road at Artist’s Point. From that location, we had fantastic views of Mt. Baker and Mt. Shuksan.

I had a poster of Mt. Shuksan on my wall in high school in St. Louis in the 1980s. I had no idea where that mountain on my poster was located. However, I vowed to see that mountain someday. When working in the national parks, I learned Mt. Shuksan is in North Cascades National Park. At the end of May 2009, I took advantage of a two-week vacation break from my Crater Lake job to go see Mt. Shuksan. With the spring snowpack and timeless glaciers clinging to the mountain, I thought it was the most beautiful site I saw in my life. I still think that to this day.

The Mt. Baker Ski Area with the view of Mt. Shuksan is my favorite spot on planet Earth. It is, as they saw these days, ‘My happy place.’ Ironically, the glaciers on Mt. Shuksan are very easy to spot, compared to the glaciers at Glacier National Park. It must be noted that Mt. Shuksan is roughly 50 miles from the ocean waters next to Bellingham, Washington. Mt. Shuksan is a lot closer to the Pacific Ocean than the mountains of Glacier National Park. Therefore, Shuskan gets a lot more snow and potential for glaciers than the mountains of Glacier National Park.

I shudder to think how Mt. Shuksan’s glaciers shrunk due to climate change. There’s documented evidence the snowpack and glaciers have receded on Mt. Baker in recent years.

Final Thoughts

I know from my own life of working at Crater Lake and Everglades National Parks that climate change is real, human caused, scientists agree, and is negatively impacting our national parks. Even more, I know from reading books and published articles from climate scientists and clean energy experts that we can limit the damage caused by climate change if we chose.

I had the good fortune in my life to work 25 years in the national parks, travel to many of the most iconic American national parks, marry Tanya who likes to hike in natural areas, and marry into a family that likes to visit national parks and scenic areas. Spending time in national parks and nature allowed me to become the climate advocate that I am today.

Because it is a remote and difficult location to travel, I am uncertain if I will see Glacier National Park again in my life. My conversation with Captain Nicole at Glacier National Park reminded me that I am getting older. I am now 55 years old and probably have more yesterdays than tomorrows. Thus, a future opportunity to go to Glacier might be unlikely. I wish Tanya and I lived closer to Glacier to enjoy it more frequently.

I do know for sure that my recent trip to Glacier National Park, my ample visits to see Mt. Shuksan at the Mt. Baker Ski Area, and working 25 years at Crater Lake and Everglades National Parks have inspired me to commit my life to take action for climate change.

From my time working in the national parks and hiking in the outdoors, I believe that we have an innate sense of needing nature and to connect with grand scenic beauty.

More than 100 years ago, American naturalist John Muir wrote in his book The Yosemite, “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.”

More recently, the late Harvard naturalist Dr. Edward O. Wilson coined the term Biophilia, which he described in his book by the same title, as “the urge to affiliate with other forms of life.” We hope when we spend time in nature to see a large mammal, colorful bird, fascinating reptile or incest, or a majestic forest of trees. Even if we don’t see any wild animals in the outdoors, we still have deep longings to connect to the natural world. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines biophilia as “a desire or tendency to commune with nature.”

Most of us have an internal longing to spend time in nature, love it, protect it, and to find a way to reduce the harm caused by humans. Yes, I acknowledge that some people are solely interested in power, greed, corruption, domination, and pleasure. However, most of us do want to connect with nature. Many of us dream of traveling to remote and iconic places, where we can be in nature and learn about it. Some of us even crave that sense of renewal, peace, and healing from spending time in the outdoors.

Spending time in nature should challenge us to take better care of it. To love and appreciate the natural world should inspire you to want to protect and defend it from imminent threats such as climate change. One should leave nature with a sense of purpose to protect it. I don’t think one should leave nature as the same person who entered it. One should leave nature with a sense of elevated renewal. The gift of communing in the outdoors should inspire us take better care of ourselves, be more caring to others, and be better stewards or citizens of our planet.

This was why I stopped working as a national park ranger in 2017. I loved the national parks and nature. I felt most at home there. At the same time, I learned and saw first hand that nature and our national parks are suffering because of human caused climate change. That awareness called me to be a climate change advocate. My time working in the national parks changed me to become the person writing this today.

My recent visit to Glacier National Park reminded me that I have a lot more work to do in my climate advocacy. My own eyes saw lack of glaciers there. My conversation with Captain Nicole confirmed that the glaciers are disappearing. Recently I read on the Glacier National Park website that ‘the retreat of glaciers seen in recent decades can be increasingly attributed to human-caused climate change.’ With this new insight, Glacier National Park is now challenging me to be a better and more effective climate change organizer.

American writer and environmentalist Edward Abbey wrote in his 1977 book The Journey Home,

“The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders.”

I went to Glacier eager to complete a life goal to see it, and spend quality time with my wife and her extended family. I left Glacier with a new determination to take climate action.

Thank you, Nancy and Rex Couture, for this fantastic opportunity to see Glacier National Park!

‘Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and a leave trail.’

– attributed to the 1903 poem “Wind-Wafted Wild Flowers” by Muriel Strode

In 2016, I had a dream to travel around my home state of Missouri to give presentations for climate change. I was inspired by friends and volunteers with Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) who conducted state speaking tours in the previous years.

In 2015, CCL friends such as Peter Bryn, Ricky Bradley, Larry Kremer, and Brett Cease completed the ‘Texas Energy Freedom Tour!’ This group held 71 events: 25 public presentations primarily to identify new CCL group leaders, and 46 meetings with various community leaders including Chambers of Commerce, county Farm Bureaus, mayors, newspapers, faith leaders, and Republican County Chairs. The goal was to promote climate action, recruit new volunteers for CCL, and create support for CCL’s policy solution of carbon fee and dividend.

The 2015 Texas Energy Freedom Tour inspired other U.S. CCL volunteers to organize state tours in 2016 such as in Georgia. Peter Bryn’s team followed up with the ‘2016 Southern Energy Freedom Tour.’ They drove 2,751 miles to visit 22 cities, giving 17 public presentations and 7 media interviews. They had 35 meetings with businesses, political leaders, NGOs and other groups. They hosted 4 CCL group start workshops and a CCL regional conference. Even more, they met with members of Congress 13 times, and generated 245 letters to U.S. representatives.

As a climate organizer, these state speaking tours looked like a fun adventure to make a difference for climate action. I wanted to do something similar in my home state of Missouri. In addition, I spent the summers working as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park. Thus, Oregon intrigued me to undertake a climate change speaking tour.

My struggle to pitch a MO climate speaking tour at a CCL Midwest Regional Conference

As I wrote on a previous blog, I attended the CCL Midwest, officially known as the “Tornadoes Region,” conference on November 12 and 13, 2016. Donald Trump won the Presidential election on November 8th, just days before in that same week. Climate advocates were on edge trying to determine the actions we should take to counter the incoming Trump Administration. There was no doubt they would try everything possible to roll back any progress to address climate change during the Obama Administration. Personally, I wanted to up my game for climate action by pitching the idea of a CCL speaking tour across Missouri, just like CCL volunteers did in Texas in 2015 and 2016. I had no idea about the resistance I would receive.

During a brainstorming breakout session of Missouri CCL volunteers during the conference, we determined that the best way to get more people involved was to organize a state tour across Missouri. It would be composed of speaking events to expose the public to CCL and its preferred climate solution, carbon fee and dividend. A leader was needed to speak at these different cities. I volunteered myself since I had the time and passion to do it. At that time, I was a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park. It was in between seasons from my summer job, so I had the availability and enthusiasm to lead this tour. After I volunteered myself to lead this tour, I immediately got some pushback from the local Kansas City volunteers.

They were concerned about the finances needed to complete this tour. That part didn’t bother me. I figured the money would work itself out, one way or another. As we brainstormed, they wouldn’t let this issue go. It got more contentious. They kept hammering how I was going to pay for this tour. I was annoyed they weren’t supportive and trying to think outside the box how we were going to grow CCL to get more people involved. To get them from stop dwelling on this sticking point, I finally said: “I will do my own fund raising to make this tour happen.”

That seemed to silence the critics, at least I naively thought at the time. However, two weeks later, I received a phone call out of the blue from the Vice President of CCL, Madeleine Para, who attended the conference in Kansas City. Madeleine started off the conversation cordial asking me how I was doing. In that moment, I was very excited talking about an upcoming trip I was planning to Ottawa Canada. I was invited to be a guest speaker and lobby members of the Canadian parliament for a Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada conference. She sounded rather cold and calculated when she said: “Well, I am going to have to burst your bubble.”

She went on to say: “I was just talking to the Executive Director, Mark Reynolds, and we agreed that you can’t do your own fund raising for a state tour. We feel like any fund raising that you would do would interfere with the organization’s fund raising. We can’t let you do that.”

It felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. I didn’t have the words to respond, so I hung up the phone. I did email her to apologize, but I felt deeply hurt. She did seem to understand that in a responding email and relaying a comment days later to a mutual friend. That was it though. There was no other action taken to reach out to me to try to heal the breach. Immediately after Madeleine’s call, I called a few CCL friends across the country, and they didn’t know what to say. They still advised me to do this tour if I wanted to do it.

During that phone call with Madeleine, I had no words to dig deeper into her reasoning. From my interactions with her, I felt an underlying jealousy. She didn’t seem to like my enthusiasm and energy to accomplish big things as a climate organizer. It felt like my plans to organize around Missouri were somehow a threat to her position. Therefore, she had to find a way to get the Executive Director on her side to stop my plans. Her phone call made no logical sense. If I had the words to say in that moment, I would have responded: ‘What was the point of that regional conference? I somehow had the impression it was to think outside our comfort zone to grow our organization to make a difference for climate action. I don’t see your logic how my own fund raising for a tour would compete with fund raising of the national organization.’

I saw for the first time that people involved in the climate movement don’t always have the best intentions to effectively act on climate. They don’t always want to help volunteers like me reach for their full potential to make a difference for climate action. Sadly, I discovered as a climate organizer that others’ politics, power, and jealousy can get in the way of my yearning to make difference. Unfortunately, it was a lesson that I would have to learn repeatedly.

Planning for the 2017 CCL Missouri speaking and lobbying tour

The good news is that I didn’t let Madeleine stop me. In the fall of 2016, the CCL regional coordinator for the Tornados, Carol Braford, invited me to be the CCL Missouri state co-coordinator. I would work closely with the other co-coordinator, George Laur, a retired engineer who lived in Jefferson City, Missouri. George and I met months earlier and we became friends. We looked forward to collaborate as CCL co-coordinators for Missouri. We had regular phone calls after the November 2016 CCL Tornados Regional Conference. George liked my idea of a CCL speaking tour across Missouri. He started making some inquiries about me giving climate change talks in Jefferson City, Kirksville in northeastern Missouri, and elsewhere.

In late January 2017, my wife Tanya had a job offer in Portland, Oregon. We decided we would move to Portland in the first week of February 2017. After our decision, I called climate friends in Missouri, such as George Laur, to inform them we were moving. Thus, I would not be organizing events in Missouri anymore. George was happy for Tanya and me, but he was sad because we enjoyed working with each other. George then said to me: ‘Looks like you will have to fly back to Missouri in March because I plan for you to speak in Jefferson City and Kirksville, MO.’

After Tanya and I moved to Oregon in February 2017, I realized it would be expensive to fly back to Missouri in March to give talks there. I love to travel, especially to give climate change talks. However, I was nervous to pay for this round-trip plane ticket. When I expressed this to George, He generously asked CCL volunteers in Jefferson City and Columbia Missouri to raise money to pay for my airline ticket. They easily raised the funds for my airplane fare. The generosity of George Laur and his CCL friends in central Missouri touched me. This motivated me to take this trip back home to Missouri to give quality climate change presentations. Even more, this gesture of kindness inspired me to see what other climate actions I could bundle into this trip.

In early March, I bought my airline tickets to fly from Portland, Oregon to St. Louis, Missouri on Monday, March 27th. I bought my return ticket from St. Louis to Portland on Monday, April 3rd. George planned for me to speak in Jefferson City on Wednesday, March 29th at 7 pm. In addition, George and the new CCL Missouri co-coordinator, Sharon Bagatell, booked me to speak at Truman State University in Kirksville, MO on Friday, March 31st at 7 pm.

Besides those two events, I hoped to bundle in more climate related events to make the most of this trip. For several years, CCL encouraged its volunteers to do spring in district lobby meetings with their local Congressional offices. In between the speaking engagements in Jefferson City and Kirksville, George arranged a meeting with staff of U.S. Senator Roy Blunt at his district office in Columbia, Missouri on Thursday, March 30th. This inspired me to reach out to the Congressional offices of U.S. Representative Ann Wagner to have a meeting with her staff on Tuesday morning, March 28th. St. Louis CCL volunteer David Henry scheduled a meeting with staff of U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill at her St. Louis district office on Tuesday afternoon, March 28th.

I was excited that while I was still in Oregon in mid-March, I coordinated a trip to Missouri to give two climate presentations and three lobby meetings. In addition, I would have a chance to visit family. I would stay with my in-laws while in St. Louis. On Monday evening, March 27th, I would have dinner with my in-laws and parents.

As I planned this trip in March while living in Portland, something serendipitous happened. On February 28, 2017, I got an e-mail from Ian Mason, a senior at Ladue High School, located in west St. Louis County. Today Ian Mason is a Weekend Anchor/Meteorologist in North Platte, Nebraska for NBC Channel 2 in Nebraska since April 2022. In that February 2017 email, Ian wrote:

“Dear Brian,

I’m not sure if you remember me or not, but I was a high school student and I attended your class on Climate Change at St. Louis Community College a couple years ago. I’m currently working with a student organization called Global Student Square and I’m doing a video on the Trump administrations Gag orders to scientists, specifically in the climatology field. I think I remember you saying that you were a Park Ranger at some point so I was interested in your point of view.

I would love to meet up at some point and talk if that is okay with you. Thank you so much!”

I responded to Ian that I would be lobbying Congressional Offices in St. Louis and giving climate change talks in Jefferson City and Kirksville in the last week of March. He was welcome to shadow me for any of these events. Ian was very enthusiastic about this. After I would fly into St. Louis on March 27th, I planned to have lobby preparation meetings with local CCL volunteers who would join me at a local Starbucks. I suggested to Ian that he could join our lobby prep meetings and even the lobby meetings. Ian jumped at the opportunities to attend our lobby prep meetings and attend one of the lobby meetings on March 28th.

On top of all this planning, I booked an Amtrak train ticket from St. Louis to Jefferson City on Wednesday morning, March 29th. I would take the train to Jefferson City to rendezvous with George and his wife Kathy Laur before our event in Jefferson City on the evening of March 29th. I loved taking trains, as well as flying. Therefore, this was shaping up to be a great trip to Missouri to promote climate action and CCL.

First Day of the 2017 CCL MO Climate Speaking and Lobbying Tour, Monday, March 27th

Earlier that month, I booked an early morning direct flight from Portland, Oregon to St. Louis, Missouri to arrive early in the afternoon to attend my lobby prep meetings with local CCL volunteers. As I always do on Southwest Airlines, I try to board as early as I can to get a window seat. I love to grab a window seat to get a great view of the scenery as the plane flies. I can’t imagine flying without a window seat.

As I made a beeline for an available window seat towards the back of the plane, a pleasant 30 something couple sat in the seats next to me. At first, we did not make conversation because I focused on looking out the plane window. I was enjoying the silence before I would be talking a lot during this trip to CCL friends, Congressional staff, family, public presentations, etc. Not long into the flight, the man sitting next to me remarked: “I think that I know you.”

His name was Nicholas Bentley and he remembered we are Facebook friends. He attended a Climate Reality Training and admired my climate organizing. He was flying with his partner Kristen Lavelle, who took our photo. This was a great start to my trip. It was great to hear that he liked following on Facebook what I was doing to act on climate. Since this trip to Missouri was all about climate action, this started my trip on a good note.

I forgot why Nicholas and Kristen were flying to St. Louis. According to his Facebook page, Nicholas was a former New Media and Online Resources Officer at Greater Yellowstone Coalition and a former Organizer at Reclaim Democracy. When we chatted, he designed board games as a career. I always loved board games. Nicholas and Kristen live in Madison, Wisconsin. I hope our paths cross again at some point so we can play some board games.

My in-laws, Rex and Nancy Couture happily picked me up at the airport and then dropped me off at Starbucks for my lobby prep meetings. It was great to see them. My lobby preparation meetings went well. I met at a local Starbucks with St. Louis area residents Sue Bell, Liz de Laperouse, Jim Rhodes, and Ian Mason. Congresswoman Ann Wagner is a conservative Republican and U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill is a moderate Democrat, so the planning for these meetings was very different. After we chatted about these meetings, I made time for Ian to see if he had any questions for me with his video project that focused on my climate organizing.

That evening, my in-laws Nancy and Rex Couture had a lovely dinner at their home for my parents and me. I wish that my wife Tanya could have been there. I enjoy traveling and visiting family with her. I did call her on Facetime so that she felt included.

Second Day of this 2017 CCL MO Climate Speaking & Lobbying Tour, Tuesday, March 28^th

The meeting with Congresswoman Ann Wagner’s staff was at 9 pm. This district office was in Ballwin, Missouri, just a few miles from where my in-laws lived in west St. Louis County. My in-laws generously allowed me to use their 2002 Toyota Corolla during my St. Louis trip. Before this meeting, I had an 8:30 am meeting with Steve O’Rourke at a local Starbucks in Ballwin close to the district office. Steve was the only participate who was not able to meet with me the day before to prepare for this lobby meeting.

I first met with staff at Rep. Ann Wagner’s district office on February 14, 2014, as part of CCL’s spring in district Congressional lobby meetings. In the spring of 2013, I volunteered to be the volunteer CCL liaison for Rep. Ann Wagner. This role involved being the point of contact person between CCL and this Congressional office. According to the CCL Community website, “CCL liaisons build relationships with their assigned members of Congress and their staff through regular personal contact, scheduling lobby meetings, and other communications with that office.”

With my role as CCL liaison to Rep. Ann Wagner, this would be my fourth in-district meeting with staff. I also lobbied the Ballwin office in 2015 and 2016. I enjoyed meeting with her Ballwin district staff, as well as her Washington D.C. staff when I lobbied there for CCL in November 2015 and 2016. I consider myself to be a moderate to progressive leaning Democrat. Rep. Wagner, plus her staff are rock solid conservative Republicans. I enjoyed adhering to CCL’s Core Values that we lobby Congressional offices with “respect, appreciation, and gratitude.”

In addition, CCL coaches it’s volunteers to be great listeners during these lobby meeting. It has offered trainings on motivational interviewing to be a more engaged and effective listener. CCL emphasizes motivational interviewing to be a superb listener so that the Congressional staff feels heard. They encourage us to be more “interested than interesting.”

CCL insists its volunteers to start every Congressional lobby meeting with a sincere appreciation for action the member of Congress took to benefit constituents in the district or state. This can be hard if the person lobbying has an opposite political philosophy of the member of Congress or staff whom they are meeting. One might object to nearly everything that member does. However, if one looks at the member of Congress’ website or does a Google search, you can find something to applaud nearly all members of Congress. Maybe it’s their efforts to get funding for veterans, seniors, disaster relief, or a job creating policy for the district. I always sincerely thanked Rep. Wagner’s office for her efforts to stop sex trafficking, a high priority for her.

Congressional offices genuinely appreciates that we start the meeting applauding a specific action of the member of Congress. It helps them let down their guard that we are not there to protest, lecture, yell, and belittle them on areas where we strongly disagree. In fact, as CCL volunteers, we strive to find common ground with these offices. We don’t back down that we are there to promote climate action, specifically a carbon fee and dividend solution. At the same time, we aspire to carefully listen to find what is their objections and sticking points to supporting climate policies, especially carbon fee & dividend. When we find a sticking point or objection where we disagree, we strive not to counter with facts why we think they are wrong. Instead, we attempt use motivational interviewing to drill down further in their objections to find common ground. In those areas of disagreement, we seek to find areas where we can work together.

I followed CCL’s lobbying philosophy for years with meeting with Rep. Ann Wagner’s Baldwin and Washington D.C. staff and I found success with their methods for lobbying. Rep. Wagner’s staff liked meeting with me, and I developed a good rapport with them over the years. Unlike other environmental and climate groups, we don’t shame them for their climate and environmental positions. For instance, Wagner’s staff told me that they felt annoyed when the Sierra Club and other groups would drop off “Worst Polluter” awards or protest in front of their Ballwin Office. It did not shift their thinking on issues. CCL believes “there is a place for protest, but our approach is to build consensus, which we believe will bring enduring change.”

Having said that, my goal for this lobby meeting was to meet with the District Director, which is the highest position in this office. They generally pick up the member of Congress from the airport and are with them for in-town events. Yes, the member of Congress listens to the junior members of the district staff. However, the District Director generally has the ear of the member of Congress for what’s happening in the District and where that member of Congress should put their priorities. A good meeting with a District Director and developing a great relationship with them is very beneficial for trying to influence that member of Congress.

In early March, I learned Rep. Wagner’s District Director, Miriam Stonebraker, would join our lobby meeting. This felt like a breakthrough for me after years of lobbying her office. Since this was a meeting with senior staff, I wanted this meeting to be a success. Previous meetings, I brought in volunteers that were strong climate advocates and local CCL volunteers. The advantage of lobbying with CCL volunteers is that they generally understand the CCL mode of lobbying of appreciation, motivated interviewing, and looking for common ground. The disadvantage is that a conservative Republican member of Congress might dismiss these constituents as not their most loyal voters that they aim to serve their district in Congress. If one reads about Rep. Ann Wagner, you discover she is Catholic, a strong supporter of the U.S. military – her son Raymond is an Army Captain, and an avid supporter of small businesses in the St. Louis area.

Therefore, for this lobby meeting, I networked hard to try to find someone who served in the U.S. Armed Forces, a local businessperson – preferably someone who worked in the solar industry, and a devout Catholic. I failed with my contacts to find someone Catholic who could attend this meeting. Through my Sierra Club contacts, they recommended Sue Bell, who was a Missouri Sierra Club Intern and spent her career in the U.S. Army. Through other climate contacts, I found Steve O’Rourke, who was then VP Business Development with Microgrid Solar, which was rebranded as Pivot Energy in 2018.

The other person joining us was Liz de Laperouse. She was not a Catholic, veteran, and a solar businessperson. However, Liz had an impressive background as a champion of the environment in the St. Louis area. Liz was the Volunteer Chair at the Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center. It is known locally as the Harris Center, which is a premier financial supporter of education and research ecology and biodiversity conservation at UMSL (University of Missouri St. Louis), the Missouri Botanical Garden, and Saint Louis Zoo. These are very respected institutions in the St. Louis area. With her work at the Harris Center, Liz was very well connected in the St. Louis.

Even more, I moved from St. Louis to Portland, Oregon one month earlier. Thus, I was no longer a constituent of Rep. Ann Wagner. It was time for me to pass the baton to constituent Liz de Laperouse so she could be the CCL Liaison to Rep. Wagner. From my interactions with Liz in 2017, I found her to be excellent to be my replacement. Having her in this lobby meeting would provide continuity for the positive relationship between CCL and Rep. Wagner’s office.

I felt like I had my lobby dream team assembled. Before the meeting, I just wanted to make sure I had them on the same page as far as CCL’s lobbying methodology. Even more, my priority to make sure that they knew we were lobbying for “the long game.” We were not going to persuade Rep. Ann Wagner in a single lobby meeting with her staff to become a climate champion that supported CCL’s carbon fee and dividend. Rather, my goal was to build a positive rapport with her staff over years to help guide her to shift her position on climate change. I had a great meeting with Liz de Laperouse and Sue Bell the day before to emphasize my lobby plan. They were totally on board and enthusiastic for this meeting.

On the morning of March 28th, I had a positive meeting with Steve O’Rourke. We hit it off immediately. If I had continued living in St. Louis, I would have liked to have become good friends with him. I found him to be very energetic, a great storyteller, passionate about solar, and a fun person to be around. After my meetings with Sue, Liz, and Steve, I felt pumped up we were going to have a terrific lobby meeting.

I was very happy with everything that happened with this lobby meeting. Miriam gave us a full hour for this meeting. In Washington D.C lobby meetings, Congressional staff often only schedules lobby meetings for 15 minutes due to their busy schedules. If they have time or feel like your lobby meeting is important, they will schedule 30 minutes. It was very gracious of Miriam to schedule a full hour for us.

CCL insists that our lobby meetings are confidential to maintain our trust with Congressional staff and members of Congress. Thus, I will limit what share what happened in this lobby meeting regarding discussions about climate change, their positions on climate policies, and their candid assessments of what is happening with Congress.

However, I will share a couple of items that stood out from the lobby meeting.

First, towards the end of the meeting, District Director Miriam Stonebraker said something unexpected to me that I will never forget. She looked right at me and commented,

“By the way I am really impressed with (Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s) website, I went on there it is very clearly laid out. It is very easy to follow. It shows that you know how to get things down. You have clear goals, and you reach them. I am very impressed because lobbying is not easy. Is it Brian?”

The comment left me feeling speechless. Miriam strongly indicated during the meeting Rep. Wagner is NOT interested in supporting any climate action in Congress. Yet, it felt like Miriam admired my tenacity with climate lobbying and she was cheering me on.

After a moment of trying to process her admiration for my climate efforts, I smiled back and quickly responded, “‘No, lobbying is not easy, but is it so rewarding.”

It felt in that moment and afterwards that she understands how hard it is to lobby. It can be just down right totally frustrating at times. Miriam’s comment inspired me to write a blog two months later, “Climate Lobbying is very hard, but it is so rewarding.”

Second, during the introductions, Steve O’Rourke introduced himself as a businessman with Microgrid Solar. Miriam responded: ‘I bet things are not going well for solar these days.’

Steve quickly responded, ‘Actually things are going well these days.’ Steve then explained the good developments happening in St. Louis at that time. Miriam and the other Wagner staff person in this meeting listened intently on what Steve had to say.

As we were wrapping up the meeting, I asked Miriam directly, ‘Who in our district you like to hear more from when it comes to climate change and solutions like clean energy?’

Miriam pointed right at Steve O’Rourke. Miriam indicated she and Rep. Wagner want to hear more from businesspeople like Steve as they consider policies related to clean energy and climate change. That felt like a victory to me that I succeeded in getting Steve, a solar businessman, in this lobby meeting. Even more, it felt like a good roadmap how to approach for future lobby meetings with Rep. Wagner’s office.

To develop more rapport with Rep. Wagner’s staff, I brought in a large plate of my mother-in-law Nancy Couture’s delicious chocolate chip cookies. My in-laws are proud Democratic voters who don’t like Ann Wagner. It was very generous of Nancy to make these cookies. Nancy has always been very supportive of my climate organizing. When I presented the large plate of cookies, Miriam and the Wagner staff did not want to touch them with a 10-foot pole.

“Are these cookies store bought?” she asked with hesitation looking at the cookies. She was leery of anything perceived as a bribe or an unethical lobbying gift over $10.

“No!” I replied. “My mother-in-law made them for you! they are delicious.”

Finally, Miriam and other members of the staff decided they could bravely accept the cookies.

After the meeting was completed, I had a good debriefing with Liz, Sue and Steve outside and around the corner from Rep. Wagner’s office. I wanted to make sure our lobby team could talk frankly without Wagner’s office hearing us. Everyone was very happy how the meeting went, including the photos we got from the meeting. I then had everyone sign a thank you card to Miriam. After Sue, Liz, and Steve left. I dropped off the note inside Rep. Wagner’s office. The hilarious part was that the plate of mother-in-law chocolate chip cookies that Miriam and the staff were initially afraid to accept was nearly devoid of cookies. Apparently, they loved the cookies.

Later that same day, I joined David Henry, Jim Rhodes, Ian Mason and others for a great meeting with staff of U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill at her regional office in St. Louis. David Henry was the CCL liaison for U.S. Senator McCaskill. After I the work I put into the meeting with Rep. Ann Wagner’s staff, it was fun for me to be a general participant in this meeting. Unlike Rep. Ann Wagner, Senator Claire McCaskill is more firm on her position that climate change is real, human caused, and a priority for action.

At the same time, Senator McCaskill was a very moderate Senator who tried to take positions that she felt reflected her Missouri constituents. In past meetings with the Senator or her staff, she was reluctant to support CCL’s carbon fee and dividend. She was afraid it would increase costs on seniors with fixed incomes. I don’t remember much about this lobby meeting, except that it did go very smoothly. I remembered McCaskill’s staff asking about how a carbon fee and dividend would impact rural and primarily low-income school districts looking to transition their gasoline burning school buses to electric buses.

For me, one of the best parts of lobbying meetings are the questions that I cannot answer on the spot. I use those questions posed to me in the lobby meetings as homework to follow up with answers for the Congressional staff. In the days after this meeting, I emailed CCL staff to ask them how they would respond how a carbon fee and dividend would impact rural communities switching their gas burning school buses to electric buses.

After the lobby meeting, I met with Ian Mason for a short interview about the lobby meeting to provide any help he needed for his video project. I left this lobby meeting feeling tired and very happy from a productive day of lobbying for climate action in my home state of Missouri.

Third Day of the 2017 CCL MO Climate Speaking & Lobbying Tour, Wednesday, March 29th

The day started off well with a beautiful Amtrak train ride from the Kirkwood Train Station in west St. Louis County to Jefferson City, Missouri. It was a lovely overcast spring day in Missouri. My in-laws kindly dropped me off at the train station for this two-hour train travel. I tried to get some work done with my climate organizing using the internet on the train. At the same time, it was enjoyable to watch the scenery go by on the train.

The train went through Castlewood state Park along the Meramec River, where I proposed to Tanya on Christmas Eve over two years before. It was fun to spot Six Flags Amusement Park in Eureka, MO where we went as a family when I was a child. West of Eureka, there’s a tunnel that seems like it is a couple miles long going through the Ozark Mountains. The train emerges from the tunnel paralleling the Missouri River for the rest of the trip, stopping in the historic towns of Washington and Herman, Missouri before dropping me off in Jefferson City.

My friends George and Kathy Laur picked me up at the train station, located just a block from the majestic state capitol building in Jefferson City. We were happy to see each other. In my excitement, I commented: “the Missouri state Capitol sure is a beautiful building.”

George wryly replied: “Yes, beautiful building on the outside. Horrible things happen on the inside.”

Ironically, we noticed small Missouri utilities lobbyists were having a barbecue cookout for legislators at the front of the Capitol building to urge them to oppose any clean energy policies and allow them to continue burning dirty fossil fuels. Point was taken, George! For a healthy planet, it looked like horrible things were happening on the outside of the building that day.

George and Kathy took me to a nearby country diner for a delicious Missouri fried catfish lunch. Yummy! I loved Missouri catfish since I was a child. We then went to their splendid home on the other side of the Missouri River from Jefferson City. Their house sits high on a bluff with a glorious view of the state Capitol and the Missouri River. We spent the afternoon chatting in their comfortable home and working on last minute details for my climate talk that evening.

After dinner, we headed to the venue where I would present my climate talk. It was the auditorium at the Runge Conservation Nature Center just west of Jefferson City. We briefly walked through an impressive nature museum about Missouri on our way to the auditorium towards the back of the building. When we reached the auditorium around 6:30 pm, we made sure that my PowerPoint slides worked, my microphone functioned properly, the projector was properly showing my PowerPoint slides, and other logistics. Everything went fluently.

This auditorium seated well over 100 people. It looked very empty when we arrived. I always had that fear if anyone would show up. George assured me that we would get a big size crowd. He was not sure how many. However, it was well advertised by the River Bluffs Audubon Society, the Osage Group of the Missouri Sierra Club, the Jefferson City/Columbia Chapter of CCL, the Runge Conservation Nature Center, and in the Jefferson City News Tribune newspaper.

It turned out over 100 people did show up for this event. The auditorium looked almost full, yet not overly crowded. My presentation was called “Is Climate Change Affecting Our National Parks?” It was fun to tie in my background of growing up in Missouri and then working in the national parks. Then sharing how I saw climate change in Everglades and Crater Lake National Parks. That observation led me to organize on climate change solutions, such as CCL’s carbon fee and dividend (CF&D). This was an enthusiastic audience that laughed at my jokes.

At the end of my presentation, I asked the audience to fill out and sign CCL constituent comment forms. These forms had the signees urge their members of Congress to act on climate and asked the members of Congress to support climate solutions, such as CF&D. We would then make sure that their filled out copies would go to all three of their members of Congress, U.S. Senator Roy Blunt, U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer or Rep. Vicky Hartzler. The good news was that 52 people wrote comment forms to their MO members of Congress asking climate action. Sadly, we ran out of forms or more people would have filled them out. It was a very empowering evening.

I was delighted Ian Mason and his mom, Gina Kratky, came to this talk. Gina drove Ian from St. Louis to Jefferson City to attend my presentation, which is around a two-hour drive one way. Even more, this was on a school night because Ian was a senior in high school at the time. Ian asked me before my event if he could video tape my presentation for his video project. I happily agreed that he could video my talk. He generously shared the video with me afterwards, which I uploaded to YouTube. I was pleased that Ian shot a good video to document this occasion.

After the event, Gina and Ian drove back to St. Louis so he could attend school the next morning and she could go to work. When George and Kathy drove me back from the Nature Center to their house, it rained hard that evening. Thank goodness we had a short drive of a few miles. When we returned to their house, George turned on the TV local news. It turned out the heavy rains caused some standing water on the roads and flash flooding. I thought about Gina and Ian. I emailed Ian to see if they made it back to St. Louis safely. He responded later that they did make it back to St. Louis. However, the heavy rains did really slow them down that they made it home much later than they would have liked, especially on a school and work night.

This was a great public speaking experience for me. Thanks to George and Kathy Laur, this a highlight among many of the over 200 climate change talks I have given over the years.

Fourth Day of the 2017 CCL MO Climate Speaking & Lobbying Tour, Thursday, March 30th

The next morning, I woke up to see the Jefferson City News Tribune had an article about my talk the previous evening, “Climate change threatens park, ranger says.” It gave a good synopsis of my presentation, especially my emphasis to the audience to contact our Missouri members of Congress, especially the Republicans, to urge them to prioritize climate action.

That talk must have made quite an impression. Besides their article, the News Tribune printed a cartoon from their conservative cartoonist Jim Dyke aimed at me. He had the wrong colors for the ranger uniform, and it did not look much like me. The statements in the cartoon looked like a real head scratcher that did not make any scientific sense. Having said that, I was flattered and honored to have inspired this political cartoon. The cartoonist tried to mock me. However, I thought the joke was on him since he seemed to have a lack of scientific understanding.

George and I then drove from Jefferson City to Columbia, Missouri, which is about a 30-minute drive. We arrived in Columbia late in the morning to attend a meeting with staff of U.S. Senator Roy Blunt at his regional office in Columbia, MO. George arranged for this meeting with Senator Blunt’s staff. Local CCL volunteer Jack Meinzenbach joined us for this meeting. George was the CCL liaison to Senator Blunt. Because George had met with this office several times, he a good relationship with them. Unlike the lobby meeting I led with Rep. Ann Wagner’s staff on Tuesday, I don’t remember any details about this lobby meeting, except that it was pleasant.

After this lobby meeting, George and I then drove to Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Rutledge, Missouri. This was over a two-hour drive from Columbia, Missouri. It was located due north of Columbia, MO in northern Missouri. We were meeting up with Sharon Bagatell. She was the new CCL Missouri co-coordinator, replacing me when I moved to Oregon the previous month. Sharon lived at Dancing Rabbit. She scheduled the climate presentation for me to give at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri the next day.

Dancing Rabbit was a communal living sustainable community. As their website says, “We build our homes using alternative techniques such as straw bale and cob, powering them with renewable energy from the Sun and wind. Vehicles at DR are owned cooperatively and powered by electricity and biodiesel. Overall, we eat an ever-increasing amount of local, organic, and in-season foods including many home-grown vegetables.”

This community was different from anything I had experienced before in my life. Actually, I like the conveniences of modern living, so it was an adjustment spending time there. Sharon arranged for me to stay in one of the vacant houses where one of the village members was traveling off site during my visit. George spent the night in a nearby motel.

I met Sharon at the eco village café. We had dinner there that evening. Sharon was a kind, soft spoken person that you would want as a friend. After dinner, I needed a place with power and internet access to use my laptop. Sharon suggested I use their community center. I wanted look over my talk the next day for Truman State University, make edits to the PowerPoint, catch up on other emails relating to my climate organizing, and touch base with my wife Tanya. In addition, this community building had showers, and lighting in the bathroom to brush my teeth.

Dancing Rabbit had no streetlights, porch lights or any kind of lighting at night. The houses were haphazardly laid out with no street signs, addresses on the homes, etc. The houses were all loosely thrown together and constructed uniquely with scrap wood, straw bale, and cob. No two houses looked the same, yet they all looked like the same hippie abstract art in the dark. I stayed way too long at the community building working on emails, updating my PowerPoint, and connecting with Tanya. By the time I finished all my tasks, it was late in the evening.

A big challenge was feeling home my way in the dark. My headlamp in my backpack did not work and my flip phone (yes, I still used a flip phone in 2017) did not give off much light. I worked 25 years in the national parks, and this eco village was one of the dark places I had seen. That night was overcast with no moon, making it more like total darkness. I was sober. I had no alcohol that day. Yet, it felt like I was drunk going home stumbling into uneven ruts on the dirt road, obstacles on the side of the road and unsure what street I was walking.

I deeply missed Tanya and our well-lit apartment in Portland. As I walked backed and forth by the houses, I could not find the house I was suppose to be sleeping. In my frustration, I became angry. I wondered what I was doing there. I questioned if I was making any difference for climate action. I was uncertain why I was in that situation. Finally, with luck and perseverance, I found the house where my suitcase was located and where I would be sleeping.

Dancing Rabbit did not connect with me, except for making friends with Sharon. The truth was Sharon wanted to leave Dancing Rabbit. She recently lost her life partner there. She was still grieving with daily memories of her partner everywhere at Dancing Rabbit. She wanted to start a new life for herself far away from there. I felt like an outsider visiting an outsider there.

Sharon explained to me that most people living there thought they were doing their part for the planet by living a simple life, “off the grid,” in a more sustainable way. She had a hard time convincing her fellow community members on the importance of contacting their elected officials and lobbying for climate action. Their attitude was “I am already doing my part.”

I have always felt frustrated by climate advocates who solely took individual actions by going vegan, not flying, not owning a car, not having kids, putting solar panels on their homes, living off the grid, buying an electric car, etc. Yes, do those things. I applaud those doing that. They set a good example and they do make a difference. At the same time, it’s not enough. As climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann wrote in USA Today op-ed in June 2019, “You can’t save the climate by going vegan. Corporate polluters must be held accountable.”

As the protest signs at climate marches and protests say, ‘We needs systems change, not climate change.’

In addition to doing those individual actions, we need climate advocates contacting their members of Congress, state legislators and local elected officials. I consistently had Congressional staff of Republican members of Congress tell me in lobby meetings that they don’t hear much from their constituents about climate change. Members of Congress need to hear regularly from more climate advocates to make climate change a top priority. Thus, just living sustainably in an eco village sounded to me like a stifling and ineffective way to address climate change.

Sharon’s perspective shaped my opinion about Dancing Rabbit that it felt cut off from the rest of the world. It was too isolated for me. Sadly, nor George or anyone else briefed me much on Dancing Rabbit before I went there to approach it with an open mind. I went to bed that night in the very dark guest house exhausted and eager to sleep. Yet, I was anxious to leave the next day to give my climate talk and to return to a modern world much more familiar to me.

Fifth Day of the 2017 CCL MO Climate Speaking & Lobbying Tour, Friday, March 31st

I set my alarm before I went to bed to meet Sharon for breakfast at her Dancing Rabbit residence. Waking up to the natural morning light felt like I had been camping the previous night. Yet, I woke up in this strange hippie like commune in Missouri. I had always thought of Missouri as a square Midwestern state. Yes, Missouri has its share of Ozark Hillbillies and low-income white rural residents struggling to make ends meet. However, I never thought of Missouri having hippies living in an eco-commune. This seemed more West Coast Oregon where I spent my summers than Missouri. Dancing Rabbit kind of seemed like an experiment gone wrong to try Burning Man, Woodstock, or the Oregon Country Fair in the conservative Show Me state.

Sharon had some tea and some nourishing food for me for breakfast. I heard wonderful things about her from George Laur and Carol Braford, the CCL Midwest Regional Coordinator. For months Carol indicated to me that she wanted to get Sharon more involved with CCL in a leadership position. Sharon shared with Carol that she wanted to be more active. However, she needed time to grieve while slowly committing to CCL or other interests.

Carol Bradford had great foresight for Sharon Bagatell’s potential. Sharon accepted Carol’s offer to step into my role as CCL co-coordinator for Missouri after I moved to Oregon in February, 2017. Sharon did a wonderful job of organizing my speaking event at Truman State in Kirksville that day, as well as other meetings she scheduled that day with the City’s mayor, business community, students on campus, and a reporter with the local newspaper. Sharon then became CCL’s current Youth Action Team Coordinator.

It was a great conversation with Sharon that morning. This was just my second conversation with her after having dinner with her the previous day. I found her to have a very kind heart, gentle spirit, a calming and centered presence, a great listener, fun sense of humor, and a big smile that she was not bashful to share. I asked her about her life at Dancing Rabbit and her loss. She opened to me how difficult it was to lose her partner.

Sharon had good memories living in Dancing Rabbit, but it was no longer a fit for her. She wanted to move to North Carolina to be with her family and work more with youth. We were not chatting in the public café in Dancing Rabbit like we were the previous day when many of the residents know her. Thus, it was great to have a more natural conversation with her.

We then gathered our belongings for the day. Around 8:45 am, Sharon drove us to Kirksville and Truman State University where we would spend the day. We met up with George Laur in the campus cafeteria to start planning our full day of meetings, capped off with my speaking event that evening. At 9 am, Sharon, George, and I met with the Mayor of Kirksville to see if Kirksville was taking action to address climate change. We then introduced him to CCL and the carbon fee and dividend policy. He was interested and polite with our climate organizing, but not very committal.

Around 10 am, the three of us met with one of the leading businessmen of Kirksville. Just like the 9 am meeting with the mayor, the meeting went smoothly. We were interested in his take on climate change, and he listened carefully about our involvement with CCL. Like the meeting with the mayor, the meeting was a good exchange of information. He was gracious but said he would have to think more about CCL and the carbon fee and dividend.

Around lunch time, Sharon scheduled me to meet with a group of 6 to 8 of science students interested in ecology and climate change. We met at the cafeteria during lunch. I quickly discovered they were interested in astronomy. I talked about the fabulous night sky I saw when working the summers at Crater Lake National Park as a park ranger. They were planning a spring break trip to a western national park to do their astronomy. The national parks are known for their “dark skies” generally away from city lights and air pollution to see the Milky Way and do more astronomy. They acknowledged that the night sky was good when you drive several miles away from Kirksville by the open fields. However, it gets better further out west from Missouri to see more stars and to see more stars clearer with their telescopes.

These Truman State students and I did not talk much about climate change, which was fine. I was interested in what they had to say about astronomy. They indicated that they might come to my talk that evening, but they were not sure. My talk was on a Friday evening. Some had plans with friends, some went home of the weekend, and some had a lot of homework to do complete. They were mildly interested. I mentioned I hoped to see them there, but I did not oversell the event.

During the day, Dr. Peter Goldman, a biology professor at Truman State University joined us periodically, in between his classes and teaching schedule. He did a fabulous job of creating publicity posters for my speaking event that was posted around the University and Kirksville. He sent me a PFD of the poster promoting the event with a mountain pine beetle at the top and a photo of a dead white bark tree at Crater Lake National Park at the bottom. It was so beautifully created that I was speechless when I first saw the 5.5 x 17-inch poster. That evening, I asked Peter for extra copies, and he generously obliged. I gave copies of the poster to my parents, in-laws and kept a few for myself. My parents and I both had these posters professionally framed and hung in our homes. My in-laws proudly displayed their poster on their refrigerator.

Early in the afternoon, Dr. Goldman arranged a meeting with George, Kathy and I with Truman State University’s economics professor and one of his peers from the science department. This was a good meeting as they absorbed the information we gave them about CCL and carbon fee and dividend. They assured us that they planned to attend my presentation that evening.

Later that afternoon, George, Sharon, and I went to the Kirksville Daily Express newspaper office to meet with newspaper reporter Jason Hunsicker to chat about my climate change talk that evening and our involvement with CCL. I remember we awkwardly all stood in the newspaper lobby with Jason while he asked us questions. Later, Jason took us to a newspaper office where a gathering had just ended to ask us a few remaining questions before we wrapped up our meeting. Sharon, George, and I then had dinner at a western looking café in town.

My presentation that evening went great. We had over 60 people in attendance, nearly filling up the classroom where I spoke. It felt like a more subdued audience than when I presented in Jefferson City two days before. I don’t remember who introduced me or the questions from the audience. With two big presentations, three lobby meetings, and a day filled with meetings with a mayor, business leader, students, professors, and a newspaper reporter, I was tired. Sharon, George, and I got a picture of the three of us before we said goodbye to Sharon. George and I then departed to return to Jefferson City. We left close to 10 pm and we returned to George’s home well after midnight. We felt exhausted from our schedule from the last few days.

A week after I returned to Portland on April 10th, Jason Hunsicker from the Kirksville Daily Express wrote an article profiling me included a lovely picture of me at Crater Lake. The newspaper had a scenic picture of Crater Lake on the front page with a small photo of Sharon Bagatell in the lower left side. The article printed in the newspaper was titled, “Citizens’ Climate Lobby tries to make a difference.” The article summarized my presentation at Truman State University in Kirksville on March 31st. The bad news is that there is no online link available. The good news is that Sharon Bagatell, mailed a hard copy of the newspaper to me.

Final Days of the 2017 CCL MO Climate Speaking & Lobbying Tour, April 1st to April 3rd

In planning this trip, George stated that he would drive me back to St. Louis from Jefferson City on Saturday, April 1st. I was happy to take the train, but George insisted that he would drive me back to St. Louis. As we drove back from Kirksville to Jefferson City, George asked me if I could take the train back to St. Louis instead. I love traveling by train, so that was no problem for me. Fortunately, I was able to buy a ticket very late that night after we returned to his home.

Late Saturday morning, George drove me to the Jefferson City Amtrak Station. Before the train arrived, George took photos of me with my camera in front of the Missouri state Capitol Building to help document this trip. I enjoyed spending George and Katy over the last several days.

I arrived at the Kirkwood, MO train station in midafternoon. My parents picked me up. I spent Saturday evening with them and most of Sunday at their home in south St. Louis County. They dropped me off at my in-laws’ house in west St. Louis County late Sunday afternoon. My in-laws live closer to Lambert International Airport. They took me to the airport around noon on Monday so I could catch the 2 pm direct flight from St. Louis to Portland, OR. I missed my wife, so I could not wait to fly back to Portland to be with her. My flight was scheduled to land in Portland around 4 pm and she would then pick me up at the airport as she was getting off work.

Passengers crowded at the gate waiting to board this airplane. In fact, it was too crowded with waiting passengers. This flight was overbooked. The ticket agents announced they needed volunteers to get bumped from this flight to take other Southwest flights to Portland. I ignored the first couple of announcements because I was anxious to see my wife. However, each announcement they increased the number of free credits offered on future Southwest flights.

When they announced $525 credits on future Southwest flights for the next 12 months, I jumped at the offer. I did not have to go to work early the next morning, so it did not matter how late I arrived. The Southwest ticket agents booked me on a flight to Oakland, California.

It was a good flight from St. Louis to Oakland. As always, I grabbed the first available window seat and had a great view flying across the United States. In California, no clouds were below us as the plane flew right over Mono Lake, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and Yosemite National Park. The mountains were glistening white with the robust snow pack they received that winter. I recognized Half Dome from the airpIane window and even took a picture of it. From visiting Yosemite numerous times, it was fun to spot this iconic feature during the flight.

I then had a 6-hour layover, arriving in Portland at 11 pm that evening. I called Tanya in St. Louis earlier in the day to tell her about the change of plans. She found it to be humorous that I jumped at this deal. I figured we would be flying again soon, so these airline credits would come in handy. We were thrilled to see each other when she picked me up at the airport.

I used my free credits to fly to Washington D.C. in June to attend the CCL Conference and Lobby Day. Thus, I spent these airline credits for more climate organizing. Even more, George Laur pooled donations from the Jefferson City/Columbia CCL chapter and others to pay for my airfare to St. Louis for this tour. Thus, I was adept at this trip of turning free airline tickets into more free airline tickets for me. I felt like a shrewd businessman, but hopefully making a difference for the planet.

On April 17th, Ian Mason informed me that the Global Student Square published the article he wrote about me. For that article, Ian created a video report which he then uploaded to YouTube. I was honored to be the subject and to be interviewed by Ian for this project.

Final Thoughts

This tour happened because of George and Kathy Laur. George and Kathy were determined that I returned to Missouri after I moved to Oregon one month previously to speak in Jefferson City and Kirksville, Missouri. I will always be grateful to them for this fun trip back to Missouri.

In addition to George and Kathy Laur, this tour succeeded because of the Jefferson City/Columbia Chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL), River Bluffs Audubon Society, the Osage Group of the Missouri Sierra Club, Runge Conservation Nature Center, Sharon Bagatell, Dr. Peter Goldaman, Ian Mason, Gina Kratky, Sue Bell, Liz de Laperouse, Steve O’Rourke, David Henry, Jim Rhodes, Miriam Stonebraker and Congresswoman Ann Wagner’s staff, Jack Meinzenbach, Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, cartoonist Jim Dyke of the Jefferson City News Tribune, my in-laws Nancy & Rex Couture, my parents Frances & LeRoy Ettling, and others I wish I could remember.

Thank goodness George Laur and I did not listen to Madeleine Para, Vice President of Citizens’ Climate Lobby, when she called to say, “You can’t do your own fund raising for a state tour.”

If you want to make a difference in the world on a serious threat like climate change, don’t listen to the naysayers, critics, and people in leadership positions like Madeleine who will try to hold you back. Act boldly! Find friends like I did like George Laur and the others I mentioned above who will support you. You can do it!

This March 2017 Missouri tour led to two other state climate change speaking tours. In October 2017, I traveled across Oregon for the CCL Oregon Stewardship Tour. In October 2018, my wife Tanya and I traveled across Missouri for another climate change speaking tour. I spoke at my alma mater William Jewell College, just outside of Kansas City, MO. I then spoke at Missouri University in Columbia, MO. Then Tanya and I traveled to St. Louis where I gave a talk at my alma mater Oakville High School, taught a climate change continuing adult education class at St. Louis Community College, and gave a presentation at St. Louis University.

I love to travel to give climate change talks. In my previous talk, I wrote how I gave over 200 climate change talks in 12 U.S. states, plus Washington D.C. and Ottawa, Canada over the past 13 years. I hope to give more climate change talks in the future in more locations.

Please consider inviting me to give a climate change talk to a group or school in your area.

“Stand before the people you fear and speak the truth even if your voice shakes.”

– Maggie Kuhn, American activist and founder of the Gray Panthers movement.

Ever since I was in grade school, I loved public speaking. As an adult, I found a dream job giving daily talks as a seasonal park ranger at Everglades National Park, Florida and Crater Lake National Park, Oregon from 1992 to 2017. While working in the national parks, I found my true passion of organizing, writing, and giving public presentations for climate action. Since 2010, I have given over 200 climate change talks in 12 U.S. states, plus Washington D.C. and Ottawa, Canada. This blog is about each of those locations where I gave climate presentations.

I enjoy traveling and giving talks that hopefully inspire people to act on climate. If you are reading this blog, I hope you will invite me to come speak in your area.

My first memories of enjoying public speaking at grade school in 1981

I grew up in Oakville, Missouri which is a suburb on the southern end of the St. Louis metropolitan area. In grade school, I had a hard time distinguishing myself from the other students. I was not athletic. Heck, in gym class I was not even the last kid picked for the sports teams. After everyone was picked, I just had to go to whichever side noticed less that I was on their team.

I was not a very studious or bright scholastic achiever. I would often procrastinate or even forget sometimes to do my homework. I watched way too much TV. My 3rd grade teacher admonished me on my report card that I was more interested in staring at the horses and fields outside the window than what was going on in the classroom. My mom was not happy reading that on my report card. To be honest, sorry teacher and mom, the horses and outside nature was more interesting than anything happening in the classroom.

I was a dreamer in grade school who could not wait to explore the woods and be outside riding my bike during summer vacation. I grew up in the late 1970s. Star Wars was the cultural rage at the time. Hence, my mind was often drifting into “a long time ago in a galaxy, far, far away…”

I took piano lessons late in my grade school years, but I was not disciplined at practicing the piano. Thus, I never developed that talent. I didn’t particularly like Sunday School, Vacation Bible School or going to church. As a kid, I did not connect with religion. Thus, I was a class clown in those settings, always rebelling against any spiritual teaching. My Sunday teachers thought I was ‘hell on wheels’ or the devil incarnate.

At school, I was not witty enough to be a class clown. I was rather shy. My grade school classmates did not know what to think of me, except I was rather odd. Heck, I thought I was unusual. Believe it or not, in 6th grade I was voted as the friendliest and the shyest student. I am still trying to figure out that message to this day.

One school project that gave me an inkling of my future. In 6th grade, we had an opportunity to give a short speech. Whoever was voted as the best speaker would then go onto the school district competition to compete against other 6th grade students from schools around the Mehlville School District. I took on this school assignment with steel determination. I wrote my own speech about the blessing of being an American and the valuable contributions of our immigrants. I practiced this speech several times so I would sound natural delivering it.

When I gave this speech to my 6th grade teacher and classmates, I had their full attention, and they were speechless when I was finished presenting it. The other students did not take this speech assignment as seriously as I did. The teacher and my classmates were in total agreement that I was the best person to represent our class and school at this district speech competition. I don’t remember winning anything before this. My heart was full of pride that I had impressed my teacher and classmates for the first time I was in school.

My mom was so proud. She seemed to hint that I might do something great with public speaking someday. She was so excited to take time off her job as a pre-school teacher to take me to the speech competition held at the nearby high school. She fully believed that I gave the best speech at the competition. As for me, I was not sure. I thought some of the other students may have spoken better than me. All that mattered to me was that I gave the competition my best shot. I put it all out on the floor. I was exhausted when the competition was over. I was too tired to care if I won or lost. I was just honored to compete and represent my class and my school.

In high school, I dabbled a bit in speech and debate. I participated in several extemporary speaking competitions, and I even tried debate once. To be honest, I did not have the desire, patience and dedication to truly be successful at it. I was mostly a band nerd in high school playing clarinet all four years and alto saxophone in the jazz band in my senior year.

Falling in love with acting and performing on the stage when I was in college.

At William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, I entered as a freshman in 1988. I majored in Business Administration, on my father’s advice to “get a practical degree.” I enjoyed my business classes. However, I loved all my communications and public speaking classes: Speech Communications 101, Interpersonal Communications, Voice and Articulation, Basic Acting, and Persuasion. If my college had minors, I would have minored in Communications.

I acted in a couple of plays in college. During my sophomore year, my Speech Communications 101 professor urged me to audition for the spring comedy play, Jabberwock. After I auditioned, it surprised me when I was offered a scene stealing character in the play. I was assigned the role as the “Get Ready Man.” The play’s background notes described my character as “Ichabod Crane riding a bicycle looking like death warmed over.”

I rode a bicycle during the most dramatic moments of the play and yelled to the audience and the other characters: “Get Ready! The end of the world is here! The end of the world is here!”

When I said those lines during the play, it killed the audience, as they say in comedy. It brought the house down. The audience thought it was hilarious. I was the talk of campus for the next week after the play performances. My parents drove four and a half hours from St. Louis to see me act. They beamed with pride watching my acting and the audience’s response.

I acted in more plays in my senior year of college. I was hooked on acting and performing on the stage. My dad would have hated to hear this when he was paying my college tuition. However, if I could do my college years over, I probably would have majored in communications, theater, or acting. I loved being in front of an audience, especially to entertain or just inspire people.

During my senior year of college, I participated in a program where a recent William Jewell graduate mentored me. I was clueless what job I wanted after graduation. However, I knew I loved public speaking and my dream job was to be a traveling public speaker. Thus, this mentor program matched me with a recent alumnus who worked for Fred Pryor Seminars.

This mentor met with me several times and invited me to a Fred Pryor Seminar for free. The speaker at this seminar taught about the value and basics of speed reading. The seminar was enlightening. The speaker was entertaining, educational, and captivating, especially with his stories of famous people who used speed reading to succeed in their careers. At that time, leading a Fred Pryor seminar seemed like an ideal job for me. However, I needed to gain some experience before Fred Pryor would consider hiring me. Unfortunately, I was graduating from college in a few weeks, and I had no career plan how I could get hired by Fred Pryor.

Working at Crater Lake National Park during the summers

In May 1992, I graduated from William Jewell College with my degree in Business Administration. I had no idea what to do with that business degree. I still don’t! While I was in college, I was recruited by an organization called A Christian Ministry in the National Parks (ACMNP). They recruit college students to work jobs for the concession companies in the national parks. The catch was that these college students would then lead the ACMNP interdenominational church services on Sunday mornings. In high school and college, I gave in and became religious since my parents and sisters regularly went to church. I figured volunteering with ACMNP in a national park gave me a chance to do regular public speaking, since I would be leading and preaching during these church services.

ACMNP found a job for me working at the Crater Lake National Park at the Rim Village gift store. I had never seen southern Oregon, so this would be a new adventure for me. I had always loved snow covered mountains and tall pine trees. My high school symphonic band played for the Expo 86 World’s Fair in Vancouver, Canada in May 1986. During that trip, I fell in love with the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. My goal was to someday escape the Midwest and live the in Pacific Northwest. Thus, it was a dream come true to spend a summer working at Crater Lake.

When I arrived at Crater Lake Rim Village, the scenery did not disappoint. Crater Lake was one of the most spectacular sights I saw in my life. The lake was 6 miles across at its widest point with this deep cobalt blue color. The rim mountains that surrounded it were decorated with snow, looking like an amazing cake decoration with the white icing on top. The pine trees were so tall, unlike the much smaller deciduous or leaf producing trees in my home state of Missouri. It was so quiet standing on the rim admiring the lake, except for the very light whistle of the wind and an occasional airplane flying overhead.

My first Crater Lake summer was magical. I enjoyed my job working as a stock clerk at the huge Crater Lake Gift Store at Rim Village. I found friends to go hiking with me to help me explore every scenic trail in the park that summer. If no one was available, I happily hiked on my own.

I enjoyed leading the church services at the campground amphitheater during my first three summers at Crater Lake National Park. It was fun to be in front of an audience and to prepare those brief sermons. It was a different audience of campers every weekend. Thus, I could recycle the same sermons and use them repeatedly.

In the summers of 1993 and 1994, I worked as a gift store lead clerk. In 1995, the General Manager of the Crater Lake Company asked me to work as the night auditor at the newly rehabilitated Crater Lake Lodge, which reopened that year. I soon discovered working all night and sleeping through the daytime splendor of Crater Lake was not my cup of tea. In 1996, the National Park Service (NPS) hired me to be an entrance station fee collection ranger at Crater Lake. I enjoyed this job, except for the occasional angry visitors who were upset when I charged them the then $5 entrance fee that to enter Crater Lake National Park.

I worked this ranger job the following summer in 1997. Around that time, NPS changed the job title to Visitor Use Assistant (VUA). I didn’t care what they called me. I just loved wearing the ranger uniform, as well as living and working at Crater Lake. I did not become financially rich working at Crater Lake, but my life experience seemed so incredibly rich working there.

Discovering Climate Change while working the winters in Everglades National Park

Crater Lake was a summer seasonal job, so I had to find a different national park to work during the winter. Thus, I started working in Everglades National Park during the winters in December 1992. The Everglades could not have been more different than Crater Lake. Unlike Crater Lake, the Everglades had no majestic snow-capped mountains or one of the cleanest and bluest lakes in the world. The Everglades was just flat, and the water looked rather murky, especially in the backcountry mangrove canals and in Florida Bay.

I relished the unique wildlife I saw, such as alligators, crocodiles, dolphins, manatees, and the wide variety of birds. The canoeing in the Everglades was a fabulous experience. My high point was the overnight canoe trip with friends to Alligator Creek and Florida Bay in February 1993.

During the winter of 1999, I saw a flock of wild Flamingos standing in the shallow waters of Snake Bight when I canoed to that area in Florida Bay. There must have been 50 to 60 in this flock. They stood around 4 feet tall. You could not get too close to them. However, when I did, it was breathtaking to see them take off in flight. They had to awkwardly run across the water for a bit to take off on a runway like an airplane. Then they would fly exposing their long black wings, which sharply contrasted the light pink feathers on the rest of their body, neck and head.

The Everglades then became my winter home. My first winter, 1992-93, my first job was in housekeeping for the Flamingo Lodge. I then transferred to a Front Desk Clerk Position. In the winter of 1995-96, I worked as a night auditor at the Flamingo Lodge.

In 1998, I started giving ranger talks in Everglades National Park. Visitors then asked me about this global warming thing, which I knew nothing. Visitors hate when park rangers tell you, “I don’t know.” Visitors expect park rangers to know everything. Don’t you?

Soon afterwards, I rushed to the nearest Miami bookstore and to the park library to read all I the scientific books I could find on climate change.

The information I learned scared me, specifically sea level rise along our mangrove coastline in Everglades National Park. Sea level rose 8 inches in the 20th century, four times more than it had risen in previous centuries for the past three thousand years. Because of climate change, sea level is now expected to rise at least three feet in the Everglades by the end of the 21st century. The sea would swallow up most of the park and nearby Miami since the highest point of the park road less than three feet above sea level.

It shocked me that crocodiles, alligators, and Flamingos I enjoyed seeing in the Everglades could all lose this ideal coastal habitat because of sea level rise enhanced by climate change.

I became so worried about climate change that I quit my winter job in Everglades National Park in 2008. I started spending my winters in my hometown of St. Louis Missouri to find some way to organize for climate action. Up until 2017, I still worked my summer job Crater Lake National Park. I loved the incredible beauty there and wearing the ranger uniform with pride while engaging with park visitors. I had a hazy plan to give public speeches and create greater climate awareness during my winters in St. Louis.

Becoming ‘The Climate Change Comedian’ to promote myself as a climate change speaker

During the summer of 2009 while I worked as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park, I became lifelong friends with fellow seasonal park rangers Graham Hetland and Aubrey Shaw. They lived permanently in Ashland, Oregon where they attended Southern Oregon University at the time. Graham’s mother lived in Ashland, and they needed to find someone to housesit for his mom, Barbara, for the winter. Barbara planned to go on a cross country road trip in a RV. Thus, they needed someone to watch her home and her friendly cat, Poppy. I planned to return to St. Louis, but they persuaded me to housesit for their mom.

I moved from Crater Lake to Ashland, Oregon in October 2009. Ashland, Oregon is a beautiful small city in southern Oregon nestled right against the Siskiyou Mountains. The leaves turned brilliant autumn colors while I was there. The weather had ideal Indian summer days while slowly getting cooler as the calendar immersed into fall. It was fun to walk around Ashland for exercise and take pictures of Ashland experiencing autumn. At the same time, I found myself restless. I wanted to pursue my climate change calling, but not knowing what to do about it.

One day, I visited my friend Naomi Eklund who lived in Ashland, Oregon then. She was pressing me on what exactly did I want to do with my life. She kept pushing me harder. Finally, I snapped, “Fine! If I could do anything, I would like to be ‘The Climate Change Comedian!”

Naomi was a tough audience, but she nearly fell out of her fell out of her chair laughing. She responded: ‘That’s perfect! I want you to go home and grab that website domain name now, www.climatechangecomedian.com.’

I went home and did that. Barbara soon sent news that she did not like RVing across country. She decided to return to her home where I was housesitting in Ashland. Around Thanksgiving, Barbara announced that she did not want to share her home with me. My parents just moved into a new home in St. Louis,. They wanted me to return home to spend the winter with them.

In mid-December, I then drove from Ashland Oregon to St. Louis, Missouri. I stopped in Flagstaff, Arizona to visit friends in who worked in Grand Canyon National Park. They talked me into hiking solo to the bottom of the Grand Canyon on a two-day backpacking trip, one of the best experiences of my life. I then raced to arrive in St. Louis late in the evening on Christmas Eve to spend the Holidays with my family.

During that winter in St. Louis, Naomi advised me to fully develop my website and create my own climate change PowerPoint that I would use for my presentations. Early in 2010, I developed my first climate change PowerPoint, “Let’s Have Fun Getting Serious about Climate Change.” I showed that PowerPoint to friends and family in the St. Louis area. A family friend helped me launch my www.climatechangecomedian.com website that is still active to this day.

State #1: My first climate change talks in Missouri in 2010

During the early months of 2010, my sisters in St. Louis wanted me to speak at my nieces’ and nephews’ schools. My younger sister first booked me to speak at my nephew Sam’s second grade class in St. Charles, Missouri on February 5, 2010. This was my first presentation outside of working as a ranger in the national parks.

For this presentation, I brought my inflatable Earth Ball, which is my symbol for caring and appreciating our planet. I used an Earth Ball for years in my Everglades and Crater Lake ranger talks. The symbol of me holding an Earth Ball is the image I use for my website and all the social media platforms I use (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn). The young students liked seeing the inflatable Earth during my talk.

I aimed to keep my talk kid friendly by focusing on the animals I saw working in the national parks, such as alligators, crocodiles, dolphins and birds, such as Bald Eagles, Woodstorks, Mangrove Cuckoos, and Gray Jays. I just stressed the general importance of taking good care of our national parks. The title of this talk was “It’s Your World to Discover and Protect.”

To attempt to make this program relatable to my audience, during the program I had an image of my nephew Sam and his height at the time of almost 4 feet tall. I compared Sam’s height to the height of the Gateway Arch, 630 feet tall, which is also a national park. It’s now known as Gateway Arch National Park in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. I showed the kids that you would have to stack up 157 Sams to create the same height as the Gateway Arch.

I then talked about Crater Lake as the deepest lake in the U.S. at 1,943 feet deep. One could stack 3 Gateway Arches in Crater Lake and still have 42 feet of water covering the highest stacked Arch or 483 Sams stacked vertically on top of each other. After the presentation, my nephew Sam came up to me in the most adorable way and said, “You embarrassed me.”

I apologized that I did not intend to embarrass him in front of his classmates. He seemed to forget it and he was ok. I doubt that was the worst thing that ever happened to him in school.

Exactly one month later, March 5, 2010, I gave a similar program to oldest niece and goddaughter Rachel’s seventh grade class in St. Louis. I used the same title, “It’s Your World to Discover and Protect.” Like the program at Sam’s school, I had a picture of Rachel in my talk and how she was 5 foot 2 inches tall at that time. I showed that 122 Rachels stacked vertically on top of each other would be the same height as the Gateway Arch. Or, 376 Rachels stacked vertically on top of each other would be the same height as Crater Lake. I thought the teachers introduced me before the talk as Rachel’s uncle or I assumed Rachel’s teachers and classmates knew I was her uncle. However, when I finished my talk, Rachel raised her hand to say, “Could you please tell them how you are related to me? None of these students seem to know about that.”

Like my previous talk, I ended this talk with a 25-foot Mentos and Coke fountain demonstration. This talk was a breakthrough for me because this was the first time I talked about climate change in a public talk. I showed that the average annual snowpack had gone down over the last several decades at Crater Lake. I defined global warming as humans trapping more carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. As a result, the average temperature of the planet has increased since the Industrial Revolution started in 1880.

On month earlier, in February, Rachel and Andrew came to my parents’ house for the day. They brought with them their individual blue Snuggie blankets that you wear like a robe to lounge around the house on a cold winter’s day. I took pictures of Rachel and Andrew without their Snuggie blankets sitting comfortably, pretending to be freezing without their Snuggie blankets, sitting comfortably with their snuggie blankets, and then I piled more blankets on top of them while their expressions turned angrier and sadder. I used those pictures to demonstrate the earth without greenhouse gases (both pretending to be freezing), the earth with greenhouse gases (both of them enjoying wearing their Snuggie blankets indoors on a cold winter’s day), and then piling blankets on them to demonstrate more greenhouse gases trapping heat causing climate change. I loved showing these pictures in climate change talks I gave to kids.

At my March presentation at Rachel’s school, I then talked about how climate change could cause problems with less snowpack, greater heat waves, and sea level rise. I then urged them to reduce the threat of climate change by recycling, unplugging voltage vampire appliances in their homes, and turning down the heat by putting on a sweater or snuggle blanket. Hopefully, this message on climate change somehow planted a seed in the minds with these students. I will always be grateful that my older sister, my oldest niece, her classmates and school gave me an opportunity to talk about climate change for the first time in a public talk.

At Crater Lake National Park that summer, I gave my climate change PowerPoint informally to some of my ranger friends one evening and I shared it with a few other ranger friends. During my cross-country drive from Crater Lake National Park, Oregon to St. Louis, Missouri in November 2010, I showed this PowerPoint twice. I shared it to some ranger friends in Page, Arizona and to my college friend Brent in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. These friends gave me some helpful tips and feedback to improve my talk.

Joining South County Toastmasters St. Louis, Missouri in January 2011

To improve my skills as a public speaker and climate change communicator, I joined a local Toastmasters group, South County Toastmasters, in January 2011. When I submitted the application to join Toastmasters, the tradition is that a club member with the position of the sergeant-in-arms escorts the visitors and applicants requesting to join out of the room. This allowed the existing members to candidly discuss and vote to approve the new members. While I waited in a different area, I could hear the members laugh when the Club President read my application that I was joining Toastmasters “to be a better climate change communicator.” Up to a third of this Toastmasters Club were conservative climate change deniers. Thus, this would be a tough audience to give climate change talks. It was exactly what I needed to improve.

On February 16, 2011, I gave my introductory speech to South County Toastmasters called, “I Would Rather be Here than in Paradise.” My first Toastmasters speech turned out to be a weird experience. I asked a fellow club member to video my speech using my digital camera. Sadly, I did not have an enough available space to record the speech on the camera’s SD card. The other pictures and videos on it took up too much room. Thus, I did not get all the speech recorded. However, I was able to get my introduction by club member George Kiser on video, as well as a couple of minutes of my speech. Later, I uploaded it to YouTube to document this occasion.

This was one of the few Toastmasters speeches that I did not turn the text of the speech into a blog. Therefore, I will include it here:

My icebreaker Toastmasters Speech: “I would rather be here than Paradise”

“’The only courage you need in your life is the courage to follow your dream.‘

I heard Oprah Winfrey say this on her show eight years ago. I am here tonight giving my icebreaker at South County Toastmasters because I am taking the courage to follow my dream in life. Following my dream led me to some strange twists: from leaving the Florida Everglades, to currently visiting St. Louis, and to eventually returning to Crater Lake. The first twist you will think is odd and crazy.

I gave up a dream job as a winter ranger in Everglades National Park in Florida to be with you here tonight. What? Does that sound crazy? Today, in south Florida it was sunny with a high of 78 degrees. Compare that to the snowy and icy weather in St. Louis this past month. Raise your hand if you would rather be in sunny, warm south Florida this winter than St. Louis?

For ten years, during the winter I was a naturalist park ranger in the Everglades. I wish I had a dollar for every person, even from some of you in this room, who told me they would love to be a park ranger. As an Everglades ranger, I lead canoe trips to show people dolphins, alligators, birds, and manatees. I also presented ranger talks about the birds and history of the Everglades. If you love public speaking and nature, I had the perfect job and I loved it. So, why on earth, as crazy as it sounds, would I walk away from the perfect job three winters ago?

Two words: CLIMATE CHANGE

Over twelve years ago, visitors started asking me how climate change was affecting the Everglades. People expect park rangers to know everything. Thus, I added climate change to my reading list so I can be the all-knowing park ranger. However, the more I read about climate change, the more alarmed I became. In November 2007, while I was still working in the Everglades, I decided to dedicate the rest of my life to the issue of climate change. Now I want to use my skills I gained as a public speaker as a park ranger to humorously educate and inspire people, like you, to take action to resolve climate change.

In May 2008, with the courage to follow my dream, I said goodbye to the Everglades. I have not looked back. It is three years later, and I am still working on my life’s mission. Last winter in St. Louis, I developed my own humorous power point on climate change, entitled “Lets Have fun Getting Serious about Resolving Climate.”

I developed my own website that I am still building www.climatechangecomedian.com (…Oops! Kevin, are we allowed to plug our own personal ventures during our Toastmasters speech?)

Anyway, the goal of my website will be to humorously promote me as a speaker who will entertain, educate and inspire people on the problem and solutions to climate change. I hope to talk to any group willing to listen to me: such as students of all ages, seniors, church groups, business groups, dentists, lawyers, IRS agents, Hells Angels, and whoever else wants to join my dream to make this a healthier planet.

I want to start this conversation on climate change with you and my hometown of St. Louis. I was born and raised here. When I am working in the national parks, I miss the Cardinals, Imo’s Pizza, Ted Drewes, Chuck Berry, my family, and what else am I missing?
Why the Arch of course!

However, there is one thing about St. Louis that I will never like? Any guesses:
(Pause)

THE SUMMERTIME HEAT AND HUMIDITY. I have not spent a summer here in 18 years, and I cannot stomach the thought of spending this summer here either.

Thus, I have not totally given up my day job as a ranger. For the past 18 years, I have spent my summers as a naturalist ranger in Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. From May to October, I narrate the boat tours, guide sunset ranger hikes, provide geology and history talks, and present an evening campfire program. Even better is the summertime weather at Crater Lake. Since the park is in the mountains, a normal summer temperature is around 67°F with very low humidity. So, in July and August, I would rather be in Paradise than here.

Fellow Missourian, Mark Twain once said, “You should live your life so fully, so that when you die even the undertaker will be sad.”

For years, I had the dream to be a national park ranger. Now I am taking the courage to follow my dream to humorously educate people about climate change, starting in St. Louis. I appreciate you, fellow toastmasters and honored guests, allowing me to share my dream with you in my icebreaker here tonight. Mr. Toastmaster.”

My second speech for South County Toastmasters in April 2011

After my speech was completed, the club had an evaluator assess my speech. Each Toastmasters speech is assigned an evaluator, which is a fellow club member. The Evaluator gives a short speech to the club what they liked about my speech and my areas for improvement.

I was exhausted after giving this speech. Like anything I do, I put it all out on the court with nothing left. My evaluator said that I looked at my notes too much since this is my life’s story. It’s me. I should not need any notes to tell it. I thought that was good advice to not rely upon notes and have the speech memorized to make a more authentic connection with the audience.

After the speech, it was announced that some of the members were going to a nearby restaurant to hang out and chat. My parents came to see my Icebreakers speech. My mom planned to go home and go to be early, like she normally does. My dad wanted to go to this social event. I just intended to go home. However, since my dad wanted to go hang out with the Toastmasters, I grudgingly went along with him. I sat by some of the Toastmasters at the far end of the table. I felt spent after giving that speech.

However, two of the members, Adam and Dee, made their feelings very plain to me that they were conservatives, and they did not ‘believe in global warming.’ Adam loyally listened to FOX Business News and Dee loved listening to Rush Limbaugh. They wanted to lecture me how I was wrong. They were irritating me more by the minute. Dee decided to give me an ear full that I needed to listen to the people on the other side who did not agree with me.

I finally had enough. I gently took her by the arm and hand. I look her fully in the eyes. I kindly but firmly said, “Dee, I have already listened to people on the other side. Their positions are simply wrong. They have no evidence to back up their claims.”

She did not like that I was holding her arm and hand as I pushed back on what she said. She retorted, “Stop treating me like an old woman!”

I didn’t say anything more. I bit my tongue. Internally, I wanted to say, ‘Stop acting like an old woman! You are not used to someone standing up to you. However, I am going to stand up to you when I think you are wrong, and you are wrong right now.’

It would have thrown gasoline on the fire to say that. My speech was an Icebreaker. That’s it. However, Dee and Adam wanted to hear the key evidence for climate change in a future speech.

Right there, they gave me an idea for my next speech. Even though I was ticked off in this interaction with them, they had laid down the challenge for me for my next speech.

I decided if I was going to go for it to talk about the key evidence for climate change, I was really going to for it. In a sense, this speech would be like passing a very loud and smelly fart at a fancy cocktail party.

To address the uncomfortable elephant in the room, I called my second Toastmasters speech, “I am going to drop a stink bomb on you!” One of my friends that I practiced my speech with was fellow Toastmaster, Nilsa Scott. She thought my speech title and concept for my speech was hilarious. I practiced this speech many times with my Nisla, my Toastmasters mentor Rob Van Winkle, my godmother Jeanette Dantico, and my parents.

This speech did not go as well as I hoped. My Toastmaster evaluator pointed out that I had trouble with the Club’s remote control to change my slides. Therefore, he recommended that I get my own remote control to be more fluid to advance the slides. In addition, he did not like that I turned my back to the audience to point out specific items on my PowerPoint. He advised me to buy a remote control with a laser pointer and to not turn my back on the audience. Although I did not feel like my speech delivery went smoothly, I thought the evaluator gave good advice.

The good news was that I was voted as “The Most Improved Speaker.” At the same time, this was the second speech where I was not voted as the best speaker. I was determined to stick with Toastmasters until one of my speeches was voted on by the Club as “The Best Speaker.”

Unfortunately, I did not get a video from this speech. However, I did turn the text of that speech into a blog later that year.

I made plans to leave St. Louis in late May to head back to Crater Lake National Park for the summer. Thus, I was determined to give one more speech and to do what I could to make the third speech ‘a winner.’ I was going to make the third speech the charm.

My third and winning Toastmasters speech in May 2011

Since the stink bomb speech was serious and technical about climate change, I decided to go lighter for my next speech in May 2011. It was called “Time to Say Goodbye.” This speech was about saying farewell to my temporary job at the St. Louis Science Center’s climate change exhibit, saying goodbye to my fellow Toastmasters as I was leaving St. Louis to return my summer seasonal ranger job at Crater Lake National Park, and my dream of saying goodbye to my ranger job so I could work full time on climate change communications and organizing.

Like my previous speech, I practiced very hard on this speech with Nilsa, Rob Van Winkle, my godmother, Jeanette Dantico and my parents. Unfortunately, my parents were out of town on a vacation trip, so they were not able to see this speech. It was a shame. I wish they could have been there because I was voted as “Best Speaker” for this speech. Yes! I finally was voted “Best Speaker” by my Toastmaster peers. I felt elated! I was leaving for Oregon on a high note.

I uploaded to YouTube a partial video of this speech. Sadly, this time, the beginning was cut off. The person who I asked to film me forgot to turn on the video at the beginning of my speech. Like the first speech, I was glad I got a partial video at least to document this speech.

Similar to my first Toastmasters speech, I forgot to turn that speech into a blog. Thus, I will include the text of that speech here:

Time to say goodbye!

“It’s time to say goodbye. That’s the goal of this speech is to get right to the point! That’s what I am going to do my speech tonight: Say goodbye to my present job, to you and to my present career.

First of all: I wanted to say unlike my previous speeches I am saying goodbye to PowerPoint, tonight only, so I can speak directly to you and not hide behind any technology. So for tonight only, it’s goodbye PowerPoint, and hello fellow toastmasters!

Next, I must say goodbye to my present job. As you may recall, when I joined Toastmasters in January, I was unemployed and struggling to find my calling to educate people about climate change. Well, in mid-March, I got a job at the St. Louis Science Center engaging visitors and answering questions at their temporary climate change exhibit. Over the past two months, I absolutely loved this job. It was a dream come true to be able to talk about climate change all day and be surrounded by the detailed science posted in the displays throughout the exhibit. I also loved my boss and co-workers and I chatted with so many adults and school groups around the St. Louis area who were accepting or critical of the concept of climate change. Their positive or negative opinions did not bother me.

I just relished being able to talk about climate change all day at work. I did literally feel like a kid in a candy store. Unfortunately, I have to say goodbye to this job on Sunday, May 15th. That is when this temporary exhibit ends and moves on to Cleveland in mid July. I hope you are can stop by the exhibit when I am working on Friday or Saturday before St. Louis says goodbye to it on Monday. This goodbye will be sad because how much I loved this job and how much it connected to my passion to inspire people to resolve climate change.

Next, I must say goodbye to you guys. You were all so welcoming when I joined in January. I made so many good friends and all of you were so helpful in critiquing my speeches. I think I will be able to make it to the next two meetings. However, I will miss you guys as I say goodbye to you and my hometown of St. Louis and head to my summer job at Crater Lake. So, if you are not able to make it to the next two meetings it will be time to say goodbye tonight.

Where am I going to is to my summer and spiritual home of Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. I am a naturalist ranger there leading various presentations, such as the boat tours, trolley tours, geology talk, sunset guided hike, evening program, etc. You all are more than welcome to come to my programs. You can count and tell me how many ahs and ums I accidently use during my ranger talks.

As I have hinted before, after nearly two decades, it may be time for me to say goodbye to Crater Lake also. I am getting tired of being a seasonal ranger. The moving and isolation in the national parks has reached its limits for me. Also, I really want to pursue my passion about educating, entertaining, and inspiring people about climate change as a public speaker. Thus, it may be time for me to really say goodbye to Crater Lake.

Also I have personally witnessed the effects of climate change while working in the national parks. When I worked in the Everglades, I saw the marine bays getting saltier and saltier with more erosion happening with sea level rise. At Crater Lake, I have personally seen our annual snowpack diminish over many years. Just like in Colorado, I have seen mountain pine beetles destroying our lodge pole pine trees. The beetles are surviving increasingly mild winters and having quite a party with our lodge pole pine trees and whitebark pine trees. With all these signs of climate change, I feel like I can no longer be the happy ranger just entertaining people in national parks. I feel called to say goodbye to Crater Lake and take this message to the cities.

Before I say goodbye to my current job, you and Crater Lake, I want to leave you with a gift. In one of my ranger programs, a guided sunset hike, I end the program with a collect of wisdom that I gained from all my years of spending time in nature and observing the park visitors. Somehow, I doubt you will be able to join me on my hike. So, if you flip over the paper, I am going to share and even let you keep:

RANGER BRIAN’S WISDOM

Would ___________ read the first three lines:

For Every Question,
There Is Not Necessarily an Answer.
Yield to the Mysteries of Nature.

Would ___________ read the second three lines:

Take Time to Enjoy the View
and Smell the Roses.
Find your Own Sacred Place

Would ___________ read the third three lines:

If Nature is Your Hobby,
You Will Never Be Bored.
You Can Never Step in the Same Stream Twice

Would _____________ read the fourth three lines:

There Are Things We Love, Things We Hate,
And Things to Which We are Indifferent.
However, In Nature, Everything Matters.

Would _______________ read the final three lines:

Every Single Person Makes the World
Every Single Day.
Think Globally, Act Daily.

I hope you have a wonderful summer here in St. Louis. Be thinking of me when you enjoy that Ted Drewes or Imo’s Pizza or other local amazing Italian food or go to a Cardinal’s game. I will be missing these luxury items in my mountain paradise home. Anyway, Mr. Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters and distinguished guests, it’s time once more for me to get to the point and close by saying: IT’S TIME FOR ME TO SAY GOODBYE!
Mr. Toastmaster.”

I could write a lot more about my Toastmasters experiences, especially with giving climate change talks. I will stop though because it is covered in a separate blog from 2016, Want to be effective on climate change? Join a Toastmaster group.

State #2: My first climate change talks at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon in 2011

As I witnessed from my Toastmasters group, giving climate change talks can be brutal. You never know if you will have climate change deniers in the audience who will make the speech or your interaction with them afterwards very uncomfortable. I initially learned about climate change working in Everglades National Park in 1998. By 2008, I wanted to do something about it. For years, I feared giving a ranger program in the national parks focused on climate change because I worried about conservative visitors would want to get in a fierce argument about it.

I first mentioned in 2008 to my superiors at Crater Lake that I wanted to give a ranger program about climate change. My Crater Lake supervisor, Eric Anderson, and the lead interpretive ranger, David Grimes, were supportive and encouraging of my idea. I just did not feel like I knew enough or was brave enough to do such a program. Finally, in 2011, I felt that I was ready. I had been doing my evening program centered on the birds of Crater Lake for five years. I enjoyed giving that program, but I was motivated to transition my evening program to climate change. David Grimes helped me with the information and images about climate change that he had wrote about for years in the park newspaper. I used the PowerPoint graphs and information I received from the park scientists that they had shared with the ranger staff during training.

Working as an interpretive park ranger at Crater Lake is a full-time job of giving programs such as boat tours, trolley tours, lodge talks, geology talks, step on tours, guided hikes, and working at the visitor center desk answering questions. Engaging with visitors and working outside in the sun all day was exhausting, even if I loved my job and put 110% effort into it. Thus, I came home in the evenings from work flat out tired. Yet, I was motivated to create an evening program on climate change.

After months I of putting it together in my spare time, I debuted my climate change evening program at campground amphitheater on August 3, 2011. The program went extremely well. To my surprise, the audience responded very positive to my program. As a matter of fact, the park visitors really seemed to like it as I gave it numerous times over the next 6 summers.

I blogged about my Crater Lake climate change evening program elsewhere. I was always very proud of this program. Even more, I was delighted when the lead interpretive ranger, David Grimes, videotaped the program on September 22, 2012, so that I could upload it to YouTube. It’s not easy to travel to Crater Lake. Furthermore, I stopped working at Crater Lake in 2017. Therefore, it is great to have this program on YouTube so that you can watch it.

State # 3 Virginia: Speaking at the NAI Conference in Hampton, Virginia in 2012

In June 2008, National Park Service ranger John Morris from Alaska came to Crater Lake to attend our annual ranger interpretation training. One evening, he gave a sample climate change program how climate change impact our national parks. He had great humor in this program, even showing an image of the ultimate proof of global warming. It was a change in the underwear fashion over the decades. John chuckled as he showed that image and the audience laughed at that comical image. John was the first person to show me that one could have fun giving a climate change talk while educating the public the seriousness of the issue. I knew then that I wanted to be like John and give climate change talks like he did that evening.

I stayed in touch with John afterwards to see if he could advise me. In 2011, he suggested that I apply to the Earth-to-Sky V Training that would be held in Shepherdstown, West Virginia on September 26 – 30, 2011. During the summer of 2011, I did apply for that training and was invited to attend. Earth-to-Sky is a partnership between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Park Service (NPS) and the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).

Earth-to-Sky offers training conferences where NASA scientists share their research about climate change, how Earth systems operates, and astronomy. The NASA scientists and the conference facilitators from NPS and the USFWS give climate change information and communication tools to help NPS interpretive rangers, USFWS educators, and government scientists to better educate the public about climate change. Earth-to-Sky V Training focused exclusively on climate change. The information provided by the NASA and other government scientists about climate change was extremely valuable to me. They challenged each of us at the training to come up with a solid action plan how we would implement the information they provided us about climate change and how to engage the public about it.

My action plan was to create a Crater Lake climate change park handout, which I completed in 2012. In addition, I would petition my supervisor to include a climate change training for the ranger naturalist staff that I would lead during seasonal training. My supervisor approved of this idea. As a result, I gave a climate change hour long training to the park staff from 2012 to 2019. In 2018 and 2019, I returned to Crater Lake to lead this training, even though I no longer worked there. That felt like a big honor for me to be invited return to Crater Lake to give this climate change training, even though I stopped working there.

It felt like that 2011 Earth-to-Sky V Training was like a gift that kept giving. It helped advance me as a climate change communicator. I wanted to give back to the Earth-to-Sky partnership somehow. Through John Morris and other Earth-to-Sky facilitators I met in Shepherdstown, I learned that Earth-to-Sky would give a climate change seminar before the NAI (National Association for Interpretion) Conference in Hampton, Virginia in November 2012.

I applied to be a speaker at this breakout training, and I was accepted. This was my first business trip traveling to a different part of the U. S. to give a climate change talk. NASA paid for my lodging, rental car, and airfare to speak at this conference. I felt like a true business trip as a professional speaker. It reminded me of when I went to see the paid professional speaker at the Fred Pryor Seminar weeks before my college graduation in 1992. When I saw that speaker, my thought was: ‘I want to be a professional speaker someday for something I had a passion.’

Around 20 attendees, including me, participated in this Earth-to-Sky seminar before the start of the NAI conference. Earth-to-Sky brought a couple of NASA scientists who were terrific speakers to explain the basics of climate change. I gave my talk towards the end of the conference. The title of my talk was “Pump You Up to Talk about Climate Change.”

My theme was the specific things that inspired me to give climate change ranger talks in the national parks. I focused on five specific items that inspired me:
• The location of working in the national parks
• Knowledgeable: Visitors expected me to know information on this subject – similar to how they expect rangers to be fluent in all subjects relating to a national park they are visiting,
• Passion: From my knowledge came a passion for the subject of climate change.
• Peer pressure: some of my ranger colleagues at Crater Lake and other parks were already giving climate change talks.
• Courage: After interviewing the Crater Lake scientists how climate change impacted Crater Lake, borrowing information from my fellow rangers, and becoming comfortable sharing my personal story how I discovered climate change working at Everglades National Park, I became comfortable to give my ranger evening program at Crater Lake on climate change.

I remembered as I wrapped up this talk, two of the audience members were skeptical of my information. They doubted that visitors they would engage in their national park would have a positive reception to hearing about climate change. My assurances that Crater Lake visitors were complimentary about my program did not give them confidence. This was a learning experience for me that I encountered again when I spoke at the Association of National Park Rangers Conference in St. Louis, Missouri exactly one year later. The lesson: park rangers can often be tougher and more cynical audiences to talk about climate change than park visitors.

One of the perks of this trip to give a climate change talk was setting aside time for sightseeing and visiting family. One of my dad’s cousins, Paula and her husband Tom, invited me to stay with them at their home in Williamsburg, about 40 miles from Hampton , Virginia. They took me to see Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown Settlement, and the Yorktown Battlefield. For years, I hoped to see these locations in my travels. Without NASA inviting me to give a talk at the Earth-to-Sky seminar at the NAI conference, I am not sure if I would have made it to Virginia.

State #4 Illinois: Speaking at the Piasa Palisades Sierra Club in Alton, IL in February 2013

In 2011, a month after I joined South County Toastmasters in St. Louis, I started working at the St. Louis Science Center at their temporary climate change exhibit in March. This exhibit closed in mid-May 2011. Before the exhibit shut down and packed up to its new location, I was determined to use the time working at the exhibit to network for climate action.

At one of the evening events that the St. Louis Science Center hosted during the spring of 2011 about climate change, I met St. Louis businessman Larry Lazar. After the event, Larry and I struck up a conversation since we both agreed we were very worried about climate change. We knew we wanted to do something, but we were not sure. We decided to stay in touch and regularly meet for coffee. I left St. Louis for the summer to work at Crater Lake, but we stayed in touch. We continued to meet for coffee in the fall of 2011.

At one of our very early coffee meetings, Larry announced: “Brian, I want to start a climate change meet up group. Will you join me?”

“Absolutely!” I responded.

Larry: “Great! Can you please sign up on the meetup.com website right now? I am going to call it Climate Reality St. Louis.” (currently known as Climate Meet Up St. Louis)

After I signed up on the spot, Larry proclaimed: “I have decided that I am going to make you the co-founder of the group!”

I felt very honored and thrilled that I possibly inspired Larry to start this climate meet up group. I was happy to be at the right place at the right time when Larry started this group. Furthermore, I was determined to make this meet up group a success. Larry and I had monthly meetings started in December 2011. We then invited local and nation climate speakers to come speak at our meet ups during the winter and spring of 2012.

In 2011 and into 2012, Larry and I became very interested in the Climate Reality Project (CRP), founded in 2007 by former Vice President Al Gore. I networked with friends involved with CRP to see if I could attend one of their trainings. In the spring of 2012, I applied to attend their next three-day U.S. training that was scheduled in San Francisco in August 21-23. In June 2012, CRP invited over 850 applicants, including Larry and me, to attend this training. As trained Climate Reality Leaders, Larry and I started giving climate change talks in the St. Louis area that winter.

Larry and I became known individually and as a team for giving climate change presentations in the St. Louis metro region. In December 2012, Chris Krusa, Program Chair for the Piasa Palisades Sierra Club in Alton, Illinois, invited me by email to give a climate change talk at their chapter meeting on February 11, 2013.

I gave a similar presentation to the one I presented in Virginia in November 2012 and to talk I gave to my fellow Crater Lake rangers in June 2012. Akin to those speeches, this talk was called “Pump You Up to talk about climate change.”

Overall, the reception to this presentation was positive. The interesting part was the difference of opinion during my talk. Halfway into my speech, I noted the severe drought in our Midwest region. I shared a November 29, 2012, St. Louis Post-Dispatch headline, “Drought threatens to close Mississippi to barges.” It was an Associated Press article that ran as the front-page story in the Post-Dispatch that day. I mentioned it as an alarm story for how bad climate change can impact weather. It was an example for me why all of us need to up our game to act on climate.

I grew up less than a mile from the Mississippi River in Oakville, Missouri, just south of St. Louis. My impression from my dad, grade school, and elsewhere was that the Mississippi barge traffic was vital for the U.S. economy to ship agricultural and mineral products in large quantities.

Chris informed me during my talk that this Sierra Club group did not like the Mississippi River barge traffic due to what they perceived as negative environmental and pollution impacts. My knowledge on the environmental and pollution impacts of large barges compared to other modes of transit was zero. Therefore, I had no basis to accept, reject or be skeptical of Chris’ response. I found it intriguing that we had different opinions on that subject since I assumed river barge traffic to be good for the economy and pollute less than other forms of large transit.

Similar to my talk in Virginia, this talk in Illinois allowed me to do some sightseeing. Alton, Illinois is about an hour drive north of downtown St. Louis. It is an old river town located on the Mississippi River just a couple miles west from the Confluence Point State Park. That state park sits at the point where the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers meet. Before my presentation to that Sierra Club Chapter that evening, I went to the confluence point where the two rivers join to take some photos. After stopping there, I briefly walked around old historic downtown Alton with its narrow streets and photograph the majestic Clark Bridge that spans the Mississippi River.

As a climate speaker, I loved how I got invitations to go to scenic places locally and nationally that I might not get the time or opportunity to visit otherwise.

State #5 Arizona: Giving a climate change presentation at Grand Canyon National Park

As I wrote earlier on this blog post, in November 2012, I spoke at NASA’s Earth-to-Sky climate change seminar before the NAI (National Association of Interpreters) Conference in Hampton, Virginia. One month later, District Supervisor Ranger Pete Peterson at Grand Canyon National Park commented to me on Facebook:

“Brian, I need you to come to Grand Canyon National Park and jump start our interpretive climate change program. Let’s talk.”

With my fantastic memories of visiting Grand Canyon National Park over the years, I was not going to pass up this offer. Let me counter that, even if I had never visited Grand Canyon National Park, this was a huge opportunity not to be dismissed because it is the Grand Canyon.

Pete Peterson and I kept in touch over the next few weeks to brainstorm when I could come to speak at Grand Canyon National Park. In early 2013, we finally settled on a date of Tuesday, May 7th. At that time, I still worked as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park. Thus, it was ideal to fit in a talk at the Grand Canyon during a cross country drive from St. Louis, where I spent the winters, to Crater Lake.

I did not know if I would get back to the southwest. In fact, I have not returned to the southwest since 2013. Since it was uncertain if I would return to this part of the U.S, I made the most of this cross-country trip driving from St. Louis to Crater Lake via the Grand Canyon.

On the first night of this journey, I stayed with my college friend, Brent Isaacs, at his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I then made a long drive to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I visited my Climate Reality and Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) friend, Maria Rotunda and her family. I enjoyed walking around the old downtown area in Santa Fe before meeting my friend Maria and her family for dinner. Maria was the CCL Chapter Leader for the Santa Fe group. I joined CCL exactly one year earlier after attending a monthly chapter meeting in St. Louis. I wanted to see the monthly meeting for the Santa Fe chapter. They graciously to allowed me to sit in on their meeting.

From Santa Fe, I drove to Canyon De Chelly National Monument in Arizona to spend a day there. I took numerous pictures of the rock formations and the ancient ancestral Pueblo ruins as I hiked up and down the canyon on several short trails. Some of these ruins were high up on a cliff, which reminded me of visiting the ruins at Mesa Verde National Park over 10 years earlier. While working in the national parks for over 20 years at that point, some park employees told me Canyon De Chelly was their favorite NPS site to visit. I enjoyed the rugged desert beauty of that area. I felt grateful for the opportunity to visit this national monument.

The next day, May 6th, I arrived mid-morning at the eastern entrance, also known as Desert View, of Grand Canyon National Park. Within minutes of my arrival, I noticed a flyer advertising my evening program at the Shrine of the Ages Auditorium at Grand Canyon Village (or Canyon Village as the park employees call it) on the south Rim. Desert View is a 23-mile drive from Canyon Village. It was great to see advertisements for my talk greeting me as I entered the park.

The 23-mile drive from Desert View to Canyon Village only takes about 36 minutes without stopping. It took me over three hours to drive it to stop at the numerous overlooks to get awe inspiring views and photos of the Grand Canyon. It was partly cloudy at Desert View. As the day progressed, it became more overcast, and the canyon looked a bit hazy that day. It was clear enough to see across the Grand Canyon and visibly see all the rock formations.

In 2009, I hiked on an overnight trip to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. In 2010, I completed a solo three-day backpacking trip from the north to the south rim on the Grand Canyon. Not only was it beyond words to admire the magnificence of the Grand Canyon, it brought back great memories when I hiked to the bottom in 2009 and 2010.

In late afternoon, I met up with my friend Pete Peterson. He briefly me about my schedule for the next day at the Canyon. I planned to give a version of my Crater Lake climate change evening program, “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” for my talk. I sheepishly asked him if he wanted me to include climate change information about the Grand Canyon in my presentation. He said yes. He wanted information about climate change at the Grand Canyon in my talk. Gulp. I got a knot in my stomach since I had no depth of knowledge about the Grand Canyon.

Pete then informed me that the next day he planned to give me a tour of the park’s facilities in Canyon Village that utilized solar and energy efficiency. Even more, he scheduled meetings with me and park researchers so I could quickly learn how climate change impacted the Grand Canyon. Then, in the evening of Tuesday, May 7th, Pete estimated I would probably be giving my evening ranger program to several hundred people at the Shrine of the Ages Auditorium.

My stomach was churning hard. It felt like I had about 24 hours to cram for a final exam on climate change at the Grand Canyon to give to an audience of several hundred park visitors and rangers attending. My head was spinning and my stomach had butterflies to pull together a presentation so quickly, but it was a lovely evening visiting with Pete and his partner Carrie. They cooked delicious home cooked meal. It tasted splendid after spending a week on the road.

While hanging with Pete and Carrie at their park house in Canyon Village, we saw an elk not far from their back porch. This amazed me because I had not really seen any elk in all my years working at Crater Lake National Park and just a few times visiting other national parks. This might have been the closest I had ever been to seeing and photographing an elk.

As dusk approached, Pete and his wife Carrie took me to see a wonderful sunset of the Grand Canyon from Yavapai Point in the Canyon Village area. The overlook was crowded with lots of visitors to get a glimpse of the sunset. The Canyon and the sunset were so captivating with the bright orange glowing colors that you could not blame anyone for being there, even if it felt like I had to out elbow others to get a photo.

As I blogged about previously, Tuesday May 7th was an intensely hectic day to meet with park researchers and tour park climate friendly facilities to quickly learn information about the Grand Canyon to include in my evening program. By late afternoon, I had more than enough information about the problem and solutions of climate change at the Grand Canyon to squeeze into my talk. My stress level was off the charts when my 5-year-old Toshiba laptop froze up and crashed as I tried to piece together a PowerPoint talk with less than 3 hours. I was safely in the ranger park library. However, my laptop struggles felt like I was hanging dangerously over the edge of the Grand Canyon and about to fall several thousand feet.

To my relief, my laptop functioned well enough to complete my revised ranger presentation with information included about the Grand Canyon. I finished my PowerPoint with about two hours to spare before the start of my presentation. Fortunately, my ranger talk that evening went smoothly. Sadly, we did not get a video of my talk. It was a packed house of over 200 people, the largest in-person talk I have ever given. As far as I remember, they were a receptive audience. It was amazing to be able to reach that many people with a message about climate change. It seemed to be a whole section of park rangers in one part of the audience, which I hoped to chat with afterwards.

After my talk was completed, some people lined up to compliment me on my talk. To my dismay, I had a climate denier who wanted to argue about the scientific details in my talk. He wanted to hog my attention. I was very happy when Pete rescued me to break up the conversation so I could chat with other Grand Canyon rangers who wanted to meet me.

I did little sightseeing that day, but it still felt like a roller-coaster adventure. Pete had an ice cream dessert at his house afterwards to unwind and celebrate the day’s achievement.

It was a tough but rewarding opportunity speaking to over 200 people at the Grand Canyon about climate change. I recently thanked Pete Peterson again for one of the best experiences of my life. The next day, I enjoyed the view of the Grand Canyon from the Bright Angel Trailhead overlook before leaving the park to continue my road trip. The canyon was a bit hazy that day. At the same time, the Grand Canyon looked even more rewarding for me with my memories of hiking to the bottom twice and then speaking to my largest audience about climate change.

After leaving the Grand Canyon, I drove to Lake Havasu City, Arizona to visit my friends Steve and Melissa, who I used to work with in Everglades National Park. They took me to see the London Bridge and a boat ride across the lake to see Havasau City, California. The next day, I drove to California to spend five days visiting friends in Yosemite National Park. I had sunny weather and blue skies the entire time I visited. That gave me a perfect opportunity to hike the Mist Trail to see Vernal and Nevada Falls, hiking in the Glacier Point area, visiting the sequoia trees at Mariposa Groves, and hiking in the Yosemite Valley underneath Half Dome.

This was a massive gift from my friend Pete Peterson to give a climate change presentation at the Grand Canyon. It allowed me to go sightseeing and visit friends along the way from Tulsa OK, Santa Fe NM, Canyon De Chelly National Monument AZ, Lake Havasu AZ, and Yosemite National Park CA. I might have planned a much simpler and direct cross-country route from St. Louis, MO to Crater Lake, OR without that invitation to speak at Grand Canyon National Park. I possibly would not have visited as many friends as I did or spend the quality of time at Canyon De Chelly or Yosemite without that chance to give a climate talk at Grand Canyon.

Yes, that was extra driving and more carbon emitted by my manual transmission fuel efficient Honda Civic. At the same time, it is spending time in nature in the fantastic scenery like Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Canyon De Chelly and other natural areas that inspires me to give talks and organize for climate action. My remaining cross country seasonal trips from St. Louis to Crater Lake in the spring and vice versa in the fall were much more direct because I did not have another opportunity like that to give a big presentation during a cross country drive.

State #6 California: Appearing as a TV guest on Comedy Central’s Tosh.o

After I developed the www.climatechangecomedian.com website in 2010 and giving some climate change talks in St. Louis, Crater Lake, and elsewhere, I struggled with what to do with the Climate Change Comedian title. My climate change talks as a park ranger, Toastmaster, Climate Reality Leader, and Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteer were not leading to any notoriety.

To up my exposure, I created some YouTube videos. On January 10, 2014, I created my first minute and a half video, “Climate Change Comedian and the Violinist!” with Tanya Couture, my girlfriend then and wife now since 2015. I tried to promote her as a professional violinist and highlight me as a climate change public speaker.

One month later, on February 6, 2014, I shot the second video with my mom, Fran Ettling, “Climate Change Comedian and the Pianist!” This two-minute video showcased my mom as a professional pianist and promote me as a climate change public speaker. In both videos, I developed my tag line with Tanya in the first video and my mom in the second remarking: “You’re not that funny!”

One year later, my dad was tired of his role as the cameraman. He asked if he could be in a video. The next video, I filmed on March 6, 2015, “Climate Change Comedian and his Skeptical Dad!” It was the longest video I created with family at 4 and a half minutes. In this video, my dad and I chat about his story how he went from doubtful on the science of climate change from listening Rush Limbaugh to accepting the science. He stated that he shifted his thinking from my information about seeing climate change in the national parks. Like the previous videos, I attempted to be funny. This time, my dad gave the tag line: “No, you are not that funny!”

It was a funny family project to do these videos with Tanya and my parents. I forgot about them and moved onto other projects.

Then in April 2016, something unexpected and magical happened. I spent the winter of 2015-16 getting married to Tanya in a big celebration wedding attended by family and friends on November 1, 2015. I gave lots of climate change talks that winter and I was planning on returning to Crater Lake for the summer. In mid-April, I was getting ready to start packing up my belongings for the summer when the phone rang at my parents’ house. My mom informed me that “someone from Los Angeles wants to chat with you.”

I picked up the phone and the person identified himself as a staff member of Comedy Central’s Tosh.o. We had a very friendly conversation where he asked me about my background such as “The Climate Change Comedian,” and making the YouTube videos with my parents and Tanya. He then got to the point asking me: “We would like to fly you and your mom out to Los Angeles to appear on a taping Comedy Central’s Tosh.o next week to be interviewed by our host Daniel Tosh. Would you be interested?”

“Yes!” as I serendipitously jumped at this opportunity.

We then wrapped up the phone call. I then approached my mom about this invitation and shared that they wanted to include her. I asked if she would be interested in getting flown to LA to appear on a national TV show.

Her response was a coy and very intrigued response of “Yes.”

The show felt bad they invited my mom and I to LA when Tanya planned a brief honeymoon trip to Augusta, Missouri that week. As a wedding gift the previous November, we received a gift certificate for a two-night stay at a bed and breakfast there. To rectify this, the show invited Tanya to join us. They paid for our airfare and hotel in Los Angeles for the three of us to briefly visit and video tape this interview. Don’t worry! Tanya and I then took the trip to Augusta, MO after this overnight trip to Los Angeles.

This TV interview on Tosh.o was not like one of my traditional climate change talks. Daniel Tosh dominated the interview with his jokes and roasting of me as the Climate Change Comedian. While I played the straight man to his skillful use of humor, I inserted information how climate change is real, caused by humans, and we can reduce the threat if we act now.

My mom, Tanya, and I nervously waited for the show to be aired on August 2, 2016. To our delight and relief, the segment was hilarious. We were very satisfied how we appeared on national TV. To this day, appearing on Comedy Central’s Tosh.o was one of the highlights of my life. In one sense, I never dreamed when I gave myself the title “Climate Change Comedian” back in Ashland, OR in 2009 that it would lead to a TV appearance seen by millions of people. This reached an audience, especially of young high school and college age Gen Y and Z viewers, primarily male, that regularly watch Tosh.o. These are folks that might not ever attend a park ranger program on climate change or see a scientific lecture on the climate crisis.

Even more, this show episode immediately went into syndication where it was shown several times over the next few months and years on Comedy Central. I had friends tag me on Facebook when they saw my episode months or even years later. My appearance on the show paid extremely well. My mom said she was able to pay to get dental work done from the check she received from the show. Years later, I continued to receive residual Screen Actors Guild checks from my appearance on Tosh.o.

Giving a climate change talk at 2016 Citizens Climate Lobby Conference in Ottawa Canada

Like so many people, I felt sick to my stomach when Donald Trump won the Presidential election on November 8, 2016. I felt naueous like years of all my climate organizing, writing and public speaking went down the drain. For a couple of days, I had no energy to do anything.

Then I exchanged Facebook messages with my Climate Reality and Citizens’ Climate Lobby friend, Cathy Orlando. In September 2010, Cathy founded and became National Director of Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada (CCL Canada). For years, I admired her leadership in CCL Canada. I had friends who enjoyed attending the CCL Canada lobby days in Ottawa, Canada to engage with Canadian members of Parliament. I wanted to directly participate, so I signed up in September to attend their November 2016 conference.

In November 2016, Cathy reached out to console me the day after Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential election. Somehow, we talked about a Toastmasters speech I gave in April 2016, “Hey U.S.A! Let’s win the Clean Energy Race!” The theme of the speech was that the U.S. could either be a leader or a laggard to compete with China on clean energy. Cathy read my blog about the speech and watched the YouTube video. She then asked me to present this speech at the CCL Canada conference in Ottawa on November 27, 2016.

For this presentation, Cathy asked me to expand it to include Canada. Thus, I renamed the speech, “Hey North America! Let’s win the Clean Energy Race!”

I arrived in Ottawa on the day after Thanksgiving, on Friday, November 25, 2016. Not surprising, it was a bone chilling overcast day in Ottawa. The gruff Canadian customs officials asked me what I was doing in Canada. I told them I was there to give a climate change talk at a conference happening that weekend. They did not believe me. They had me turn on my laptop and show them some of my PowerPoint slides. When they saw a small part of my presentation, they decided I was legitimate. They then thanked me for my efforts as a climate organizer.

Tanya decided two weeks earlier to join me on this trip. Unfortunately, she could not book the same flight as me, so she arrived at the Ottawa airport a couple of hours after me. She missed all the drama I had with the Canadian customs officials. When she arrived in Canada, she simply told them that she was there to visit friends. They immediately waved her through.

After Tanya arrived, my Climate Reality and CCL Canada friend Rolly Montpellier picked us up at the airport and generously let us stay at his home during the conference. As an active volunteer with CCL Canada, Rolly planned to attend the conference and lobby day. He kindly let us ride with him to the conference each day.

A CCL conference and lobby day in Washington D.C typically has over 1,000 people. The population of Canada is only about a tenth of the U.S. population (40 million vs. 330 million). It made sense that around 100 people, nearly all Canadians and a couple of Americans, such as Tanya and me, attended this conference.

My talk, “Hey North America! Let’s win the Clean Energy Race!” went well for this conference and the attendees seemed to like it. The conference video recorded all the speeches, so I uploaded my speech to YouTube afterwards. Tanya captured some good photos of me speaking.

The next day and a half, Tanya and I joined over 55 CCL Canada volunteers to lobby members of Parliament at their offices. The Parliament buildings and downtown Ottawa is charming. As an American, it looks very British. If Great Britain and the U.S.A. had a child, it would look like Canada. My parents took my sisters and I to drive through Ontario, Canada as part of a family vacation to see Niagara Falls in 1983. We saw Ottawa in July and I always wanted to see it again. In between the lobby meetings, Tanya and I explored the majestic, Gothic style, Parliament Building and the surrounding grounds.

All our lobby meetings were face-to-face with members of Parliament. Tanya and I were split up to attend separate lobby meetings. In October 2016, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party announced a plan to establish a carbon fee and dividend in 2018. The priority of our lobby meetings was to thank the Liberal Party members and to urge full implementation of the carbon fee and dividend.

Tanya and I were often the only Americans in these lobby meetings. The election of Donald Trump happened just a couple of weeks previously. The members of Parliament often turned to Tanya and I in our lobby meetings to ask: ‘What just happened in your election?’

I was still stunned by the 2016 U.S. Presidential election result. This was the first time Tanya participated in climate lobbying anywhere. She felt amused and uncomfortable that she was put on the spot in these meetings to answer why the U.S. elected Donald Trump as President.

This was another peak experience for me as a climate speaker and organizer to give a talk in Ottawa and lobby members of Parliament in Canada. After this talk, I could now brag that I was an international climate change speaker.

#7 Colorado: Breakout speaker at 2017 Climate Reality Day of Action Training in Denver.

After I was trained as a Climate Reality Leader in San Francisco, California, in August 2012, I was an active Climate Reality Leader and mentor. I attended Climate Reality Trainings as a mentor in Chicago IL in 2013, Cedar Rapids IA in 2015, and Houston TX in 2016. Climate Reality Project asked their volunteer Leaders like me to log their “Acts of Leadership” on their Hub website so they could track our actions. Even more, logging our climate actions enabled other Climate Reality Leaders to see how we took specific climate actions to inspire them to do the same.

Therefore, I logged all my climate change talks, as well as the opinion editorials I wrote that were published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and newspapers across Oregon. I recorded each of my blogs from my climatechangecomedian.com and my writing contributions for the climatebites.org website. I submitted each time I taught a continuing adult education class for St. Louis Community College and the Oasis Continuing Education Center in St. Louis. I logged each time I lobbied a member of Congress, wrote a letter to them, emailed them, and called their office. I recorded each time I attended climate related meetings and organized climate events. Because of all the times I submitted climate actions, I became known from 2014-2020 as one of the top Climate Reality Leaders for my recorded Acts of Leadership.

Because of all of my logged “Acts of Leadership,” the Climate Reality staff invited me to be a guest speaker at their March 5th Denver Day of Action. This event took place after the March 2017 Climate Reality Training in Denver, Colorado March 2-4. The staff asked me to speak about “Spreading the Word: Mastering Presentations.”

In that talk, I shared my 6 tips for Mastering Presentations such as:

1. Sharing your story.
   I told my story I how saw climate change working as a park ranger in the national parks.
   
   
2. What common values do you share with your audience.
   I shared how I related to my audiences with their love of the national parks and nature. I quoted Holocaust victim Anne Frank from her book, The Diary of a Young Girl:
   “The best remedy for for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature, and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be…amidst the simple beauty of nature.”
   
   
3. Include the mission statement for the group that invited you.
   When I spoke at Second Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, Missouri in January 2017, I included their website statement that they are “a certified Earth Care Congregation in the Presbyterian Church (USA) since 2012. ”
   
   From Rotary Clubs, I included their Four Way Test:
   
   

4. Include your audience in your talk.
   I then talked about how I would show up at meetings of an organization weeks before my talk to get permission to take photos of individual club members to weave them into my talk. The audience loved seeing their friends and themselves in my PowerPoint images.
   
   
5. If possible, Include some humor.
   I would share the viral image Positive proof of global warming that shows the changes in underwear fashion over the years. I also included the Bloomberg Business article that I had the unfortunate experience to wake up to the day after my wedding on November 2, 2015, “Climate Change Kills the Mood: Economists Warn of Less Sex on a Warmer Planet.”
   
   
6. Share local stories of the problem and solutions to climate change.
   I showed the image of the extreme flood that I saw in St. Louis on January 1, 2016. I then shared the story in the Webster-Kirkwood Times, “Living Green With Solar Energy,” from December 14, 2012. The article highlighted St. Louis residents Jim and Judy Stroup. They installed solar panels on their house the year before and saved around 87% on their electric bill. I included the quote from Jim Stroup:
   
   “This past month, I spent more beer & pistachios than I did on gas & electric. And I am not a big drinker. It’s amazing how much (solar) cuts down on your bills and how economical it is to install.”

I then wrapped up my presenting by listing my 6 tips for mastering the presentation for the audience to see it one last time.

This presentation was well received by the audience of primary Climate Reality Leaders and staff. I remember seeing fellow Climate Reality Mentors there such as Harriet Shugarman, Jill MacIntyre Witt and Maria Rotunda. They gave me positive feedback about my talk. Maria’s son, Ian Marchegiani, took a great picture of me speaking.

Giving climate change talks in Washington D.C. at Citizens’ Climate Lobby conferences

In February 2017, my wife Tanya and I moved to Portland, Oregon. My wife’s job transferred us to Portland, but I was unsure what to do with my life. I knew I wanted to be a climate organizer. I was uncertain what I was precisely going to do and how I would make a living doing that. For the previous 24 years, I worked as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park during the summers. For 16 years, from 1992 to 2008, I worked as a winter seasonal ranger in Everglades National Park. People knew me as a park ranger. That job opened doors for me to give climate change presentations. I loved that job.

By 2017, I wanted to transition out of being a seasonal park ranger to be a full-time climate organizer. In May, I blogged “My struggle to transition from a park ranger to a climate lobbyist.” I had a hard time weening myself away from the ranger job. I worked at Crater Lake in May 2017 as the park needed ranger staff during that month to start ramping up for the summer visitation. At that time, I did not commit to work at Crater Lake beyond the first week of June.

For the summer of 2017, it was time to do something different. I did not want to attend the Crater Lake interpretative ranger seasonal training. I was eager to attend the June Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) Conference and Lobby Day, June 10th to June 13th. This was a couple of days after my final day of work at Crater Lake. Even more, I wanted to do more than just participate in this June CCL conference. I asked CCL if I could be a breakout speaker for this conference.

In January 2017, I gave a Citizens’ Climate Lobby online training about climate change in our national parks. I described this training as:

“Unsure how to find common ground when you meet with a member of Congress or Congressional staff? Most likely, a National Park Service (NPS) unit exists in the district of your member of Congress or inside your state. It is vital to know how climate change negatively impacts these national treasures and how the NPS works to reduce their carbon footprint in each of their units. National parks and monuments may be an economic linchpin for many Congressional districts.

Join seasonal park ranger and Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteer Brian Ettling as he discusses how he has witnessed climate change while working in the national parks. He will share how he has used his experience and love of our national parks to achieve common ground in meetings with Congressional staff. Even more, he will share examples of two national parks working to reduce their carbon footprints.”

My lobbying experience showed me that one of the best ways to find common ground with Congressional staff was to talk about nature and national parks. In addition, climate lobbying can seem discouraging looking at the news with worsening weather events and Congressional inaction. CCL often likes to use the quote from E.B. White,

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first.”

For the June 2017, I wanted to lead a breakout session on the importance of protecting nature and our national parks as we lobby for Congressional offices to pass climate policy. The CCL staff went along with my idea.

We agreed on a panel breakout session called, “Protecting and Conserving Species in the Face of Climate Change.” CCL suggested two panelists, Dr. Brooke Bateman, Director of Climate Watch for the National Audubon Society, and Leah Donahey, Senior Campaign Director for the Alaska Wilderness League. My responsibility was bring in a third speaker from NPS.

My NPS friend from Earth-to-Sky, John Morris, suggested that I contact Jon Jarvis, the recent Director of the National Park Service from 2009 to 2016. I then emailed Jon Jarvis. He replied that he must graciously turn down the invitation. He was interested in the June 2017 conference panel, but he had to decline to observe by law “a one year ‘cooling off’ period where I cannot be engaged in any ‘matters of substance’ related to the NPS.”

I then offered the spot to John Morris. He accepted the invitation, but then he had to back out due health issues. Other NPS rangers I approached where not available. Thus, I was the third speaker and the moderator. My talk was about the pika, a small mammal that is closely related to the rabbit. Because it lives in cool mountain high elevations in the western U.S, it is an indicator species for detecting climate change. I shared how Crater Lake and the national parks are attempting to switch to clean energy for its facilities to reduce the threat of climate change.

I remember having around 30 people in the audience for this breakout session. I was pleased that it went smoothly, since I wore two hats as the moderator and a panelist speaker for this presentation. I did not notice I was filmed when I moderated the breakout session. Ashley Hunt-Martorano, a friend and the CCL Marketing and Events Manager at that time, came into this session and shot a quick video on her phone during the question-and-answer portion with the audience. I appreciated her recording this short video to document the occasion.

For the June 2019 CCL conference in Washington D.C, CCL approved for me to co-lead another breakout session on “Mastering Town Halls” with fellow Climate Reality Leader and CCL volunteer Eve Simmons. For the last couple years, I had attended several Congressional town halls in Oregon. I had some success of engaging with Oregon’s U.S. senators and a member of Congress. Sadly, I was the only CCL volunteer present at some of these town halls. Therefore, I wanted to lead a breakout session about tips I discovered to engage members of Congress, their staff and the community at local town halls.

Eve and I did not get a big audience for this breakout session. I remember us having less than 20 people in a room that could have probably held around 40 people. Except for a couple of people who had questions for us and gave us feedback that it was helpful, we did not seem to get much of a response from the audience.

Eve and I struggled at times to get our ideas and messaging in our talk in sync. However, I was very proud to give this talk on the importance of “Mastering Town Halls.” In my experience in Oregon, I had not seen much climate advocates, especially CCL volunteers, at town halls. I hoped to raise awareness about that in some way that I could.

#8 Washington state: Giving a breakout talk at the Climate Reality Bellevue Training

Just two weeks after the June 2017 CCL conference in Washington D.C, Climate Reality Project invited me to be a breakout speaker for their Training in Bellevue, Washington on June 27-29, 2017. After my March Climate Reality Day of Action breakout presentation in Denver, Colorado, Climate Reality staff kept in contact with me. They were pleased with my volunteer actions.

As a result, they invited me to be a co-breakout speaker with Maddie Adkins at the Climate Reality Training in Bellevue. This was very exciting because I was Maddie’s mentor at the Climate Reality Training in Houston, Texas in August 2016. She was 17 years old when I met her in 2016. I helped her with her mentor application for the February 2017 Denver training. I was happy for her when Climate Reality invited her to be a mentor. Even more, it was very exciting when she was selected as one of the panelists, along with Lucia Whalen, David Ellenberger, and Nana Firman CLIMATE REALITY LEADERS: WHO WE ARE panel discussions led by Al Gore at the Denver Training. From meeting her at the Houston Training, we developed a good rapport.

Maddie Adkins is the name she is known by her family, friends and Climate Reality. She writes and promotes herself professionally under her given name of Madison Adkins. As a teenager, she created a lot of buzz when she lived in Carmel, Indiana. She worked with her mayor and city council on a climate change resolution. She gave speeches at schools and universities to educate young people about climate change and their power as citizens. In 2017, she worked at iMatter, an international youth-led organization that empowers youth to join the climate movement. Before I left for the training in Houston, I received messages from friends telling me how excited they were that I was her mentor and the great things she was doing for climate action.

It happened to be very beneficial that my wife Tanya and I moved to Portland, Oregon in February 2017. Maddie lived in Portland with her parents at that time. Thus, we met in person to prepare and practice our presentation in early June. We were scheduled to give this talk in Bellevue at the Climate Reality Training at the end of June. I really did appreciate her bubbly, joyous youthful enthusiasm, and excitement to give this joint presentation with me. Her playful and exuberant personality helps bring out the fun and creativity in those around her, especially me. I fed off her impish teen energy and she enjoyed my goofy and wacky personality. We practiced hard to do a great job giving this presentation at the training.

We enjoyed weaving together our presentations together in a cohesive talk. Maddie focused on how to speak to youth and schools. I focused on how to speak to adults. I shared the six tips for mastering the presentation and finding an audience that was from the Climate Reality Day of Action talk I gave in Denver just a few months before this June talk. I added a new original quote I created that I have used in the conclusions of my climate change talks since then:

Maddie had great tips for our talk that she later wrote about for an August 7, 2020 article for Medium.com, “How I Grew My Public Speaking Audiences from 10 to 1,000.” In her 2020 article, her helpful tips included: practice, invite your friends to your presentation, expect tech issues, tell your story, follow up, and your authenticity is what makes your presentation powerful.

As we practiced our talk in Bellevue the day the day before we gave it, I mentioned to Maddie one of my all-time favorite quotes associated with the poet and author Maya Angelou:*
“People will forget what you said…but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Maddie loved hearing that quote. She decided on the spot that would be the conclusion of our talk. She ended her 2020 Medium article with that same quote. With the busyness of our lives, Maddie and I lost contact after that talk. It seemed we were two energetic atoms bouncing off each other. We each received an inspirational boost in our climate advocacy since that collaboration and giving this talk in Bellevue together in 2017. I will always be grateful for Climate Reality Project pairing me up with Maddie to give this talk.

The large audience of Climate Reality Leaders who attended our breakout talk gave us a very positive response. Even more, the Climate Reality staff was delighted with our talk. It felt like the organization appreciated all my climate advocacy.

#9 Florida: Giving a climate change talk at the CCL regional conference in Tampa

In January 2014, I attended the CCL southeast regional conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Former Congressman Bob Inglis was the main conference speaker. I wanted to see him speak live and possibly meet him, so I registered to attend this conference.

At this conference, I met Abhaya Thiele, the CCL Southeast Regional Co-Coordinator and the Florida Co-Coordinator. Abhaya and I struck up a friendship with our love of Florida. She lived part of the year in the northern part of the state in Gainesville. I lived for sixteen years in Everglades National Park at the southern end of the state. Because I first learned about climate change when I started giving ranger talks in the Everglades in 1998, my dream was to return to Florida to give a climate change talk. Since our 2014 meeting in Atlanta, Abhaya and I kept brainstorming how I could return to Florida to give a climate change talk and promote CCL.

In December 2017, Abhaya invited me to be a guest speaker at the Florida Regional Conference for CCL that was held on February 24, 2018 in Tampa, Florida. This was a dream come true for me to return to Florida to give a climate change talk. I first learned about climate change when I started giving ranger talks in the Everglades in 1998. Ten years later in 2008, I stopped working in Everglades National Park because I was so worried about climate change.

Over my 16 years of working in the Florida Everglades, I made many friends. One friend, Steve Robinson, a fourth generation Floridian who worked in Everglades National Park from 1980 to 2005, became a mentor to me. Sadly, Steve passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2007. During that heartbreaking time when Steve fought cancer, I met Steve’s family, such as his brother Michael and his cousin Paul “Steb” Sedwick. Both Steb and Michael lived in the Tampa area. The day before the Tampa conference, I spent the day visiting with them.

On February 24, 2018, I gave my talk at the CCL Florida Regional Conference. My topic was “Storytelling: Reaching People Through Common Values.” My first point was that everyone has a climate change story, even if they don’t think they have one. I shared my story how I became aware of climate change while working in the Everglades as far back as 1998.

My second point was telling a local story about climate change that relates to your audience. As an example, I gave my story that I share in Oregon how I saw climate change while working at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon with the summer wildfire season becoming more intense.

My third point was sharing a personal story for why pollution is bad. I told my story how my dad has stage 4 bladder cancer. For years, my family lived just a couple of miles from the Meramec Coal Power Plant. I cannot say with certainty that the pollution from that plant caused my dad’s cancer. However, the air pollution from that plant certainly increased the risk of cancer for my dad and many others in the nearby St. Louis southern metropolitan area.

My fourth point was encouraging the audience about to talk about conservative Republicans who support climate solutions, such as carbon fee and dividend. I gave examples of former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, and former Congressman Bob Inglis.

My fifth point was telling stories how CCL helped them have breakthroughs in their political power. My example was my success getting opinion editorials published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Oregonian, and other newspapers.

My final point was urging them to share the story of Pennsylvania businessman Jay Butera. He made numerous trips to Florida and Washington D.C. to convince Republican members of Congress such as Carlos Curbelo, Ileana Ros-Lehtinem, and others to join the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus.

Around 75 people attended this conference. They gave me a grateful response for my talk. After the conference, my friend Climate Reality and CCL friend Susan Nugent and her partner Roland Fisch drove me from the conference in Tampa to their home in Gainesville, Florida.

The next day, Susan drove me from her home to the nearby Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park. That park reminded me of Everglades National Park, with the wide variety of wildlife we saw that day, such as alligators, Glossy Ibis, ducks, a Limpkin, a brown snake, Moorhens, a ribbon snake, horses, Cattle Egrets, Woodstorks, Great Egrets, a Snail Kite, a soft shelled turtle, and even bison. Yes, you read that correctly: bison. My wife was floored when she saw my photos of bison. She did not think that bison lived in Florida. They are not found in south Florida where the Everglades is mostly marshy and swampy. However, a small heard of bison thrives in the large area of this state park and the higher dry ground of northern Florida.

The next day, Susan and her partner Roland drove me to Cedar Key, on the Florida Gulf Coast. Cedar Key is about an hour and a half drive from Gainesville. I enjoyed seeing this coastal nature preserve that was nestled on the Gulf of Mexico. Cedar Key had some archaeological shell mounds, rising up to 28 feet above sea level. Scientists date them as nearly 6,000 years old, built over a 3,500-year period (2500 B.C.-A.D. 1000) by the first native Floridians.

Like my previous climate change speaking trips, it was a fabulous perk to meet up with friends and go sightseeing in the days after giving a climate presentation. Even more, I got to visit Florida in the middle of winter when the temperature was around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, but much colder in most of the United States, including our home area in Portland, Oregon.

#10 Idaho: Speaking at 2018 CCL Greater Northwest Regional Conference in Boise

Just two weeks after I traveled to Florida, I went to Boise, Idaho to attend the CCL Greater Pacific Northwest Regional Conference, March 9-11. The organizer of this conference was Roberta D’Amico. My supervisor at Crater Lake National Park, Marsha McCabe, was good friends with Roberta. They knew each other as career National Park Service employees. Marsha encouraged me to get to know Roberta since Marsha knew we were both involved with CCL.

I had a good conversation with Roberta and her partner John at the November 2017 CCL conference in Washington D.C. She was the lead organizer for the March regional conference and unsure who to recruit as speakers for the conference. I offered to help any way I could, including as a guest speaker if she needed me. In November 2017, we promised to stay in contact to exchange ideas. In January 2018, Roberta decided that she wanted me as a guest speaker at the conference. Even more, she determined that I would speak twice during the conference.

First, I gave a recap of the CCL Oregon Stewardship Tour that I led the previous October and November. This was a 30-minute presentation that talked about the lessons I learned for the tour. The main lessons I learned:

1. Develop a planning team for a tour.
2. Recruit a marketing team.
3. Share your climate change story
4. Emphasize local impacts your audience witnessed, such as the wildfires in Oregon.
5. Every audience is different: From high schoolers to seniors, liberals to Trump supporters
6. It was an adventure of a lifetime for me to lead that tour.

In addition to the lessons learned, I debriefed on items we could have done better for the tour:
• Don’t list Congressional lobby meetings on the official tour site. Very confusing for the media.
• If possible, try to have more than one presenter on the tour.
• Try to sponsor a tour with another group, like the Audubon Society.
• Put constituent comment forms and postcards on each seat before the event.
• We built goodwill with Renew Oregon promoting their state level cap and invest proposal. However, it made the talk more awkward and confusing since Renew Oregon and CCL’s solutions are completely different.
• Faster follow up with new supporters to become active volunteers – line up mentors in advance.

Second, Roberta thought it would be good for me to give an entertaining talk during dinner. My 10-minute talk centered on “What’s Your Story?’ A friend of mine recorded a video of this speech that I later uploaded to YouTube. Furthermore, I took the text of that speech and turned it into a blog, “For effective climate action, tell your story.”

Since the Northwest is much more geographically spread out than Florida, I remember this Greater Northwest Conference as having a smaller attendance of around 50 to 75 people than the conference I attended in Florida the previous month. The attendees at this conference liked my talks. Unlike other speaking engagements, I was not able to do any sightseeing in Boise. The good news though was that this was the first climate conference I attended where I was asked to present twice on two different subjects. That alone felt like a victory.

#11 Georgia: Co-presenting at the 2019 Climate Reality Training in Atlanta

After presenting as a guest breakout speaker at the Climate Reality Denver Day of Action in March 2017 and as a co-presenter for a breakout session at the Climate Reality Training in Bellevue, Washington, Climate Reality Project staff invited me to be a co-presenter along with Itzel Morales Lagunes at the Climate Reality Training in Los Angeles, California. Itzel and I presented on the same topic I presented in June 2017 at the Climate Reality Bellevue Training, “Mastering the Presentation and Finding Your Audience.”

Climate Reality staff gave positive feedback they received from the Climate Reality Leaders who attended this joint presentation with Itzel. During this Los Angeles Training, I wanted to promote Climate Reality Project and CCL. I loved volunteering for both organizations and encouraging climate advocates to get involved with one or both amazing groups. Thus, Steph Zhu a blogger for CCL wrote a blog about me, “One person’s journey to Climate Change Activist” for the Red, Green, and Blue website on September 12, 2018.

In the fall of 2018 and the start of 2019, I stayed in touch with Climate Reality staff. They invited me to be a co-presenter with Maria Santiago-Valentín for their March 2019 Training in Atlanta, Georgia. Maria lives in Clark, New Jersey. She was originally from Puerto Rico. She had an impressive background as a doctoral student in education, a learning disabilities consultant. She is the author of a 2019 book that is available in English and Spanish, Bipolar Disorder: Etiology and Treatment Overview: Mindfulness, Medication, Digital Psychiatry and Classroom Accommodations.

Maria attended the Climate Reality Training in Chicago in 2013. Climate Reality noticed her activism as a co-leader of the New Jersey People’s Climate Rally in 2017 and 2018, and a steering committee member of the 2018 New Jersey March for Science. In July 2018, Maria presented at the Global Mental Health Congress in Paris, where she shared her research entitled “An Overview of the Neurological Base of Bipolar Disorder” published by the Journal of Childhood and Development Disorders. She was the treasurer of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, New Jersey Chapter and vice chair of the New Sierra Club Environmental Justice Committee.

Maria was very humble and shy. She was worried about giving our joint presentation to a huge group of Climate Reality Leaders during the Atlanta Training. She was modest about her accomplishments and background. She seemed to have limited experience with public speaking and talking in front of large audiences. Unlike Itzel or Maddie, Maria relied more on me to create and edit our presentation. Maria had a kind heart and gentle spirit. I was happy to help her feel comfortable giving this presentation. She was appreciative of everything I did to help us prepare for this Atlanta presentation. Speaking to hundreds of Climate Reality Leaders at this training seemed daunting to her. I did my best to be her rock of support. I had someone take a picture of both of us in Atlanta with our fists pumped, with the attitude of “WE GOT THIS!

In fact, that became our theme for the new Climate Reality Leaders attending this talk, “YOU GOT THIS!” Maria even had a picture of herself in the talk not smiling with the text: “OMG!!! I am freaking out! The content and my accent!!!”

I used that phrase “YOU GOT THIS!” several times in this presentation. I started this talk borrowing from Tim Ryder’s presentation that he gave with Itzel Morales and me at the Los Angeles Training in 2018. I showed an overview of images of Al Gore’s 518 slides from his long presentation. Al Gore gave his nearly three-hour climate presentation using most of those slides the day before. In our breakout presentation, I walked through how they could find Al Gore’s slide decks on the Climate Reality Hub. I then encouraged them to use the 59 slides of Al Gore’s “Truth in 10” slide deck that is available to everyone, not just Climate Reality Leaders. It is accessable on the public Climate Reality website. The Truth in 10 slides do not have any copyright limitations. They can be shown to anyone anywhere, especially if the climate presentation is livestreamed, video recorded, or uploaded to YouTube.

I then used a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr quote:
“Everyone can be great. Because anybody can serve.
You don’t have to have a college degree to serve.
You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve.
You don’t have know about Plato and Aristotle to serve.
You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve.
You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics to serve.
You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

This seemed very appropriate to use a Dr. King quote since this presentation was given in his hometown of Atlanta, GA. After I used that quote, I repeated the theme: “YOU GOT THIS!”

I might have even had Maria say it out loud for effect. I then gave my 6 tips for Mastering Presentations that I which I had been sharing since my Denver breakout talk.

When I shared my story as my first tip, I then turned to Maria and asked her to share her story.
She talked about her background with Organizing for Action (OFA) and her involvement with the Climate Change State Team at OFA in New Jersey. She then told the audience how her and her family were impacted by Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey in 2012. Even worse, her relatives were devastated by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in September 2017.

In my second tip, Finding Your Audience, I gave my examples of forming a Climate Reality Meet Up Group in St. Louis, getting involved with the local Climate Reality Chapter, joining a Toastmasters Club in St. Lous, and leading the CCL tour across Oregon in October 2017. Maria gave her examples speaking to OFA, lobbying her New Jersey Assemblyman, and speaking at Columbia University. Maria also shared how she organized and spoke at environmental marches People’s Climate Movement, NJ Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch, NJ March for Science and as a panelist for a public screening of the 2017 National Geographic documentary, From the Ashes.

Maria and I tag teamed for the rest of this talk. I provided tips and examples. Maria responded with her own examples. She was lovely to co-present with as a team. She gave it her all, stepping out of her comfort zone to speak to this large group of Climate Reality Leaders.

I started the conclusion with my standard quote: “The most important person who can make the biggest impact reducing the threat of climate change is the person sitting in your chair.”

For the final slide, I showed a quote from former President Barack Obama, “We are the ones we have been waiting for!” Then Maria once more proclaimed, “YOU GOT THIS!”

Like Maddie Adkins and Itzel Morales, it was an honor and pleasure to present with Maria. From the conversations and email exchanges with Climate Reality staff afterwards, they seemed pleased with this presentation. Unfortunately, Atlanta was the last Climate Reality Training I attended in person. I hoped to participate as a breakout speaker in trainings after that, but I was not even invited to attend future in-person trainings.

#12 North Carolina: My climate talk at NC State Parks Superintendents Conference

Sadly, when the COVID Pandemic came to dominate our lives in 2020, it killed my enthusiasm for giving public talks for climate change. I didn’t feel like speaking out about climate change when COVID was raging due to the reports of all the people dying, the economic downturn, and President Donald Trump advising people to ingest bleach. The social isolation took a huge psychological toll because I am a people person. I love to be around people to chat, network, organize, attend meetings for climate action, and entertain. With the heaviness of the pandemic hanging over everything, I felt no motivation to do anything, especially climate comedy.

Out of nowhere, Robin Riddlebarger, Park Superintendent of Hanging Rock State Park, North Carolina sent me an email in May 2022.

Robin wrote: “Howdy! Stumbled upon your (Climate Change Comedian) website as I was searching for inspiration about a guest for our annual conference of superintendents for North Carolina State Parks. I am organizing this year’s conference with three other superintendents…We want this conference to be inspiring and refreshing instead of depressing like it usually is. I’d love to find out more about your prices for doing an in-person…presentation to a bunch of crusty superintendents.”

This looked like a good opportunity to jump on, so I immediately emailed Robin back. I expressed an interest to speak to her group. In that email, I asked why they were interested in me as a speaker. Why me?

Robin’s response: “Myself and three other superintendents are brainstorming guest speakers that will inspire us. We found that we usually leave the conference feeling more burnt out than we were when we arrived. (We) are determined that this year will be different. We will at least learn something. Instead of listening to boring HR polices that could have been handled in an email.

Our staff has endured great suffering since the pandemic and morale is at an all time low. We even had a ranger take his life recently. The parks were the only thing open during the pandemic and have been loved to death. Are you sensing a theme here? We need to learn something meaningful and we need positive inspiration. The superintendents live for their parks…We care a lot. But we’re dysfunctional as heck. We don’t need team building. We are already an awesome team. We need something GOOD. Is this anything you would want to tackle? (I’m laughing because obviously climate change is not good, but you know what I mean).”

Robin’s email touched my heart. As a professional speaker and former park ranger, it seemed like an ideal fit for me. I decided to give a presentation that could provide hopefully some healing, entertainment, and inspiration for them.

The North Carolina State Parks Superintendents Conference scheduled me to speak on November 14, 2022. My title for this talk: “Our Parks: Places of fun, healing, and inspiration to change the world.” This was my first in person talk in almost three years. The superintendents laughed at some of my jokes, but my timing was rusty since I had not performed live in years.

With her approval, I included Robin’s email to me in my PowerPoint why she thought I would be ideal to speak at this conference, “Instead of listening to boring HR polices that could have been handled in an email.”

When I shared Robin’s HR comment, it received a big laugh from the audience. The organizers of this conference joked about that line afterwards. They were still making jokes about dry HR presentations the next day.

I felt like I got my groove back with this talk. I did not know when I would return to North Carolina. In October, I messaged friends that I knew for many years that lived on Ocracoke in the Outer Banks if I could stay with them. They said yes. However, they insisted that I ‘sing for my supper’ by giving a climate change talk to over 50 middle and high school students in Ocracoke. Thus, I ended up giving two climate change talks on this 8-day trip to North Carolina.

While I was in North Carolina, I rented a car from Raleigh to the Outer Banks. The drive from Kill Devil Hills on the northern part of the Outer Banks to Ocracoke was stunningly beautiful with the beaches, lighthouses, and impressive bridges and ferries connecting the islands on the Outer Banks. My talk for the middle and high school students in Ocracoke went well overall. Teens are generally much tougher audiences for the jokes I like to share during my presentations.

It felt like I was back to my old self before the pandemic of traveling to other states once or twice a year to give climate change talks and doing sightseeing in between those talks. I will keep my fingers crossed that I will get more invitations like this in the future since I definitely seem to be a big step up from talks on “boring HR policies.”

Final Thoughts

Ok. I will admit. This blog is more like a book than a blog. My intention was to write about my breakthroughs of speaking on climate change in new states, as well as Washington D.C. and Ottawa Canada. Bless you if you made it all the way to the end. I wrote this blog for me. For me to document in one spot all the states, plus the world capital cities where I spoke.

When I gave my first climate change talk at my nephew Sam’s school on February 5, 2010, I had no idea that I would end up giving over 200 climate change talks in a dozen U.S. states and even outside of the U.S. I had no way of knowing that I would end up on national TV a couple of times, speak to over 200 people at the Grand Canyon, and be a breakout speaker at three Climate Reality Trainings led by Al Gore. I hoped something like this would happen to me. It is always completely unknowable what will happen in the future.

I still hope to give more climate change talks in more U.S. states, unusual locations and even internationally. I hope to give a TED talk and speak at prestigious locations. The invitations I receive come out of the blue very serendipitously. They just happen when they happen. The key is putting myself out there so more opportunities do happen. If you are reading this, I hope you will take a chance on me.

I want to use my life energy to create a higher consciousness for more climate action while having fun doing that. Most of all, I want to inspire you to up your game to act on climate.

Thank you for reading this!

• Correction: In writing a previous blog, I discovered that quote is misattributed to Maya Angelou. According to the Quote Investigator website (QI), which “records the investigatory work of Garson O’Toole who diligently seeks the truth about quotations.” According to QI, the quote actually originates from “1971 collection titled “Richard Evans’ Quote Book”. The statement was ascribed to Carl W. Buehner who was a high-level official in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.”

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.”
– Joseph Campbell from the 1987 book, Joseph Campbell and Power of Myth with Bill Moyers

A birthday is a good day to reflect upon what have I done with my life and where do I want to go from here. Five years ago, I did a blog of life reflection, “On turning 50 years old, reflections for my climate advocacy.“

In that blog, I wrote about pivotal years of my birth, age 10, 20, 30, 40 and turning age 50. I then focused on the advice I would give my 40-year-old self, since I grew up hearing my parents and their friends say, “Life begins at 40.”

My advice to my younger self: “Believe in you and keep your eye open for opportunities and people to meet because you will accomplish far more than you can even envision right now.”

I then listed and described my accomplishments, adventures and highlights from the age of 40 years old to 50 years old. I then ended the blog thinking about my own mortality. It is possible I have more yesterdays than tomorrows since it is statistically unlikely that I will reach 100 years old or now even 110 years old. It could happen. I am not fatalistic or pessimistic. I love life, but tomorrow is never guaranteed.

Here is how I ended that blog: “Now I am looking forward to my next 10 years. I sure hope to do something big in my 50s, like giving a TED Talk. If life begins at 40 and my life certainly felt like it did, I am eager to see what my 50s and beyond have for me. Let the adventure begin!”

I have not accomplished a TED Talk yet, but I hope to do that. However, I am now halfway through that ‘next 10 years.’ I had some fabulous high points and some crushing low points.

Earlier in 2023, I blogged, “For Climate Action, who’ll buy my memories?” That blog was a potential introductory chapter when I eventually write my autobiography or memoir about my life as a climate organizer. My goal is to write a memoir called From Park Ranger to Climate Activist: My peaks and valleys on this Journey. In that blog, I touched upon highlights and low lights from life from the past five years. This blog expands upon my life’s journey of the past five years.

July 2018 – Transitioning from a Tesla Motors employee to a Renew Oregon volunteer

In July 2018, I was in a mid-life crisis. Just nine days before my 50th birthday, I quit my job at Tesla Motors. That job was not a good fit for me. From January to June 2018, I worked at Tesla Energy selling solar panels at nearby Home Depots. As my first sales job in my career, It presented a big challenge for me to sell home solar systems to often skeptical and uninterested Home Depot customers.

This Tesla Energy job felt strange after working 25 years a park ranger in the national parks. People love park rangers. They treated me like a celebrity as a park ranger. I loved my seasonal park ranger job in the Everglades and Crater Lake National Parks, but I stopped working as a park ranger in October 2017. I wanted to organize for climate action. This Tesla sales job allowed me to set my own hours and schedule, enabling me the flexibility to be a climate organizer.

On June 12, 2018, I was lobbying Congressional Offices at the U.S. Capitol as part of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) Lobby Day. Suddenly, my iPhone exploded with texts and messages with my job. In the messages, I learned Tesla laid off my supervisor, the advisor manager, their regional boss and 9% of Tesla’s staff, mostly in the Tesla Energy Division.

When I returned to Portland days later, I received the news that my job transferred to Tesla Motors, located just south of downtown Portland. Sadly, the new job felt relentless and demoralizing for me with the long hours, long commute, unsupportive work environment, and stifling work culture. Therefore, I decided to leave that job on July 9, 2018.

That day I resigned from Tesla, my mind was in a fog. I was not sure what to do with my life. The Tesla store was in the south waterfront district just south of downtown. I decided to go to the Powell’s Books downtown store to restore my soul. Powell’s Books is a big landmark, institution, and tourist destination in Oregon. It claims to be “the largest used and new bookstore in the world, occupying an entire city block and housing approximately one million books.” After spending two hours there to cheer myself up after quitting a very stressful job, I walked towards a MAX commuter train stop to take public transit home.

During this walk, I ran into Sonny Mehta, an organizing Field Director for Renew Oregon. I first met Sonny October 22, 2017, two days before I departed Portland to start the 2017 The Oregon Stewardship Tour. In autumn 2017 and 2018, Renew Oregon was in the middle of organizing a campaign to lobby the Oregon Legislature to pass cap and trade legislation in the upcoming 2019 session. When I led The Oregon Stewardship Tour, Oregon CCL leadership wanted me to include information in my talks on Renew Oregon’s cap and trade policy. Thus, I stopped by the Renew Oregon office in downtown Portland just before I left for the 2017 tour. As I chatted with Sonny, he gave me handouts from Renew Oregon to share with Oregonians during my tour.

When I ran into Sonny on July 9, 2018, he asked what I was doing. I shared that I just quit my Tesla job. Sonny and I agreed to meet for coffee in a couple of days. He encouraged me to volunteer for Renew Oregon in their organizing efforts to get the Oregon Legislature to pass a cap-and-trade bill in the 2019 Oregon Legislative session. Looking to do the most effective climate action, I jumped at the opportunity to get involved with Renew Oregon. I soon joined their weekly organizing calls late in July.

July 2018 – My first efforts to fund raise for climate and political action

It took several weeks for me to be fully involved with Renew Oregon’s campaign. A few days before my 50th birthday, I choose to do something new to boost my morale. I posted a birthday fundraiser on Facebook for CCL on July 13th. My initial goal was to raise $200. I actively promoted this fundraiser and encouraged friends and family to contribute.

To my surprise, I blew past that $200 goal within a couple of days. I then set a goal to raise over $1000 by the time of my birthday. By the time of my birthday on July 18th, I raised over $1,137 for CCL. That far surpassed any expectations I had. I discovered a new talent and skill for myself: fundraising. Two years later in the fall of 2020, I co-hosted two virtual fundraising house parties for the campaign for Chris Gorsek for Oregon Senate and Shemia Fagan for Oregon Secretary of State. Those house parties went above expectations for fundraising.

In 2022, I co-hosted a successful fund-raising house party for my Oregon Senator Kayse Jama. From April to September, I was the Outreach Coordinator for the Raz Mason for Oregon Senate Campaign. I co-organized three house parties for her campaign. Furthermore, I encouraged local and national friends and family to contribute to her campaign. I helped raise over $7000 to her campaign. All my efforts for fundraising started with that 2018 fundraiser for CCL.

Around the time of my CCL birthday fundraiser, the Climate Reality Project (CPR) asked my permission to use my image for their fundraising campaign. CRP was originally known as the Alliance for Climate Projection. Al Gore established CRP in 2006 with the proceeds he received from the 2006 documentary film and book, An Inconvenient Truth, plus the prize money he received as the co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. CPR’s mission is “to recruit, train, and mobilize people of all walks of life to work for just climate solutions that speed energy transition worldwide and open the door to a better tomorrow for us all.”

Along with over 850 other climate advocates, I first attended a Climate Reality Project Training led by Al Gore in San Francisco in August 2012. Since then, I was a mentor to help train other Climate Reality Leaders in Chicago, Illinois in 2013, Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 2015, Houston, Texas in August 2016, Denver, Colorado in March 2017, and Bellevue, Washington in June 2017. After I became an active Climate Reality Leader after the 2012 San Francisco training, I frequently promoted CRP as a great organization to get involved with the climate movement.

By July 2018, CRP appreciated my efforts to promote them as I organized for climate action. Thus, I was honored when they selected two Climate Reality Leaders and me as the faces to represent their summer 2018 fundraising campaign.

August to November 2018: Actions as a public speaker, canvasser, and volunteer lobbyist

Around the time of that July fundraiser for Climate Reality Project, they invited me to be a breakout speaker for a co-presentation with another Climate Reality Leader for their upcoming training in Los Angeles August 28-30, 2018 . That took time to prepare that presentation and schedule time with the co-presenter Itzel Morales to get our talk ready for the training. Itzel and I gave this breakout session, “Mastering the Presentation” to several hundred people during this Climate Reality Training. We were very pleased how the presentation unfolded and the positive responses we received from fellow Climate Reality Leaders and mentors.

In September and October, I devoted consider time to canvass in Washington state for their 1631 ballot initiative to put a price on carbon. I knocked on many doors of the homes in Vancouver, Washington to urge these residents to vote for this carbon pricing initiative. This ballot measure lost by a vote of 43% to 56%. I was very proud of my efforts to engage with Washington state voters to support this climate action.

In mid-October, I organized a climate change speaking tour across my home state of Missouri. I gave presentations at my alma mater William Jewell College, Missouri University in Columbia, my alma mater Oakville High School, St. Louis University, and teaching a Climate Change 101 continuing education class at St. Louis Community College. It was a very successful tour with the presentations I gave across Missouri. The student newspaper for William Jewell College, The Hilltop Monitor, published an article on October 26, 2018 about my talk on the campus, “Brian Ettling presents the conservative case for a carbon tax at the 2018 Truex Economic Lecture.”

Before the 2018 Missouri climate speaking tour and while I canvassed for the 1631 ballot initiative, I deepened my involvement with Renew Oregon as they ramped up their efforts to urge Oregon Legislators to pass a cap-and-invest bill in the upcoming 2019 Legislative session.

During the summer of 2018, I started reaching out to my Oregon Legislators. In August 2018, fellow CCL volunteer and Climate Reality Leader KB Mercer and I met for coffee with our Democratic nominee for the Oregon Senate, Shemia Fagan. As constituents, we urged her to support the cap-and-invest bill in the upcoming 2019 Oregon Legislative session.

In addition, I wrote letters to my Oregon Representative Diego Hernandez. I met him for the first time on September 25, 2018, on a legislative working day at the Oregon state Capitol. We met for a second time on December 18, 2018 to urge him to support a Renew Oregon cap-and-invest bill. Both of my legislators were strong climate champions and dependable supporters of the legislation, so my meetings with them were positive experiences.

As a side note, I will point out that Shemia Fagan was elected as Oregon Secretary of State in November 2020. She resigned from that position in May 2023 because of ethical violations while serving in that position. In March 2021, Diego Hernandez resigned serving as a Representative from the Oregon Legislature due to multiple accusations of sexual harassment.

In both cases, the professional conduct of these two public servants disappointed me. I thought they took the appropriate position to resign their elected positions because they lost public trust with their ethical violations. Having acknowledged this, I still want to note both of these individuals were very supportive and generous with their time with me when I started lobbying them in 2018 to support the cap-and-invest bills.

Besides lobbying my state legislators, I wrote op-eds for Renew Oregon’s cap and trade bill for Oregon newspapers in the fall of 2018. On September 25, 2018, Klamath Falls Herald and News published a guest opinion that I wrote. “To reduce wildlife smoke, let’s act on climate change.” At that time, I was an active volunteer with Citizens’ Climate Lobby and Renew Oregon. Thus, it was fun for me to promote CCL’s carbon fee and dividend proposal and Renew Oregon’s Clean Energy Jobs Bill in one op-ed.

On October 6, 2018, the Bend Bulletin printed my guest column, “2018 drought and smoke should push us to act on climate change.” My op-eds for the Herald and News and the Bend Bulletin both referenced recent articles about the intense heat and smoked happening in Oregon that summer. In writing those op-eds, I then pivoted to the solution of supporting CCL’s carbon fee and dividend and Renew Oregon’s Clean Energy Jobs bill. These op-eds were published just days before I left for my October speaking tour in Missouri.

2018-19: Inviting guest speakers for Climate Reality Portland Chapter Monthly Meetings

On September 17, 2018, around the same time I volunteered with Renew Oregon, I attended the Climate Reality Portland Chapter monthly meeting. I was active with this group since I first moved to Portland in February 2017. At this meeting, I volunteered to be the Program Director recruiting guest speakers for the monthly meetings. For over the next year and four months, I enjoyed booking the local monthly speakers for the chapter meetings.

• For the October 2018 meeting, my friends Marvin Pemberton and Ken Pitts talked about how they give climate change presentation to the schools in the Portland area.
  
  
• At the November 2018 meeting, I booked Climate Reality Leader Katy Eymann from Bandon, Oregon shared about her latest efforts to stop the proposed Jordan Cove LNG pipeline and Sonny Mehta from Renew Oregon gave an update about the Clean Energy Jobs bill to price carbon pollution in Oregon.
  
  
• For the January 2019 meeting, I asked Lenny Dee, co-founder at Onward Oregon and Just Energy Transition Campaign Co-Coordinator for 350PDX, to share the latest about the Portland Clean Energy Fund and Climate Reality Leader Jane Stackhouse gave a summary on what was happening with Renew Oregon’s Clean Energy Jobs Bill.
  
  
• At the February 2019 meeting, I recruited 15-year-old organizers Jeremy Clark and Charlie Abrams to talk about their achievements in climate organizing and my friend Francine Chinitz gave a 10-minute presentation about Citizens’ Climate Lobby.
  
  
• For the March 2019 meeting, I reached out to Charlotte Shuff from the Community Energy Project, to share how her organization helps low-income renters in Portland with weatherization to reducing their utility costs. This also helps them lower their carbon footprint.
  
  
• For the May 2019 meeting, we invited chapter member Kate Gaertner, founder of TripleWin Advisory to present the necessity and opportunity of pursuing deep corporate sustainability measures within business. During the second half of the meeting, I gave a sample Truth in 10 Climate Reality Talk on the problem and solutions to climate change.

Organizing in 2019 to urge Oregon Legislators to pass the Clean Energy Jobs Bill (HB 2020)

For the first half of 2019, I was very involved volunteering to Renew Oregon to urge Oregon legislators to pass a cap and invest bill. It was introduced in the Oregon House as the Clean Energy Jobs Bill or HB 2020 on February 4, 2019.

Just two days after the bill’s introduction, I helped Renew Oregon turn out volunteers and participants for their Lobby Day at the Capitol in Salem on February 6th. Along with other CCL members and Climate Reality Leaders, I called over 160 volunteers across Oregon with CCL and Climate Reality Project to attend this rally and lobby their state legislators to pass HB 2020. Over 700 people attended this rally. The day after the rally, Sonny Mehta called me to thank me for all my efforts. He shared that many people told him that they were there because of CCL. He was blown away by CCL’s involvement and participation in the event.

Renew Oregon and their many volunteers, including me, lobbied the legislators extensively before and during the session to build good relationships with them. Therefore, we were confident we had the votes among the Democratic legislators in the Oregon House and Senate to pass this bill before the end of the legislative session. One of the highest moments of my climate organizing and for all the Renew Oregon climate organizers was the moment HB 2020 passed on the Oregon House floor on Tuesday, June 18, 2019.

The Clean Energy Jobs Bill moved on to the Senate floor where we had the Democratic votes to pass this bill. On June 20, 2019, it was very disheartening when Oregon Senate Republicans fled the state to deny the required 2/3 quorum for a floor vote for HB 2020. Over the next ten days, it felt more depressing as Republicans Senators refused to return to work until the Democrats agreed to kill HB 2020. It felt like a year of effort for me of numerous lobby meetings with legislators, attending organizing meetings, testifying at hearings, helping to organize events and rallies, encouraging residents across Oregon to contact their legislators, and countless trips to the Capitol in Salem was all going down the drain. It was a helpless feeling that a bitter defeat was about to happen and there was nothing we could do about it.

The bill had to pass the Legislature before the Sunday, June 30, 2019, the last day of the session or it would die. The last day of the session is known on the Oregon Legislative calendar as Sine Die. According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary Sine Die means, “without any future date being designated (as for resumption): indefinitely. the meeting (or legislative session) is adjourned.” We hoped for a miracle that the GOP Senators would come to their senses and return to Oregon. However, it looked bleaker each day.

On Tuesday, June 25th, Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney announced that he did not have the Democratic votes to pass HB 2020. Therefore, the bill was dead. On Friday, June 28th the Republican Senators returned to Salem to vote on the remaining legislative bills before the Sine Die happened. I felt so numb that a major bill on climate action failed. I had no energy in July 2019. I did not want to get off the couch for weeks. Fortunately, I had other climate actions happening at that time that gave me some hope.

June 2019 to February 2020: Persuading a Member of Congress to co-sponsor a climate bill

From November 2015 to November 2018, I attended 6 Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) Conferences and Lobby Days in Washington D.C. I participated in numerous CCL lobby meetings with Congressional staff to ask them to support CCL’s preferred policy of a climate bill that included a carbon fee and dividend. On November 27, 2018, a small bipartisan group of House members and U.S. Senators introduced Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (EICDA).

This climate bill was first introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Democratic Reps. Ted Deutch (D-FL-22), Charlie Crist (D-FL-13), and John K. Delaney (D-MD-06), as well as Republican Reps. Francis Rooney (R-FL-19) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA-08), On December 19, 2018, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) and Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware) introduced bipartisan Senate version.

Those versions of EICDA died when the new session of Congress started on January 3, 2019. However, the House version of the EICDA was re-introduced on January 24, 2019. In the 6 previous times I lobbied with CCL in Washington D.C, I never persuaded the staff of a member of Congress to support or co-sponsor climate legislation.

I only had one face to face meeting with a member of Congress, U.S. Senator Clair McCaskill of Missouri, on November 17, 2016. This meeting happened just 9 days after Donald Trump was elected President. During a morning coffee meeting with her and other constituents, I voiced my concerns about climate change. She retorted, ‘Good luck with anything good happening with climate policies for the next four years.’

This face-to-face meeting did not go well. My hunch was that I would probably have better success persuading Congressional staff to support a climate bill than a member of Congress. If the Congressional staff likes your policy, you may have a powerful ally that can help sway the Representative or Senator to support your position.

This strategy turned out to be successful for me in June 2019 when CCL volunteers and I met with the Washington D.C. Congressional staff of Representative Frederica Wilson, Florida District 24. We had a very productive conversation with her Legislative Correspondent, Devin Wilcox. Devin seemed very supportive of the EICDA. I very distinctly heard Devon say towards the end of the meeting that he felt his boss Rep. Wilson could easily co-sponsor our bill.

The Florida CCL volunteers and Washington D.C. CCL staff stayed in touch with Devin for months afterwards. I reached out to Florida CCL volunteers periodically to make sure they were in contact with Devin regularly. That June 2019 meeting, plus CCL volunteer and staff follow up conversations with Devin led to Congresswoman Frederica Wilson to join with 95 of her U.S. House colleagues to co-sponsor the EICDA on February 24, 2020.

Inviting Kelsey Juliana to speak at our June 2019 Climate Reality Portland Chapter Event

As Program Director for the Portland Climate Reality Project Chapter, I asked the Chapter Leadership Team in the spring of 2019 for suggestions for a speaker for the June 2019 meeting. Someone suggested that we reach out to Kelsey Juliana one of the lead plaintiffs for a Youth vs. Gov court case, officially known as Juliana vs. the United States. Their complaint asserts that the federal government’s affirmative actions cause climate change. Therefore, it violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, as well as failed to protect essential public trust resources.

Kelsey is originally from Eugene, Oregon. In June 2019, she was a college student at the University of Oregon in Eugene. She is the oldest of the youth 21 plaintiffs taking on the federal government. The plaintiffs in this lawsuit were represented by the non-profit Our Children’s Trust, located in Eugene, Oregon. Hence, that’s why her name is on the lawsuit. The CBS TV show 60 minutes featured these plaintiffs, including Kelsey Juliana, on their March 3, 2019 broadcast.

I emailed Kelsey at the end of April 2019 and she responded that she would be “be happy to come up and present.”

Our leadership team decided to go big for scheduling this event on June 18, 2019. We secured an event space in northeast Portland, known as Tabor Space. The Sanctuary Room at this venue could hold up to 250 people. One member of our Leadership Team, Jonathan Bailey, was able to persuade the City Club of Portland to help co-sponsor the event. The City Club was a terrific partner helping to split the rental costs of the large room at Tabor Space with us. Everything was falling into place for a fabulous event to happen.

The turnout exceeded our expectations. We estimated over 220 people at this event. We had a professional videographer record the event to Vimeo. The Leadership Team chose me as the MC (or Master of Ceremonies) to give the introductions and announcements during the event.

Overall, the event went fantastic. I was very proud to have participated in it, sent the initial email to invite Kelsey Juliana to the event, and to be the MC for the event. I was honored to get my picture with Kelsey Juliana. The full credit to making this event a success really goes to Amy Hall-Bailey and her husband Jonathan Bailey, as well as Brenna Burke, Deborah Lev, Wally Shriner, Brittany Kimzey, Jane Stackhouse, Steve Holgate, the Portland City Club, and many others. My friend and fellow Climate Reality Leader Ken Pitts took wonderful pictures of the event. It was great to be at the right place at the right time to see this event come together.

We really did appreciate Kelsey Juliana and Our Children’s Trust for their time and participation. Kelsey was an enthusiastic and engaging speaker with the audience.

Organizing two big climate events in Portland OR in August 2019 and January 2020

In June 2019, Deb Lev, the Chapter Chair of the Portland Climate Reality Chapter, announced to the Leadership Team that she intended to step down. She quickly needed an interim Chair for our Chapter to replace her. I wanted to take the chapter up to the next level so I asked The Leadership Team if I could take on the role. At that time, I served as the Program Manager on the Leadership Team. That role organized the monthly meetings and inviting guest speakers. I would continue as Program Manager, along with performing as the interim Chapter Chair.

As Chapter Chair, I wanted to organize two big events over the next six months to urge legislators to take another shot at a cap and invest bill. With these two big events, my goal was for the Climate Reality Portland Chapter to become well known in Portland, Oregon. I hoped that more recognition would help us attract more members and energize our membership. Even more, I intended that we partner more closely with other climate and environmental groups in the Portland area to help get climate legislation passed in the 2020 Oregon legislative session.

With approval of the Leadership Team, I organized two very successful events. The first was held at a local theater in Milwaukie, OR on September 16, 2019. We filled this theater with over 80 local climate advocates and Climate Reality Leaders for an event called: “Climate Legislation: Where do we go from here in Oregon?” We had a panel of three speakers: Milwaukie Mayor Mark Gamba, Dylan Kruse from Sustainable Northwest and Shilpa Joshi from Renew Oregon.

At this event, we encouraged folks to fill out post cards to their legislators. We ended up with 50 postcards and 11 letters. Two days later, I took the train to Salem. I delivered the postcards and letters to legislators at their offices at the state Capitol. They just happened to be having a workday in Salem that same day.

We had another large Climate Reality Portland Chapter event on January 21, 2020, attended by over 100 people. We packed the meeting space at the Hollywood Senior Center in northeast Portland. The speakers were Oregon Senator Michael Dembrow and Oregon Representative Karin Power, the chief sponsors of the 2019 Clean Energy Jobs Bill. At this gathering, I encouraged attendees to fill out postcards to their legislators urging them to support the cap and invest bill for the 2020 legislative session. I had another huge stack of filled out postcards to take to the Oregon Capitol. I was exhausted from organizing these events.

At both events, I shot 4 second videos with the packed audience hold up pieces of paper that read, “CLIMATE ACTION NOW!” I then had the audience shout in unison with their fists pumped: “CLIMCATE ACTION NOW!” I sent these videos to Climate Reality staff to use these videos as they see fit, but I did not get much of a response.

Similar to the Milwaukie event, I had a big stack of postcards and letter filled from the attendees to their Oregon senators and representatives urging the legislators to pass the cap and invest bill during the 2020 legislative session.

Organizing an Oregon legislative resolution for climate action

I did not know it at the time, but this was the last Climate Reality Portland Chapter event or any kind of climate event that I organized. At the end of February 2020, the House and Senate Republicans walked out of the legislative session killing all the bills waiting to be passed that session, including the cap and invest bill. For the second legislative session in a row, Republican legislators used a walk out to deny a 2/3 required quorum to kill a climate bill. It was another kick in the stomach and depressing defeat.

On the bright side, Oregon Governor Kate Brown did not take that bad news lying down. On March 10, 2020, she signed bold climate executive orders aimed to cut Oregon’s greenhouse gas emissions. Governor Brown signed her climate executive orders surrounded by youth active in the climate movement. Governor Brown’s office invited climate advocates from around the state to attend, such as Renew Oregon volunteers. Thus, I was part of the group in her office to watch her sign the climate executive orders. That day provided hope and some solace, but the defeats of the cap and invest bills still felt like open wounds.

The bright spot of Governor Brown’s executive climate orders soon ended. Within a couple days, by the the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns loomed over everything. All events, meetings, and indoor activities soon cancelled indefinitely. For years, I was very active in the climate movement planning meetings, organizing events, lobbying, attending hearing, etc. All my climate organizing seemed like it fell off a cliff overnight. I was not sure what to do. I was very depressed.

In March 2020, I resigned as the interim Chair and Program Director of the Climate Reality Portland Chapter. I was burned out from the feuding within the Leadership Team over the previous six months. Fortunately, the bad apples within the Leadership Team who caused the strife left, but I then I had no energy or motivation left to lead the chapter after all the battles with them.

At the same time, I found ways to bounce back from the lowest times. During the summer of 2020 while the COVID pandemic was still raging, I met with numerous Oregon legislators by phone and Zoom. I led the efforts with Oregon CCL volunteers for over 30 Oregon legislators to endorse the CCL federal bill, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (EICDA). During one of these meetings, Oregon Rep. Tiffiny Mitchell asked if she could introduce a state resolution endorsing the EICDA. Representative Mitchell did not run for re-election. Thus, Senator Michael Dembrow proudly introduced the resolution on the Oregon Senate floor on February 4, 2021, when it officially became known as Senate Joint Memorial 5 or SJM 5.

SJM 5 passed the Oregon Senate on April 7th by a vote of 23 to 5, with 6 Republican Senators, half of the Oregon GOP Senate caucus, joined all the Democratic Senators present to vote to support it. Unfortunately, SJM 5 fell short of receiving a floor vote in the Oregon House in June 2021. It was exciting was that 30 House members, including 7 Republicans, signed on to co-sponsor it. The Oregon House has 60 members. Half the chamber was SJM 5 co-sponsors.

The worst part of this defeat was Oregon CCL leadership becoming very angry when the OR House Democratic Leadership refused to give SJM 5 a floor vote. After I experienced two dreadful GOP walkouts that defeated the 2019 and 2020 cap and invest bills, I never believed SJM 5 would pass until I saw it with my own eyes. The Oregonian published an opinion editorial (op-ed) from Oregon CCL leadership and I disagreed with the tone. Former Rep. Tiffiny Mitchell advised us not to publish it since it seemed to attack OR House Democratic Leadership.

I pleaded with the Oregonian and Oregon CCL leadership to re-edit the op-ed to be more gracious, but they ignored my input. Oregon CCL leadership then organized a protest at the Capitol that I did not want to participate. It looked pointless. OR House Leadership conveyed to me in a clear message that SJM 5 would not receive a vote. The reactions of the CCL Leadership Team after SJM 5 died left me feeling disenchanted with CCL and the climate movement.

My comeback after the COVID Pandemic setback and defeat of the Oregon resolution

In autumn of 2021, I began writing a blog which turned into over 82 pages of writing. It looked like a possible book with the title Why I Quit the Climate Movement. However, that title and those writings felt too pessimistic. I set those writings aside in 2022 to work on political campaigns for state legislators. I focused on trying to elect local Democratic candidates who would protect our democracy. The violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 frightened me that we came close to losing our democracy. Former Vice President Gore said it best years ago, ‘In order to fix the climate crisis, we first must fix the democracy crisis.’

As a climate organizer, I devoted my energy in 2022 to elect local Democratic candidates who would be strong on enacting climate policies and protecting our democracy. Out of nowhere, Robin Riddlebarger, Park Superintendent of Hanging Rock State Park, North Carolina sent me an email in May 2022. She asked me if I would speak to a group of crusty park superintendents at their annual conference of North Carolina State Parks Superintendents in November 2022.

I jumped at this opportunity to travel to North Carolina to give a climate change talk to these state park superintendents. I had a great time speaking at this conference on November 14, 2022. It felt like I had my groove back giving an in-person climate change talk for the first time since before the COVID pandemic started in March 2020.

In August 2022, my South County Toastmasters group, where I was a member from 2011-17, invited me to be a guest speaker. I gave a short climate change talk to them on April 19, 2023, Reaching for Your Dreams, when I traveled to St. Louis to visit with family for over a week.

In June, I traveled to Washington D.C. for the Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) conference and lobby day. Because of the COVID 19 pandemic, this was first scheduled in-person conference and lobby day since November 2019, about 3 and a half years ago. I had many frustrations with CCL over the years, especially how the SJM 5 resolution ended. Thus, I had a hard time deciding if I wanted to go to Washington D.C. to attend their conference and lobby day.

The key factor that pushed me to register to attend the CCL conference and lobby day was the CNN town hall with Donald Trump on May 10th. It upset me that CNN allowed this twice impeached, indicted, disgraced former president to say a lot of false information with very little real time fact checking. Even worse, the audience cheered with approval when he lied about the 2020 Presidential election was stolen from him. It still seemed like our democracy was under severe threat from Donald Trump and this modern Trumpist movement.

Thus, I chose to lobby with CCL in Washington D.C. for climate action to celebrate our democracy and stress the importance of climate action. Yes, I felt raw how CCL treated me over the years. However, my love for our democracy and passion for climate action was a higher priority for me than my misgivings about CCL. Thus, I bought my airline tickets and registered for the CCL conference and lobby day just a couple of days before the May 21st deadline. I really do try to live my life by the Winston Churchill quote:

“It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required.”

I was glad I attended this CCL conference and lobby day. It was great to see fellow climate advocates that I had not seen in over three and a half years. Even more, my three lobby meetings on Capitol Hill were productive. The best part was a brief conversation that two other CCL friends from Oregon and I had with Congresswoman Andrea Salinas. We were originally scheduled to have a face-to-face meeting with her. However, on the CCL lobby day, that meeting changed to a staff level meeting when the time of one of her committee meetings changed.

My friend Walt and I spotted her in a Congressional hallway. She recognized us from when we lobbied her on climate during her time as an Oregon legislator. We asked if we could chat with her as she walked briskly to her office. She happily agreed. During this quick chat, I asked her if she would co-sponsor the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (EICDA), if it was re-introduced. Rep. Salinas endorsed the EICDA as a state representative in 2020. Even more, she was one of the first legislators to co-sponsor the SJM 5 resolution in 2021. She indicated that it was a possibility co-sponsor the EICDA, but she would want to read the bill first.

Then she was nearly at her office. I wanted to give her time and space to go to her next scheduled commitment. In the rush of everything happening, I asked if we could get a picture with her. She graciously obliged to get a selfie photo on with her along with Oregon CCL friends Walt Mintkeski and Tamara Staton.

Final Thoughts

In 2023, I am focusing my efforts on writing blogs that I hope to eventually turn into a memoir. As I wrote in the opening paragraphs of this blog, my working title for a book is From Park Ranger to Climate Activist: My Peaks and Valleys on this Journey. I hope someone would be interested in reading my life stories as a park ranger to climate organizer.

As I look forward in my life, I hope to turn my blogs on the www.climatechangecomedian.com website into a book or two. I still hope I to do something big in the last five years of my 50s, like giving a TED Talk. For many years, I dreamed of going to grad school to learn how to become a better climate organizer. I still would love to get a dream job as a climate organizer. I don’t have a clue how to do that yet. I hope that path becomes more apparent in the next few years.

Life is a gift. I believe that Joseph Campbell said it best:

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.”

I want to use my remaining years, which is hopefully many years, to experience life fully that I can inspire others, hopefully you, to make a difference to reduce the threat of climate change.

“Fight for the things that you care about but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

– Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court

As a climate organizer, one of my proudest accomplishments was organizing three large climate events. I am a climate change speaker who has given talks to groups of over 200 people. At the same time, it was fun for me to plan three separate events where I packed a large room with over 80 and even 100 people to see speakers that I had invited. All of these events happened before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when it was easier to gather large groups of people. I organized one of these events in St. Louis, Missouri in 2017 and two in the Portland, Oregon area. My final large event happened in Portland in January 2020, less than 6 weeks from when the COVID pandemic shutdown started.

I learned a lot from organizing these events. These events would not have been a success without friends from the Climate Reality St. Louis Meet Group (now known as Climate Meetup-St. Louis), the St. Louis Chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) the Climate Reality Portland Chapter, the Metro Climate Action Team, and the CCL Portland, Oregon Chapter. I wanted to share my story of organizing these three large events with this blog as I aim to document about my life as a climate change organizer.

My Climate Change story

As I blogged about previously, I was a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon and Everglades National Park, Florida for 25 years from 1992 to 2017.

In 1998, I started giving ranger talks in Everglades National Park. Visitors then asked me about this global warming thing. Visitors hate when park rangers tell you, “I don’t know.” Visitors expect park rangers to know everything. Don’t you?

Soon afterwards, I rushed to the nearest Miami bookstore and to the park library to read all I the scientific books I could find on climate change.

The information I learned really scared me, specifically sea level rise along our mangrove coastline in Everglades National Park. Sea level rose 8 inches in the 20th century, four times more than it had risen in previous centuries for the past three thousand years. Because of climate change, sea level is now expected to rise at least three feet in Everglades National Park by the end of the 21st century. The sea would swallow up most of the park and nearby Miami since the highest point of the park road less than three feet above sea level.

It shocked me that crocodiles, alligators, and Flamingos I enjoyed seeing in the Everglades could all lose this ideal coastal habitat because of sea level rinse enhanced by climate change.

I became so worried about climate change that I quit my winter job in Everglades National Park in 2008. I moved back to my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri in the winters to give speeches and organized about climate change. However, up until 2017, I still worked my summer job Crater Lake National Park. I loved the incredible beauty there and wearing the ranger uniform with pride while engaging with park visitors.

During my winters in St. Louis, I started organizing slowly for climate action because I was unsure how to go about it. I started giving climate change talks at my nieces and nephews grade schools in the spring of 2010. In the winter of 2011, I joined South County Toastmasters to become a better climate change communicator. That same winter, I worked at the St. Louis Science Center at their temporary climate change exhibit from March to May 2011.

Up until 2017, I still worked my summer job Crater Lake National Park. While working there for many years, the impacts of climate change became apparent with the average annual snowpack diminishing. I noticed more mild winters with below average snowpacks. The summer wildfire seasons became more longer, hotter, dryer and more intense. By August 2011, I had gathered enough information to start giving a climate change ranger evening program at the campground amphitheater to the park visitors.

Getting involved with Citizens Climate Lobby and The Climate Reality Project

In April 2011, while attending a St. Louis Science Center lecture about how climate change is impacting the weather , I met and became friends with St. Louis businessman Larry Lazar. We had a mutual longing to do something about climate change. Thus, Larry and I co-founded the St. Louis Climate Reality Meet Up group in November 2011 (now called Climate Meetup-St. Louis) to organize regular meetings and promote events in the St. Louis area to create more awareness about climate change.

Larry and I had our first meeting at Cafe Ventana in St. Louis on December 11, 2011. Larry organized the meeting around all of us getting to know each other and our concerns about climate change. We had about 16 people attend the meeting, including Tom and Carol Braford. Larry did a great job making our initial Meet Up meeting a success. After the meeting, I will never forget Carol personally inviting me to a Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) conference call meeting.

Over that winter of 2011-12, Larry Lazar and I led our Climate Reality Meet Up meeting on the third Sunday of each month. Up to 20 people attended our meetings, including Tom & Carol Braford. Carol was very persistent in promoting CCL and inviting me to their meetings. I felt in a bind because attending a CCL meeting intrigued me, but my job schedule made it hard.

Finally, the timing was right when my winter seasonal job ended at the Science Center at the end of April. I was free Saturday, May 5th. I was very impressed with CCL and immediately became involved. At the close of the meeting, I boldly told Carol that I was going to establish a CCL group in southern Oregon when I returned to Crater Lake National Park to work as a park ranger that summer. It took all summer, but I eventually helped establish the southern Oregon CCL chapter that regularly meets in Ashland, Oregon.

In 2011 and into 2012, I also became very interested in the Climate Reality Project (CRP), founded in 2007 by former Vice President Al Gore. I networked with friends involved with CRP to see if I could attend one of their trainings. In the spring of 2012, I applied to attend their next three-day U.S. training that was scheduled in San Francisco in August 21-23. In June 2012, CRP invited over 850 applicants, including Larry and me, to attend this training. As trained Climate Reality Leaders, Larry and I started giving climate change presentations in the St. Louis area that winter. Larry and I gave several joint presentations with Lucas Sabalka, a mathematics professor at St. Louis University who had also attended the Climate Reality San Francisco Training.

In the winter of 2012-2013, Larry, Lucas, and I gave several joint Climate Reality Presentations to large audiences at churches in the St. Louis area. Lucas and his wife left St. Louis in May 2013 to accept a job in his hometown on Lincoln, Nebraska. Up until January 2017, Larry Lazar and I continued to organize monthly meet up events and give regular joint Climate Reality presentations in the St. Louis area. Larry and I gave climate change presentations at some of monthly meet ups, but we mostly invited other speakers.

Because of the magic of Skype and Zoom, we brought in national speakers such as

• Scott Mandia, Professor of Earth and Physical Sciences and Assistant Chair of the Physical Sciences Department at Suffolk County Community College, Long Island, New York. He co-authored the book, Rising Sea Levels: An Introduction to Cause and Impact highlighting the impact of sea level rise on 25 major cities around the world.
  
  
• Dr. Michael E. Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of several books. Dr. Mann is well known as creator of the “Hockey Stick” temperature graph, an icon in the intense political battle over human-caused climate change.
  
  
• John Cook, founder of the Skeptical Science website in 2007. He is now a Senior Research Fellow with the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne. John authored several books on climate changes, such as Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand. More recently, in 2020 he wrote and drew the cartoon illustrations for the book, Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change: How to Understand and Respond to Climate Science Deniers.
  
  
• Peter Sinclair, a Michigan-based videographer, specializing in climate change and renewable energy issues. He has created hundreds of educational videos correcting climate science misinformation, including his independent “Climate Denial Crock of the Week” series, and the monthly “This is Not Cool” series for Yale Climate Connections, which has run since February 2012.
  
  
• Brian Malow, Earth’s Premier Science Comedian (self-proclaimed). He was featured on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, co-hosted shows on The Weather Channel, and been profiled in Nature, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. “Brian worked in science communications at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, and blogged for Scientific American. His website describes Brian “as currently freelancing as a speaker, performer, consultant, writer, producer, and whatnot.”
  
  
• Dr. Richard Alley, a Professor of Geosciences at Penn State. He was presenter for the PBS TV miniseries on climate and energy Earth: The Operator’s Manual and author of the book. His book The Two-Mile Time Machine, tells a riveting history of global climate changes that is discovered by reading the annual rings of ice from cores drilled in Greenland.
  
  
• Dr. Margaret Klein Salamon, a clinical psychologist turned climate activist who founded and directed The Climate Mobilization from 2014-2020. She is the Founding Principal of Climate Awakening, a project to help foster the power of climate emotions through meaningful small group conversations. She is the author of Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth, a self-help guide for the climate emergency.
  
  
• Karen Street, a science writer and retired teacher who helps educate the public on climate change science and solutions, sharing the best understanding of scientists and economists. She has a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from UC, Berkeley. She worked as an electrical engineer for several years before becoming a high school math and physics teacher until 1994. As she transitioned to become a science writer, Karen researched the differences between coal and nuclear energy and became aware of the serious threats from climate change. Since then she has become a strong proponent of nuclear energy as a key solution to address climate change.
  
  
• Sam Daley-Harris, an organizer, author, and founder of the anti-poverty organization RESULTS. He wrote a very inspiring book for organizers, Reclaiming Our Democracy, Healing the Break Between People and Government. In 2012 Daley-Harris launched the Center for Citizen Empowerment and Transformation to help organizations more deeply engage their supporters and create champions in Congress and the media for their cause. With his background of creating and building RESUTS, Sam was a mentor to Marshall Saunders over 15 years ago when Marshall created Citizens’ Climate Lobby.
  

I met nearly all these speakers at scientific or climate conferences. However, Larry had a genuine gift of recruiting nearly all these guest speakers and turning out good size audiences in the St. Louis area. The exception was I successfully invited Peter Sinclair, Brian Malow, and Sam Daley-Harris to speak to our Climate Reality St. Louis Meet Up. Because of Skype and later Zoom, I marveled how fabulous it was to be able to invite these national speakers to chat with us by video over 10 years ago, before it became commonplace today.

Organizing my first large meet up event in St. Louis with over 80 people in attendance

In January 2017, my wife interviewed for a job in Portland, Oregon, so we knew we had a good chance of moving there. She accepted the position towards the end of the month, so we decided to move to Portland in early February. Before we knew for sure we were moving, I wanted to start off 2017 on a positive note as a climate organizer.

January 2017 felt very gloomy with Donald Trump’s inauguration as President. Trump vowed to reverse all of Obama’s climate policies. Climate advocates viewed this with a sense of doom and a heaviness of not knowing what to do next. I believed I had the perfect speaker in mind to provide hope and inspiration to St. Louis area climate activists: Jay Butera. He was a volunteer with CCL from Gladwyne, PA. In 2016, after years of effort, “Jay was the concept-originator and driving force behind formation of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.” For several years, Jay served as CCL’s Senior Congressional Liaison in Washington, working to maintain a continuous year-round presence for CCL in the Halls of Congress.

In November and December 2017 it took several emails to Jay and a few mutual friends reaching out to him for Jay to say Yes to speak to our Meet Up. We met via Skype in mid-January to plan this event.

Jay and I agreed upon the date of Sunday, January 29, 2017. He would speak to us live by video link at Schlafly’s Bottle Works in St. Louis, Missouri. Before Jay spoke, he wanted me to play the 2016 National Geographic Years of Living Dangerously episode, “Safe Passage.” This episode featured former West Wing TV star Bradley Whitford returning to Washington D.C. to try to lobby Republicans to act on climate change. In the process, he learns about Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) and CCL’s Senior Congressional Liaison in Washington D.C, Jay Butera.

Larry Lazar and I found a way to pack the room with 80 people to hear Jay Butera speak that evening. You could have heard a pin drop when I played that Years of Living Dangerously episode for the audience. They gave Jay a resounding applause when the video stopped. The audience seemed to hang onto every word that Jay spoke. He seemed to have gained a deep respect from this audience. Many folks in this audience were progressives, deeply cynical about Republicans or any politicians solving climate change. They felt deep hurt by the outcome of the 2016 election with the recent inauguration of Donald Trump as President. You could feel Jay giving them a sense of hope and a way to step forward on climate. Jay showed a way to reach Republicans on the issue of climate. It had a sincere impact on this audience.

As a climate organizer, it felt like a peak moment for me. Around that time, I found that that Madeleine Para, then Vice President of Programming for CCL, reluctantly approved of Jay speaking to our Climate Reality St. Louis Meet Up. However, she made it clear that she did not want Jay to speak to any other CCL or climate group. She strictly wanted him to be focused on lobbying members of Congress in Washington D.C.

I wish Madeleine could have been in that room that evening to see how Jay was impacting progressive, more cynical climate advocates. That felt bittersweet at the event that I successfully persuaded Jay Butera to speak this this St. Louis group. At the same time, there seemed to be a bit of resentment from national CCL that I persuaded Jay Butera to speak to this CCL group. When Jay spoke at that meeting, I could not think of a better speaker at that moment. I was very proud of what I had accomplished in that moment and place for climate action.

Unfortunately, everything soon went sideways at this meeting and this era of good feelings quickly fell apart. After Jay spoke, Larry Lazar took over for the second half of the meeting. Early that week, Larry asked me if he could invite a new group to attend this meeting. It was a group I had never hear of before called Indivisible. At that time, I thought they were called Invincible.

Early that same day, there was a protest rally at Lambert International Airport to express over the ban of Muslim immigrants to the U.S. that the new President Donald Trump had just imposed with an execute order. Most of this audience came directly from that protest. They were still simmering with anger over this recent decree by Donald Trump.

They made those feelings very clear when the break was over and we moved into the second half of this meet up. The good vibe that Jay Butera had dispelled over the room suddenly evaporated. One of the first speakers said: ‘I am mad as hell at Donald Trump and something must be done immediately to stop him. We need to impeach him!”

The room then burst into a strong applause. I urged them to follow the path that Jay Butera laid out for us just a few minutes earlier. I tried to counter with a sense of reason that even if we impeached Trump, we would then have a President Mike Pence. I pleaded with the audience that a President Pence would also be terrible for America, especially on the issue of climate change.

Someone yelled out from the audience at me: “I DON’T CARE!”

It felt like I lost control of this audience that they just wanted to grab some pitch forks and storm the castle. Someone else got up to speak that he creates puppets for protest movements, and he wanted to know if anyone would join him. That felt like a face palm moment to me.

It looked like Jay Butera’s message got drown out by the anger towards Donald Trump. I kept thinking: ‘Where were these people in 2016 to organize with the Democrats to prevent Donald Trump from becoming President?’ Most of these folks knew in 2016 that Trump was a threat to climate action, women’s rights, immigration, and our democracy. Yet, they seemed to understate the threat and were super angry now. I felt speechless in that moment.

After another round expressing how angry they were, I responded than you cannot just be against something. Then you automatically have opposition and resistance. You must be smart about your protest, or you can fail. Internally, I was thinking about the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protest. In my view, the 2016 Bernie Sanders movement did not seem to comprehend this.

From a 2016 Toastmasters speech I gave, I shared with this audience an example of something to be in favor of: China plans on spending $361 million dollars on clean energy in the next several years. By that time, they were the world’s largest market and manufacture of solar panels. They also installed more wind turbines than anyone else in 2015 (not sure about the figures for 2016 then). China plans on kicking our ass in the renewable energy race. If we really jump all in on the renewable energy race we clean up our air, provide tons of jobs, grow our economy, become truly energy independent, and best of all, reduce the threat of climate change.

Sadly, my words just seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Larry Lazar soon wrapped up this meeting. Before he adjourned the meeting, Larry announced that my wife Tanya and I were moving from St. Louis to Portland, Oregon in a few days. He shared how much he enjoyed co-organizing the St. Louis Climate Reality Meet Up group with me. His voice seemed almost choked up as he was announcing this. I sure did appreciate Larry saying that. At the same time, I felt deflated from the second half of the meeting. It felt like we lost all momentum for folks in the room to join CCL or try to follow Jay Butera’s example.

After the meeting, I walked up to Larry Lazar who was relaxed and enjoying a beer with an attendee. I asked Larry if he knew inviting the Indivisible or Invincible folks could lead to an uneven meeting like that. Larry responded that if he had not invited Indivisible, we would not have had that huge crowd that evening. He went on to very coldly say, ‘To be honest, I invited them because I doubted most of those folks would be interested in coming to see Jay Butera.’

Larry’s words stung. I had nothing left to say and I just left. Our relationship never seemed to be the same. It was a shame because he was the best man at my wedding on November 1, 2015. I asked him to be my best man because of the great relationship we had co-founding the Climate Reality St. Louis Meet Up group.

A few days later, Tanya and I moved to Portland, Oregon. Larry then dropped out of the climate movement. We lost touch soon afterwards. Larry and I exchanged emails this year. In April 2023, Tanya and I went to St. Louis for a week to celebrate my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. During this visit, I accepted an invitation to give a climate change speech to my old Toastmasters group, South County Toastmasters. I sent Larry an email inviting him to my speech.

He did respond that he would try to make it. He went on to say: “I’m taking classes (on-line) to learn about solar with the hopes of becoming involved in the solar industry. Maybe even becoming an installer or sales person. I’m open to either and will be starting from the ground up. I think it will be the best use of my time and skills going forward.”

Larry did not come to my Toastmasters speech. However, I was happy to hear that he found a new way to be involved in the climate movement. When I knew him well 10 years ago, he constantly organized climate events and gave climate change talks in the St. Louis area. I was sorry to see that he dropped out of the climate movement in recent years. I assumed that he became very busy with work as a businessman, and he could not handle the distraction of climate organizing anymore. If he puts his mind into solar installation like he did for creating and organizing the Climate Reality St. Louis Meet Up group, I know he will be a success as a solar installer.

As time passed, I am now incredibly proud of that Climate Reality St. Louis Meet Up event with Jay Butera as the guest speaker. I have not seen Jay at the most recent CCL conferences in Washington D.C. He seems to have dropped out of CCL, except for now just being a member of CCL’s Advisory Board. I was delighted to show that Years of Living Dangerously episode with Jay Butera and to see how it positively touched the audience.

The first half of that event went beautifully. I don’t dwell about the second half of the event now. I chalk it up to the anger and despair that all of us climate advocates were feeling when Donald Trump became President in 2017. Thank goodness all of us climate activists and so many other Americans found a way to defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential election.

Leading Climate Change speaking tours in Missouri and Oregon in 2017

After Tanya and I moved to Oregon, it would be a couple of years before I would organize a large climate event like I did in St. Louis in January 2017. When Tanya and I decided that we were moving to Portland in February 2017, I had to call climate friends in Missouri to let them know we were moving so I could not organize events in Missouri with them anymore. At that time, I was the co-state CCL Coordinator in Missouri with George Laur, who lives in Jefferson City, Missouri. George was happy for Tanya and me, but he was sad because we really did enjoy working with each other. George then said to me: ‘Looks like you will have to fly back to Missouri in March because I am planning for you to speak in Jefferson City and Kirksville, Missouri.’

After Tanya and I moved to Portland in February 2017, I became very active as a volunteer in the Portland, Oregon Chapter of CCL. I immediately loved living in Portland, but it felt like ‘a blue bubble’ with many people living there who are passionate about climate change and taking climate action. Thus, I envisioned a road tour to travel to central, southern, and eastern Oregon to inspire Oregonians in those more rural areas to organize for climate action and join CCL.

The CCL volunteers and I who organized this tour called it The Oregon Stewardship Tour. We thought that taking climate action, especially with urging Congress to pass a carbon fee and dividend, is one of the best ways to be good stewards of Oregon’s precious air, and and water.

It was also one of the bravest and boldest feats I have done driving 1,600 miles myself in my car to 11 cities for this 12-day tour from October 24 to November 4, 2017. I traveled to give presentations in La Grande, Baker City, John Day, Burns, Prineville, Redmond, Lakeview, Klamath Falls, and Grants Pass to talk to rural and conservative Oregonians about climate change.

This tour was a huge undertaking for me. For a recap, I had

9 public outreach events
2 lobby meetings with district offices of Rep. Greg Walden
2 newspaper editorial board meetings
2 live radio interviews
4 published articles in Oregon newspapers featuring the tour
4 press releases published announcing local tour events.

Like the Missouri tour I completed in March, I did not organize any of the local events of the Oregon Stewardship Tour. All those events were organized by local volunteers in those Oregon cities, plus the CCL volunteers on our tour planning committee. Thus, I can’t take credit for organizing those events. All these events took place in small cities in eastern, central, and southern Oregon. Therefore, we were happy when we had 20 to even 30 people show up at these events. This was quite an adventure for me to give 9 climate change presentations in 12 days while driving over 1,600 miles alone in my car to reach all these destinations. I was running so ragged with this intense schedule that I was exhausted and had a cold by the end of that tour.

Just one week after that tour ended, I traveled to Washington D.C. to attend a CCL conference and lobby day. I gave a presentation about the tour at the December Portland Climate Reality Chapter meeting. Fortunately, my schedule in November and December was much lighter for me to rejuvenate after the intense schedule of the Oregon Stewardship Tour.

Briefly working for Tesla Energy and then volunteering for Renew Oregon

In January 2018, I started working for Tesla Energy. For the next six months, my job was selling solar panels at nearby Home Depots. This was my first full time sales job, much different my ranger jobs or any previous jobs I held.

It quite an adjust for me. I had grown very comfortable having seasonal jobs as a park ranger working the national parks for the previous 25 years. I got used to nearly everyone loving me as a park ranger. In sales, it seems like nearly everyone hates you for bothering them and occasionally you find someone who likes you. It took all my energy to succeed in this job. There was no time, interest or desire to plan large events especially for climate action.

Sadly, Tesla laid off my supervisor, the advisor manager, their regional boss and 9% of Tesla’s staff, mostly in the Tesla Energy Division, on June 12th. My job transferred to Tesla Motors, located just south of downtown Portland. Sadly, the new job was not a good fit for me with the hours, commute, work environment, work culture, so I decided to leave that job on July 9, 2018.

The day I quit Tesla, I ran into Sonny Mehta, an organizing Field Director for Renew Oregon. I just happened to see Sonny when I was walking in downtown Portland as I was getting ready to catch public transportation to go home. I met Sonny the year before on October 22, 2017, just two days before I departed Portland to start The Oregon Stewardship Tour. I stopped by the Renew Oregon office in downtown Portland on that beautiful October day and he gave me handouts from Renew Oregon to share with Oregonians during my tour.

Sonny recruited me to volunteer for Renew Oregon in their campaign to urge legislators to pass cap and trade legislation in Oregon Legislature during the upcoming 2019 session. Looking to do the most effective climate action, I jumped at the opportunity to get involved with Renew Oregon. I soon joined in on their weekly organizing calls. Sonny encouraged me to get involved in various ways such as writing op-eds and letters to the editor (LTE) in newspapers in Oregon.

On September 25th, I attended a Renew Oregon lobby day at the Oregon Capitol in Salem. This lobby day focused on attending a public hearing of the Legislative Carbon Reduction Committee. This would be the joint legislative committee created by the Senate President and Speaker of the House to craft a legislative cap and invest bill in the 2019 legislative session. That same day of the hearing, I lobbied my state legislators for to support a cap and invest bill. This lobby day would be the start of many lobby days over the next 9 months to attend many public hearings of the Joint Carbon Reduction Committee and to lobby state legislators to do whatever I could to help Renew Oregon pass their cap and invest bill.

On February 4, 2019, the cap and invest bill was introduced in the Oregon Legislature as the Clean Energy Jobs Bill or HB 2020. Renew Oregon and their many volunteers, including me, lobbied the legislators extensively before and during the session to build good relationships with them. Therefore, we were confident we had the votes among the Democratic legislators in the Oregon House and Senate to pass this bill before the end of the legislative session. One of the highest moments of my climate organizing and for all the Renew Oregon climate organizers was the moment HB 2020 passed on the Oregon House floor on Tuesday, June 18, 2019.

Recruiting guest speakers for the Climate Reality Portland Chapter Monthly Meetings

On September 17, 2018, around the same time I volunteered with Renew Oregon, I attended the Climate Reality Portland Chapter monthly meeting. I was active with this group since I first moved to Portland in February 2017. At this meeting, I volunteered to be the Program Director booking guest speakers for the monthly meetings. For over the next year and four months, I enjoyed booking the local monthly speakers for the chapter meetings.

• For the October 2018 meeting, I had my friends Marvin Pemberton and Ken Pitts talk about how they give climate change presentation to the schools in the Portland area.

• At the November 2018 meeting, I booked Climate Reality Leader Katy Eymann from Bandon, Oregon shared about her latest efforts to stop the proposed Jordan Cove LNG pipeline and Sonny Mehta from Renew Oregon gave an update about the Clean Energy Jobs bill to price carbon pollution in Oregon.

• For the January 2019 meeting, I asked Lenny Dee, co-founder at Onward Oregon and Just Energy Transition Campaign Co-Coordinator for 350PDX, to share the latest about the Portland Clean Energy Fund and Climate Reality Leader Jane Stackhouse gave a summary on what was happening with Renew Oregon’s Clean Energy Jobs Bill.

• At the February 2019 meeting, I recruited 15-year-old organizers Jeremy Clark and Charlie Abrams to talk about their achievements in climate organizing and my friend Francine Chinitz gave a 10-minute presentation about Citizens’ Climate Lobby.

• For the March 2019 meeting, I reached out to Charlotte Shuff from the Community Energy Project, to share how her organization helps low-income renters in Portland with weatherization to reducing their utility costs. This also helps them lower their carbon footprint.

• For the May 2019 meeting, we invited chapter member Kate Gaertner, founder of TripleWin Advisory to present the necessity and opportunity of pursuing deep corporate sustainability measures within business. During the second half of the meeting, I gave a sample Truth in 10 Climate Reality Talk that went for 20 minutes on the problem and solutions to climate change.

Inviting Kelsey Juliana to speak at our June 2019 Climate Reality Portland Chapter Event

All the planning and recruiting speakers for these meetings led to our Climate Reality Portland Chapter Leadership Team deciding to go big for a June 2019 event. We decided to reach out to Kelsey Juliana one of the lead plaintiffs for a Youth vs. Gov court case, officially known as Juliana vs. the United States. Their complaint asserts that the federal government’s affirmative actions cause climate change. Therefore, it violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, as well as failed to protect essential public trust resources.

Kelsey is originally from Eugene, Oregon. In June 2019, she was a college student at the University of Oregon in Eugene. She is the oldest of the youth 21 plaintiffs taking on the federal government. The plaintiffs in this lawsuit were represented by the non-profit Our Children’s Trust, located in Eugene, Oregon. Hence, that’s why her name is on the lawsuit. The CBS TV show 60 minutes featured these plaintiffs, including Kelsey Juliana, on their March 3, 2019 broadcast.

Someone on our Chapter Leadership Team had connections to Kelsey Juliana, so they asked me to email her to see if she could be the speaker for our June event. I first emailed her in March 2019, but I did not get a response. In April, our Leadership Team started to worry since we had not heard back from her, so I emailed her again in late April. On April 30, 2019, she responded:

“Hi Brian!

I will have just finished my finals by that time, so I’d be happy to come up and present to you all, thanks for the invite. Let me know how to best prepare, however if we could touch base a little closer to the date that would be appreciated. Thanks!
-Kelsey”

With this confirmation, our leadership team decided to go big for this event. We secured an event space in northeast Portland, known as Tabor Space. A member of our Leadership Team, Jonathan Bailey, was able to persuade the City Club of Portland to help co-sponsor the event. The City Club was a terrific partner helping to split the rental costs of the large room at Tabor Space with us. Everything was falling into place for a fabulous event to happen.

As of late May, we had not heard anything more from Kelsey Juliana. We needed a short bio, a photo, and a brief overview of her topic for promotional purposes. On June 4th, a massive rally happened in downtown Portland supporting the Juliana vs. the U.S. lawsuit as the court case was argued in front of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Afterwards, many of the plaintiffs, including Kelsey Juliana, spoke to huge crowd that was assembled. Since we had not received a recent confirmation from Kelsey about the June 18th event, I hoped to chat with her very briefly.

I stood around for a long time among all attendees hoping to get a brief word with her. As I was just about to say hello to her, Jo Rodgers, Plaintiff Engagement Coordinator for Our Children’s Trust stopped me. She very briskly said to me, ‘I am very sorry, but Kelsey does not have time to talk. She must catch a train back to Eugene right now.’

I responded, ‘I totally understand, Jo. However, Our Climate Reality Leadership Team is planning a big event with Kelsey. We have not heard from her in over a month. We still need items from her like a photo, a short bio, and confirmation that she will be able to make it by 6 pm before the event starts at 6:30 pm.’

Jo replied, ‘She will be there, and I will pass along this information to her.’

Then Jo, Julia and others were whisked away from this rally. It was one of my most frustrating moments as a climate organizer. Our Climate Reality Portland Leadership Team had put hours into planning this event, including me. I felt like I had just been blown off, belittled, and felt very unappreciated. It hurt. At the same time, I was going to have to swallow my pride, and continue doing what I could to make that event a success.

I did send a friendly email to Jo Rodgers the next day and she did apologize for rushing Kelsey out of the rally. She did appreciate my understanding and said that they just made the train on time. I then explained that I would be flying to Washington D.C. to attend the CCL conference June 6th to 12th, plus traveling June 13th to 16th to Crater Lake National Park to be a guest speaker. Thus, I would not be available to answer any questions during that time. During my absence, my friend and fellow member of the Portland Climate Reality Chapter Leadership Team, Amy Hall-Bailey, would be the point of contact.

While I was in Washington, D.C. attending the CCL conference, the Leadership Team did an amazing job putting the final touches on organizing this event for Kelsey Juliana on Tuesday, June 18, 2019. The emails were really flying back and forth between the Leadership Team members as the final details were hammered out. I received an email from Jonathan on the Leadership Team two days before the event on Sunday, June 16th asking if I would MC (be the master of ceremonies) for the event. My wife and I were driving all day from Talent Oregon back to Portland, Oregon, so I was not able to respond until that evening. However, I did respond that I would be happy to be the MC.

On Monday, June 17th, I spent the day at the Oregon Capitol in Salem. It was an exciting day to witness history. I sat in the Oregon House gallery for over six and a half hours while the chamber debated the Clean Energy Jobs Bill when the bill finally passed the chamber that evening. In the meantime, on this same day, emails were flying back and forth for the final logistics of this event. One Leadership Committee member Brenna wrote:

“Has Brian had any time to go over what he plans to say? I know he’s been busy today. With such a short timeline, we need to keep all speaking succinct and maximize our time with Kelsey.”

My friend and Climate Reality staff member Brittany responded: “If Brian is in the Capitol today, I’ll check with him.”

Amy Hall-Bailey replied: “Thanks, I know that you, Jane and Brian are probably really occupied with the events in Salem, but it looks like we have a full house for tonight’s event- 250 people, if they all show. I hope everyone is prepared!”

Fortunately, I did have all day on Tuesday, June 18th to prepare for this event. The turnout was amazing. We estimated we had over 220 people at this event. We did have a professional videographer record the event to Vimeo.

Even though I printed out the prepared introductions that Amy sent me, I was still a little nervous speaking in front of this very large audience. Lee van der Voo, an award-winning investigative journalist, interviewed Kelsey Juliana. Lee covers the youth in climate change movement for The Guardian and Reuters. She is the author of The Fish Market: Inside the Big-Money Battle for the Ocean and Your Dinner Plate and she was in the process of writing a book for Timber Press about the Juliana v U.S lawsuit.

Liv Brumfield, field representative for U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, (D-OR) was in attendance and sitting in the front row. As the MC, it was my job to introduce her so she could read a brief statement of support from the Portland Congressman Earl Blumenauer. I was so nervous in the moment that I could not pronounce her name correctly. Understandably, she corrected me in front of the entire audience.

Overall, the event went fantastic. I was very proud to have participated in it, sent the initial email to invite Kelsey Juliana to the event, and to be the MC for the event. I was honored to get my picture with Kelsey Juliana. The full credit to making this event a success really goes to Amy Hall-Bailey and her husband Jonathan Bailey, as well as Brenna Burke, Deborah Lev, Wally Shriner, Brittany Kimzey, Jane Stackhouse, Steve Holgate, the Portland City Club, and many others. My friend and fellow Climate Reality Leader Ken Pitts took wonderful pictures of the event. It was great to be at the right place at the right time to see this event come together.

We really did appreciate Kelsey Juliana and Our Children’s Trust for their time and participation. Kelsey was an enthusiastic and engaging speaker with the audience. Lee van der Voo had great questions that allowed the audience to get to know Kelsey, her thoughts on the lawsuit, and her ideas how we should reduce the threat of climate change.

Organizing my second large climate event in Milwaukie, Oregon in September 2019

The day after the Kelsey Juliana climate that felt so triumphant, disaster happened in Oregon.

The Clean Energy Jobs Bill moved now moved from the Oregon House to the Senate floor where we barely had the Democratic votes to pass this bill. On June 20, 2019, it was very disheartening when Oregon Senate Republicans fled the state to deny the required 2/3 quorum for a floor vote for HB 2020. Over the next ten days, the mood was more depressing as Republicans Senators refused to return to work until the Democrats agreed to kill HB 2020. It felt like a year of my effort of numerous lobby meetings with legislators, attending organizing meetings, testifying at hearings, helping to organize events and rallies, asking residents across Oregon to contact their legislators, and countless trips to the Capitol in Salem went down the drain. It was a helpless feeling that a bitter defeat was about to happen and there was nothing we could do about it.

The bill had to pass the legislative before the Sunday, June 30, 2019, the last day of the session or it would die. The last day of the session is known on the Oregon Legislative calendar as Sine Die. According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, Sine Die means, “without any future date being designated (as for resumption): indefinitely. (Example) the meeting (or legislative session) is adjourned sine die.” We hoped for a miracle that the GOP Senators would come to their senses and return to Oregon. However, it looked bleaker each day.

On Tuesday, June 25th, Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney announced that he did not have the Democratic votes to pass HB 2020. Therefore, the bill was dead. On Friday, June 28th the Republican Senators returned to Salem to vote on the remaining legislative bills before the Sine Die happened. A friend talked me into going to the Capitol to at least look at the weak-kneed Democratic Senators in the eye. I felt so numb that a major bill on climate action failed.

The peak experience of the Kelsey Juliana event was just one week previously, yet it felt like a very distant memory under the weight of this very bitter defeat. I felt so depressed by this letdown that I did not want to get off the couch for weeks.

On June 26, 2019, Deb Lev, the Chapter Chair at that time, informed the Leadership Team that she intended to step down to work full time for another environmental organization. She quickly needed an interim Chair for our Chapter to replace her. I liked Deb a lot. I was her mentor at the 2016 Climate Reality Training in Houston. However, I wanted to take the chapter up to the next level so I asked The Leadership Team if I could take on the role as an interim Chapter Chair. At that time, I served as the Program Director on the Leadership Team. My role was organizing the monthly meetings, so I would then be performing two roles as the Chapter Chair.

As Chapter Chair, I wanted to organize two big events over the next six months to urge legislators to take another shot at a cap and invest bill. With these two big events, my goal was for the Climate Reality Portland Chapter to become well known in Portland, Oregon. I hoped that more recognition would help us attract more members and energize our membership. Even more, I intended that we partner more closely with other climate and environmental groups in the Portland area to help get climate legislation passed in the 2020 Oregon legislative session.

The Kelsey Juliana Event took a lot of effort and energy for the Leadership Team to successfully create. It showed that we could achieve a large event with a great turnout. After the disaster of the Clean Energy Jobs bill getting killed by the Oregon Senate walkout, I needed some event to devote my energy to heal from that devastating loss. I suggested at the June 26th Leadership Team meeting an event in September called Climate Legislation: Where do We Go from Here?”

The group seemed sort of ho hum about it. When I suggested various speakers that I had in mind, a member of the leadership team, Sally remarked in a condescending tone: “I think you need to noodle it some more and then get back to us.”

Ouch. I tried not to dwell on her remarks. I envisioned a panel discussion. The person I approached to be a speaker was Climate Reality Leader and the Mayor of Milwaukie, Mark Gamba. Milwaukie is a suburb town nestled against the southern city boundary of Portland. Mark and I met for lunch on July 8th at the Milwaukie Food Court Station Pod. I took public transit, MAX light rail commuter train – the orange line, to meet up with him. That was the first time I remember showing up to a town or city for the time and immediately having a meal with the mayor. I first met Mark at the 2017 Climate Reality Training in Bellevue, WA.

Mark is a former National Geographic photographer who has traveled the world. These experiences made him deeply appreciate our natural world and “acutely aware of the changes in our climate.” He is a strong climate champion. As Mayor of Milwaukie, Mark led the effort for Milwaukie to become the first city in Oregon to declare a climate emergency. Mayor Gamba and City Council members unanimously passed the resolution in January 2020. The resolution speeds up by five years the city’s timeline for achieving the goals it previously adopted in its Climate Action Plan. In addition, the resolution calls for the city to become carbon neutral by 2045.

I knew Mark Game would be a great speaker for our panel discussion. He immediately said yes. The catch was we would have to schedule our event on Monday, September 16th because Tuesday evenings is when Milwaukie has their city council meetings.

I knew securing Mark as a speaker would help attract other speakers to the panel and would draw in an audience. The point of this September event would be to energize climate advocates to push their legislators to pass a cap and invest bill in the 2020 Oregon Legislative session. After Mark agreed to be a speaker, I next approached Renew Oregon for a speaker. Shilpa Joshi, Coalition Director for Renew Oregon, said she was available to speak at this event. I still struggled to find the third speaker.

My friend on the Climate Reality Portland Leadership Team, Amy Hall-Bailey, suggested that I ask Dylan Kruse, Director of Government Affairs & Program Strategy for Sustainable Northwest. Amy set up a meeting for with Dylan at Sustainable Northwest’s downtown Portland office in early August. I was very impressed with Dylan’s knowledge of Oregon’s politics and rural Oregon. Dylan immediately said yes when I asked him. Whew! We had our three panel speakers!

I next needed a venue, and I was really racking my brains on this problem. Every place I considered was already booked or too expensive to consider. Someone suggested that I approach Mark Gamba to see if he had any places in mind that could seat up to 100 people. Mark recommended the Chapel Theatre in Milwaukie. With Mark’s permission, I contacted the owners of the Chapel Theater and they generously offered to host the event for free. I asked if I could check out their venue. They graciously met with me at their Theater on Tuesday, August 13th. My in-laws were visiting from St. Louis. Thus, my wife and her parents joined me as I met with the owners of the Chapel Theatre.

I thought it was a beautiful old church that was converted years ago into a dramatic, multi-purpose theatre. It was a very well-kept theatre that looked to be a fun place to stage a play or a community event like ours. When the owners let us inside, there were no seats in the main part of the chapel. Yet, they informed me that the chairs could be set up any way we liked, and the facility could hold up to 99 people depending on seating layout. It seemed like the perfect event space for us. Even more, they did not want to charge us. They seemed like they wanted to help us as a favor to Mark and our cause for environmental activism.

Now that I had the date, the speakers, and the location with over a month to go, we now had to promote the event and invite as many people as possible to pack the house. As always, Amy Hall-Bailey came up with lovely graphic designs artwork to promote the event online. I would have liked to have found an MC, but it looked like it was going to fall onto me. The members of the Climate Reality Leadership Team helped me on the day of the event with setting up the chairs, signing people in as they came in the doors, networking during the event, etc.

I reached out to my friends in Citizens’ Climate Lobby, the newly formed Metro Climate Action Team, Renew Oregon, Climate Reality Leaders who had not attended an event in a while, and basically anyone I knew in the Portland area to attend this event. The good news is that over 80 people showed up and the Chapel Theatre looked packed.

Mark Gamba, Shilpa Joshi, and Dylan Kruse all did a great job answering questions. I appreciated how they spoke to the audience why it is still important to press forward to urge our Oregon legislators to pass a cap and invest bill in the upcoming 2020 Oregon Legislative session.

Unlike the Kelsey Juliana event, we did not get a video recording of this event. It was a shame because I was very happy how the event happened. I tried something new at the beginning of the program. I printed over 70 signs on white paper with green letters that said, CLIMATE ACTION NOW! I took a short video of the audience shouting those words in unison.

I started the program with a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. quote:

“Through education we seek to change attitudes; through legislation and court orders we seek to regulate behavior. Through education we seek change internal feelings (prejudice, hate, etc.); through legislation and court orders we seek to control the external effects of those feelings. Through education we seek to break down the spiritual barriers to integration; through legislation and court orders we seek to break down the physical barriers to integration. One method is not a substitute for the other, but a meaningful and necessary supplement. Anyone who starts out with the conviction that the road to racial justice is one lane wide will inevitably create a traffic jam and make the journey longer.”

I wanted to make the point with this event that I won’t solve the problem of climate change by just changing our own hearts and other people’s hearts to kindly be more sustainably. We also must do the heavy lifting of changing the laws to alter people’s behavior to live in a more sustainable way to reduce the threat of climate change. Leadership Team member Wally Shriner complimented me on that quote. I was shocked and pleased to hear him say anything positive because he always seemed to be critical and nitpicking everything I did as the Program Director and interim Chapter Chair.

The most effective part is that we encouraged folks to fill out post cards to their legislators. We ended up with 50 postcards and 11 letters. I took the train to Salem and delivered them to legislators. They just happened to have a workday in Salem two days after our event. It felt very fulfilling to deliver these constituent postcards to the offices of Oregon Senators and Representatives on a beautiful fall day on September 18th.

Organizing my third large climate event in Portland, Oregon in January 2020

Even as I organized this event in Milwaukie Oregon on September 16, 2019, I planning months ahead. The 2020 Oregon Legislative session started on February 3, 2020. In even years in Oregon, the legislative session only goes for 5 weeks. It is very compressed with Senators and Representatives only able to introduce a couple of bills, as opposed being able introduce multiple bills in the long, odd year sessions. Thus, any kind of cap and invest bill must be ready to be introduced at the start of the session so it can pass in that short 2020 Legislative session. In early September, I envisioned having a Climate Reality event around the third week of January 2020. That would be just less than two weeks to the start of the 2020 Legislative session, to urge legislators and energize climate advocates to support another Clean Energy Jobs bill.

Thus, on August 30, 2019, I sent emails to the two Oregon legislators that led the efforts for the Clean Energy Jobs Bill in the 2019 legislative session, Senator Michael Dembrow and Representative Karin Power. In the emails, I asked if they would speak at a Climate Reality event on January 21, 2020. Both immediately said yes to speaking at such an event.

I thought it might be easier organizing a second event since the first event I organized in Milwaukie on September 16th went well. Unfortunately, open warfare broke out among the members of Climate Reality Portland Chapter Leadership Team in August. Some of the Leadership Team were unhappy that I was the interim Chair of the Chapter.

They were critical of everything I was doing, but they had no big ideas of their own. They accused me of having no vision. However, they did not consider that I was organizing a big event in September 2019 and January 2020 while working with them to recruit monthly speakers in between. I thought it was vital for the Climate Reality Portland Chapter to work in coalition with other Portland climate groups, such as Renew Oregon, Metro Climate Action Team, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, etc. to organize to get effective climate legislation passed.

Even more, half of the Leadership Team voiced frustration with the way I moderated the September 16th event. They thought that I talked too much, and I used the word ‘I’ and instead of ‘we’ too much. This was my first time moderating a panel discussion. Overall, I was very pleased how the event happened. It felt like we had plenty of time for the speakers to talk about themselves and answer my questions, answer audience questions, and make community announcements during that event. Everyone who attended seemed satisfied with the event. Most importantly, we got attendees to fill out over 50 postcards and letters to their legislators to urge them to support another cap and invest bill.

Half of the team though supported my leadership. Sadly, it was very hard to lead a group of a house divided. It started to wear me down that I started to dread the Leadership Team meetings. The infighting led to a point where I wanted to resign in early October, but two members of the Leadership Team talked me out of it. I was committed to making this event a success with Senator Dembrow and Rep. Power on January 21, 2020. That focused me to grind it out.

The Climate Reality Project seemed supportive of my chapter leadership since I was very committed to the organization, their Pricing Pollution Campaign, and the chapter. Their Pricing Pollution campaign worked closely with Renew Oregon to urge Oregon legislators to pass a cap and invest bill. At the same time, they did not want to get in the middle of our strife. Sadly, this did not help because we really did need a good meditator with this stressful situation.

The best way to resolve the tension among the Leadership Team was to bring in new members to serve on the Team. The optimal way to recruit new members to serve on the Portland Chapter Leadership Team was to invite new Portland Climate Reality Leaders who had just attended a training. New members could possibly bring positive energy, fresh ideas, and team building skills. After new Climate Reality Leaders just attended a training, they are at their peak enthusiasm to join a Climate Reality Chapter or even a Leadership Team. Unfortunately, there were no upcoming Climate Reality Trainings until sometime in 2020.

As the autumn turned to winter, the January 2020 event started coming together. Like the Milwaukie event, I struggled with trying to find an event space. In November, Senator Dembrow and his staff recommended the Hollywood Senior Center (now Called the Community for Positive Aging) in northeast Portland. This community venue could hold over 100 people and they were willing to not charge us a fee since this was an open community event. I had attended some of Senator Dembrow’s monthly town halls at the Hollywood Senior Center. I thought it would be a great facility to hold this event.

Just like the Milwaukie event and other events, plus climate meetings that I organized, now was the time in December and early January to try to turn out my friends and fellow climate organizers. I called friends and emailed that attended the Milwaukie event. I contacted climate advocates I knew with Citizens’ Climate Lobby, the Metro Climate Action Team, Renew Oregon, etc. to ask them to attend this event. Like the previous events, Amy Hall-Bailey created an excellent online graphic to promote this event that I could include in my emails. This graphic was primarily used in the email newsletter to Climate Reality Portland Chapter members, on Meetup.com, the Climate Reality Portland Chapter Facebook page, etc.

Over 107 people RSVPed on the Eventbrite page for this event. Over 100 people showed up for the event. The room was packed. Senator Dembrow and Representative Power did an outstanding job of addressing what they hoped the next cap and invest bill would accomplish and how we can help them try to get this bill passed in the Oregon Legislature. They did a terrific job of answering audience questions. My friend and fellow Climate Reality Leader, Ken Pitts, took fabulous pictures of the event. My wife Tanya also took superb photos.

Like the Milwaukie event, I MCed this event. Just like before, I had my printed signed on white paper with the words printed in green, “CLIMATE ACTION NOW!” Once again, I made a very short video of the audience hold up the signs and yell in unison “CLIMATE ACTION NOW!”

I injected some impromptu humor into this event by remarking that I planned play that video clip on a repeated loop to my wife later that evening. As I closed out the event, I thanked Senator Dembrow and Representative Power for all their leadership in the Oregon Legislature on the cap and invest bills. I attempted to joke that I sometimes fell asleep when I attended the Joint Legislative Carbon Reduction Committees meetings that they co-chaired because I could not always follow the fine details of the bills. Senator Dembrow chuckled and said that he forgave me, understanding that the public does not always understand the minute details in these bills.

I do not think that Representative Power got my sense of humor. She did not seem to laugh at that joke. After the event, when we were chatting, she asked me point blank: ‘Are you really going to play that video for your wife on a repeated loop this evening?’

I tried to explain to her that it was a joke and that my wife and I like to tease each other. However, I don’t think she was buying it.

Like the previous events, I very proud how everything unfolded. Everyone who attended the event seemed to enjoy it. Because of the fighting within the Climate Reality Chapter Leadership Team, it was basically just Amy Hall-Bailey and I who organized this event. I thought we were a great team putting this event together. I could not have accomplished it without her.

Similar to the Milwaukie event, I had a big stack of postcards and letter filled from the attendees to their Oregon senators and representatives urging the legislators to pass the cap and invest bill during the 2020 legislative session.

Final Thoughts

I did not know it at the time, but this was the last Climate Reality Portland Chapter event or any kind of climate event that I organized. Amy Hall-Bailey did a great job of recruiting speakers and organizing the February 2020 meeting.

At the end of February 2020, the House and Senate Republicans walked out of the legislative session killing all the bills waiting to be passed that session, including the cap and invest bill.
For the second legislative session in a row, Republican legislators used a walk out to deny a 2/3 required quorum to kill a climate bill. It was another kick in the stomach and depressing defeat.

On the bright side, Oregon Governor Kate Brown did not take that bad news lying down. On March 10, 2020, she signed bold climate executive orders aimed to cut Oregon’s greenhouse gas emissions. Governor Brown signed her climate executive orders surrounded by youth active in the climate movement. Governor Brown’s office invited climate advocates from around the state to attend, such as Renew Oregon volunteers. Thus, I was part of the group in her office to watch her sign the climate executive orders. That day provided hope and some solace, but the defeats of the cap and invest bills still felt like open wounds.

The bright spot of Governor Brown’s executive climate orders was soon overtaken within a couple days of the shutdowns with the COVID-19 pandemic. All events, meetings, and indoor activities were soon cancelled indefinitely. For years, I was very active in the climate movement planning meetings, organizing events, lobbying, attending hearing, etc. All my climate organizing seemed like it fell off a cliff overnight. I was not sure what to do. I was very depressed.

In March 2020, I resigned as the interim Chair and Program Director of the Climate Reality Portland Chapter. I was burned out from the feuding within the Leadership Team over the previous six months. Fortunately, the bad apples within the Leadership Team who caused the strife left, but I then I had no energy or motivation left to lead the chapter after all the battles with them.

Amy Hall-Bailey graciously took over as the interim Chapter Chair. She wrote a very sweet and kind note in the April 2020 Climate Reality Portland Chapter online newsletter:

“Brian Ettling is stepping down as Interim Chapter Chair. He offered to be Interim Chair in July 2019. He has done a great job with organizing and leading our chapter including two large successful events around Climate Legislation. He and Amy Hall have been working to keep a Portland Chapter presence as we lost many of our Leadership Team in November 2019. We are grateful for his leadership, and grateful that he has offered to continue to work with us on presentations and other needs!

First of all, thank you to Brian for all your work. It’s been a challenge and I appreciate you staying on longer than you planned.”

With the pandemic and lack of any climate organizing on the horizon, I did fall into a very deep depression. I found a way to pull myself out of it by organizing an Oregon legislative resolution supporting federal carbon pricing during the first half of 2021. After that, I did a lot of writing and journaling in the second half of 2021. In 2022, I worked on legislative campaigns to try to get Democratic candidates who would protect our democracy, climate, and a woman’s right to choose. In 2023, I am writing and blogging a lot to try to document all my climate actions over the years, especially before the pandemic.

In writing this blog, it was fun to reflect on the 3 large climate events that I organized. No doubt there was exhilarating and painful moments. At this point, I still have no plans to organize another large climate event or even a climate meeting in the future. However, anything is possible when inspiration strikes!

“It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required.”
– Winston Churchill

As a climate organizer, one of my favorite actions is traveling to Washington D.C. to lobby Congressional Offices to urge them to pass effective climate policies. Since November 2015, I traveled eight times to Washington D.C. to attend Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) conferences and lobby days on Capitol Hill. In 2015, I blogged about my first experience lobbying in Washington D.C. In 2016, I wrote about lobbying in Washington D.C. and Ottawa, Canada . Plus, I blogged about lobbying on Capitol Hill with CCL in 2017. That same year, I shared how climate Lobbying is very hard, but it is so rewarding. Indeed, it has been very meaningful to lobby at the U.S. Capitol because I once persuaded a member of Congress to co-sponsor a climate bill in 2020.

I got injured the first time after I lobbied as I returned from Washington D.C. for climate action, but I have no regrets. I love traveling to the U.S. capital, but it is a very long flight from Portland, Oregon. Washington D.C. is a very beautiful city, with similar weather as my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. It can be quite humid and hot in the summer and frigid at times in the winter. The iconic monuments to Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, the Vietnam Memorial, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Capitol Building are all sacred sites to see. It is very convenient to get around the city with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority commuter rail system (or the Metro). The trains roar like a lion as they loudly enter the subway stations. They carry up to 8 passenger cars that seems to stretch for over a mile.

On the lobby day, I love walking out of the Metro Union Station to be greeted by the shiny white Capitol dome above the trees several blocks away. It is a hassle but a necessity to go through airport like security to get inside the Senate and House office buildings. Walking inside the Congressional office buildings, it is a fun and complicated maze to try to find the exact offices of Senators and Representatives to arrive at our CCL scheduled lobby meetings. Arriving inside the offices of the members of Congress, one is greeted by friendly staff and exquisite artwork, photography and mementos that represent that Congressional district or state.

The best part is the scheduled meeting with the Congressional staff or possibly even a member of Congress to urge them to support specific climate legislation. It feels very empowering as a citizen to petition them to support climate bills. At the same time, the Congressional staff often provides valuable information where the member of Congress stands on a particular bill. The staff or member of Congress can be very helpful on what information they need before supporting or co-sponsoring a bill, who they like to work with across the political aisle, and what’s happening in Congress that can help or impede getting a climate bill passed. It is very fascinating to hear what the staff or member of Congress has to say.

Many other things make lobbying Congressional Offices in Washington D.C. amazing. The shiny marble hallways and floors with people walking about and talking in quiet voices. The national media gathered at various spots to try to snag a quote from a U.S. Senator. Recently, I playfully posed in front of them for a second pretending like they were interviewing me for a story.

The Congressional cafeterias have an amazing variety of food for whatever you are in the mood to eat that day: pizza, sushi, tacos, spaghetti, hamburgers, garden salads, wraps, soups, ice cream, etc. You name it!

You never know who you are going to run into walking down the Congressional hallways. On my most recent visit on June 13, 2023, I said hello to U.S. Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and John Kennedy of Louisiana. In addition, many other groups are lobbying Congressional offices the same day as the CCL lobby days. I chatted with volunteers with the Susan G. Koman Foundation in a Congressional cafeteria as they lobbied Congress for funding to research to prevent and cure breast cancer the same day CCL was there. As you can tell, I love everything about lobbying the Congressional Offices for climate action in Washington D.C.

My disillusion with Citizens’ Climate Lobby in recent years

Sadly, with the 2020 COVID pandemic I was not able to travel to Washington D.C. for the last three and half years. During the pandemic, I participated in some Zoom lobby meetings with Congressional staff. That was enjoyable, but it was not same as traveling to Washington D.C. and the U.S. Capitol to lobby Congressional offices.

Since I last lobbied in Washington D.C. in November 2019, I became disillusioned with CCL. As I blogged about previously, it always felt like national staff in the organization and leaders in Oregon CCL kept me at arm’s length. They emphasize a core value of treating people with appreciation, gratitude, and respect. However, it never felt like the organization treated me that way.

By far, my lowest moment in my climate organizing, was in 2016. Then Vice President of CCL, Madeleine Para, did not want me to do my own fund raising to organize a speaking tour across Missouri to promote CCL and climate action. My friend and Missouri state CCL Coordinator, George Laur, organized a Missouri speaking tour for me in March 2017. It left a bad taste in my mouth though that Madeleine and CCL national did not want to support me for devoting myself to a tour across Missouri to promote them.

In October 2018, I organized a climate action speaking tour across Missouri. I spoke to over 200 students, faculty and alumni at my alma mater William Jewell College, just outside of Kansas City, Missouri. I then gave talks at Missouri University in Columbia, my alma mater Oakville High School, St. Louis University, and teaching a Climate Change 101 continuing education class at the Meramec campus of St. Louis Community College. It was a very successful tour with my presentations across Missouri. By giving these talks, I hoped it might inspire other climate organizers to speak to their alma mater colleges and high schools. I requested to write a blog on the CCL website to report on this Missouri tour, but CCL was not interested. They offered to feature me on their Citizens’ Climate Higher Education website, but not their main website.

In 2017, I decided that I really loved climate lobbying and wanted to a career doing this. I was very impressed at that time with Jay Butera, a volunteer with CCL from Gladwyne, PA. In 2016, after years of effort, “Jay was the concept-originator and driving force behind formation of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.” For several years, Jay served as CCL’s Senior Congressional Liaison in Washington, working to maintain a continuous year-round presence for CCL in the Halls of Congress. In January 2017, I invited Jay to be the guest speaker at the last St. Louis Climate Reality Meet-Up event I organized before moving to Portland, Oregon a week later. Over 80 people attended this event, packing the room at Schlafly’s Bottleworks in St. Louis.

In April 2017, I emailed the Vice President of Government Affairs at CCL, Danny Richter, and Jay Butera to see if I could shadow Jay and learn how he lobbies in Washington, D.C. Both flatly turned me down. Their responses really stung. I felt like neither one of them wanted to advise me at all to be an even more effective climate lobbyist and make a career out of it.

Feeling like I frequently got the door slammed in my face by CCL hurt badly. However, I kept picking myself back up to try again. My last straw with CCL when I organized a state resolution in the Oregon Legislature in 2021 to urge members of Congress to support the federal bill, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (EICDA).

This Oregon resolution became known as became known as Senate Joint Memorial 5 or SJM 5.
It passed the Oregon Senate on April 7th by a vote of 23 to 5, with 6 Republican Senators, half of the Oregon GOP Senate caucus, joined all the Democratic Senators present to vote to support it. Unfortunately, SJM 5 fell short of receiving a floor vote in the Oregon House in June 2021. It was exciting was that 30 House members, including 7 Republicans, signed on to co-sponsor it. The Oregon House has 60 members. Half the chamber was SJM 5 co-sponsors.

The worst part of this defeat was Oregon CCL leadership becoming very angry when the OR House Democratic Leadership refused to give SJM 5 a floor vote. After I experienced two dreadful GOP walkouts that defeated the 2019 and 2020 cap and invest bills, I never believed SJM 5 would pass until I saw it with my own eyes. In June 2021, the Oregonian published an opinion editorial from Oregon CCL leadership, and I disagreed with the tone. Former Rep. Tiffiny Mitchell advised us not to publish it since it seemed to attack OR House Democratic Leadership.

After that happened, I lost nearly all respect for CCL and I stepped away from volunteering from the organization. I then focused my energy on my climate writings, volunteering for the Oregon League of Conservation Voters (OLCV) and canvassing for Democratic legislative candidates in 2022. CCL challenges its volunteers to ‘step out of their comfort zone’ because ‘that’s where the magic happens.’ However, whenever I tried to step out of my comfort zone to promote and organize for CCL, I felt like I only received pushback from the organization.

To this day, I still love CCL. They are the only environmental and climate organization that I know that truly strives to empower their volunteers to build positive relationships with elected officials, the media and their local community for climate action. I learned so much volunteering with them. At the same time, they have broken my heart at times and left me feeling demoralized as a climate organizer. I first wrote a blog about them in February 2013, Want to change the world? Be Persistent! If I could go back in time to when I wrote that blog or when I first became involved with CCL in May 2012, I would have lots of words of caution for myself.

Deciding to attend the CCL Conference and Lobby Day in Washington D.C. in June 2023

In early 2023, CCL announced it would be lobbying for the first time in person in Washington D.C. since November 2019. This would be their first in-person conference and lobby day on Capitol Hill since before the COVID-19 pandemic. After my setbacks interacting with CCL, I was not sure if I wanted to attend.

In late April, I reached out to friends in the Washington D.C. are to see if I could stay with them. In my previous eight times that I attended CCL conferences and lobby days in Washington D.C, I stayed with friends in the D.C. metro area. If either of my friends indicated that I could stay with them, that would be a deciding factor if I would register and attend the conference. If those friends did not offer for me a chance to stay with them, I would not travel to Washington D.C. because I cannot afford the hotel rooms in the D.C. metro area.

On May 2nd, I heard from my friends Tom and Reena that I could stay with them. Sadly, that same day, I received the news that my car needed over $2000 in repairs. On May 18th, I started crafting an email to Reena to say that I could not afford to travel to stay with them. On the bright side, my wife felt bad seeing how much I had to pay to repair my car. Thus, she bought me a brand-new Mac Book Pro laptop because I desperately needed a new and faster laptop. To my relief, the final car repair bill turned out to be a little less expensive at $1650. May 21st was the final day to register, so I needed to decide to attend or not to attend quickly.

The final straw that pushed me to register to attend the CCL conference and lobby day was the CNN town hall with Donald Trump on May 10th. It upset me that CNN allowed this twice impeached, indicted, disgraced former president to say a lot of false information with very little real time fact checking. The day before, a New York jury found Trump liable for battery and defamation in the lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll. She claimed that Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store in the mid 1990s and the jury basically agreed. Trump used that townhall to call her a “wack job.” It was appalling that town hall audience laughed and clapped when Trump called her that name. Even worse, the audience cheered with approval when he lied about the 2020 Presidential election was stolen from him. It still seemed like our democracy was under severe threat from Donald Trump and this modern Trumpist movement.

Thus, I decided I was going to Washington D.C. to lobby for climate action to celebrate our democracy and stress the importance of climate action. Yes, I felt raw how CCL treated me over the years. However, my love for our democracy and passion for climate action was a higher priority for me than my misgivings about CCL. Thus, I bought my airline tickets and registered for the CCL conference and lobby day just a couple of days before the May 21st deadline. I really do try to live my life by the Winston Churchill quote:

“It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required.”

Attending the CCL Conference in Washington D.C. in June 10-12, 2023

My flight arrived in Washington D.C. around 5:40 pm on Friday, June 9th. I told Tom and Reena that I would not be arriving at their house until sometime after 7 pm. In the previous days, Washington D.C, New York City, and much of the northeast U.S. coast experienced hazardous and smoky air due to wildfires in western Canada. I felt a sense of dread receiving that news.

In past years, my wife and I experienced very unhealthy air from western wildfires while living in Portland and Crater Lake National Park, Oregon. It was very dispiriting to be trapped indoors, especially during the 2020 pandemic, due to wildfire smoke causing awful air conditions. I would not wish those smoky conditions on my worst enemy. I had compassion for people living on the northeast coast experiencing this extremely poor air quality in the second week of June. I worried about experiencing those smoky conditions when I arrived in Washington D.C.

I was very fortunately the Canadian wildfire smoke had mostly dissipated when I arrived in Washington D.C. The weather was pleasant and sunny. I hopped on the Metro to head to Tom and Reena’s home in Tacoma Park, Maryland, which bordered Washington D.C.. The outdoor conditions were nice enough that I decided instead to get off the Metro at Union Station to walk a couple of blocks to the U.S. Capitol to see the building for the first time since November 2019.

The U.S. Capitol Building looked majestic and peaceful on that lovely late Friday afternoon. I loved seeing the exterior of this temple for democracy in all its glory. The building and the Capitol grounds looked very serene and relaxing. As a climate organizer, the U.S. Capitol area seemed like it was welcoming me back to do my first in-person lobbying there in three and a half years. A positive spirit was in the air as I took several “selfies” with my iPhone. A friendly person asked me if I wanted my picture taken. At the same time, it felt heavy and sad that January 6th took place there only a year and a half before. It was hard to believe that a very dangerous and unruly mob wanted to vandalize the building and hurt elected officials on the inside.

I then took the Metro to Takoma Park, Maryland to stay with Tom and Reena. They were happy to see me for the first time in three and a half years. They very generously had a comfortable guest room for me to stay. They were one block from a local food co-op where I could buy all my own groceries to make my own breakfasts while I stayed with them.

Late the next morning, I planned to attend the first sessions of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby conference. On the way there, I got off the Metro near the White House to walk by the building on Pennsylvania Avenue and view it from Lafayette Square. As always, the President’s Executive Mansion looked beautiful, a bright color in the summer afternoon sun. Seeing the building in person, looked different how it is seen on TV. It looked a bite like a southern slave plantation house in keeping to the style when it was first completed around 1800. The scene on Pennsylvania Avenue was lots of tourists admiring the building and taking pictures. A religious man shouted into a megaphone deriding gay pride as a sin, since June is Gay Pride month. Nearly everyone there ignored him and his message as they enjoyed the scene of seeing the White House.

I then took the Metro to the first day of the CCL conference at the Omni Shoreham Hotel where author and environmentalist Bill McKibben spoke via video from his home in Vermont for the CCL monthly conference call. Bill promoted his new group, Third Act, to build “a community of Americans over the age of sixty determined to change the world for the better.” The goal of Third Act is to use the resources and energy of people over 60 years old to “use our life experience, skills and resources to build better tomorrow” in areas such as divesting large banks from fossil fuel investments, safeguarding our democracy, and powering up communities with clean energy. In addition, McKibben spoke in favor of CCL’s top priority for reforming the permitting process to speed up the pace to build new clean energy projects.

After Bill McKibben’s presentation, I enjoyed attending the CCL breakout session for the En-ROADS climate Workshop. For years, I found the En-ROADS climate solutions simulator to be an excellent tool to model the various solutions needed to reduce the climate crisis. I enjoyed the Saturday and Sunday sessions of the CCL Conference to prepare us to lobby Congressional Offices at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, June 13th. It was invigorating for me to see friends from across the U.S. who volunteer and work for CCL that I had not seen in three and a half years.

Lobbying Senator Ron Wyden’s D.C. office on permitting reform on June 13, 2023.

Over 850 CCL volunteers registered to lobby Congressional offices on the CCL Lobby Day of Tuesday, June 13th. As with all previous June CCL lobby days, all the volunteers lined up on the steps of the Capitol at 8:15 am for a large group photo. We then went our separate ways to our scheduled lobby meetings.

I had three scheduled lobby meetings that day with the staffs of Senator Ron Wyden, Representative Earl Blumenauer, and Representative Andrea Salinas, who are all members of Congress from Oregon. My first lobby meeting was not scheduled until 10 am, so I had time to call my wife Tanya, plus my mom and dad to let them know I was in front of the U.S. Capitol Building getting ready to lobby Congressional offices that day.

My first scheduled lobby meeting was a 10 am lobby meeting with staff of Senator Ron Wyden. Ten of us Oregon CCL volunteers were scheduled to attend this meeting. All of the roles for this meeting, such as appreciator, time monitor, notetaker, asker, follow-up, and listener, were divided up at a planning meeting on Friday, June 10th. I could not attend that meeting since I was flying from Portland to Washington D.C. that day. From that meeting, the remaining role assigned to me was the photographer. My task would be to make sure that we took of picture of all of us CCL volunteers by or in Senator Wyden’s Office, plus the staff member if they were willing to be in the group photo with us. At the lobby meeting, I made sure we got the group photo.

On Sunday afternoon, June 11th, Tamara Staton, Education and Resilience Coordinator for CCL, announced that that she had to back out of our Tuesday Wyden lobbying meeting. The leader of this meeting, Teresa Welch, asked for someone to step into Tamara’s role for this meeting to share with Senator Ron Wyden’s staff CCL’s position on permitting reform. I immediately jumped at the opportunity. I felt like I absorbed CCL’s detailed reasoning why permitting reform was a top priority during the CCL Conference that happened between Saturday, June 10th to Monday, June 12th. From what I learned about performing reform at the CCL conference, I was eager to share understanding of this issue in the lobby meetings.

When I texted Teresa on Sunday offering to explain CCL’s stance on permitting reform during the Wyden lobby on Tuesday, Teresa responded “Are you OK with doing that whole job (introduce the topic, share CCL’s perspective, and ask a question to start the conversation)?”

I texted back that I was. I then wrote out CCL’s position on permitting reform, which is:

CCL’s position that clean energy permitting reform is a top priority for us:
• We can’t implement the IRA without it. Over 80% of the potential emissions reductions delivered by IRA in 2030 are lost if transmission expansion is constrained.

• We can’t reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 without it. It’s a key policy action if the US is going to meet the 2015 COP Paris commitments.

• More than 92% of new energy projects currently awaiting permits are solar and wind, and just 7.5% are natural gas. We need permitting reform to get the good projects implemented more quickly.

• It takes an average of 4.5 years for federal agencies just to complete environmental impact statements for major energy projects. That’s way too slow! These are important assessments, but we need speed up the pace with which we build new clean energy projects.

• We want a bill that will be:
– bipartisan
– improves community engagement.
– makes federal agencies more efficient,
– allows transmission lines to be permitted and built much faster.

We want a permitting reform bill that allows for the good clean energy projects to be approved more quickly and the bad ones to be rejected faster.

Basically, we want a permitting reform bill that speeds up approval of clean energy projects with community engagement.

In addition, I shared with Senator’s Wyden’s staff a printed graph from CCL that shows the U.S. is projected to have a 28% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. However, if we enact permit reform, we could get to a 40% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. With permitting reform, it gets the U.S. a giant step closer to its 2015 Paris commitment of a 50% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions below the 2005 level by 2030.

When I was finished explaining all of this, I asked Senator Wyden’s legislative aide what the Senator’s position was on permitting reform. The aide’s response was very positive. I can’t say anything beyond that because the CCL meetings with Congressional staff and members of Congress is confidential. Overall, all the Oregon CCL volunteers and I in the meeting with Senator Wyden’s staff felt like we in near agreement about permitting reform.

Meeting with staff of Rep. Earl Blumenauer about CCL’s carbon pricing bill

For our noon meeting with staff of Rep. Earl Blumenauer, the meeting leader, Walt Mintkeski, asked me to do the brief asks at the end of the meeting. Specifically, I would be asking Congressman Blumenauer to support permitting reform. Even more, we were asking him to support our carbon pricing bill, The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (EICDA) when it is re-introduced soon in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The EIDCA was introduced in the two previous Congressional sessions in 2019 and 2021. In the previous Congressional session (2021-2022), the EICDA reached 95 House co-sponsors. I strongly support their advocacy for a price on carbon such as the EICDA bill. This policy puts a steadily rising fee on carbon at the source, such as the oil well, methane well, coal mine, or fossil fuel imports at the U.S. border.

The fee starts at $15 per metric ton of greenhouse gas emissions and increases by $10 or $15 each year, depending upon future emissions. The revenue from the fee is then returned to American households in a monthly dividend check. It is one of the best policies to protect American businesses while holding international polluters accountable with a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM).

The EICDA targets 90 percent emission reductions by 2050 compared to 2016 levels. The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) urges all nations of the world, especially the U.S, to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 to avoid possible catastrophic consequences from climate change.

In the graph on U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions from CCL that I showed above in the previous section, a carbon price is a vital tool to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Implementing effective permitting reform, plus a carbon price, help the U.S. reduce its GHG emissions by 52% by 2030. As I mentioned previously, the U.S. has a 2015 Paris commitment of a 50% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions below the 2005 level by 2030. Permitting reform, plus a carbon price, helps the U.S. exceed its 2030 goal to reduce GHG emissions.

The United States and Australia are the only developed economies without a nationwide carbon price in place. The European Union, the largest foreign market available to U.S. producers, will begin implementation of a CBAM on imports (including American exports to the E.U.) this year based on its existing carbon price. Thus, a carbon fee and dividend with a CBAM, such as with the EIDCA, can help the U.S. reduce its harmful greenhouse gas pollution that causes climate change while helping make American products more competitive in the E.U.

Climate change is a high priority for Congressman Earl Blumenauer. In past years, he introduced his own carbon pricing bills. In our previous lobby meetings with Rep. Blumenauer and his staff, he has indicated that he would vote for the EICDA on the House floor if it came up for a vote. However, with his concerns about environmental justice, he resisted co-sponsoring the EICDA. On our June 13th lobby meeting, we asked his staff to pass along to Rep. Blumenauer that the EICDA will most likely be introduced soon. We asked that he please consider voting for it if it came up for a floor vote in the U.S. House, like he indicated in the past that he would do.

Like the meeting I attended with Senator Ron Wyden’s staff, we felt like we had a positive exchange of information with the staff of Congressman Earl Blumenauer.

Briefly Chatting in the Halls of Congress with Rep. Andrea Salinas about carbon pricing

After my meetings with staff of Senator Ron Wyden and Rep. Earl Blumenauer, I had over two hours before our 2:15 meeting with staff of Rep. Andrea Salinas. My friend and fellow CCL volunteer, Walt Mintkeski, who led the Rep. Blumenauer meeting and would be leading the Rep. Salinas meeting, decided that we would hang out together until the Rep. Salinas meeting.

Walt informed me that our meeting plans for the Rep. Salinas meeting had changed. Originally, we were scheduled to meet with her office staff for 30 minutes. However, halfway in this meeting, the legislative aide would then walk us to the door of the nearby committee room, where we would have a brief chat with Rep. Salinas as she came out of her committee hearing.

Unfortunately, the committee meeting time had changed the day before. The legislative staff then informed Walt that the brief meeting with Rep. Salinas was cancelled. We felt a little disappointed since we hoped to say hello to Congresswoman Salinas. At the same time, we totally understood because the schedules of members of Congress change quickly. When that happens, face to face meetings with the Senator or Representative then gets cancelled.

As Walt and I walked towards one of the Congressional cafeterias, Tamara Staton, a staff person for CCL, joined us. She also was scheduled to be at the 2:15 pm meeting with staff of Rep. Salinas. As Walt, Tamara, and I waited for an elevator to go to a Congressional cafeteria around 12:48 pm, I noticed Rep. Salinas walk right by us. I said to Walt: “That’s Andrea Salinas!”

Walt is in his mid 70s, but he bolted after her like a kid running on a racetrack. I then ran to catch up to both of them in a quick instant.

Walt said hello to Rep. Salinas and she quickly remembered Walt and me. Walt mentioned that we were supposed to have a brief chat with her at 2:30 pm, but that was cancelled. Rep. Salinas confirmed that. Walt then asked if we could chat with her while she was briskly walking to her office. Rep. Salinas welcomed that idea and seemed very happy for us to walk with her.

I lobbied in Washington D.C. eight previous times. However, this was my first time directly lobbying a member of Congress while they were very quickly walking to their next scheduled event. Walt brought up permitting reform. She had interesting but confidential thoughts on that.

I was very excited to chat with her in person. I thanked her for being one of the first Oregon Legislators to endorse the EICDA in October 2020. I then thanked her for agreeing to be one of the first co-sponsors Senate Joint Memorial 5 (SJM 5) in the Oregon Legislature when it was first taking shape in December 2020. SJM 5 urged Congress to pass the Energy Innovation & Dividend Act. She was very supportive of all my climate organizing in Oregon in 2020 and 2021. Thus, this was a dream come true for me to talk with her directly on Capitol Hill. When I asked if she would support the reintroduction of the EICDA in this Congress, her response was positive. However, she said she wants to see the bill first.

She was then nearly at her office. I wanted to give her time and space to go to her next scheduled commitment. In the rush of everything happening, I asked if we could get a picture with her. She happily obliged to get a selfie photo on my phone with Walt, Tamara, me, and her.

It was a sublime and exhausting experience to briskly walk to directly engage with her. She explained to us the political atmosphere in Congress. She had good insights on what was happening in Congress. At the same time, it frustrated me because I could not hear her well with the background noise. The acoustics of the Congressional hallways were terrible with lots of other people walking by and the sounds bouncing off the marble floors and hallways. Overall, I was very thrilled for a chance to chat with her and directly ask her to support climate legislation.

We then had over an hour to debrief from that experience and then get ready for our 2:15 pm meeting with staff of Rep. Andrea Salinas. Unlike the hallway frantic chat with Rep. Salinas an hour earlier, it felt much more relaxing to be sitting in her office exchanging information with her staff about permitting reform, carbon pricing, and other climate bills that CCL supported.

Final thoughts

That evening, I enjoyed attended the CCL reception at the Omni Shoreham that evening to see Congressman Scott Peters from California speak. It was great to connect with friends that I got to know from over the years in CCL and scarf down some free appetizers at the event. I then took the Metro back to Takoma Park to briefly visit with my hosts Tom and Reena before they went to bed. I flew back from Washington D.C. to Portland, Oregon the next day.

After feeling burned over the years with my involvement with CCL, I feel rather leery to be involved with them again. I do really love lobbying in Washington D.C and possibly attending a future CCL conference there. As a climate organizer, I am not sure what the future holds for me. I hope to find a way to successfully urge Rep. Andrea Salinas to co-sponsor the EICDA if it is introduced soon, but we shall see. I know for sure that I will find some way to feel productive and useful in the climate movement, whether I am involved with CCL or not.

Growing up in St. Louis, Missouri in the 1970s and 80s, our family enjoyed getting the daily newspaper delivered each morning to our front lawn. Yes, we also watched the news on TV. However, our daily subscription to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was how we primarily received our local and national news. Whoever woke up first in the morning was then asked by the second person, “Did you bring in the newspaper this morning?”

I remember my dad and older sister enjoying reading the daily newspaper from cover to cover, from the headlines to the comics on the last page. We enjoyed reading the newspaper’s analysis of the previous day’s local, national, and international events. Our family felt like we had a better grasp of what was happening in the world and could discuss it in a more meaningful way by reading the newspaper. Even more, it felt like the people who truly made a difference in the world, somehow got their name in the newspaper.

As a kid, I somehow wanted to get my name in the newspaper. I did not know how, but I was going to find some way to make it happen. Since my parents loved reading the newspaper, I knew it would make them proud if I could get my name in the newspaper in a positive way.

I kept a low-key life not drawing any media attention to myself graduating from Oakville High School in St. Louis in 1987. I then graduated from William Jewell College in Kansas City, Missouri with a degree in Business Administration in 1992. I then started working seasonally in the national parks, spending my summers working at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon and my winters in Everglades National Park, Florida.

Getting my name in nationally known newspapers as an Everglades Park Ranger

In 1998, I became a naturalist guide narrating the concession boat tours at the Flamingo Outpost in Everglades National Park. Flamingo and the Everglades would attract travel writers looking to write stories about what saw and their recommendations for visiting the Everglades. On February 27, 2000, Chicago Tribune staff writer Robert Cross wrote about his experience visiting the Everglades. He was a passenger on an Everglades boat tour that I narrated.

Writing about my boat narration, Cross observed: “Everything about the park filled (Brian) Ettling with excitement. His energy compensated for the lack of snowcapped mountains.”

He went on to report: “Out of the Buttonwood Canal, Brian Ettling began rattling off the names of birds and animals that were nesting, wading or soaring overhead. He saw a lot, and so he had to speak so fast that he ended up sounding like a tobacco auctioneer.”

I enjoyed that description of me talking so fast like a ‘tobacco auctioneer’ because that did describe me to a T. I did talk very fast then. Partially because this was my first job narrating tours in a national park and I wanted to share all my knowledge and love for the area. If I could go back in time, I would encourage myself to speak slower so the park visitors could understand me better. Even with my very fast talking, Robert Cross described me as “alert and energetic.”

This was the first time I had recalled getting my name in any publication. I have kept a hard copy of that article to this day. In 2003, I landed a winter job as an interpretative/naturalist ranger at the Everglades City Visitor Center in Everglades National Park. At this location, I regularly led ranger guided canoe trips into the Ten Thousand Islands area on the Everglades on weekends. On one of those trips was New York Times travel writer Beth Greenfield.

I was told in an advance by my supervisor that she would be on my canoe trip. Even more, we ended up sharing the canoe with her in the front rowing. I was in the back steering and narrating for her and the other visitors in canoes who signed up for this ranger led canoe trip. Beth Greenfield quoted me several times for this NY Times article, “Slipping Slowly Into South Florida’s Grassy Water.” She wrote:

“(Beginner paddlers) are best off joining the short, organized trips on more navigable creeks, led by park naturalists like (Brian) Ettling, 38.

‘I never get tired of this area,’ he said one day this winter as he led canoeists paddling single file beneath a cathedral of arching mangrove branches. He excitedly pointed out blue herons, jumping mullet fish and skittish tree crabs.”

She then reported how I pointed out and described of other Everglades wildlife. I will never forget when I and the other Everglades Park rangers saw that we were quoted in this article in the travel section of the New York Times. It felt at that time like we had accomplished something big to be quoted in the New York Times. I still have hard copies of that newspaper article to this day.

Looking back at it now, nearly all the rangers I encountered working in the national parks were extremely knowledgeable and very enthusiastic about sharing their vast knowledge with park visitors. In some ways, it is a matter of luck for a ranger or naturalist guide to be at the right place and at the right time to be quoted for one of these articles. It had little to do with us as individuals. These travel writers just needed good quotes and names for their travel articles.

I loved being a park ranger. Every day was lovely wearing that park ranger uniform while working in magnificent national parks. Being a park ranger was the best job I ever had, but it started to feel like a theme park mascot after a while. Visitors are really enthralled with the ranger uniform. They wanted to get their pictures with a ranger, ask a ranger questions, and attend a ranger program. They were not as interested in the individual wearing the uniform.

Many visitors did ask me the same monotonous questions such as ‘Where did you come from?’ ‘How did you get this ranger job?’ and ‘What other national parks have you worked?’ Those questions still seemed superficial to me. The visitors asked those questions because they really wanted to be a park ranger. They asked about my background to see if their background could lead to a job like that. Or they loved national parks and park rangers, so they wanted to compare my story with other park rangers they encountered.

As the years went by working in the national parks, I wanted to be known more as Brian Ettling. Not just Park Ranger Brian Ettling interacting with visitors at their national parks vacations.

In my desire to learn all I could about the Everglades to answer visitor questions and give nifty quotes to travel writers, I discovered my lifelong passion that eventually led me away from the national parks. This journey led me to get my name in newspapers for the pressing issue of our times, climate change.

Discovering Climate Change while working in the national parks

In 1998, I started giving ranger talks in Everglades National Park. Visitors then asked me about this global warming thing. Visitors hate when park rangers tell you, “I don’t know.” Soon afterwards, I rushed to the nearest Miami bookstore and to the park library to read all I the scientific books I could find on climate change.

The information I learned really scared me, specifically sea level rise along our mangrove coastline in Everglades National Park. Sea level rose 8 inches in the 20th century, four times more than it had risen in previous centuries for the past three thousand years. Because of climate change, sea level is now expected to rise at least three feet in Everglades National Park by the end of the 21st century. The sea would swallow up most of the park and nearby Miami since the highest point of the park road less than three feet above sea level.

It shocked me that crocodiles, alligators, and beautiful Flamingos I saw in the Everglades could all lose this ideal coastal habitat because of sea level rinse enhanced by climate change.

I became so worried about climate change that I quit my winter job in Everglades National Park the year in 2008. I started spending my winters in St. Louis Missouri to find some way to organize for climate action. I started giving climate change talks at my nieces and nephews grade schools in the spring of 2010. In the winter of 2011, I joined South County Toastmasters to become a better climate change communicator. That same winter, I worked at the St. Louis Science Center at their temporary climate change exhibit from March to May 2011.

Up until 2017, I still worked my summer job Crater Lake National Park. While working there for many years, the impacts of climate change became apparent with the average annual snowpack diminishing. I noticed more mild winters with below average snowpacks. The summer wildfire seasons became more longer, hotter, dryer and more intense. By August 2011, I had gathered enough information to start giving a climate change ranger evening program at the campground amphitheater to the park visitors.

Getting involved with Citizens Climate Lobby and The Climate Reality Project

While attending a St. Louis Science Center lecture about how climate change is impacting the weather in April 2011, I met and became friends with St. Louis businessman Larry Lazar. We had a mutual longing to do something about climate change. Thus, Larry and I co-founded the St. Louis Climate Reality Meet Up group in November 2011 (now called Climate Meetup-St. Louis) to organize regular meetings and promote events to create more awareness about climate change in the St. Louis area.

Larry and I had our first meeting at Cafe Ventana in St. Louis on December 11, 2011. Larry organized the meeting around all of us getting to know each other and our concerns about climate change. We had about 16 people attend the meeting, including Tom and Carol Braford. Larry did a great job making our initial Meet Up meeting a success. After the meeting, I will never forget Carol personally inviting me to a Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) conference call meeting.

She had an enticing way to describe the group. She mentioned conference calls on the first Saturday of each month listening to national experts on climate change. Then the group plans actions to lobby Congress to pass effective laws to protect us from climate change. I was interested. One big problem: I just took a job at the St. Louis Science Center where I agreed I would be working weekends. Thus, it would be really hard for me to attend these meetings.

Over that winter of 2011-12, Larry Lazar and I kept leading our Climate Reality Meet Up meeting on the third Sunday of each month. Up to 20 people attended our meetings, including Tom & Carol Braford. Carol kept mentioning CCL. I felt in a bind because attending their meetings intrigued me, but my job schedule made it hard.

Finally, the timing was right when my winter seasonal job ended at the Science Center at the end of April. I had a free Saturday, May 5th. I arrived at Tom & Carol’s house around 11:30 am. She had a lot of delicious and healthy snacks for us to eat, especially wonderful cheese, crackers, fruit, and amazing homemade bread. There was 5 of us in attendance. Then Carol connected us to the conference call, and I was blown away.

All these groups from North America were calling into the conference call: Atlanta, New York, Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, Toronto, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Albuquerque, Madison, Seattle, and new groups in Portland and Eugene, Oregon. The Executive Director of CCL, Mark Reynolds began this call with a quote from Dr. Peter Joseph: “Action is the antidote for despair.”

This amazed me because I first met Peter in San Francisco just 5 months before at a party while I was attending the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting. We happened to attend a Union of Concerned Scientists reception and we struck up a conversation. Peter mentioned that he was a Climate Reality Leader, trained by Al Gore. I told Peter that I wanted to be a Climate Reality Leader, so we exchanged business cards and we kept in touch. I was blown away that Peter was mentioned by CCL Executive Director Mark Reynolds on that May 2012 CCL monthly call.

Even more, during that May 2012 CCL conference call, I connected with the elegant and effective solution that CCL championed to reduce the threat of climate change, a carbon fee and dividend. At that time, I was thinking: ‘Where has this group been my whole life?’

At the close of the meeting, I boldly told Carol that I was going to establish a CCL group in southern Oregon when I returned to Crater Lake National Park to work as a park ranger that summer. It took all summer, but I eventually helped establish the southern Oregon CCL chapter that regularly meets in Ashland, Oregon.

Thanks to the help of Peter Joseph putting in a good word for me, I attended a Climate Reality Training in San Francisco, August 2-4, 2012. The training is a great way to network and help participants become more effective taking action to reduce the threat of climate change. At that training, I met Dr. Lucas Sabalka. His name tag stated he was from St. Louis. At the time, he was an Assistant Professor of mathematics at Saint Louis University. I encouraged Lucas to get involved with the St. Louis group of Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL). When Lucas returned to St. Louis, he immediately attended the local St. Louis CCL group meeting.

A St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial leads to my first op-ed published for climate action

When I was finished with my seasonal job at Crater Lake National Park, I returned to St. Louis in late October. It was a thrill to be involved with the St. Louis CCL group when they made a huge accomplishment this winter. Steve Valk, Director of Communications of CCL at that time, came to visit the St. Louis CCL chapter in early December. Carol and Tom Braford arranged for a group meeting that included Steve Valk, Lucas Salbalka, and me. Carol then scheduled our group to have a meeting with Kevin Horrigan, the Managing Editor of the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

We persuaded Kevin for the Post-Dispatch to write a supportive editorial about the danger of climate change. Even more, the newspaper strongly affirmed need for Congress to pass a carbon fee and dividend, which is the priority of CCL. On December 27, 2012, The Post-Dispatch published the editorial, “Save the Planet. Save Social Security, Save Medicaid, Tax Carbon.”

Kevin Horrigan gave each of us his business card at that meeting. He told us that if we ever wanted to write an opinion editorial (op-ed) for the Post-Dispatch about CCL and carbon fee & dividend, he would make room to publish our op-ed. This really intrigued me because I grew up reading the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I had always wanted to get my name in the newspaper. After that editorial board meeting and the December 2012 Post-Dispatch editorial endorsing CCL’s carbon fee and dividend, I was determined to an op-ed for the Post-Dispatch to publish.

After that Post-Dispatch editorial meeting, I talked with CCL friends for months about writing and submitting an op-ed to the newspaper for climate action. On the Saturday, April 6, 2013, monthly meeting, CCL Executive Director Mark Reynolds urged the volunteers on the national call to submit LTEs and op-eds around the time of Earth Day. He pointed out that there is a heightened sense of awareness in the media with environmental and climate issues that makes it more likely that newspapers would publish submitted LTEs and op-eds focused on those issues. That certainly intrigued me to try to write and submit something.

When I mentioned this to Lucas at the CCL meeting, he said in an exasperated tone: ‘Brian, you have talked about writing something for months. I think it is time for you to just do it.’

I had a lot of respect for Lucas. I didn’t want to let him down. He was correct that I had talked about it, but had procrastinated about it for months. I loved that Lucas pushed and challenged me to step out of my comfort zone to write an op-ed for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. That Saturday evening, I stayed up super late and wrote the op-ed. I immediately took up his challenge, wrote out the op-ed and submitted it by email to the Post-Dispatch that night.

The Post-Dispatch published this op-ed on April 19, 2013, close to Earth Day:
“For Earth Day, a GOP free-market solution to climate change.”

I will never forget waking up that morning to retrieve the newspaper from the front lawn. When I brought the newspaper inside, opened, and went to the opinion section, I noticed that my op-ed was published in the Post-Dispatch. It was a feeling of joint elation, since I was staying with my parents at their home for the winter. My dad’s cousin from Los Angeles was visiting, plus two of my parents’ good friends from Anaheim, California. It was a house full of people to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary party that was happening the next day. I fulfilled a childhood dream to get my name in the newspaper in a positive way!

Everyone was very proud of me for getting this op-ed published in the newspaper. My parents responded like I gave them the perfect 50th wedding anniversary gift. It certainly added to the joy of the party. I felt elated getting published in the newspaper for an op-ed promoting climate action. Even more, it was great to weave into the article support for CCL, their carbon fee and dividend solution, and urging by name the local members of Congress to support this policy.

It felt like a very sweet accomplishment. I wanted to find ways to duplicate that success again to get published in more newspapers to elevate climate action.

My second published St. Louis Post-Dispatch op-ed kept me up late at night in July 2013

With the success of my first published op-ed, I wanted to get a second one published. I waited a few months so the Post-Dispatch would not become tired of me. For my second op-ed submission, I decided to talk about a different subject besides CCL and carbon fee & dividend.

Besides my involvement CCL, during the winter of 2012-13, I also volunteered for the Missouri Sierra Club and the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. With the climate organizing that Larry, Lucas, and I did during the winter of 2012-13, I met Sara Edgar, an organizer with the Missouri Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. I then stumbled across a news article that I learned how dependent St. Louis was on burning coal for electricity.

On December 31, 2012, the headline for St. Louis Post-Dispatch grabbed my attention: “One in five kids in parts of St. Louis area struggles with asthma.” Underneath the headline was an 8-year-old African American boy, Xavier Miles, with a big smile on his face before receiving his spirometry test, which shows the function of the lungs, at his school. The caption stated that “Xavier has asthma and met with various educators who reminded him how to take off himself during an asthma attack.”

The article then mentioned that St. Louis has twice the national average of children suffering with asthma. In an amazing coincidence at that time, St. Louis got around 84% of its electricity by burning coal, that is over twice the national average of 39%. Even worse, Ameren, the local electric utility, operates 4 three coal-fired power plants in the St. Louis metro area, 3 of which run without modern pollution controls.

According to the Clean Air Task Force, retiring one coal plant prevents annually 29 premature deaths, 47 heart attacks, 491 asthma attacks, and 22 asthma emergency room visits.

Just a couple of miles from where I grew up in my childhood home was the Meramec Coal Plant. It was originally built in 1953. Its health costs to society is larger than profits from production. According to the Environmental Integrity Project, the plant causes about 1,000 asthma attacks and 57 to 100 premature deaths each year.

On March 2, 2013, my dad had surgery to remove a six-inch cancerous tumor below his kidney. The doctor asked my dad if he was a smoker because my dad’s cancer was typical of a smoker. However, my dad has been a non-smoker his entire life. I was worried for my dad living 36 years just a couple of miles from the Meramec coal plant increased his risk of cancer.

From the awareness I learned how bad it is to burn coal, especially in my hometown St. Louis, I gave a speech at the April 17, 2013, St. Louis South County Toastmasters meeting called “What Keeps Me Up Late at Night.” The goal of that speech was to urge my fellow Toastmasters to request the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to require Ameren, the local electric utility which operates Meramec Plant, to lower its sulfur dioxide emissions to levels that are safe for our families according to the Clean Air Act.

That Toastmasters speech led me to write an opinion editorial published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on July 10, 2013. Just like my Toastmaster’s speech, the title of this op-ed was called, “What Keeps me Up Late At Night.” This op-ed asked St. Louis area residents to urge Ameren to retire the local coal plants because of the health risks from the polluted air.

My dad was a retired 40-year employee of Ameren, the utility that operated the Meramec coal plant. My parents had concerns about me speaking so publicly against Ameren and the Meramec Coal Plant since my dad received a retirement pension from Ameren. Even more, my parents knew a lot of people in the St. Louis area, including Ameren employees. They felt like my op-ed had put them in an awkward position. This led to some strained conversations with my parents. We eventually moved on and forgot about this subject. However, the difficulties it caused within my family did probably keep me up late at night more than my first published op-ed. We came to an agreement to let them know before I had an article published like that again.

The good news is that my op-ed did generate a conversation in the St. Louis area about the Meramec Coal Plant. Ameren first announced its plan to retire the Meramec Coal Plant in 2014. It officially closed Meramec on December 31, 2022. Meramec was Ameren’s oldest and smallest coal-fired power plant. Would this plant retirement happened without my op-ed? Probably. It is obvious now that this was Ameren’s oldest and possibly most inefficient power plant. Thus, its future looked limited.

At the same time, it felt good to put a spotlight on that unhealthy and polluting power plant to put more pressure on Ameren to retire it. In time, my parents seemed to also come around to be proud of my advocacy to urge the retirement of the Meramec Coal Plant.

10 Oregon Newspapers publish my 2013 op-eds promoting CCL and carbon fee & dividend

After I had success in 2013 getting two op-eds published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I wanted to get climate change op-eds published in Oregon newspapers. As a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park, I worked there from mid-May to the end of September in 2013. Even more, I had co-founded the southern Oregon chapter for Citizens’ Climate Lobby earlier that year. Thus, I aimed to create more success and publicity for this group. The CCL Chapter Leader for the southern Oregon group, Susan Bizeau, knew I had written and published op-eds in St. Louis. She also thought I should write op-eds to submit to be published in Oregon newspapers.

I first emailed a guest opinion submission to the Medford Mail Tribune on September 9th. It amazed me that it was quickly published on Thursday, September 12, 2013, “2013 drought, wildfires call for action on climate change.” The day it was printed, I was running errands in Medford, Oregon with my Crater Lake National Park ranger job. Medford is about 76 miles or an hour and a half drive southwest from Crater Lake. I occasionally was assigned to go to Medford with my job pick up or drop off vehicles, pick up park newspapers, etc. By chance, I happened to be in Medford that day with work errands which enabled me to buy a hard copy of the newspaper with my guest opinion on page 9. It was exciting to have my first op-ed published in Oregon.

As a side note, unfortunately, the Medford Mail Tribune shut down abruptly in early January 2023. As of this writing, they don’t have an active website to share an online link to my op-ed. Therefore, here is a screenshot of the print edition:

With my breakthrough Mail Tribune op-ed in September 2013, I next submitted a guest commentary to the Klamath Falls Herald and News. It took a while for the Herald and News to publish my submission, but they did on September 22nd. Southern Oregon experienced a bad drought in 2013, so I stuck with the same theme that I used for the Mail Tribune. My guest commentary for the Herald and News was called “2013 Oregon drought calls for action on climate change.”

Klamath Falls is only about 60 miles or a little over a one-hour drive directly south from Crater Lake. Klamath Falls and Medford are in opposite directions from Crater Lake. The cities are separated by the Cascade Mountains. When I was driving back from Medford on the weekend of September 22nd as it was getting dark, I happened to find a newspaper vending machine in the small town of Rocky Point. I just happened to have one remaining hard copy of the Herald and News with my guest commentary printed inside towards the back page.

With these two published op-eds, I decided to try for the other large city newspaper in southwestern Oregon, The Grants Pass Daily Courier. It published my submission on Friday, September 20, 2013. The Daily Courier gave my guest opinion a different headline, “See Crater Lake as climate bellweather.” On that weekend of September 21st, I traveled down through Medford to see friends in Talent. I purchased a copy of this Grants Pass newspaper among the newspapers for sale by the checkout stand by the Fred Meyer’s supermarket in Medford.

It is hard for me to access this Daily Courier op-ed online because it is behind a pay wall subscription fee. Here is a screenshot of the print edition:

Around that same time, The Bend Bulletin published an op-ed by me on September 18th, “2013 Oregon drought calls for action on climate change.” I emailed a submission to them around the same time I emailed my other submissions in early September. Bend is a two-hour drive north of Crater Lake. It was my only op-ed where I was not able to get a printed copy. At the same time, it was still exciting to be published in their newspaper.

I felt like I was on a roll getting op-eds published in southwestern Oregon’s three largest newspapers within a week, plus The Bend Bulletin. On that Saturday evening, I had dinner with Susan Bizeau, the Group Leader of the southern Oregon CCL chapter. Susan was ecstatic that I got op-eds published in so many local newspapers in the past week. She responded to my Medford Daily Tribune guest opinion with a supportive letter to the editor that was published. She was eager to show me and read it to me as a group of us went out for Thai food in Talent, Oregon.

Since I was having success getting published in newspapers, Susan challenged me to submit op-eds to more Oregon newspapers, even the largest newspaper in Oregon, The (Portland) Oregonian. I did not want to let Susan down and I loved being challenged by friends in this way. I wrote it the submission and emailed it on September 27, 2013. I forgot about this submission because I then had too many other things on my mind. I was totally focused on wrapping up my season at Crater Lake, packing up my belongings, cleaning out my seasonal park residence, loading my car, and planning about my cross-country drive back to St. Louis.

During my cross-country drive, I woke up in a motel room in West Wendover, Nevada, on the second day of my journey on October 4, 2013. As I was getting ready to brush my teeth, I received a phone call Steve Valk, Director of Communications of CCL. He wanted to congratulate me for getting a guest opinion published in The Oregonian. This was a complete surprise to me. I asked Steve how he knew about this. He responded that it popped up on his Google alerts for “Citizens Climate Lobby” that day. This was a thrill to get this news out of the blue. I immediately had to turn on my laptop to see for myself. It was so cool to see it online for the first time, “Shrinking Crater Lake snowpack argues for carbon tax: Guest opinion.”

This was now my seventh published op-ed for the year, two in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and now five in Oregon newspapers. It felt like I was still surfing a good wave, and I was not ready to quit yet. After I returned to St. Louis for the winter, I decided to email another Oregon newspaper, the Eugene Register-Guard, to submit an op-ed. The Register-Guard published my guest opinion on October 23, 2013, “Crater Lake snowpack shows climate change.”

This was now my eighth published op-ed for the year, two in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and six in Oregon newspapers. I felt like I was on a winning streak and I did not want it to end. Over the next month, I was busy working full time for the Missouri Sierra Club. However, as I wrote about in my previous blog, that job was not a good fit for me. I decided to resign from that job at the end of November to devote myself to my writing and organizing. On December 3, 2013, another Oregon newspaper, The Ashland Daily-Tidings, published my op-ed, “Smaller Crater Lake snowpack calls for climate change action.” Unfortunately, there is no online link to that guest opinion. I have friends in Ashland, Oregon, but they were not able to get a hard copy for me.

‘But, that’s not all!’ as they say on bad TV infomercials, I was not finished for 2013. On December 13, 2013, the Salem Statesman Journal published my op-ed, “Carbon tax an act to stem climate change.” This is my tenth op-ed for 2013 that I got published: two in the St. Louis Post Dispatch and eight in Oregon newspapers. Ten was a nice round number. I felt like I had done my part getting published in newspaper op-eds in 2013.

To my surprise, my newspaper writings continued. On December 22nd, the Statesman Journal published a very dismissive letter to the editor (LTE) by Mr. Ray Woodworth of Salem, Oregon, “Climate change consensus is not scientific proof.”

Ray Woodworth directly attacked my op-ed by writing, “In his Dec. 14 guest opinion, Brian Ettling wrote that more than 97 percent of climate scientists and the Catholic Church agree that climate change is caused by humans. What he failed to point out is that this agreement is a consensus, not a scientific proof.”

Woodworth went on to argue: “What makes these scientists so sure that human beings are responsible now? Can they scientifically prove it? So far, they have not.”

To my delight, the Statesman Journal published my 200-word LTE response to Ray Woodworth on January 5, 2014, “Isotope signature proves carbon footprint of man.”

My LTE response and my blog “Explaining Climate Change in 200 Words or Less” inspired some Facebook friends to try to explain climate change in their own words or even in French. I then wrote a blog about that, “Explaining Climate Change briefly in French or your own words.”

St. Louis Post-Dispatch publishes two more of my op-eds calling for climate action.

After the Salem Statesman Journal op-ed, I decided to take a break from writing op-eds for a few months. The inch hit me to start writing again as Earth Day approached in April 2014. It would be one year anniversary of my first published op-ed that was in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch just a couple of days before the 2013 Earth Day.

I wrote and submitted a new op-ed to the Post-Dispatch for Earth Day, April 22, 2014. To my joy, they published my op-ed, “For Earth Day: Asking our elected officials to be climate heroes.”

With this op-ed, the Post-Dispatch included a beautiful color photo of Crater Lake National Park. The words “For Earth Day” were also printed in green. The layout for this article looked stunningly beautiful. The way that the Post-Dispatch printed my op-ed, I should have mounted and framed it. I still might one of these days.

For Earth Day 2015, I wrote and tried to submit an op-ed to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, but this time they decided not to publish my submission. I got a bit spoiled getting op-eds published in the Post-Dispatch for the previous two Earth Days. I figured that I would wait for the right time when I felt inspired to submit an op-ed to the Post-Dispatch again.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial from November 27, 2015, “Climate Consensus” inspired me to write and submit an op-ed. To my excitement, the Post-Dispatch decided to publish it two days before Christmas, on December 23, 2015. “A GOP market-friendly alternative to Obama’s Clean Power Plan”. I advocated that CCL’s carbon fee and dividend proposal would effectively reduce the threat of climate change. At the same time, carbon fee and dividend would grow the economy while reducing greenhouse emissions much more effectively than President Obama’s EPA regulations, which the Republicans deeply opposed.

At our Christmas family gathering, my older sister asked me about this op-ed. It was great to have an engaging conversation about climate change this family get together for Christmas. I hope my op-ed inspired other family conversations during the 2015 holidays. This op-ed inspired me to write and submit more op-eds in 2016.

For Earth Day 2016, I decided to write and submit an op-ed to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Unlike April 2015, they chose to publish my op-ed for April 22, 2016, “Earth Day and our national parks calls for GOP climate action.” I was very fortunate when the Post-Dispatch published my 2014 Earth Day op-ed with the brightly colored picture of Crater Lake National Park. There were no colored photographs attached to my op-ed this time, which was slightly disappointing. At the same time, it still felt glorious to have an op-ed published on climate change in my hometown newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It was great to have my picture and words in the newspaper that I grew up reading as a child.

5 Oregon Newspapers publish my 2016 op-eds promoting climate action

2016 marked the Centennial or the 100th anniversary celebration of the National Park Service (NPS). Many media articles were written and published that year focusing on the significance of the NPS Centennial. That brought a lot of media attention to the national parks and NPS sites in 2016. With all this local and national spotlight attention on the national parks with the 2016 centennial, I thought this would be a good hook to submit climate change op-eds.

In early May 2016, I returned to work at Crater Lake National Park for my summer ranger job. I worked many years there as a park ranger, plus I saw climate change while working in the national parks. Even more, climate change is one of the biggest threats facing the national parks as we reflected upon the centennial and the future of American national parks. In May 2016, my first submission was in the Medford Mail Tribune. It was published on May 6, 2016, with the “Crater Lake threatened at centennial.”

Since there is no line link available as of this writing: here is a screenshot of the hard copy of my Mail Tribune op-ed:

Over one week later, the Klamath Falls Herald and News published my guest opinion, “Legislation offers hope dealing with climate change.” Oddly, no online link exists for this op-ed. Somehow, I managed to get a hard copy to save.

This Herald and News commentary did not mention the centennial. On May 6, 2016, the Herald and News, The Bend Bulletin, and other Oregon newspapers reported “Climate change could alter Crater Lake’s clarity.” That article spurred me to write and submit my guest opinion to the Herald and News to acknowledge the problem of climate change on Crater Lake. I then pivoted to offer a great policy solution of urging Congress to pass CCL’s carbon fee and dividend.

That same month that I submitted op-eds to the Mail Tribune and the Herald and News, I thought it was a good opportunity to submit a guest opinion to Oregon’s largest newspaper, The Oregonian. I wrote this op-ed with similar wording as my Herald and News guest commentary. The Oregonian published my opinion piece on May 12, 2016 with the headline: “Climate change: Protect Crater Lake National Park.”

The Oregonian printed my op-ed with a beautiful color photo of Crater Lake above what I had written. Just like my Earth Day, April 22, 2014 op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch which showed a beautiful photo of Crater Lake along with my writing, this layout in the Oregonian looking stunning and splendid. I asked a friend of mine who lives in Portland, Jamie Scott Campbell, to mail a copy of my Oregonian op-ed to me. Jamie and I worked together at Crater Lake in my first summers there in 1992 and 1993. It was very kind of Jamie to mail this to me.

I will never forget opening the large vanilla envelope that Jamie sent it to me. I carefully opened it up at the Crater Lake interpretive ranger office. My ranger colleagues were very excited and impressed. One my ranger friends, Lise Walls, wanted to get a picture of her and me holding the Oregonian page that had the picture of Crater Lake and my op-ed. I will never forget what she said as she wanted pictures for the occasion. She said, “Brian, this is a big deal!”

This was very memorable sharing this experience with my fellow Crater Lake ranger friends. I was not finished submitted op-eds in 2016. On June 11, 2016, The Bend Bulletin published my guest view “Climate change action needed to protect our national parks.” The CCL Bend Chapter Leader happened to be visiting Crater Lake several days later. I was disappointed that I was unable to meet up with her. She very thoughtfully brought a hard copy of that Bend Bulletin op-ed. She gave it to a fellow Crater Lake park ranger to give to me.

The NPS centennial was officially observed on August 25, 2016. That was the date that President Woodrow Wilson signed the Organic Act into law. Around that time, it seemed appropriate to submit a guest opinion for the Ashland Daily Tidings. This newspaper printed my fifth and final 2016 op-ed on August 24th, “Park centennial calls for action.”

Getting my name and a cartoon about me printed in Missouri newspapers in 2017

In November 2016, my friend, Brian Kahn, wrote an article for the website, Climatecentral.org, that featured me. Brian worked as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park during the summers of 2006, 2008, and 2010. He then became a journalist covering climate change for Climate Central. Since my writings and focus for years was seeing climate change in the national parks, I was pleased when Brian wrote the article, “National Parks Are At the Front Lines of Climate Communications: More and More Park Rangers Are talking about Climate change.”

Brian had several quotes from me and quoted some of my friends for the article. We chatted by phone a couple of months before Climate Central published the article. I urged Brian to use several sources that he ended up using in the article. Brian Kahn’s article was a turning point for me from when I was writing less op-eds and appearing more in newspaper articles.

In late 2016, my friend George Laur, who is the Missouri Coordinator for CCL, decided that I should do a speaking tour in Missouri to promote CCL sometime in 2017. In February 2017, my wife Tanya and I moved to Portland Oregon when she was recruited for a job there. When I told George this in January 2017, his response was: ‘We are still doing this tour, Brian. You might just have to fly back from Oregon so you can speak at the events.’

I ended up flying to Missouri during the last week of March for this speaking tour in Missouri. George made all the arrangements for me to speak at two different locations. First, I spoke to over a crowd of 100 people in Jefferson City at the Runge Conservation Nature Center on March 29, 2017. I spoke on the impacts of climate change in our national parks. The Jefferson City News Tribune wrote an article about my talk, “Climate change threatens park, ranger says.”

That talk must have made quite an impression. Besides their article, the News Tribune printed a cartoon from their conservative cartoonist aimed at me. He had the wrong colors for the ranger uniform, and it did not look much like me. The statements in the cartoon looked like a real head scratcher that did not make any scientific sense. Having said that, I was very flattered and honored to have inspired this political cartoon. The cartoonist tried to mock me. However, I thought the joke was on him since he seemed to have a lack of scientific understanding.

Two days later, on March 31, 2017, I spoke to over 60 people at Truman State University in, Kirksville, Missouri. When George and I arrived in Kirksville that morning, I met with a newspaper reporter Jason Hunsicker from the Kirksville Daily Express. Jason wrote an article profiling me included a lovely picture of me at Crater Lake. The article printed in the newspaper on April 10, 2017. It was titled, “Citizens’ Climate Lobby tries to make a difference.” The bad news is that there is no online link available. The good news is that my CCL friend that lives near Kirksville, Sharon Bagatell, mailed a hard copy of the newspaper to me.

Getting my name in Oregon newspapers in 2017 to promote climate action

After this short Missouri speaking tour, I wanted to do a speaking tour across Oregon. I had this vision to travel around central, southern, and eastern Oregon to inspire and organize Oregonians in those areas to organize for climate action and join CCL.

The CCL volunteers and I who organized this tour called it The Oregon Stewardship Tour. We thought that taking climate action, especially with urging Congress to pass a carbon fee and dividend, is one of the best ways to be good stewards of Oregon’s precious air, and and water.

It was also one of the bravest and boldest feats I have done driving 1,600 miles myself in my car to 11 cities for this 12-day tour from October 24 to November 4, 2017. I traveled to give presentations in La Grande, Baker City, John Day, Burns, Prineville Redmond, Lakeview, Klamath Falls, and Grants Pass to talk to rural and conservative Oregonians about climate change.

This tour was a huge undertaking for me. For a recap, I had
• 9 public outreach events
• 2 lobby meetings with district offices of Rep. Greg Walden
• 2 newspaper editorial board meetings
• 2 live radio interviews
• 4 published articles in Oregon newspapers featuring the tour
• 4 press releases published announcing local tour events.

The morning that I left Portland to start driving across Oregon to La Grande for the tour, I had a phone interview with Lee Juillerat of the Klamath Falls Herald and News. The newspaper had their article about me and The Oregon Stewardship Tour as the headline story on the front page of the newspaper on October 29, 2017. This was the first time I had a headline front page newspaper article about me. Underneath the frontpage headline, “Forum to discuss climate change at Crater Lake,” was a bright color picture of me at Crater Lake.

When I spoke in Klamath Falls on November 2, 2017, I spoke to 25 citizens at a downtown Klamath Falls location, we ended up filling the room. That Herald and News lead article probably helped motivate some of the area residents to attend the event.

After that October 24th morning interview with Lee Juillerat of the Herald and News, I jumped in my car and started the long drive from Portland to Baker City, Oregon. It was a 234-miles and over 4-hour drive to this city in eastern Oregon. When I arrived in Baker City, I met up with two Portland CCL volunteers, Barry Daigle and Jason Lewis. They drove separately from Portland to meet up with me to help me during the first two days of the tour since they were from that area. The first thing that Barry and Jason pointed out to me was the press release printed on the front right column of the Baker City Herald announcing our event in Baker City that evening. The headline was “Group to discuss climate change Tuesday at the Library.”

That same day, the newspaper for La Grande, The Observer, announced our event for Wednesday, October 25th, “Forum to discuss climate solutions.” With these newspapers announcing the tour events for the first two days, the tour felt like it was off to a great start. Because of the press releases in the newspaper as well as the word of mouth, we were able to fill the room with local residents during the first two days of the tour.

Before the tour started, The Blue Mountain Eagle, the newspaper for the city of John Day, printed an October 18th press release. It was for the third event for our tour on Thursday, October 26th, “Climate forum coming up.”

During my presentation at John Day on October 26th, a writer for The Blue Mountain Eagle, Richard Hanners, came to report on the event. On October 31st, he wrote an article for the newspaper. “Climate change group presents its case.” I remember this event for having a tough audience of mostly high school students who did not have much of a response to the presentation. I was very happy that Richard Hanner’s article strictly reported on the facts of my presentation and the conversation with the audience how the weather in John Day has changed over the years. I was relieved he did not share that the audience was very subdued and hard to energize. I sure hope my presentation had some kind of impact on these students.

On the same day The Blue Mountain Eagle published their press October 18th release, The Burns Times-Herald printed a press release “Oregon Stewardship Tour Offers Forum” for the fourth day of the tour on Friday, October 27th. We had 14 people fill the small room at the Hines City Hall to hear my presentation. Unlike the teenagers in John Day the previous day, the residents of Burns-Hines were very engaged and asked lots of questions during this presentation.

The audience was concerned because it could be quite expensive to live in Burns if a carbon fee and dividend was passed in Congress. They informed me that residents often must drive 130 miles one-way to get supplies and run errands in Bend.

This group gave us lots of homework to find out more details of this policy and exactly how it would impact low-income people. We promised we would respond to their questions quickly as and e-mail the answers back to them. We loved their enthusiasm and keen interest to learn all they could about our solution, even if they were asking very tough questions at times.

On October 28, 2017, the Bend Bulletin had a front page article announcing the events for the fifth and sixth days of our tour. On Saturday, October 28th, I was scheduled to give a talk in Prineville at the Crook County Fire and Rescue Building. On Sunday, October 29th, my talk was at the Roundtable Pizza in Redmond, Oregon. The Bend Bulletin article was called, “Climate Tour goes to unlikely locations.”

This part of the tour had mixed results. No local residents showed up for the Prineville event, just three local CCL volunteers from the Bend area. Thankfully, we had a 15 people show up for our event in Redmond. Thus, the Bend Bulletin article did not stir up much interest in the nearby cities of Prineville and Redmond. At the same time, it was still a morale boost to be on the front page of this newspaper as I was winding my way through Oregon during this tour.

These were all the newspaper articles that I recall from The Oregon Stewardship Tour. I was exhausted and had a cold by the tour that covered 11 cities over 12 days. It was an adventure to travel and meet Oregonians across the state. Yet, a few times felt it was a like a grind. Overall, it was rewarding to get publicity for Citizens’ Climate Lobby, carbon fee and dividend, and the tour in the local newspapers as I traveled to eastern, central and southern Oregon.

Writing 2 op-eds to promote Oregon’s cap and invest bill in 2018

For the first half of 2018, I worked for Tesla Energy in a job selling solar panels. This was my first sales job. It quite an adjust for me. I had grown very comfortable having seasonal jobs as a park ranger working the national parks for the previous 25 years. I got used to nearly everyone loving me as a park ranger. In sales, it seems like nearly everyone hates you for bothering them and occasionally you find someone who likes you. It took all my energy to succeed in this job. There was no time, interest or desire to write op-ed, especially for climate action.

Because of my support wife Tanya and a very supportive boss Mike, I did end up succeeding in the job. I exceeded the company required sales goals for March and April. By the end of May, my supervisor informed me that I was ranked 50th out of 350 employees for the number of home solar appointments booked. I hit a positive strive of booking Tesla Energy Advisors scheduled to come to customers’ homes in the Portland OR and Vancouver WA area to chat with them about creating a custom solar system for their home.

Sadly, Tesla laid off my supervisor, the advisor manager, their regional boss and 9% of Tesla’s staff, mostly in the Tesla Energy Division, on June 12th. My job transferred to Tesla Motors, located just south of downtown Portland. Sadly, the new job was not a good fit for me with the hours, commute, work environment, work culture, so I decided to leave that job on July 9, 2018.

The day I resigned from Tesla, I was in a fog that day not sure what to do. The Tesla store was located in the south waterfront district just south of downtown. I decided to go to the Powell’s Books downtown store to restore my soul. Powell’s Books is a big landmark, institution, and tourist destination in Oregon. It claims to be “the largest used and new bookstore in the world, occupying an entire city block and housing approximately one million books.” After spending an hour or two there to cheer myself up after quitting a very stressful job, I walked towards a MAX commuter train stop to start taking public transportation home.

On this walk to catch public transit, I ran into Sonny Mehta, an organizing Field Director for Renew Oregon. I met Sonny the previous October just a couple of days before I departed Portland to start The Oregon Stewardship Tour. Renew Oregon was organizing a campaign to lobby Oregon legislators to pass cap and trade legislation in Oregon Legislature during the upcoming 2019 session. When I led The Oregon Stewardship Tour during the previous October, Oregon CCL leadership wanted me to included information in my talks on Renew Oregon’s cap and trade policy. Two days before I left for the 2017 tour, I stopped by the Renew Oregon office in downtown Portland. I met Sonny for the first time, and he gave me handouts from Renew Oregon to share with Oregonians during my tour.

When I ran into Sonny on July 9, 2018, he asked what I was doing. I shared that I just quit my Tesla job. Sonny and I agreed to meet for coffee in a couple of days. He encouraged me to volunteer for Renew Oregon in their organizing efforts to get the Oregon Legislature to pass a cap and trade bill in the 2019 Oregon Legislative session. Looking to do the most effective climate action, I jumped at the opportunity to get involved with Renew Oregon. I soon joined in on their weekly organizing calls. Sonny encouraged me to write op-eds and letters to the editor (LTE) in newspapers in Oregon. I was quite familiar with writing many op-eds and LTEs from experience over the years. It looked like a fun challenge from Sonny.

Because of other commitments, it took me awhile to write op-eds for Renew Oregon’s cap and trade bill for Sonny Mehta for Oregon newspapers. In late August, I was a breakout speaker for a co-presentation with another Climate Reality Leader for the Climate Reality Training in Los Angeles. That took time to prepare that presentation and schedule time with the co-presenter Itzel Morales to get our talk ready for the training. In September, I devoted some time to canvass in Washington state for their 1631 ballot initiative to put a price on carbon.

In mid-October, I organized a climate change speaking tour across my home state of Missouri. I gave presentations at my alma mater William Jewell College, Missouri University in Columbia, my alma mater Oakville High School, St. Louis University, and teaching a Climate Change 101 continuing education class at the Meramec campus of St. Louis Community College. It was a very successful tour with the presentations I gave across Missouri. The student newspaper for William Jewell College, The Hilltop Monitor, published an article on October 26, 2018 about my talk on the campus, “Brian Ettling presents the conservative case for a carbon tax at the 2018 Truex Economic Lecture.” It took time in September to create all those presentations. Even with all those commitments, I found time to write op-eds for Renew Oregon and Sonny.

September 25, 2018, Klamath Falls Herald and News published a guest opinion that I wrote. “To reduce wildlife smoke, let’s act on climate change.” At that time, I was an active volunteer with Citizens’ Climate Lobby and Renew Oregon. Thus, it was fun for me to promote CCL’s carbon fee and dividend proposal and Renew Oregon’s Clean Energy Jobs Bill in one op-ed.

On October 6, 2018, the Bend Bulletin printed my guest column, “2018 drought and smoke should push us to act on climate change.” My op-eds for the Herald and News and The Bend Bulletin both referenced recent articles about the intense heat and smoked happening in Oregon that summer. In writing those op-eds, I then pivoted to the solution of supporting CCL’s carbon fee and dividend and Renew Oregon’s Clean Energy Jobs bill. These op-eds were published just days before I left for my October speaking tour in Missouri. It was a relief to get these published before my trip since I knew I would be focused on that for several weeks.

Writing a climate change guest opinion for the Portland Tribune in June 2021

For the next year and a half, I was very busy volunteering with Renew Oregon to urge legislators to pass the Clean Energy Jobs Bill. This was a cap and invest bill known as HB 2020 in the 2019 Oregon Legislative session. This was a very empowering endeavor to attend legislative hearings at the Oregon state Capitol in Salem, lobby legislators, testify at hearings, participate in weekly phone meetings, assist in organizing rallies, and organize large events. In addition, I wrote two LTEs to the Portland Tribune, one in January 2019 and the other in February 2020 urging legislators to pass the Clean Energy Jobs Bill.

As I attended numerous legislative hearings on the Joint Committee for Carbon Reduction, I enjoyed having a great front row seat to watch the HB 2020 take shape in committee, successfully pass out of committees, and even pass on the House floor on June 18, 2019.

The victories felt huge to watch the bills progress towards passage. At the same time, it was a devastating and heartbreaking loss when the Republicans fled Oregon in the last week of June 2019 to prevent a Senate floor vote, which killed HB 2020. In late February 2020, Republicans in both the House and the Senate fled Oregon fled Oregon to kill that cap and invest bill. After the first defeat in the summer of 2019, I felt so low I did not want to get off the couch for weeks.

At the same time, I found ways to bounce back from these setbacks. During the summer of 2020 while the COVID pandemic was still raging, I met with numerous Oregon legislators by phone and Zoom. I led the efforts with Oregon CCL volunteers for over 30 Oregon legislators to endorse the CCL federal bill, The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (EICDA). During one of these meetings, Oregon Rep. Tiffiny Mitchell asked if she could introduce a state resolution endorsing the EICDA. Representative Mitchell did not run for re-election. Thus, Senator Michael Dembrow proudly introduced the resolution on the Oregon Senate floor February 4, 2021, when it officially became known as Senate Joint Memorial 5 or SJM 5.

SJM 5 passed the Oregon Senate on April 7th by a vote of 23 to 5, with 6 Republican Senators, half of the Oregon GOP Senate caucus, joined all the Democratic Senators present to vote to support it. Unfortunately, SJM 5 fell short of receiving a floor vote in the Oregon House in June 2021. It was exciting was that 30 House members, including 7 Republicans, signed on to co-sponsor it. The Oregon House has 60 members. Half the chamber were SJM 5 co-sponsors.

The worst part of this defeat was Oregon CCL leadership becoming very angry when the OR House Democratic Leadership refused to give SJM 5 a floor vote. After I experienced two dreadful GOP walkouts that defeated the 2019 and 2020 cap and invest bills, I never believed SJM 5 would pass until I saw it with my own eyes. The Oregonian published an opinion editorial from Oregon CCL leadership and I disagreed with the tone. Former Rep. Tiffiny Mitchell advised us not to publish it since it seemed to attack OR House Democratic Leadership.

I pleaded with the Oregonian and Oregon CCL leadership to re-edit the op-ed to be more gracious, but they ignored my input. Thus, I wrote my own op-ed. and I submitted it to the Portland Tribune. Unlike the Oregonian, the Portland Tribune is a weekly newspaper in Portland, Oregon. It is owned by the Pamplin Media Group, which publishes several community newspapers in the Portland metropolitan area. On June 11, 2011, the Portland Tribune printed my op-ed, “Federal legislation holds hope of steering U.S. toward net zero carbon emissions.”

I was very proud of my Portland Tribune op-ed. I talked about the problem of climate change and then the federal solution of CCL’s Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (HR 2307). I then wrote about the Oregon Legislative Resolution, SJM 5. I listed by name all 36 Republican and Democratic legislators who sponsored SJM 5. I stated that “Oregon Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteers applaud each of these legislators for co-sponsoring SJM 5 to support a national bipartisan approach for climate action.”

I ended this guest opinion by writing: “These legislators listed above are making a bold statement that a federal market-based carbon pricing bill is a way forward for Oregon and the U.S. to reduce the threat of climate change.

We hope our Oregon Congressional delegation, Reps. Cliff Bentz, Suzanne Bonamici, Earl Blumenauer, Peter DeFazio, and Kurt Schrader, and Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, will see this message and support HR 2307.”

Because of the animosity over the June 2021 Oregonian op-ed, I no longer felt like a valued volunteer and climate organizer within Oregon CCL. I dropped out of CCL several months later.

My June 11, 2011, the Portland Tribune op-ed was my last published op-ed. My frustration with Oregon CCL nearly caused me to quit the climate movement. However, I am still active in the climate movement as of this writing on June 8, 2023. The threat of dangerous climate change is too great of a burden to just walk away. I decided in May 2023 to attend the CCL June Conference and Lobby Day in Washington D.C. happening June 10-13 in Washington, D.C. On June 13, 2013, I will be joining hundreds of CCL volunteers in lobby meetings at Congressional offices at the U.S. Capitol to urge Congressional offices to pass effective climate legislation.

In the past two years, I have submitted two op-ed to the Oregonian, but the newspaper decided not to publish them. I still love to get more op-eds printed in newspapers in the future for climate action. In a sense, I am still living my dream of getting my name in the newspaper to try to make a positive difference in the world.

My tips how to get a climate opinion editorial (op-ed) published in a newspaper

1. Go to the newspaper’s website to the opinion or editorial section and look for a tab for “Submitting a commentary piece or letter to the editor (LTE).”
   
   In that section, such as this link to the Oregonian, it will note the email address to submit the op-ed or letter to the editor (LTE). Most importantly, it will state the maximum word count for LTEs (up to 250 words for The Oregonian) and a maximum for an oped (up to 500 to 600 words for the The Oregonian). For submitting an LTE or op-ed, keep a close limit on your word count. Don’t go over the word count or the newspaper will reject it.
   

2. Keep the op-ed relevant to a recent editorial in the newspaper, a news story reported in the newspaper within the last couple of days, or a major event getting a lot of coverage in the media.
   
   Newspaper editorial staff are more likely to publish your op-ed if your op-ed is in response to a recent editorial or news article in the newspaper.
   
   
3. If you are urging local members of Congress or state legislators to pass a specific bill, mention their names in your op-ed.
   
   Members of Congress and their staff have Google alerts to when the Senators or Representatives’ names are printed in published media. Thus, if you weave in the elected official’s name in your op-ed, they are more likely to read it if their name in mentioned.
   
   
4. Don’t get discouraged! It can be hard to get an op-ed or even a LTE published in major city newspapers due the volume of op-eds submitted by many people.
   
   Thus, don’t be too disappointed if your op-ed is not published due to possible high number op-ed submissions. Getting published can require multiple submissions of different op-eds to a newspaper over a period before one gets published. Be patient!
   
   
5. Due to the smaller number of op-ed submissions in local and neighborhood newspapers, try submitting an op-ed to your local neighborhood newspaper.
   
   You can increase your chances of getting published submitted your op-eds and LTEs to local and neighborhood newspapers since they tend to receive less guest opinion submissions. Even more, these newspapers might be more eager to fill space in their pages due slow news periods or lack of other op-ed submissions.
   
   
6. To increase your chance to get published, submit op-eds to multiple newspapers.
   
   At the same time, try to vary the wording to each newspaper that you submit. Look at their website at the maximum word limit and try to tie your op-ed submission a news story or editorial of that specific newspaper. Newspapers generally don’t like to run generic op-eds from citizen writers that appear in other area newspapers.
   
   
7. Have fun! It is very rewarding to get an op-ed or a LTE published in a newspaper.
   
   I loved submitting op-eds and getting published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and various Oregon newspapers over the years. It was very exciting seeing my name in print urging for climate action to hopefully reach many readers and online subscribers of these newspapers. I hope it created more awareness and inspiration for climate action. Maybe it helped others to find their voice to write to newspapers and their elected officials to act on climate. You just never know when you plant seeds when and where they are going to spout.
   

Final Thoughts

As nearly all my blogs, this is a very long as I shared my complete story on a given topic. I also wrote this so I could share all my published op-eds in one blog with my thoughts on each individual one that was published. Even with the very immense length of this blog, I could not find a way to highlight other peak moments for me.

One of my biggest achievements as a climate organizer was when Yale Climate Connections (YCC) published an article I wrote: “Communicating Climate Change in a National Park” on April 26, 2012. YCC defines itself as “a nonpartisan, multimedia service providing daily broadcast radio programming and original web-based reporting, commentary, and analysis on the issue of climate change.” For years, I listened to their daily minute and a half podcasts/radio stories on “how people are responding to the changing climate.” YCC featured my friend Larry Lazar on their podcast in 2015. They featured me on their podcast in November 2017, “Park ranger witnesses climate change firsthand.”

I met Bud Ward, Editor of Yale Climate Connections, at the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco in December 2011. We exchanged business cards at a social event. Months later, I emailed Bud to network for a career in climate communications and advice for attending grad school for climate communications. We chatting by phone in March 2012. I will never forget when Bud said: ‘I can’t help you with either of those, but I admit I have something a little more self-serving. Would you want to write a short article for Yale Climate Connections?’

I jumped at that opportunity. We agreed that I should write about my experience about communicating about climate change as a park ranger in the national parks. Bud offered to pay me for writing that article, which turned out to be a similar amount to a paycheck I was receiving as a park ranger at that time. Bud was very gracious with his edits after I submitted my writing to him. Before I had written and submitted any op-ed, this experience writing for Bud and Yale Climate Communications really hooked me on writing about climate change.

In addition, Clare Foran, former associate editor at The Atlantic, reached out to me for a phone interview in November 2014. She was writing an article about park rangers in the national parks discussing climate change with park visitors. Somehow, she found me, possibly from my Crater Lake climate change evening program that is on YouTube. Our phone conversation went well. She then wrote this article featuring me for The Atlantic, “Next Time You Visit a National Park, You Might Get a Lecture on Climate Change” that was published on December 12, 2014.

This was another high point for me, among many, as a climate organizer. It was another dream come true for me to get my name in newspaper and magazine publications promoting climate action. I hope my story and successes will inspire you and others to write and to act on climate. I look forward to seeing your name in a newspaper or magazine for climate action.

“It sounded really loud, he said it really loud
On the radio, whoa-oh-oh-oh”
From the 1979 song “On the Radio” by Donna Summer

When I was a kid growing up in Oakville, Missouri, a suburb at the southern end of the St. Louis metropolitan area, I was fascinated by FM radio stations that played pop music. In some of my earliest memories around the age of 5 to 7 years old in the mid 1970s, I loved listening to Elton John and Paul McCartney on the radio. Every time my parents’ car drove past a very tall radio tower in St. Louis, typically painted in subdue red and white colors with a blinking light on top, I thought Elton John, Paul McCartney and other singers were performing their songs live somewhere from within that tower. It seemed magical and mystical in my young child’s imaginative brain. I didn’t understand how they would perform their hit songs repeatedly inside those towers. It did not occur to me until I was older that the singers recorded the songs just once on records and the radio stations were just playing the records.

I watched way too much TV growing up, but my favorite memories were listening to pop music on the radio. Someday I wanted to be “On the Radio” as that memorable 1979 song by Disco singer Donna Summer sang. As I grew up, other dreams took over my life. In the 1980s, I wanted to be a successful businessman like billionaire Donald Trump who I saw on TV as oozing with confidence and success. I loved his 1987 book The Art of the Deal. I wanted to be building skyscrapers and closing big money real estate deals like he was. In addition, my dad thought I should major in Business Administration in college to get what he called “a practical education.”

From 1988 to 1992, I attended William Jewell College in Kansas City, Missouri to major in Business Administration. I enjoyed my business classes, but I quickly discovered that I did not want to spend my life working in an office cubical. I just too ecliptic to be the practical adult that my dad wanted me to be. In 1991, Donald Trump went bankrupt. So much for that stellar businessman image that he projected. Even wore, he cheated on his first wife with the mistress who would eventually his second wife, bragging to the media that his extra martial affair was “the best sex he ever had.” Thus, I wanted no part of Donald Trump’s sleazy world and lifestyle. I stopped liking him then and wanted nothing to do with him ever since then.

Working in the national parks and discovering climate change

When I graduated from William Jewell College with my business degree in May 1992. I was unsure what to do with my life. I took a summer job at the gift store at Crater Lake National Park to help me find my own life’s path. When the train arrived in southern Oregon, on May 20, 1992. I found my spiritual home in Oregon at Crater Lake National Park. From that point on, I wanted to live close to snowcapped mountains and to nature. The odd thing was that Crater Lake was just a summer job. I had to find a different job for the winter.

In the winter of 1992-93, I worked at the front desk at the Flamingo Lodge in Everglades National Park, Florida. It was about as far away from Crater Lake as you could get in the United States. I could not wait to return to Crater Lake in May 1993. At the same time, I enjoyed my winter in the Everglades canoeing and seeing all the wildlife. It was fascinating to see alligators, crocodiles, dolphins, manatees, and the wide variety of wading birds in the Everglades.

From 1992 to 2008, I fell into this habit of spending my summers at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon and my winters in Everglades National Park, Florida. The national parks had little to no TV reception. Thus, I continued my lifelong love of listening to popular music on the radio. The FM radio became my companion during those cross-country drives across the United States, traveling from Crater Lake to the Everglades in the fall and the reverse trip every spring. In 2002, I switched to listening to local National Public Radio (NPR) stations in southern Oregon and Florida to stay up to date with the national news.

In 1998, I started giving ranger talks in Everglades National Park. Visitors then asked me about this global warming thing. Visitors hate when park rangers tell you, “I don’t know.” Soon afterwards, I rushed to the nearest Miami bookstore and to the park library to read all I the scientific books I could find on climate change.

The information I learned really scared me, specifically sea level rise along our mangrove coastline in Everglades National Park. Sea level rose 8 inches in the 20th century, four times more than it had risen in previous centuries for the past three thousand years. Because of climate change, sea level is now expected to rise at least three feet in Everglades National Park by the end of the 21st century. The sea would swallow up most of the park and nearby Miami since the highest point of the park road less than three feet above sea level.

It shocked me that crocodiles, alligators, and beautiful Flamingos I saw in the Everglades could all lose this ideal coastal habitat because of sea level rinse enhanced by climate change.

Organizing for climate action in my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri

I became so worried about climate change that I quit my winter job in Everglades National Park the year in 2008. I started spending my winters in St. Louis Missouri to find some way to organize for climate action. I started giving climate change talks at my nieces and nephews grade schools in the spring of 2010. In the winter of 2011, I joined South County Toastmasters to become a better climate change communicator. That same winter, I worked at the St. Louis Science Center at their temporary climate change exhibit from March to May 2011.

While attending a St. Louis Science Center lecture about how climate change is impacting the weather in April 2011, I met and became friends with St. Louis businessman Larry Lazar. We had a mutual longing to do something about climate change. Thus, Larry and I co-founded the St. Louis Climate Reality Meet Up group in November 2011 (now called Climate Meetup-St. Louis) to organize regular meetings and promote events to create more awareness about climate change in the St. Louis area.

Up until 2017, I still worked my summer job Crater Lake National Park. While working at Crater Lake for many years, the impacts of climate change became apparent with the average annual snowpack diminishing. I noticed more mild winters with below average snowpacks. The summer wildfire seasons became more longer, hotter, dryer and more intense. By August 2011, I had gathered enough information to start giving a climate change ranger evening program at the campground amphitheater to the park visitors.

Larry Lazar and I organized some informative meetings about climate change through our St. Louis Climate Reality Meet Up group during the winter of 2012-13. In June 2012, the Climate Reality Project, founded in 2007 by former Vice President Al Gore, invited Larry and I to attend their three-day training in San Francisco, California on August 21-23. As trained Climate Reality Leaders, Larry and I started giving climate change presentations in the St. Louis area that winter. Larry and I gave several joint presentations with Lucas Sabalka, a mathematics professor at St. Louis University who had also attended the Climate Reality San Francisco Training.

Learning about the unhealthy and deadly coal pollution in the St. Louis area

With the climate organizing that Larry, Lucas, and I did during the winter of 2012-13, I met Sara Edgar, an organizer with the Missouri Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. It was through Sara at the Beyond Coal Campaign and a news article I stumbled across that I learned how dependent St. Louis was on burning coal for electricity.

On December 31, 2012, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, my hometown newspaper, had this headline that grabbed my attention: One in five kids in parts of St. Louis area struggles with asthma. Underneath the headline was an 8-year-old African American boy, Xavier Miles, with a big smile on his face before receiving his spirometry test, which shows the function of the lungs, at his school. The caption stated that “Xavier has asthma and met with various educators who reminded him how to take of himself during an asthma attack.”

The article then mentioned that St. Louis has twice the national average of children suffering with asthma. What causes asthma?

According to the Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, environmental factors are one of the top causes of Asthma:
“Pollution, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, ozone, cold temperatures, and high humidity have all been shown to trigger asthma in some individuals.”

During periods of heavy air pollution, there tend to be increases in asthma symptoms and hospital admissions. Smoggy conditions release the destructive ingredient known as ozone, causing coughing, shortness of breath, and even chest pain. These same conditions emit sulfur dioxide, which also results in asthma attacks by constricting airways.”

Sara then shared with me statistics how deadly and unhealth it is to burn coal for energy. According to the Environmental Integrity Project, 1,000 asthma attacks and 57 to 100 premature deaths occurred each year because of the Meramec Coal Plant. Even more, according to the EPA, over 95% of our fixed source greenhouse emissions for St. Louis County came from the Meramec Coal plant at that time.

Volunteering and taking action for the Missouri Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign

Sara invited me to be the moderator of the Coal, Climate and Clean Energy Forum at the Cliff Cave Library in Oakville, MO on March 28, 2013. Around 50 people attended this event. Sara encouraged me to write letters to the editor, which were published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and neighborhood newspapers urging Ameren to retire the Meramec Coal Power Plant.

From the awareness I learned how bad it is to burn coal, especially in my hometown St. Louis, I gave a speech at the April 17, 2013, St. Louis South County Toastmasters meeting called What Keeps Me Up Late at Night. The goal of that speech was to urge my fellow Toastmasters to request the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to require Ameren, the local electric utility which operates Meramec Plant, to lower its sulfur dioxide emissions to levels that are safe for our families according to the Clean Air Act.

On April 25, 2013, Sara invited me to be one of the speakers at a Beyond Coal rally in front of the Ameren headquarters. All the speakers at this rally, including me, spoke to the attendees and the local TV & radio media about stopping coal ash pollution from Ameren’s four coal plants in the St. Louis metro region. We wanted Ameren to stop dumping coal ash from our coal power plants in our ground water, rivers, and local community.

Those volunteer actions I took for the Missouri Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign then led me to write an opinion editorial published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on July 10, 2013. Just like my Toastmaster’s speech, the title of this op-ed was called, “What Keeps me Up Late At Night.” This op-ed asked St. Louis area residents to urge Ameren to retire the local coal plants because of the health risks from the polluted air.

Briefly working for the Missouri Sierra Club and the Beyond Coal Campaign

All these volunteer action led to the Missouri Sierra Club hiring me in October 2013 to be an organizer primarily for the Beyond Coal campaign. At the time, it felt like a dream come true to work full time as a climate and environmental organizer.

The job soon felt like it was not an ideal fit for me just days after I started. Besides the Sierra Club, I organized for Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL), the Climate Reality Project and I was the co-leader of the St. Louis Climate Reality Meet Up group, along with Larry Lazar. I took this job hoping to still coordinate with these other climate organizations. However, the job turned out to be all consuming with no time to interact with those organizations.

The St. Louis Climate Reality Meet Up had an event with a large attendance in November 2013. I hoped to go to recruit volunteers for the Sierra Club and the Beyond Coal campaign, as well as coordinate with those climate activists attending for future coalition organizing events. Sadly, my boss at the Sierra Club did not want me to attend because of a small gathering of Sierra Club volunteers scheduled to meet at the Sierra Club office that evening. I found his decision to be rather short sighted. It felt like we were just not seeing eye to eye on climate organizing.

Even more troubling, I learned that my job was an “exempt” position, not subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime regulations and, therefore, not entitled to overtime pay. It felt like I was working morning, afternoons, and evenings with very little free time. It felt stifling and confining compared to my other climate organizing and my summer job as a park ranger at Crater Lake National Park. Around Thanksgiving 2013, I did not want to do that job anymore, so I gave my two weeks notice.  

In agreement with my supervisor to leave on good terms, we agreed I would attend the Missouri Health Foundation Annual Retreat in Columbia, MO in early December. The goal of sending me there was to network with the conference organizers and attendees to coordinate more with the Sierra Club. My supervisor wanted to me to make connections with conference organizers and attendees to work on a shared goal to improve the health of Missourians by reducing pollution, especially from Missouri’s coal plants. It turned out to be a grueling conference with a lot of information and dry lectures. Many of the breakout sessions were about Medicaid expansion for Missouri, an issue that I do support. However, the breakout sessions about Medicaid expansion did not hold much interest for me.

Hearing two of my Climate Reality friends interviewed on a St. Louis area radio station

As I drove to the conference, I had a gut feeling it would be a very wonky conference on medical policy. Thus, I was not looking forward to attending. On the drive to this conference on Monday, December 9, 2013, two fellow St. Louis Climate Reality Leaders, my friend Larry Lazar and Chris Laughman, were featured on a radio interview on the environmental themed Earthworms radio show on independent community supported radio station KDHX 88.1 FM.

I was driving on the I-70 interstate towards Columbia, MO leaving the St. Louis metro area when the interview started. Sadly, the radio signal in my car was not strong since I was heading away from St. Louis. I became very angry turning the car around at the nearest exit to try to get a better radio signal. I was not thrilled about going to this health conference, so this radio show was to be my driving companion for this very dark and lonely December evening.

It was exciting when Larry Lazar mentioned me during this broadcast, which was totally unexpected. He said, “Brian Ettling has given 100s of climate change presentations. He is a national park ranger, and he has a very funny, compelling, and interesting presentation. He is one of our best.”

This was a huge honor for Larry to say this. Larry was recommending me to give climate change talks in the St. Louis area. Unfortunately, no online link is available to share a recording of this radio interview now. However, this was a moral boost for me that night in December 2013 because I felt down that the Sierra Club job did not work out for me. I drove to this health conference to complete a work obligation, not to fulfill a passion for me. To be honest, I was jealous at that moment that Larry and Chris were on the radio. I was excited for them, but I wanted to be that person on the radio talking about climate organizing.

With a new year approaching, I made it a high priority if not a 2014 resolution to be interviewed on the radio for climate action. If Larry Lazar and Chris Laughman could do it, I could do it!

Success! Landing my first live radio interview for climate action!

The host of that Earthworms radio show on KDHX 88.1 FM is Jean Ponzi. She is a great host. Jean is very engaging, funny, gregarious, and passionate about environment. Jean is the Green Resources Manager for EarthWays Center of the Missouri Botanical Garden. In addition, she hosts Growing Green St. Louis on the Big 550-KTRS AM, a weekly showcase for local sustainability achievements. On top of that, Jean is in demand as a public speaker promoting Green living options in business and public settings. I think it would be very safe to call Jean a very inspiring and positive “Force of Nature” in the St. Louis area.

Just like Larry Lazar and Chris Laughman had accomplished in December 2013, I really wanted to be on her radio show. At the same time, since she just had Larry and Chris on her show, I knew I was going to have to wait my turn to hang low for several months before I could reach out to her to request to be a guest on her show.

Going through my old emails and Facebook posts, I don’t know how I connected with Jean Ponzi. Somehow, it just happened. It might be because both of us gave presentations at the Webster University Sustainability Conference that took place the previous Friday. Maybe we had a conversation during that conference. I don’t remember now. Anyway, I did something right because Jean invited me into the KDHX studio in midtown St. Louis for a live interview on Monday evening, April 14 , 2014. My first radio interview was fun and exciting. I had finally made it, like the Donna Summer song, I was going to be “On the Radio.”

The bad news is that there’s no longer an online link from this radio interview. The good news is that I got a picture of myself in the radio studio with Jean Ponzi. If I remember correctly, Jean had another guest booked, but that guest cancelled so she booked me to go on the air. That is one of the keys to getting on the air for climate action or other issues that you want to promote: being available if a booked guest suddenly cancels.

One of the things I loved about doing radio interviews is there is no eye contact with the audience. The listeners can’t see you. Thus, I brought in notecards of my favorite quotes, my short personal mantras for climate organizing such as “Think Globally and Act Daily,” and information on the events that I was promoting.

Yes, I did give Jean good eye contact during the interview to be fully engaged with her. At the same time, she did not mind at all when I glanced at my notes. There were times during the interview where she had to introduce the show, make announcements, station identification, promote upcoming broadcasts, etc. Thus, I had plenty of time to look at my notes and notecards to make sure I knew the talking points I wanted to emphasize during this radio interview.

The ultimate key to getting a radio interview is promoting an upcoming event you are leading in the community. For this interview, I promoted an event happening a few days later. On Thursday April 17th 7 pm, Climate Reality Leaders Larry Lazar, Corinne McAfee, Dr. Johann Bruhn, and I were presenting on climate change at Eastern Central College in Union, Missouri.

My parents, some of my friends, and my then girlfriend now wife Tanya Couture heard the live radio interview. They were all very pleased and proud to hear me on the radio.

The good news is that Jean Ponzi and I did stay in contact. She did invite me back as a guest for her radio shows six additional times in the five years after that. Larry Lazar and I were guests for her Growing Green St. Louis show on KTRS 550 AM on November 21, 2014. Larry and I talked with Jean about our efforts giving climate change talks in the St. Louis area as Climate Reality Leaders. It’s a shame that there is no recorded link from that interview.

The Earthworms archive recordings of their past podcast episodes goes back as far as February 3, 2015. Thus, you can listen to recordings of the other 5 times Jean invited me to be a guest on her Earthworms radio program/podcast:

1. Brian Ettling On Climate Change Activism, recorded on April 7, 2015.
   
2. Climate Change Tales – from a National Park Ranger, recorded on April 27, 2016.
   
3. Citizens’ Climate Lobby – the Power of One, Many Times Over, December 7, 2016.
   
4. Brian Ettling: Climate Change Advocacy Marches On!, recorded on October 2, 2018.
   
5. Brian Ettling: A Climate Leader’s Update, recorded on November 27, 2019.

Starting in 2015, Jean did not even have me come into the radio studio to record these radio interviews/podcasts. We would agree upon a time, and she would call me on my cell phone. One of those calls on April 27 2016, I spoke to her from inside my car in a rest area in Colorado during my cross country drive from St. Louis to my summer job at Crater Lake national park. Those phone calls made it even easier to spread out my notecards and notes to share the exact quotes, talking points, and upcoming events that I wanted to emphasize during our interview.

My 2014 live radio interview on St. Louis NPR radio program KWMU “St. Louis On the Air”

In April 2014, staff at Eastern Central College in Union coordinated with Larry Lazar and me to promote our Thursday April 17th event. Climate Reality Leaders Larry Lazar, Corinne McAfee, Dr. Johann Bruhn, and I presented on climate change at Eastern Central College that evening.

The staff at Eastern Central College made a successful connection with the St. Louis National Public Radio (NPR) station, KWMU 90.7 FM for their daily show, St. Louis On the Air about “the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region.”

The show invited Larry Lazar, Dr. Jack Fishman, and me to be interviewed live on the air on April 15, 2014. Since 2011, Dr. Jack Fishman is a Professor of Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the Director of The Center for Environmental Sciences at St. Louis University (SLU). Before arriving at SLU, he worked at the NASA Langley Research Center for 31 years, where his research focused on the area of tropospheric chemistry. Larry, Jack, and I were invited to appear on St. Louis On the Air “to discuss the impact of climate change on the Midwest, ways to reduce your carbon footprint, and local efforts to get the word out about global warming.”

We were primarily there to promote our event, The Panel Discussion on Climate Disruption on Thursday, April 17, 2014 at 7:00 p.m. at East Central College in Union, Missouri. During my winters in St. Louis, I regularly listened to KWMU for news. I especially enjoyed listening to St. Louis On the Air daily. In Florida, Oregon, and Missouri, I was a loyal listener to NPR for over ten years. It was so exciting to go to the radio studio to see where the show was broadcast live.

When I appeared on KDHX’s Earthworms with host Jean Ponzi, it was a thrill for me to be interviewed solo to have the challenge to think on my feet to answer all her questions by myself. At the same time, I loved the chance to share this experience to be interviewed on the St. Louis NPR station with my friends Larry Lazar and Dr. Jack Fishman.

Since 2011, Larry and I had given a lot of joint climate change presentations in the St. Louis area and had organized some climate events. Larry introduced me to Dr. Jack Fishman who really has a deep understanding of the science of climate change. I loved the challenge of answering questions in live radio interviews. At the same time, I don’t have all the answers. Sometimes I don’t think on my feet as well as I should. I don’t remember certain words when I am put on the spot and some answers to questions can allude me in the moment. Thus, I was very happy to have Larry there to share his perspective as a businessman and Dr. Fishman to share his knowledge and expertise as an atmospheric scientist.

It was fun to meet the host of St. Louis On the Air, Don Marsh, since I had heard his voice on my radio many times over the years. Even more, I remembered him years ago when I would see him on TV in St. Louis on stations KDNL and KTVI. I found him to be polite, reserved, and made us feel welcome in the radio station. He asked us great questions and he gave us the freedom to answer them in our own manner without interrupting us. It was great to get a picture of Don, Jack, Larry and I in the studio.

Of course, my parents, Tanya, and many other friends heard us on the radio live. I got to hear the daily re-broadcast at 9 pm and I was very happy how all of us sounded. A day later, KWMU, posted a link, description and recording of our interview, Encounters With Climate Change: A Discussion With Three St. Louisans. Even more, a picture of me at Crater Lake National Park in my ranger uniform included with the online post.

This felt like my biggest accomplishment as a radio interview up to that point. I still dreamed though of getting a radio interview on KMOX 1120 am, the news and talk radio station, which has the biggest number of listeners by far in the St. Louis area. In April 2014, I did not know how I was going to make that happen. It took a couple of years while I pursued other opportunities, but this dream did eventually come true.

My October 2017 radio interviews for two southern Oregon radio stations

After that April 2014 appearance on the St. Louis KWMU NPR radio show St. Louis On the Air, I hoped to have other opportunities to be interviewed on the radio. As I mentioned before, Jean Ponzi did invite me several times to appear on Earthworms on KDHX. However, it took a couple of years before I had more opportunities to be on the radio.

In February 2017, my wife Tanya and I moved to Portland, Oregon. After we moved there, I became very active as a volunteer in the Portland, Oregon Chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL). I immediately loved living in Portland, but it felt like ‘a blue bubble’ with many people living there who are passionate about climate change and taking climate action. Thus, I had this mission to travel around central, southern, and eastern Oregon to inspire and organize Oregonians in those areas to organize for climate action and join CCL.

The CCL volunteers and I who organized this tour called it The Oregon Stewardship Tour. We thought that taking climate action, especially with urging Congress to pass a carbon fee and dividend, is one of the best ways to be good stewards of Oregon’s precious air, and and water.

It was also one of the bravest and boldest feats I have done driving 1,600 miles myself in my car to 11 cities for this 12-day tour from October 24 to November 4, 2017. I traveled to give presentations in La Grande, Baker City, John Day, Burns, Prineville Redmond, Lakeview, Klamath Falls, and Grants Pass to talk to rural and conservative Oregonians about climate change.

This tour was a huge undertaking for me. For a recap, I had

• 9 public outreach events
• 2 lobby meetings with district offices of Rep. Greg Walden
• 2 newspaper editorial board meetings
• 2 live radio interviews
• 4 published articles in Oregon newspapers featuring the tour
• 4 press releases published announcing local tour events.

Looking back, I wish we could have booked more radio interviews. The organizers of the tour and I did not plan that part of the tour as well as we could. I wish we would have reached out to Oregon Public Radio (OPB) to their Think Out Loud program, a daily conversation covering local Oregon news, politics, culture, and the arts. This show reminded me of St. Louis On the Air, the local NPR show in St. Louis that covered local news and cultural topics. I was interviewed live on St. Louis On the Air on April 15, 2014. Since OPB’s Think Out Loud broadcasted in most of Oregon, this was a lost opportunity that we did not approach the show’s producers and contributors to let them know about my tour.

On the third day of the tour, I arrived in John Day and met up with Eric Means, another Portland CCL volunteer. Eric took advantage of the perfect fall weather to ride his motorcycle from his home to John Day. Eric and I then met up with Logan Bajett at the local John Day radio station KJDY to do a 10-minute radio interview about CCL and the Oregon Stewardship Tour. It was a taped interview that was scheduled to play Monday morning on Logan’s Coffee Talk radio show. Unfortunately, a couple days later, Eric received an email from Logan that the station management decided not to air the interview. That felt like a disappointment since the interview went well and we took time out of the busy schedule that day to complete this radio interview.

On November 1, 2017, on the tenth day of the tour in Lakeview Oregon, I had a radio interview conducted over the phone with Jefferson Public Radio (JPR) on their daily morning show The Jefferson Exchange. JPR was the local NPR station that had a broadcast area that included Ashland, Medford, Klamath Falls and much of southwestern Oregon. When I worked at Crater Lake National Park from 1992 to 2017, this was the local NPR station where I was a regular listener. Thus, I was very excited to be interviewed by this radio station.

The Jefferson Exchange’s Host Geoffrey Riley had a joint interview with me and Jim Walls, a resident of Lakeview who successfully led Lake County to be a net exporter of clean energy. Jim was my host while visiting Lakeview. Jim Walls was Executive Director for the Lake County Resources Initiative (LCRI), a non-profit working on natural resource projects to promote local clean energy projects to reduce the threat of climate change. With Jim’s leadership at LCRI, Lake County had become one of the first counties in the U.S. to be a net exporter of clean energy.

Jim Walls wore a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and a western belt buckle. He spoke with a down home twang like someone that you would hope to meet visiting a western wide open spaces landscape. Lakeview is about 14 miles north of the northeast California border. It was one of the highlights of my trip to visit Lakeview and meet Jim Walls. Lakeview is in one of the least densely populated areas of the United States. After I arrived in Lakeview, one of the first things Jim told me:

“Son, this is not rural out here. This is frontier country. You could drive over 100 miles in any
direction leaving Lakeview and not see another human being.”

Jim was so unique and a fantastic host, plus a big local leader in clean energy. Thus, it was an honor to meet him and participate in this joint radio interview with him on JPR. I remembered this as another great radio interview that I enjoyed doing. We were on the phone in two different rooms at the office building where Jim worked in Lakeview. We tried to be as far apart in the office so we would not get a weird audio feedback on the phone while we were interviewed live on the air. After the interview, the only downside was that I had to rush to leave Jim’s office to head to Klamath Falls for more scheduled activities happening during the tour.

On day later on the eleventh day of the tour, I traveled to Ashland, Oregon. An Ashland independent radio station KSKQ 89.5 FM scheduled me for a live radio afternoon interview. I shared my background how I first discovered and got involved with CCL. The radio hosts reacted very positively to my background information about myself, CCL’s carbon fee and dividend solution, and how that solution would help dramatically less air pollution.

At the end of the interview, the radio host wanted me or another local CCL volunteer back in three months for another interview. Even more, he offered to do public service announcements for future Southern Oregon CCL monthly meetings held in Ashland. The KSKQ radio staff’s positive enthusiasm for CCL was a wonderful way to wrap up the day. It felt like high note as the Oregon Stewardship Tour was wrapping up the next day in Grants Pass, Oregon.

My climate change radio interviews for KMOX 1120 AM, known as “The Voice of St. Louis”

The summer of 2017 was my last year working as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park. During that summer, I was planning and focusing on CCL The Oregon Stewardship Tour that I would be taking that fall. In my job as a seasonal park ranger, I would sometimes lead “step on” bus narration tours where a private motorcoach bus filled with passengers on an organized company tour of the western U.S. would come to Crater Lake. It just happened that this tour company, Sunrise Tours, and the passengers all the passengers on board were from my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.

Among the group of St. Louisans on this tour bus was Debbie Monterrey, Co-host/co-anchor or Total Information AM, 5 to 9 a.m. weekdays on KMOX 1120 AM radio station in St. Louis. Debbie traveled on this bus tour with her family. It appeared that Debbie and her family were on this tour so she could promote Sunrise Tours for an on the air advertisement for KMOX.

Let me emphasize that KMOX is not any radio station in St. Louis. KMOX prides itself on being “The Voice of St. Louis.” This news, information, and talk radio station is the most dominating of all radio stations in the St. Louis region. It is the flagship station of the St. Louis Cardinals Major League Baseball team. At that time, the flagship station of the St. Louis Blues NHL hockey team. It carried the Rush Limbaugh Show from 11 am to 2 pm daily.

The station boasts of running on 50,000 watts and having a broadcast coverage area of nearly all of eastern Missouri and most of Illinois. On October 29, 2013, The New York Times profiled KMOX in article, Trying to Outrun the Cardinals’ Long Reach. The article states: “With a 50,000-watt signal originating from a transmitter across the Mississippi River, in Illinois, KMOX is said to be heard in 44 states and as far away as the Netherlands, East Africa and Guam.”

Since I was a child growing up in St. Louis, I knew about of the broadcast reach of KMOX in St. Louis and much surrounding Missouri and Illinois area, plus areas beyond. As an adult, I knew that KMOX has a large number of conservative listeners who loyally tuned in daily to the Rush Limbaugh Show. Thus, when I started organizing for climate action in St. Louis around 2010, this was my dream to somehow be interviewed on KMOX inspire listeners to act on climate.

With this in mind I did not know who Debbie Monterrey was before I led this “step on” ranger tour at Crater Lake National Park in August 2017. However, everyone on the tour knew who Debbie was, so it became apparent to me very quickly who she was. It’s one thing to meet a well- known news reporter and radio host. It’s another thing when they are genuinely friendly and easy to get to know. Anyone would want to be friends with Debbie. She is very interested in people, traveling, life, her family, and sincerely focuses on you in a conversation.

Debbie was very appreciative of everything I did leading this step on tour around Crater Lake. She especially liked how I interacted with her children. As a ranger, I always tried to go out of my way to interact with children during my ranger talks and make them feel important. Debbie generously complimented me about my tour.

I told her my parents were big listeners and fans of KMOX. I shared about my background as a native St. Louisan who graduated from high school there. I let her know that I come back during the winters to give public presentations about climate change and organize events in the area. At the end of the tour, we exchanged business cards. Debbie encouraged me to contact her next time I was coming to St. Louis so she could do a “profile interview” about me.

One week later, on August 24, 2017, Debbie enjoyed my Crater Lake ranger tour so much that she briefly talked about me live on KMOX that morning. My Dad happened to hear her remarks on the radio live. This is what Debbie said live on the air:

“Oregon is absolutely beautiful if you have never been there…When we went to Crater Lake, which is phenomenal, we had a guide come on board, Ranger Brian Ettling and he is from Oakville. He went to Oakville High School. He would do 6 months of the year at Crater Lake and 6 months coming back to St. Louis and he was so hilarious. He did a great job. My husband asked him: ‘Do you ever do stand-up comedy?’ And (Brian) responded, ‘Actually, I do YouTube videos about climate change. I try to make them funny. They are kind of silly.’ And Tosh.o on Comedy Central had Brian on for a Web Redemption, which you can find on YouTube, which I thought was pretty amazing.”

That December during the week around Christmas, Tanya and I traveled to St. Louis to visit with her parents and brother, and my parents, sisters and their families for Christmas. A few weeks before Christmas, I emailed Debbie to see if I could get a Profile Interview with her. We exchanged emails and scheduled a date for the day after Christmas, December 26, 2017, for me to come down to the KMOX radio studio in downtown St. Louis to be interviewed by Debbie.

I asked Debbie if my parents come join me in the studio, since they are lifelong regular listeners of KMOX. Debbie generously agreed they could join us. It felt like this was the best Christmas gift I could have given my parents. They loved every minute of being in the KMOX offices and studio. Debbie was very happy to meet them and to get a picture of all of us together. My parents were very proud to be in the studio when Debbie recorded our radio interview.

The profile interview aired on Saturday, January 6, 2018. Fortunately, here is the link where you can listen to this interview. After it aired, my mother-in-law commented that I sounded “Very impressive and smooth.”

When I just listened to the recording afterwards, overall, I was very happy with it. Since KMOX has a lot of listeners who regularly listen to Rush Limbaugh on this radio station, I was striving for a message to reach moderates and conservatives. Debbie told me that the interview recording would probably air several times. That was good news since I was trying to reach moderates, conservatives, and their families who regularly listen to KMOX.

I am a little critical of myself that I did talk way too fast in some of my answers. When I do a future radio interview, I should have a piece of paper in front of that says: “Talk slowly! Relax.” I did not catch any ‘ahs’ or ‘umms,’ so my delivery was good. However, I definitely had pregnant pauses and I did use “And so” as crutch words.

Debbie was a very friendly and kind interviewer. As a news reporter, she still wanted my reaction to people who do not accept climate change, the Trump Administration, and people who think it is too late. Listening to the interview recording on January 6, 2018, I was very happy I was able to keep my answers positive and hopeful.

Overall, getting interviewed by Debbie Monterrey on KMOX was a highlight of my life and an incredible experience. It was a dream come true to talk about climate change for the biggest radio station in the St. Louis region. My interview went so well that KMOX did invite me to return for short interviews for couple of short news segments in the following years.

In October 2018, I organized a climate change speaking tour across Missouri to speak at my alma mater William Jewell College in Kansas City, Missouri University in Columbia, MO, my alma mater Oakville High School, St. Louis University, and teaching a climate change 101 continuing adult education class at the Meramec Campus of St. Louis Community College. KMOX did a short three-minute segment highlighting my speaking events in St. Louis that included a very short, recorded interview with me. Sadly, there is no online link to that radio promotion.

Debbie asked me to do a recorded phone interview with her for a short news segment for KMOX for telling the difference between ‘Weather vs. Climate.’ This two-and-a-half-minute segment aired on February 12, 2019. Fortunately, I gave a Toastmasters speech about this subject in January 2013. I turned the text of that speech into a blog, You Can See Clearly Now. Thus, it was very easy for me to provide Debbie with short sticky sound bite quotes that she could insert into this recorded news segment.

The COVID pandemic in 2020 grinded all of my climate change organizing to a halt for a couple of years. Thus, my most recent radio interview is my Earthworms interview with Jean Ponzi recorded on November 27, 2019.

I love public speaking and giving radio interviews. Thus, I hope to give more radio interviews in the future, if the opportunity presents itself.

Until then, here are my tips to give successful radio interviews:

1. Get the contact information for the radio host and/or the producers for the radio program where you hope to be interviewed.
   This was how I got all of my radio interviews, I reached out by email and called the radio station and the host of the radio show where I wanted to be interviewed.
   
   The only exceptions were my local NPR radio interviews. For the April 15, 2014 interview on the local NPR show St. Louis On the Air, a staff person at Eastern Central College in Union, Missouri booked that interview. For my November 3, 2017 interview on the local NPR Southern Oregon show The Jefferson Exchange, someone from the local Citizens Climate Lobby Chapter in Ashland, Oregon reached out to Jefferson Public Radio to book that interview. Thus, if you have contacts that can make connections with a radio station to schedule an interview, utilize them.

2. Radio hosts and shows are always looking for guests.
   Sometimes guests cancel. If someone suddenly cancels, a radio host or show might be eagerly looking to book someone for the next day or week, etc. Thus, be prepared that they might call you in on a very short notice if a guest cancels. Even more, climate change could be a breaking ‘hot topic’ news story where they need almost an immediate comment. Be ready to jump on those opportunities if they arise!

3. It helps if you have an event you are promoting.
   Local radio hosts and shows like to tie their interviews to upcoming community events that are open to the public. Therefore, if you are leading or participating in a team organizing a nearby event, do let your local radio stations know. Radio stations are always looking to fill airtime. Thus, they might read a short press release about your event. Even more, they might be interested in a radio interview with you.

4. Giving a radio interview can seem like a pop quiz since you don’t know what the radio host will ask you.
   If you can’t answer a question, don’t feel bad or panic. Just pivot to what you know. Talk about the event you are promoting or share the talking point you want to emphasize to the listening audience hearing you on the radio.

5. It’s the radio! In most cases, you can have your notes or notecards with you.
   For most of my radio interviews, I had notecards and a page of notes with my favorite quotes, my short mantra statements like ‘Think Globally, Act Locally!’ and information on the event I was promoting. The radio hosts never objected that I had notes to glance over. I would still give the radio host good eye contact during the interview. However, they never complained about me glancing my notes during the interview to make sure I said exactly what I wanted to say.

6. Speak slowly and enunciate well.
   In any public speaking situation, including a radio interview, I tend to speak fast and run my words together that makes it hard for others to understand me. Before the interview, take some relaxing breaths, meditate, or even write on a notecard “Talk slowly! Relax.”
   
   Remind yourself that the audience can’t see you. They will only hear your voice. Thus, make sure they can hear you clearly by speaking slowly and pronouncing your words so that they can understand you and your message.

7. Have Fun! It is a very enjoyable experience to be interviewed on the radio.
   All the radio hosts who interviewed me, such as Jean Ponzi, Debbie Monterrey and Don Marsh, loved their job. They wanted their guests, such as me to have a great and enjoyable experience. Each radio host I encountered were genuinely happy to see me, meet me, and wanted to do a great interview with me. They appreciated me being there. Their personalities, mannerisms, and the way they interacted with me put me at ease and I felt honored to be there.

Final Thoughts

As you can tell by this blog post, I had great memories getting interviewed for climate action on the radio over the years. As a child growing up listening to FM rock music stations, this was a dream come true to be on the radio. As a climate organizer during the past 13 years, it was a life goal for me to be on the radio to reach a wider audience to try to inspire them to act on climate. I hope this blog post will inspire you to go “on the radio” for climate action.

Over the past four years, I had the opportunity to give oral testimony to Oregon Legislative committees five times to urge them to support strong and effective climate legislation. In this blog, I include the text from those testimonies.

Even more, I will provide my tips for giving oral testimonies to legislative committees, such as:

1. Practice and prepare giving testimony for less than two minutes.
   
   Every Oregon legislative committee that I testified required testimony of a maximum of no more than two minutes. If the time went over two minutes, the committee chair would cut of the person giving testimony even if they were in mid-sentence trying to complete their final talking points.
   
   To avoid going over the time limit, find out in advance on the legislative committee website page how long you will be allowed to speak. If it is not spelled out on the website, assume that you will only have about two minutes to speak.
   
   To keep your testimony under two minutes, type it out and keep the testimony to one page at 200 to 300 words at the most. Practice with a stop watch to become comfortable reading the text. If you are stumbling over the words, that will take time and possibly cause you to go over your allowed time.

2. If comfortable, use humor.
   
   The oral testimony given by many private citizens tends to be very serious, factual, and finely messaged bullet points. After hearing many testimonies from professional lobbyists and private citizens, the oral testimonies can start to sound monotone and unappealing to the legislators and the audience in the hearing room.
   
   If you feel comfortable, try to inject appropriate humor to get the legislators’ attention and break the tension in the room with a good laugh. I did this by acknowledging the previous speaker or speakers and responding with what they said with a funny quip.
   
   As you will see from my oral testimony from February 20, 2020, I brought and briefly wore my park ranger hat to try to lighten up the situation. It felt like by using some humor that it made my oral testimony more memorable to the legislators at the committee hearing.

3. Share a compelling story about yourself.
   
   Most of the times I testified, I shared how I was a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park for 25 years. While working there, I talked about how I witnessed climate change with a diminishing annual snowpack and more intense wildfire seasons.
   
   At my February 6, 2020, oral testimony, I shared that my dad has stage 4 bladder cancer and currently is in hospice care. I then tied that personal information with the fact that our family lived for about 33 years a couple of miles from a coal fired power plant in St. Louis that had no modern pollution controls, increasing the risk of my dad’s cancer.
   
   I once heard climate communicator George Marshall say, “Science (or facts) is not what persuades people. It’s the stories they hear from the people they trust.”
   
   Therefore, briefly share a story that will get the attention of the legislators and the citizens seated in the back of the room to make your oral testimony more memorable.

4. If you coordinate with a group to oppose or support a bill, use their talking points .
   
   At the same time, put the talking points into your own words. Again, monotony causes people to tune out from oral testimony. Say the talking points in your own way of speaking to make it sound more interesting to the ears of the legislators and the audience.
   
   In 2019 and 2020, when I testified to the OR Legislative Joint Carbon Reduction Committee, Renew Oregon asked me and others to give oral and written testimony. Often, Renew Oregon staff provided talking points for us how the cap and invest bill, known in 2019 as the Clean Energy Jobs Bill or HB 2020, would create a lot of jobs in Oregon while reducing pollution. They frequently had slips of paper with helpful facts they gave us to encourage to say in our oral testimony. However, they advised us to not sound like the repeating parrots or robots when we testified. They urged us to weave their talking point facts into our oral testimony in our own words so that we wold not sound monotonous.

5. If possible, mention something you have in common with the legislators.
   
   For two of my testimonies, I told the legislators that I used to be a conservative Republican. With my background of having some understanding of GOP principles and values, I would then share how it is in their conservative interests to support this climate bill.

6. Don’t forget to mention the bill name and/or bill # that you support or oppose.
   
   Sometimes you can feel nervous or rushed to get as much information as possible during the timed two-minute deadline. Thus, it is possible to forget to emphasize the bill name and bill number that you want the legislator to support or oppose. Elected officials often talk about lobby meetings they previously had with constituents who forgot to urge the lawmaker to support or oppose as specific bill or an amendment to a bill.

7. If your legislators are not on the committee you are testifying, let the legislator know about your testimony.
   
   Our legislators are extremely busy. However, they want to know when constituents give oral testimonies to support or oppose a bill. If constituents show up in person or sign up on Zoom for a legislative hearing to share their thoughts on a bill, legislators appreciate when constituents want a bill on the legislator’s radar to support or oppose.

8. Have fun!
   
   Use humor, a compelling story, tie your testimony to a previous testimony, bring friends and family to hear you testify or try other ideas to make your time testifying fun, especially in that tight two-minute time frame. The two-minute time frame will fly away very quickly like a bird. Find a way to have fun to make the experience more memorable, for the legislators, audience members, and you.

The rest of this blog with be the text from the five times I testified, plus the videos of my testimony that I downloaded from the Oregon Legislative website so you could see my testimony. I hope this will provide some inspiration and ideas if you decide to give oral testimony to a legislative committee to support or oppose a climate bill.

February 15, 2019

Co-chairs and members of the Joint Carbon Reduction Committee:

My name is Brian Ettling and that’s a tough act to follow (laughter from the audience from the compelling and humorous testimony from the previous person testifying, KB Mercer)

I was a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park for 25 years from 1992 to 2017. Hopefully, everyone here has been there. It’s one of the most beautiful places on the planet.

I loved my job as a park ranger interpreting the scenery for park visitors who come from around the world to visit Oregon.

Sadly, I have seen climate change while working at Crater Lake National Park. With a diminishing annual snowpack, a more intense fire season and more smoke in the summertime, to the extent now that visitors are cancelling their vacations. The Oregonian recently reported about this. Visitors are now shifting their visits to the shoulder seasons and less in the summer.

I actually worked the phones at Crater Lake helping people plan their vacations. And I saw that I had to tell people that if they had asthma or breathing difficulties that it was probably was not a good time to visit (when it was smoky). When people cancel their vacations, they don’t visit Oregon. They are not staying in our hotels, and they are not visiting our restaurants. It has a bad impact on our Oregon economy.

I actually grew up as a conservative Republican. When climate change is having a bad impact on our economy, it is just not good for us. So, we should be doing so much more. I really highly encourage you to pass the strongest Clean Energy Jobs Bill possible.

I submitted written testimony yesterday. I fully support what Renew Oregon and 350PDX recommends to strengthen this bill. Please pass the strongest bill possible to protect Crater Lake National Park, our incredible scenery in Oregon for our children and for all of us.

Thank you so much.

March 1, 2019

Co-chairs and members of the Joint Carbon Reduction committee:

My name is Brian Ettling. I came here today strictly as a volunteer. I am not getting paid, but I will be glad to receive a check or a job if anyone wants to help me be active for climate change.

I was a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park for 25 years. I saw firsthand as a park ranger a diminishing snowpack and a more intense wildfire season.

My wife and I got to move to Portland Oregon two years ago. I love living in Portland, but it is a kind of a blue bubble. There are many people living there who are passionate about climate change. So, what I did in October 2017 was to travel around central, southern, and eastern Oregon to La Grande, Baker City, John Day, Burns, Redmond, Lakeview, Klamath Falls, and Grants Pass to talk to folks in rural and conservative parts of Oregon about climate change.

What I learned blew me away. There’s a county, Lake County, that’s been able to invest in so much solar. They are now a net exporter of clean energy. They have been able to hire teachers and hospital workers because of that.

We have 36 counties in Oregon, including Wasco (where the hearing was held that day in The Dalles, Oregon). We need to ask ourselves in each county: Do we want to be leaders on this issue or do we want to keep falling further behind.

The clean energy revolution is happening in front of us. 20% of the world’s carbon emissions now has a price on carbon, according to the World Bank’s (Carbon Pricing Dashboard). So, it is happening in front of us. China is putting together a price on carbon, as well as South Africa, Europe, and Mexico. So, we need to decide as Oregonians to be at the engine or caboose of this train.

I just want to say that I love the Clean Energy Jobs bill. I strongly support it. There are currently 50,000 clean energy jobs in Oregon. There are 11,000 clean energy workers in rural Oregon. 36 counties, including Wasco have clean energy workers. So this will be a big benefit to our state.

Thank you so much.

February 6, 2020

Senator Dembrow and members of the Senate Environmental & Natural Resources Committee:

My name is Brian Ettling and I live in NE Portland.

I am here today because of my dad, LeRoy Ettling, pictured here with my Mom.

My dad has stage 4 bladder cancer and currently is in hospice care.
Literally, I could get a phone call any time urging me to go back to St. Louis MO to be with him

7 years ago, my Dad had a huge tumor and kidney removed. The doctors all thought my Dad was a smoker since his cancer is consistent with a life-long smoker. My dad was always a non-smoker.

However, we lived for about 33 years a couple of miles from a coal fired power plant in St. Louis that had no modern pollution controls, increasing the risk of his cancer.

It’s well known that burning diesel, oil, natural gas, and coal, which is the leading cause of air pollution, causes an estimated 100,000 U.S. deaths each year, according to a 2019 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Thus, Message to you today is “Less Pollution = Saved Lives!”

A 2019 non-partisan study by Berkeley Economic Advising and Research (BEAR) shows that reducing carbon pollution will create 50,000 Oregon jobs in construction and clean energy.

Senator Olson and Senator Findley: I grew up as a conservative Republican. I ask you to pass a strong and effective climate bill this session for my Dad, all of our families and our grandkids.

Thank you!

February 20, 2020

Members of the House Rules committee:

My name is Brian Ettling and I live in NE Portland.

This is my fourth time in the past year testifying to urge you to pass a strong and effective climate bill.

Recent events, such as record warm temperatures Antarctica, huge catastrophic fires in Australia and recent very smoky summers in Oregon tells that we are in a climate emergency. Every day we delay, we deny our kids a livable future. Enough is enough.

For 25 years, I worked as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park. I had a dream job giving various tours of this international scenic treasure. I even brought my hat today so you could see how good I looked as a ranger.

Sadly, I saw climate change working there with a more intense wildfire season. In the summers from 2015-2017, the smoke was so bad that I saw the park become a ghost town at times. Visitors would cancel their vacations to Crater Lake not wanting to breath the smoke or worried about family members who suffer from asthma triggering negative health consequences if they visited.

When visitation would drop, I saw the bad impact it had on the rural economy surrounding Crater Lake to the mom & pop campgrounds, restaurants, hotels, and businesses dependent on the summer tourist season. Seeing the negative impacts of climate change at Crater Lake is why I have volunteered full time for the last 2 years now trying to get a climate bill passed in the Oregon legislature.

Since then, I attended probably over a hundred hearings. I applaud the legislators who did the research, working groups, studies, debate, and allowed thousands of pages of testimony to carefully craft this bill with massive public input.

To protect the beauty of Oregon, our economy, our rural residents and our children, I urge you to please pass SB 1530 and HB 4167 now.

Thank you.

My April 8, 2023
Oral Testimony to the Oregon Legislature Joint Ways and Means Committee

Members of the committee.

My name is Brian Ettling. My wife Tanya and I live in northeast Portland. While living here for the past 6 years, we experienced the extreme weather, such as heat domes in the summer, extreme smoke making it hard to breath, and even extreme cold temperatures in the winter.

Because of climate change, scientists tell us the extreme weather in Oregon is getting worse. This extreme weather adversely impacts all Oregonians, but especially seniors, children, low income, BIPOC communities, and rural communities.

Thus, I urge you to fund and support these bills help Oregonians become more energy efficient, improve our buildings resilience, and naturally drawdown the greenhouse gas pollution:

First, please support and fund SB 530, the Natural Climate Solutions Bill. It allows financial incentives for voluntarily managing Oregon’s farms, forests, ranches, and natural lands for carbon sequestration.

Second, please support and fund the Building Resilience Senate Bills 868, 869, 870, and 871. These bills align energy efficiency programs and building codes with state climate goals for rapid deployment of heat pumps, weatherization, and building retrofits for Oregonians. Even more, these bills will improve energy efficiency of existing large commercial buildings and state government buildings, including schools.

I am here today asking to make sure that Oregon doesn’t miss the historic opportunity of billions of dollars in federal investments for individuals, state and local government, and the private sector from the Inflation Reduction Act.

These bills fight climate change while creating local clean energy jobs that can’t be exported and strengthens our economy. Now it’s time to get some help from the federal government.

Thank you for your time.

And that’s not all! My Most Recent Oral Testimony to the Oregon Legislature

On April 24, 2023, I attended a meeting of the Metro Climate Action Team (MCAT) Transportation Committee bi-monthly meeting. MCAT is a volunteer group that is part of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters (OLCV). The MCAT Transportation Committee Chair, Rich Peppers, and I agree to meet during the week to help him with his oral testimony to be given on Thursday, April 27 at a hearing for Oregon Legislative Joint Transportation Committee. MCAT Transportation Committee would be submitting their official testimony for their feedback for the proposed legislation replacing the I-5 bridge which connects the cities of Portland, Oregon to Vancouver, Washington.

MCAT is part of the coalition for the Just Crossing Alliance, a partnership of environmental, environmental justice and sustainable transportation organizations from across Oregon and Washington. This coalition recently organized the I-5 Bridge Right Size. Right Now campaign. The goal of this campaign to replace the outdated I-5 bridge with an earthquake-safe bridge that is “not sprawling boondoggle that will increase air pollution and drive up costs for working commuters.”

The Right Size. Right Now campaign wants a new bridge that includes funding for mass transit, a separate bike & pedestrian lane while staying within the footprint of the existing I-5 bridge. I helped Rich practice his oral testimony on Wednesday, April 26th. I asked Rich if I should sign up to give oral testimony, in addition to his testimony. He encouraged me to do that. Just after midnight on April 27th, I signed up on the Oregon Legislative website to give oral testimony virtually on the Transportation Committee Hearing held that evening.

Late that night, I quickly typed up my testimony with the talking points from the Right Size. Right Now campaign email blast that was sent to me earlier that day. On the morning and early afternoon of April 27th, I practiced the script of my oral testimony to make sure I kept it under the 2 minute required limit to give oral testimony. Rich decided to testify virtually on the Joint Transportation Committee’s Microsoft Teams video link, and I decided to do the same.

This would be my first time testifying virtually since I normally get rides with other climate organizers to attend hearings at the Capitol in Salem. You can definitely tell this by the image and video included below that my first time giving oral testimony virtually. Unfortunately, I did not position myself to be fully seen by my video camera on my I-pad. At the same time, I was excited to testify because the gridlock of rush hour traffic on the I-205 and I-5 bridges is my biggest pet peeve living in Portland. Vancouver and Portland needs to replace the I-5 bridge for one that includes public transit and peak congestion tolling to reduce traffic that presently comes to a near standstill during the afternoon rush hour in Portland.

April 27, 2023

Oral Testimony to the Transportation Committee aboutthe I-5 Replacement Bridge.

Dear Co-Chairs and committee members,

My name is Brian Ettling. When my wife and I moved to northeast Portland six years ago, in February 2017, we learned two things:

1. The daily rush hour grid lock traffic that jams our roads leading to the I-205 and the I-5 bridges horrified us. Let’s rethink how we do our traffic infrastructure in the north Portland area.
2. A friend told me that she drives very fast across the I-5 bridge. She is scared the bridge is structurally unsafe, especially when that big earthquake eventually happens.

Thus, I strongly support replacing the I-5 bridge, but oppose HB 2098 -2 and -4 amendments. This current bill with those amendments jeopardizes a right-sized Bridge Replacement, right now.

I support the -3 amendment that ensures this replacement bridge project moves forward smoothly with explicit pro-labor and community benefits provisions, financial guardrails, and major investments in mass transit.

o Please No Blank Check for ODOT for $1B general fund bonds. We want Phase project funding.
o We want to build our communities while building this bridge, No to Section 7: Please ensure this project invests in good local and union jobs, apprenticeships, and environmental justice, while secures community benefits for North Portland.
o No Freeway Expansions: Direct IBR to explore smaller bridge design options and choose a plan that is less polluting and more financially responsible.
o No Fiscal Free-for-all: Refresh and recommit to financial safeguards and accountability measures in existing law.

I urge the committee to please consider the -3 amendment from Representative Khanh Pham’s office that addresses all these concerns.

Thank you for your consideration.

Final Thoughts

As a climate organizer, giving oral testimony to Oregon Legislative committee to urge them to support strong climate bills is one of the most empowering actions I have accomplished. It feels very impactful to speak truth to power encouraging legislators to support or even modify climate legislation.

It can feel stressful to speak publicly to these elected officials in a packed hearing room with only two minutes to make vital points. At the same time, it can be a lot of fun to try to use some humor, share compelling stories, note common ground, and give important information why they should support, oppose, or modify a high priority climate bill that is in their committee.

From numerous times giving oral testimony to a legislative committee, I can testify with full confidence that you if have an opportunity to give oral testimony to a legislative committee about a climate bill, you should do it!