The historical person who inspired me to be a Climate Lobbyist 

Brian Ettling in front of the U.S. Capitol Building on June 12, 2018.

Whenever I lobby a Congressional, a legislative office, or speak directly to an elected official to urge them to pass climate legislation, I feel like I am keeping alive the spirit of one individual who made a deep impact on me: William Gladstone Steel. He is also referred to as, ‘Will Steel.’ 

I discovered Will Steel when I worked as a park ranger at Crater Lake National Park from 1992-2017. He was the subject of my ranger lodge talk from 2006-2017. Will Steel lived from 1854 to 1934. I doubt he ever heard about climate change. However, he had a passion for conservation and the environment since he is known to this day as ‘The Father of Crater Lake National Park.’ 

Steel’s tireless tenacity to make a difference impacted me. In every ranger talk I gave, I hoped his story would inspire my audience that each one of them could make a positive impact in the world. If you are reading this blog, I hope his story and mine will influence you. 

This blog is my story how I discovered Will Steel and my ranger talk how I interpreted his life. 

Brian Ettling giving his William Gladstone Steel talk at the Crater Lake Lodge on May 22, 2016.

My Story of Discovering Crater Lake 

I graduated from William Jewell College on Sunday afternoon May 17, 1992, with a degree in Business Administration. I enjoyed my business classes in college, but I decided to never work in an office cubicle. Just hours after the graduation ceremony, I boarded an Amtrak Train heading from Kansas City, Missouri to Los Angeles, California. The fantastic western scenery from the train window helped me close the chapter on my college years and my entire life at that point of living in Missouri. I was eager for my new life adventure in the Pacific Northwest. 

From LA, I caught another train called “The Coast Starlight,” with fabulous scenery of California from the train windows took me to my destination of Klamath Falls, Oregon. The final morning of this trip train started fantastic with a breath-taking view of the 14,000-foot Mt. Shasta as the train curved around the huge mountain.

An employee of the Crater Lake Lodge Company named Kevin picked me up at the train station on May 20, 1992. It took over an hour to drive from the Klamath Falls train station to Crater Lake. Kevin and I chatted a lot during the drive. I was so eager to see Crater Lake. I kept pointing at the scenery and asking him: ‘Is Crater Lake behind that mountain?’ 

‘No,’ he kept responding. ‘Don’t worry! You will eventually see it.’ 

When I arrived at the 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 where 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. 

In a sense, my life changed forever seeing Crater Lake for the first time. I found my new home. I never did like the heat, humidity, and dearth of snowcapped mountains in Missouri. May is still a winter month at Crater Lake and I would see it snow falling within the next day or two. The crisp colder temperatures felt like natural air conditioning to me, compared to the very hot and muggy summer temperatures in Missouri. I could not wait to discover hiking on the trails in the park and wandering to different locations to admire the beauty of Crater Lake National Park. 

Brian Ettling’s first summer at Crater Lake National Park. Photo taken on November 3, 1992

I did not think much about Will Steel in my early years working at Crater Lake. I knew he was the park founder, but that was all.  However, my first impression was similar than when William Gladstone Steel saw it for the first time on August 15, 1885. One year afterwards, he wrote

“Crater Lake is one of the grandest points of interest on earth. Here all the ingenuity of nature seems to have been exerted to the fullest capacity, to build one grand, awe-inspiring temple, within which to live and from which to gaze up on the surrounding world and say: ‘Here would I dwell and live forever. Here would I make my home from choice; the universe is my kingdom, and this is my throne.’”

A key point of that quote is ‘the universe is my kingdom.’ Crater Lake does not just enchant during the daytime. Except for the distant cities of Eugene and Klamath Falls, Crater Lake has minimal light pollution. Thus, the stars really shine on a moonless light like countless jewels, especially clustered around the Milky Way Galaxy trail in the middle of the sky. I never saw so many stars like that before growing up under the light pollution of the St. Louis metro area and going to college in the Kansas City metro area. With the dark skies and endless stars, Crater Lake is an ideal place to contemplate one’s place in the universe. 

Milky Way over Crater Lake. An image given to Brian Ettling by a park visitor.

Crater Lake as a place of romance and wonder 

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. 

Crater Lake was a very romantic place that the concession staff found ways to couple off, date, and sneak into each other’s beds in the co-ed staff dormitory. The romance of the location caught up with me when I found my first girlfriend Sheila that summer. Both of us explored intimacy with each of us losing our virginity that fall as the outside temperatures declined with winter fast approaching in October. Crater Lake’ enchanting power and later working in Everglades National Park together kept our relationship going for eight years. We eventually drifted apart as our interests diverged and compatibility waned. Others may say Paris, France is the most romantic place in the world. Personally, the romantic beauty of Crater Lake is like nothing other. 

The romance, the enjoyment of working and living in the park, the opportunities for fabulous hiking right outside my door, the spectacular beauty, and the friends I made kept bringing me back to Crater Lake during the summers for the next 25 years. Like Will Steel, I could not get enough of that park. I found different seasonal summer jobs to keep me rooted there. 

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 then 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. 

Photo by Brian Ettling of Crater Lake National Park. Photo taken on June 19, 2012.

Rediscovering Crater Lake and becoming an interpretations ranger 

From 1998 to 2002, I found a year-round position working as a naturalist guide on the boat tours at the Flamingo Outpost in Everglades National Park. I enjoyed the convenience of living in one location all year, as opposed to only working from May to October at Crater Lake. The Everglades wildlife was magnificent with the alligators, crocodiles, dolphins, manatees, and wide variety of colorful birds. I loved narrating about the history, ecology, and pointing out the wildlife to the park visitors and birdwatching on my own in my free time. However, by the spring of 2002, I was burned out of working my job in Flamingo. Crater Lake was calling me back home. 

Renowned American naturalist John Muir once wrote“The mountains are calling and I must go.”

I totally understood that sediment. On February 22, 2002, I bought a brand-new green Honda Civic, which I still drive to this day. I no longer felt stranded to the Everglades without a car. It was time to leave and return to the place I loved so deeply: Crater Lake National Park. Like the summers of 1996-97, I worked as a VUA ranger at the entrance stations during the summer of 2002. It felt like such a blessing to wear the ranger uniform again. Sheila and I ended our dating relationship in Flamingo in 2000. It took years for me to rediscover myself. Crater Lake was a place of rejuvenation and healing for me to create a new life for myself as a single person. 

In the summers of 2002-2005, I worked this VUA ranger position at Crater Lake. By 2006, I wanted a new job at Crater Lake. The Crater Lake naturalist rangers, or interpretation rangers as the NPS called them, seemed to really enjoy their jobs at Crater Lake. They narrated the boat tours, lodge talks, guided hikes, and led evening campfire programs for the park visitors. I hung out with them in my free time. I wanted to be one of them. I was very excited receiving the phone call in early May that I was hired as a Crater Lake interpretation ranger for the summer of 2006. 

In June 2006, the Crater Lake Interpretation staff had three weeks of training before we gave our ranger talks during the summer. Time was short to create an original lodge talk. 

Photo of Park Ranger Brian Ettling at Crater Lake National Park on taken on June 9, 2015.

Creating a ranger lodge talk around William Gladstone Steel

For some reason, the park founder, William Gladstone Steel, intrigued me. His life story, especially how it related to the history of how Crater Lake became a national park, seemed like a very rich story to interpret for park visitors. Like any historical person, his life story included bravery to overcome steep obstacles. At that same time, his story contained some humor how he would step on toes and push other people around to get what he wanted. He made enemies how he treated people. Steel’s enemies were not always the bad guys, sometimes he was. He was not always an angel. Quite frankly, at times, he could be a jerk. 

The lead naturalist Dave Grimes and I both thought Will Steel could be perfect subject for a lodge talk because he was relatable. He was a flawed human being that succeeded because of and despite his flaws. He was like a family member in that you could love and admire, but other days you would want to scream and even disown them. My talk would not be a ‘living history talk’ where I would pretend that I was Will Steel, wear a costume, and portray him to an audience like an actor would. However, this would be the type of character that a stage or screen actor would kill to play since he is such a complex and dynamic character. 

When I later described how I interpreted Will Steel in my lodge talk, I would tell anyone that talking about Steel was similar to giving a ranger talk on the late President Richard Nixon. I would say that ‘Like Nixon, there was some good things and some not so good things.’ 

Ironically, my mentor in the national parks, Ranger Steve Robinson, who I knew from 1993 from working in both Crater Lake and the Everglades thought that Steel was a charlatan and a greedy fraud. He could not stand him and thought he had few redeemable qualities. 

Park Ranger Steve Robinson 1950-2007

As I researched Will Steel for my lodge talk, I met with the Crater Lake Park Historian, Steve Mark. In my meeting with Steve Mark, he had a more nuanced view. He tends to choose his words very carefully. He would quickly acknowledge Steel’s impressive accomplishments. At the same time, I got the impression from Steve Mark that Steel was a self-promoting showman who could really alienate people while accomplishing great things for Crater Lake and himself. Again, Steel was a complicated man that would be wonderful to interpret for a park audience. 

On the July 4th holiday weekend in 2006, my William Gladstone Steel lodge talk was ready. I even practiced it for a fellow ranger Dave Harrison the night before. Dave really liked my talk. He gave me some helpful tips for this talk that I use to this day.  

The title I gave my lodge talk was “Let’s Have a Toast to the Man of Steel!” The visitors seemed to love my talk. I received a very positive response from them. This talk was given on the back porch of the Crater Lake Lodge or inside in the Great Hall if the weather was cold, rainy, or snowy outside. Visitors would typically order alcoholic drinks from the Cocktail servers from the Lodge Dining Room. Steve Mark described it as ‘giving a ranger talk in a bar.’

That atmosphere intimidated some of my fellow rangers, but not me. In fact, I would even encourage my audience before I started my talk by saying: ‘Please order drinks because I have heard that my jokes are not funny when people are sober.’  

That received a big laugh from the visitors who happened to be there. They could tell this would be a fun and entertaining program. My humor enticed them to stay for my entire talk.

Brian Ettling giving his ranger talk at the back porch of the Crater Lake Lodge on June 14, 2019.

Even more, I told my audience that the title of my talk happening at 4 pm was Let’s Have a Toast to ‘the Man of Steel.’ I explained that I would have a toast at the end of my talk around 4:20 pm. I even handed out plastic margarita glasses that I joked that I stole from my mom’s liquor cabinet. I informed them that I would not provide drinks to fill up those glasses. Even more, the glasses were dirty. I never washed them. They were just props. I wanted everyone to have glasses to give a toast at the end of my talk, especially the children. 

Again, I did this to draw in an audience to my talk and work with this venue. I wanted to show that this would be a fun and historical talk where I would not be taking myself too seriously. 

A couple of weeks later, lead ranger Dave Grimes saw my ranger talk. He was very impressed and full of praise for it. He thought it was so good that he thought we should video tape it. He suggested that we then send the recorded ranger talk to the NPS Interpretive Offices in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. If they approved, those rangers would then certify my lodge talk, which would look great on NPS job evaluations and ranger job applications. 

Thus, Grimes recorded my 2006 talk. I later uploaded it to YouTube where you can see it here. 

On February 27, 2008, The Stephen T. Mather Training Center for NPS sent a letter to Crater Lake National Park that this submitted ranger talk “demonstrates the certification standards.”

My lodge talk ranger “Let’s Have a Toast to the ‘Man of Steel!’”

In this next section, I posted the text from my Will Steel ranger talk that I gave at the back porch or inside of the Great Hall of the Crater Lake Lodge from the summers of 2006-2017. It is basically what I said in the YouTube video. I copied and pasted the transcript from the YouTube video, while also weaving in text that I thought improved this talk over the years. 

“I am showing four o’clock on the nose here this afternoon.

I’m going to get started with my Ranger talk. 

My name is Ranger Brian, and the title of my talk is let’s have a toast to the Man of Steel. We’re going to be talking about William Gladstone Steel who’s considered to be the founding father for Crater Lake National Park, the first man to research on the lake, our first concessionaire for Crater LakeNational Park and the second superintendent.  

But before I go any further, I thought I would start off with an inaccurate historical reenactment that’s something that William Gladstone steel did to help make this a national park. 

Picture this: the year is 1888 and William Gladstone Steel went to the headwaters of the Rogue River about 40 miles from us here. He then gathered up about 600 baby rainbow trout and he put them in a large milk bucket. (I demonstrated this by dumping Goldfish crackers into two plastic buckets filled neared the top with water)

He started transporting the fish in a horse-drawn wagon but the buckets were sloshing out too water on that bumpy wilderness terrain. He then decided to carry the full buckets by foot 40 miles up to the rim of Crater Lake.

Brian Ettling carrying goldfish crackers in two plastic buckets filled with water during his lodge talk in the Great Hall of the Crater Lake Lodge. Photo taken on May 22, 2016.

Can you imagine what was going through his mind as he was doing this?  

I know what’s going through my mind right now. Something like: 

‘Boy are these buckets heavy but I still yeah 40 more miles to go. 

I sure wish somebody would carry these buckets for me, but I guess it’s going be up to me! Oh wow! My back is killing me, and I still have 38 more miles to go.’

But just think: If I can get these fish in Crater Lake maybe fishermen will join me in the efforts to make this a national park. However, until then my back is still killing me.’ 

Well, you get the idea. He carried these fish up to the rim. In a sense, that was the easy part. There was no trail down a lake surface here in 1888 so he then hauled these fish by foot down a lake shore on these unstable rock ledges. He successfully planted 37 fish in Crater Lake.  

Now what were you thinking as I was carrying these buckets: 

‘Man, that ranger is crazy!’ 

The reason why I carried these buckets and expended all that energy was to demonstrate just a small fraction of energy that William Gladstone Steel took to make this a fabulous national park so we can enjoy this beautiful view from the back porch of the Crater Lake Lodge here today.

The planting of fish into Crater Lake was a success. NPS continued this tradition until 1941. Today, two different species of fish live at Crater Lake, rainbow trout and kokanee salmon. 

Because of Will Steel, Crater Lake is now a fun place for fishermen. Since the fish are exotic and non-native, you don’t need a fishing license to fish in Crater Lake. There’s no size limit, number limit, and catch limit. You can catch as many fish as possible to your heart’s content, but you have to take them home with you. There’s no catch and release. 

But William Gladstone Steel is so much more than just ‘the fish guy.’ He’s considered be the founding father of Crater Lake National Park. 

So, who is this guy? 

Photo from Crater Lake National Park Historical Photo Collection.

William Gladstone Steel was born in Stratford Ohio in 1854. As a schoolboy in Kansas in 1870, he claimed he read a newspaper article about this beautiful lake in Southern Oregon mountains called Crater Lake. This newspaper was wrapped in his lunch. He made a mental note that someday as an adult he was going to visit crater lake. 

Well, in 1872 his parents moved to Portland, Oregon. Here is a picture of him. Isn’t he a handsome man, ladies? Our park curator thought so as she put together these pictures for me.

Finally, in 1885 he ventured to Crater Lake. He took the train down from Portland to Medford, Oregon. It took several days for him to get here by horse. The last couple hundred yards, he was so eager to see Crater Lake, that he ran ahead of his horse to get a look at the edge of the Rim. He saw it from around this area here where the Crater Lake Lodge is located here today. 

On August 15, 1885, he saw Crater Lake for the first time. This is how he described seeing it:

“Not a foot of land about the lake had been touched or claimed. An overmastering conviction came to me that this wonderful spot must be saved, wild and beautiful, just as it was for future generations, and it was up to me to do something. How, I did not know, but the idea of a national park appealed to me.”

After William Gladstone Steel saw Crater Lake, it changed his life. When he returned to Portland Oregon, he started a petition drive. He got hundreds of signatures from friends, associates, and anyone he could find to start a campaign to make Crater Lake a national park. On top of that, he wrote close to a thousand letters nationwide basically every major magazine and newspaper in the country. He proclaimed to them that Crater Lake should be a national park. 

Brian Ettling in his Crater Lake Lodge ranger talk demonstrating with a sample letter that Will Steel wrote over 1,000 letters nationwide urging Crater Lake should be a national park.

Even more, he wrote every single member of Congress a letter trying to lobby them to make this a national park. However, none of these efforts were enough. William Gladstone Steele then had to make numerous trips to Washington DC to personally lobby senators and congressmen to make this a national park. He became such a fixture at the Capitol that senators and congressmen would duck around doors and hallways whenever they saw him. 

They thought William Gladstone Steel as a pest and a crackpot. They probably even told at one point, ‘Will Steel, go home! Give it up! We are not going to turn your little lake into a national park!’ 

But Will Steel would not give up. He said at one point, “I got licked so often that I learned to like it!”

After 17 years of having a force of will and a persistent determination, Congress finally gave into Will Steel to get him off their backs. In 1902, Congress passed a law to make Crater Lake into a national park. President Theodore Roosevelt signed it into law on May 22, 1902. Today Crater Lake National Park is the fifth oldest national park in the United States. 

William Gladstone Steel is quite a success story. But think about it. From the first time he saw Crater Lake until it became a national park, took 17 years of his life for his dream to come true. 17 years that’s a long time. It’s about the same amount of time it takes to raise a child from when they’re born until about the time, they’re ready to graduate from high school. 

So, what does that say? 

  1. It says that one person. Any one of us here today can make a difference. 
  2. It also says never give up on your dreams, no matter how crazy they may be.
  3. It also says it may take an incredible amount of persistence and determination, as well as hearing a lot of ‘no’s for your dreams to come true.  
Photo from Crater Lake National Park Historical Photo Collection.

That’s a great story by itself. But Will Steel is more than ‘the fish guy’ and the founding father of Crater Lake National Park. He was the first person to do scientific research on Crater Lake. 

After he saw Crater Lake in 1885, he was determined to find out the lake’s depth. He applied and received funding from the U.S. Geological Survey to try find out the depth of Crater Lake. 

Now the high-tech equipment in 1886 determined depth was a lead pipe, a piano wire, and hand crank. After he attained this equipment in Portland, he then three boats built up to survey the bottom of Crater Lake. He then had all this equipment shipped by rail from Portland down to Ashland. Next they had to use horse-drawn wagons to get this equipment up to Crater Lake.  

Just right after they left Ashland and were Phoenix Oregon, Will Steel and the surveying party were heckled by a teenage boy. The boy told Will Steel, ‘I don’t know who built your boats, but they probably never seen a body of water before. Your boats won’t float on Crater Lake.’  

William Gladstone Steel was not one to listen to his critics. He thought about what that boy said, and this is what he wrote in his book afterwards, ‘This brings to mind the fact that a critic is a person who finds fault with something of which he is densely ignorant.’  

Kids, keep that in mind next time somebody makes fun of you. Or tells you your dreams can’t come true. They’re nothing more than a critic and a critic is no more than a person who finds fault with something of which he is densely ignorant.

Brian Ettling addressing the children during his ranger talk at the back porch of the Crater Lake Lodge. Photo taken June 14, 2019.

It took over a week on those poor trails with those horse-drawn wagons, but they got the boats up to the rim around the Rim Village area. In a sense, that was the easy part because they had to get the boats from the rim to the lakeshore. It’s about a thousand feet down here so they had to use ropes and pulleys to slide the boats downhill. Will Steel later wrote that as they slid the boats downhill, it caused a few rockslides He claimed that was a rockslide just left of the boats. However, the boats made it safely the shoreline. The boats could float. 

They used that lead pipe, piano wire and hand crank to do 168 soundings determine the depth. They determined in 1886 that Crater Lake was 1996 feet deep. It was the deepest lake in the United States and one of the deepest lakes in the world. We knew that as early as 1886. 

Now 1996 feet deep sounds a little off, doesn’t it?  In 2001 we used advanced sonar, and we now know the lake is 1,943 feet deep.  Will Steel and his surveying party for about 53 feet off from today’s measurement. That sounds like a lot. However, if you do the math, they were only about 3% off as they knew an 1886 this was the deepest lake in the United States.

With that fact, they could more persuasively tell Congress this should be a national park. 

Not only is William Gladstone Steel ‘the fish guy,’ the founding father of Crater Lake National Park and the first person to do research, but he is also the first concessionaire. 

In 1902, after this became a national park, William Gladstone Steel hoped to become the first Park Superintendent. He figured he’d spent 17 years of his life blood, sweat, and tears trying to make this a national park. If you were a member of Congress in 1902 who would have been the logical choice to pick as the first Superintendent of Crater Lake National Park?

Will Steel, Of course!  

Brian Ettling holding up a picture of William Gladstone Steel during his lodge talk at Crater Lake Lodge. Photo taken on May 22, 2016.

However, many members of Congress then didn’t like William Gladstone Steel. They thought he was a pest, a crackpot, and a zealot so they were very happy to turn down his request. Understandably, William Gladstone Steel was very disappointed, but he was not going to be denied increasing the enjoyment of Crater Lake for himself or all of us here today. 

In 1907, he formed the first concessionaire here and that year he started the campground at Mazama Village located roughly where it’s at here today. It was referred to as the Anna Springs Campground then. Besides the camping he also started the boat tours around 1907. 

Back then, you would take a trail from the Rim Village area down to Lake Shore and then you take a rowboat out to Wizard Island. Besides the boat tours and the camping, he also started something else. Just curious: has anybody ever here ever been to the Crater Lake Lodge?

Yes, this is where we are at today. In 1909, Will Steel received funding from friends to start building the lodge. The original Crater Lake Lodge was constructed between 1909 to 1915. 

This was how William Gladstone Steel this described all of his efforts as the park concessionaire, “All the money I have is in the park and if I had more it would go there too. This is my life’s work making Crater Lake accessible for folks because what good is scenery if you cannot enjoy it fully.”  

So, in a sense, with fish to catch, boat tours and these comfortable rocking chairs, William Gladstone Steel but want us to have a completely fulfilling visit to Crater Lake. It’s as if he personally invited all of us here today with the rocking chairs, a nice place to have dinner in the dining room, a comfortable bed to sleep in here tonight, and the campground. 

Besides all that, he also did one more thing to make this a fun national park to visit. Did anyone here drive up to crater lake from the outside? 

Yes, all of us did. Unless you came in by helicopter or parachute. None of us would come up here without a good road system. In 1907, if you came to Crater Lake from Klamath Falls, it took about two full days by horseback. Today, it is little over one hour drive. Around that time from Medford, it took between three to five days to get here by horseback on those very poor trails.  

In 1909, he pushed Congress to obtain road surveying funding so roads could be built to connect to nearby Oregon cities. He dreamed up a circular drive around Crater Lake so we can enjoy the views of the lake from many different angles. The original Rim Road received federal funding for construction between 1913 to 1916. The modern Rim Drive replaced it in 1934. 

Brian Ettling photo of the Crater Lake trolleys on the East Rim Drive at Crater Lake take in June 2013.

In a sense, with the road system, boat tours, these rocking chairs, and the lodge, it was as if Will Steel invited each and every one of us here today. He would want us to be able to admire and appreciate Crater Lake just as he admired and loved Crater Lake over 100 years ago. 

I don’t want to give you the impression that Will Steel is a saint because he is not. He is human just like all of us here today. During those years when he was the concessionaire, he wasn’t satisfied. He was determined, even hell bent, to become the park superintendent.

He did everything he could to become superintendent, even starting false rumors about the first superintendent, William F. Arant. History shows William Arant was a decent superintendent but Will Steel rarely said anything nice about him. He used his connections to have William Arant removed. Arant knew he was being pushed out. Like any of us losing our jobs because of political means, William Arant was not going down without a fight.

He and his wife refused to leave his superintendent’s office. Even more, he refused to leave sitting at the chair at his desk. Therefore, two U.S. Marshals had to pick him up from his chair and toss him out into the street. He didn’t get the message the first time and went back inside the Superintendent’s residence. The U.S. Marshals then ejected him out of the home again. 

If anybody drives into Crater Lake in from the south entrance, you might notice a sign for the Goodbye Picnic Area. That is literally the spot where the US marshals escorted out William Arant as the first superintendent. William Arant said ‘Goodbye!’ as defiantly as he could. 

The park then said ‘hello’ to our second superintendent William Gladstone Steel.  He was the Crater Lake Park superintendent between 1913 to 1916. 

Photo from Crater Lake National Park Historical Photo Collection.

As we all know, unfortunately, what comes around goes around. 

In 1916, Congress created a new organization to bring all the national parks under one government agency. It was called the National Park Service (NPS). 

The first Director Stephen Mather did not like Steel’s antics. He wanted park superintendents loyal to him and the NPS mission. Mather did what he could to push out Steel. 

Steel then used his political connections in Oregon to create the job of the Park Commissioner for himself. Steel would then be the official magistrate overseeing any federal court cases involving Crater Lake. It was just a ceremonial job. The only court case he ever heard was some teenage boys throwing rocks at people below them.  

He now had a way to support himself for the rest of his life with his park commissioner salary. In one way, he felt blessed with all he was able to accomplish for Crater Lake. 

At one point he said, “I set out what I accomplished to do and I’m now happy.”  

Photo from Crater Lake National Park Historical Photo Collection.

At the same time, he felt like he did so much for Crater Lake. Yet, he felt kind wounded and empty towards the end of his life.  

Do you remember the pictures of that dashing young man I showed you towards the beginning of my talk? Let me show you some pictures as he gets up in years. You will notice that he starts to look more stern, serious, and sad here as he advances in age. As he was getting up in years, he felt like he still had a lot of ideas for Crater Lake here. 

In 1916, his friend Williams Jennings Bryant stayed at the lodge. He told Will Steel that ‘If you want to do boat tours you need to have an elevator that goes down to the lakeshore.’ 

Anybody who has taken a boat tour and walked down the 1.1 miles and the 700 foot drop on the Cleetwood Trail knows that’s a great idea. The National Park Service said ‘no’ to that. 

When the Park was constructing the Rim Road, William Gladstone Steel wanted a section of the Rim Drive to go to the lake shore. He envisioned driving your car to Lake Shore to open up your car door and touch the water. Again, the National Park Service said ‘no.’ 

Besides the Crater Lake Lodge, Will Steel wanted to construct at least three more lodges, so more people had places to stay at Crater Lake. Again, the National Park Service said ‘no.’ 

Even more, Steel wanted a bridge out to Wizard Island so a driver could drive their car to the island and then drive to a big sprawling parking lot at the top. Again, NPS said ‘no.’

Photo from Crater Lake National Park Historical Photo Collection.

Will Steel was feeling more wounded as he got up in years feeling like the National Park Service and the public forget about him.  He felt like he did so much to create Crater Lake National Park, protect research, and promote it. Yet, he felt was being forgotten about over time. 

Maybe some of us could relate today. How many folks here are parents or even grandparents?

Do you ever feel like sometimes your kids fully don’t appreciate all the efforts and sacrifices you took to raise them? 

That’s kind of how William Gladstone Steel felt.  Again, he was born in Ohio in 1854 and he died in Medford, Oregon 1934.  A couple of years before he passed away, he wrote, “My heart is full of sorrow of forgotten old man broken and condemned to solitude…I look across my little valley and see strangers and friends passing and review, but they know me not, neither do they care.”  

Unfortunately, he felt like he was forgotten about towards the end of his life.  

Well, in a moment we’re going to do what we can to correct this here today because we’re going to celebrate William Gladstone Steel with a toast. 

So, grab your wine glasses, plastic water bottles, your beer bottles, my plastic margarita glasses, your paper cups, your coffee mugs, and your fish buckets. Anything you have here. Get ready because we’re going to do a toast here. 

Everyone ready?

So, in conclusion, to William Gladstone Steel, The Father of Crater Lake National Park. He did so much throughout his life so we could enjoy this beautiful view from the back porch of a Crater Lake Lodge here today. Cheers!”

Brian Ettling giving a toast to William Gladstone Steel at the end of his Crater Lake ranger talk on May 22, 2016.

 William Gladstone Steel information not included in my lodge talk 

William Gladstone Steel had an amazing life story. My lodge talk felt like it wrote itself when I created it. However, I could not squeeze into my talk many fascinating aspects of his life. His parents were abolitionists when he was growing up in Ohio in the 1850s. They were anti-slavery zealots and this idealism rubbed off on Will Steel. As I would tell visitors in conversations, Will Steel became a zealot following his parents example, but he was a zealot for Crater Lake. 

He was an idealist that hated the Ku Klux Klan when it was showing some prominence in Oregon during the 1920s. He enrolled his only child, his daughter Jean, into a Catholic High School in Medford, Oregon in the 1920s, and he was not even Catholic. He just wanted to thumb his nose at the KKK. Oddly, this was one of the very few things that we knew about his personal life.

He never talked about his wife Lydia Hatch that he married in Portland in 1900 or his daughter Jean Gladstone Steel, born in 1902. All his writings and numerous scrapbooks were all about Crater Lake. After my lodge talk, visitors wanted to know about his personal life and if he had any direct descendants. His daughter Jean took over the Crater Lake Park Commissioner job after Will Steel died in 1934, but she had no children. 

As it was, my talk was very long. Sometimes it would go over 25 minutes for a 20-minute program. I tried to include my audience where I could with rhetorical questions scattered throughout the talk and the toast at the end. Plus, I sprinkled in humor where possible to share the oddities about Will Steel and myself. To my frustration, the limited time of this talk prevented me from sharing that William Gladstone Steel organized and founded the Mazamas. He established this mountaineering climbing club on the summit of Mount Hood in 1894. 

The Mazamas, located in Portland, Oregon, promotes climbing, responsible recreation, and conservation values through outdoor education, advocacy, and outreach. Steel’s goal was to create a climbing organization run by climbers for climbers. He insisted that summiting a glaciated peak be a requirement for membership (a threshold that was removed by vote of the membership in January 2023). Remarkably, the Mazamas were never a ‘Boys Only Club.’ Women did not obtain the right to vote in Oregon until 1912. Yet, Steel designed the Mazamas in 1894 to be open to men and women as long they climbed a glaciated peak.

Photo by Brian Ettling of the 125th Celebration of the Mazamas that happened at their facility in Portland, Oregon on July 28, 2019.

Crater Lake sits in a collapsed volcano that had an enormous eruption that imploded upon itself 7,700 years ago. Today the collapsed dormant volcano is referred to as Mt. Mazama. Steel organized a Mazama excursion to Crater Lake on August 21, 1896. One of their activities at Crater Lake was to hike up to the summit of Wizard Island to christen the volcano as Mt. Mazama. No doubt it was probably another way for Steel to get his mountaineering buddies to help his campaign to urge Congress to pass a bill to make Crater Lake a national park. 

In 1885, to start his campaign to make Crater Lake a national park, I shared in my lodge talk that Steel “wrote close to a thousand letters nationwide basically every major magazine and newspaper in the country…Even more, he wrote every single member of Congress a letter trying to lobby them to make this a national park.” 

It was tough to squeeze in my talk that Steel’s job in 1885 was the Supervisor of Postal Carriers in Portland, Oregon. This probably greatly helped his letter writing campaigns. Even more, I liked to joke during my talk that Steel might have even pressed some of his employees into his service to write Congress to make Crater Lake a national park. 

Frequently, visitors asked me after my talk what Will Steel did for a living. I would respond that he was the Supervisor of Postal Carriers in Portland. According to Crater Lake historian Steve Mark, Steel also dabbled a bit in real estate. He never seemed to be a wealthy man. Any money he seemed to make went towards developing Crater Lake into a national park. 

Steel seemed unbothered the way he offended people. This included the sheep herders, loggers, members of Congress, local southern Oregon residents, the first Crater Lake Superintendent William Arant, and the first Director of the National Park Service Stephen Mather in his singular obsession to turn Crater Lake into a national park with great roads and amenities for the park visitors. He wanted the best possible experience for tourists visiting Crater Lake. He was not afraid to step on toes of others who stood in the way for his vision for Crater Lake. 

From 2006 to 2017, while I was a park ranger at Crater Lake, I never got burned out talking about Steel’s grit, determination, vision, tenacity, and singular focus to make Crater Lake into a wonderful national park to visit today. Will Steel was a fun lodge for me to present. I was always eager to give it since it was such an enjoyable experience for the park visitor and me. 

Brian Ettling giving a ranger lodge talk at the back porch of the Crater Lake Lodge on June 14, 2019.

Traveling to Everglades National Park for the winter from Crater Lake 

When I gave this talk, I was always a political person looking how I can make the world a better place. I wanted to do this by somehow lobbying Congress to pass better policies, especially for climate change. I felt a kindred spirit with Will Steel with our deep love for Crater Lake, living life on my own terms, finding my passion and being a zealot about it, not caring what people think who don’t share my passion, and a ‘steel determination’ to make a difference in the world. While William Gladstone Steel’s single focus was to make Crater Lake a terrific national park to visit, my singular focus for over 15 years now is to make a difference for climate action. 

I have always considered Crater Lake to be my place where my heart sings from when I first saw it in May 1992. However, Crater Lake was always a summer job for me. Because of the very snowy and long winters there, I could never find a way to get a permanent year-round job there. It’s also a very isolated place in the winter. I did get to work there into mid-November 1993 for the Crater Lake gift store and work from mid-March to May as an interpretive ranger for the Classroom at Crater Lake program. It was sublime to be there with all the snow.

At the same time, I felt like I got cabin fever with all the snow. It did not feel like an ideal match to work those jobs during those months. After enjoying Crater Lake for 6 months, I was typically eager to travel and work elsewhere during the winter months to see other beautiful places.

In my first winter away from Crater Lake National Park, I worked a season 1992-93 for the concessionaire, TW Services which then became part of the Amfac Corporation, at the Flamingo Outpost in Everglades National Park. After spending 6 months in the snowy mountains of Crater Lake, the Everglades was the exact opposite with a very flat landscape. 

The highest point on the park road was just 3 feet above sea level. The majestic snowcapped mountains surrounding Crater Lake were a distant memory in the Everglades. Plus, when I arrived in December 1992, the weather was hot, humid, and muggy, the kind of summer weather I had escaped from my home state of Missouri to spend the summer at Crater Lake. When I looked out into the sawgrass prairie, one of the dominant landscapes of the Everglades, it looked no different than a bland Midwest farm field to me. 

Photo by Brian Ettling of the Everglades “River of Grass” taken in 1993.

Moreover, I was picked up by a concession employee in Homestead, Florida. I had an amazing Amtrak two day train ride from St. Louis to Miami, Florida, arriving in mid afternoon. However, there was no friendly concessionaire employee to pick me up when I arrived. When I called the company, they said I was going to have to take a bus down to Homestead, located just outside of Everglades National Park. I was informed that they don’t pick new employees up at the train station or airport, just the bus stop in Homestead. I was not planning on taking a bus to Homestead and I was livid. I wanted to immediately turn around and spend the winter with my parents in St. Louis. However, something told me not to do that to give this experience a try. 

Arriving in Homestead that evening, it looked like a war had just been fought there. Hurricane Andrew destroyed the area just three months earlier. The city still had piles of debris and not much electricity making it a very dark place to meet someone at night. I had never seen an aftermath of a natural disaster, and it looked very creepy and bleak. When we drove into the Everglades late that moonless night, it was very dark outside. It felt like I was being driven into the depths of hell. I wanted to turn around and leave, but I did not know how. With his love of Crater Lake, I don’t think that Will Steel would have liked to have been in this situation either. 

Everglades National Park inspires me to take Climate Action 

At the same time, I make the most of this time working in Everglades National Park. In February 1993, I even went on an overnight canoe trip in a mangrove creek called Alligator Creek with friends Jim and Rob. This felt like an Indiana Jones experience to be canoeing in the mangrove creeks where the trees would form a canopy overhead, making me feel like I was going to be swallowed up by the Everglades. The mangroves have a lot of dissolved muck at the base of their watery roots which gives off a hydrogen sulfide smell, like rotten eggs. We were irritated by mosquitoes at times during this trip in the mangrove creek and at our shoreline campsite that evening.  The mosquitoes got so bad that we made a campfire at night not to stay warm by to stand close to it to try to get some relief from the mosquitoes. 

We saw an alligator or two during this trip, as I did nearly every day that I worked in the Everglades. However, alligators don’t like to live in the brackish saltwater mixture of the mangroves. They prefer the interior freshwater areas in the Everglades and throughout Florida. When we spotted an alligator, Jim would humorously say, “Alligator Creek lives up to its name!” 

Jim said it often enough that Rob and I started laughing and would later on impersonate the way he would say that. In the middle of this trip, we did see the endangered American Crocodile. It laid totally still on an embankment by the mangrove shoreline. It wanted to regulate its body temperature, like all crocodilians do, on a warm day. At the same time, it had its mouth open so the salvia on its tongue could cool off its head, similar to how us humans sweat on a hot day. The mangrove creek was only about 8 feet wide. There was not much room when we were paddling down the creek getting close to it. When we got too close, the shy crocodile wanted no part of us. It jumped in the water and disappeared faster than you could blink.

Photo by Brian Ettling of an American crocodile in Everglades National Park. Photo taken in 1993.

I am glad that I did not give up on the Everglades from my first impression. The area started to grow on me. Like discovering the stories of Will Steel determined to make Crater Lake into a national park around 1902, I started reading about Marjory Stoneman Douglas. She is considered to be the mother of Everglades National Park. I remember seeing some TV show about her when I was growing up in Missouri. I became intrigued about her. She was still alive then at the age of 102 and still making public statements how the Everglades must be protected. 

In my spare time, I read her 1987 autobiography Voice of the River. I found her book to be very inspiring, insightful, and even humorous. Like William Gladstone Steel, Marjory Stoneman Douglas became another huge hero of mine and deep influence on my life. At that time, I was religious, but I loved her ending sentence in her autobiography, “I believe that life should be lived so vividly and so intensely that thoughts of another life, or a longer life, are not necessary.” 

Unlike the love at first sight when I first saw Crater Lake, it took time for me to develop a love and deep appreciation for the Everglades. Looking at the Everglades through the eyes of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, as well as my mentor Steve Robinson really helped. 

Brian Ettling’s copy of Voice of the River by Marjory Stoneman Douglas. He purchased this book in the Everglades in 1993.

Steve was a fourth generation Floridian, originally from the Tampa Bay area, who worked seasonally in Everglades National Park for 25 years from 1980 to 2005. He was an amazing storyteller about the Everglades and nature that people flocked to see his ranger talks. Ironically, Steve started working as a summer interpretation ranger at Crater Lake National Park in 1993. Like me around that time, he was spending his summers at Crater Lake and his winters in the Everglades. With his long hair and long beard, he looked and talked like Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax.

Steve had a deep knowledge of the Everglades with enchanting stories to go with it, that I would hang onto every word he said. Everyone else I met who knew Steve did the same. Even when I strongly disagreed with Steve, I still thought he had a very valid, well-thought-out point of view that was worth considering. For instance, he was no fan of William Gladstone Steel. Steve did not think Will Steel was a worthy conservationist or should be put on a pedestal as ‘The Father of Crater Lake National Park.’ He thought of him as nothing more than a carnival huckster like P.T. Barnum. Steve did not like how Steel pushed so hard to be the concessionaire at Crater Lake and wanted to make a lot of money as the Crater Lake concessionaire. 

On the other hand, Steve thought Marjory Stoneman Douglas was someone to be admired and emulated. He met Marjory years ago by chance while working as an Everglades ranger. He was very impressed with her. He found her to be very humble, knowledgeable yet self-confident in his brief conversation with her. I spent hours at Steve’s park housing residence in Flamingo and Crater Lake hanging onto every word that he told me. Fortunately, Steve’s wife Amelia and their young son Darby did not mind my frequent presence to learn from Steve. 

I found the stories of the Everglades, especially in the Flamingo area, to be very captivating. I loved all the wildlife I in the Everglades, such as the alligators, crocodiles, dolphins, manatees, and the wide variety of birds. By April 1993, I was eager to return to Crater Lake. However, the Everglades, especially the Flamingo area drew me back to work there again in the winter of 1995-96 and again during the winter of 1997-98. 

A photo by Brian Ettling of the wild Flamingos in Everglades National Park. Photo taken in 1999

My first winter, 1992-93, I started working in housekeeping for the Flamingo Lodge and then moved my way up to a Front Desk Clerk Position. In the winter of 1995-96, I tried working as a night auditor at the Flamingo Lodge. I made it through the season, but it was not my cup of tea. That time, I brought my girlfriend Sheila with me, and she enjoyed working there with me at the Flamingo Lodge. We then returned to work there for the winter of 1997-98. 

By 1998, I saw the concession naturalist guides looking like they had a great time narrating the boat tours. I wanted to work that position and jumped at the opportunity when an opening happening in January 1998. By this point, I had worked in the Everglades for several seasons, but I still knew so little about the birds, the history, the ecology, and other subjects that the visitors wanted information. I spent those first few months reading, studying, and cramming all I could to appear as a competent and well-versed naturalist guide.

As I have blogged about before, I became concession naturalist guide on the boat tours in the Everglades in January 1998. Soon afterwards, visitors started asking me about global warming. I knew next to nothing about that subject. Visitors hate when park rangers and naturalist guides tell you, “I don’t know.” Soon afterwards, I rushed to the nearest Miami bookstore and the park library to read all I the scientific books I could find on climate change.

I learned about sea level rise along our mangrove coastline in Everglades National Park. It 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. That would swallow up most of the park and nearby Miami since the highest point of the park road is three feet above sea level.

Photo of Rock Reef Pass in Everglades National Park.

It really shocked me that crocodiles, alligators, and beautiful Flamingos I enjoyed seeing in the Everglades could all lose this ideal coastal habitat because of sea level rinse enhanced by climate change. I just did not know what to do about it. 

I enjoyed my job as a year-round naturalist ranger at Flamingo in Everglades National Park. However, by the spring of  2002 I was burned out of that job. I wanted something new. In the winter of 2003, I worked as a seasonal interpretation park ranger at the Everglades City Visitor Center at Everglades National Park. From 2003-07, I enjoyed this winter job of narrating the boat tours, leading guided canoe trips, giving ranger led bike tours of Everglades City, giving ranger talks, and creating an evening presentation on the birds of the Everglades. 

My supervisor at Everglades City offered me a choice for the winter of 2007-08 to return to Everglades City or work as a winter seasonal interpretation ranger at Shark Valley Visitor Center in Everglades National Park. I always had enjoyed taking the Shark Valley Tram Tour or renting bikes to traverse on the 15-mile Tram Road. With the man canal next to the west side of the Tram loop, it was a great waterway to see alligators and many wading birds. 

During that winter, I became so worried about climate change that I could not sleep at night. In the spring of 2008, I quit my winter job in Everglades National Park. In 2009, I started spending the winters in my hometown of St. Louis, MO to start organizing for climate action. I did not know what to do, but I was determined I was going to make a difference for climate action.

Brian Ettling leading a ranger led canoe trip in Everglades National Park. Photo taken around 2004-2007.

Becoming a climate change organizing zealot in Missouri and Oregon 

By 2009, for seventeen years, I had worked as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon in the summers. Everglades National Park, Florida was where I worked in the winter up until 2008. Two years before, in 2006, I became an interpretive park ranger at Crater Lake. I absolutely loved my job as an interpretation ranger at Crater Lake giving ranger talks, guided hikes, leading evening campfire talks, and narrating the boat tours. I loved every minute of standing in front of an audience, in these iconic places sharing about nature.

2006 was also a pivotal summer for me because I saw in a nearby movie theatre the climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truthabout former Vice President Al Gore. That documentary lit a spark to do something about climate change, but I did not know what to do. 

This climate change calling went for years without an outlet to act. In 2009, I gave myself the title of The Climate Change Comedian on a dare from a friend in Ashland, Oregon. While spending the winter of 2010 in St. Louis, my sisters booked me to give ranger/climate change talks at my nieces and nephews schools, and for their boy and girl scout groups. A family friend in St. Louis helped me develop my own website www.climatechangecomedian.com, which is still active today. That same winter, I created my own climate change PowerPoint talk, Let’s Have Fun Getting Serious about Solving Climate Change.

In the spring of 2010, I gave this PowerPoint talk with friends in St. Louis. In August 2010, I showed it to fellow rangers at Crater Lake National Park. In February 2011 while spending the winter in St. Louis, I joined South County Toastmasters to improve my public speaking skills and follow my ambitions to be a good climate change communicator. That same month, I started writing this blog and posted two entries that month.

From March to May 2011, I worked at the St. Louis Science Center at their Climate Change exhibit. For years, I didn’t feel like I knew enough to talk to Crater Lake visitors about climate change and give ranger talks about it. That changed in August 2011, I was finally brave enough to debut a climate change evening campfire ranger talk called The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, which I recorded for YouTube in 2012

Brian Ettling presenting his climate change evening ranger talk at Crater Lake in the summer of 2015.

I felt very scared when I started giving this climate change talk at the Crater Lake campground Amphitheatre for audiences of up to 100 visitors. I was very afraid that I would get visitors who would want to argue with me about climate change and debate the science. Actually, the opposite happened. The park visitors were very appreciative and gave me a lot of positive feedback. I loved giving this climate change evening program at Crater Lake until I stopped working there at the end of the summer of 2017. Hopefully, Will Steel would have been proud of my climate change evening talk. I shared how climate change impacted Crater Lake. I then encouraged my audience to take action to reduce the impact on Crater Lake and our national parks. 

During the winter of 2011-12, a friend Larry Lazar and I co-founded the Climate Reality Meet-Up group (now known as Climate MeetUp-St. Louis). I met Larry the previous spring when I worked at the Climate Change exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center. In December 2011, we held our first monthly gatherings with speakers to learn more about the science of climate change and how we could act on climate.  

Becoming a volunteer Climate Change Lobbyist 

One of the guest speakers who came to our Climate Reality Meetup group during the winter of 2012 was Carol Braford. Back then, Carol was the St. Louis group leader with Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL). Carol is still active to this day with CCL as the Midwest or “Tornadoes” Regional Coordinator. During the winter of 2012 at Climate Reality Meet Ups, Carol Braford was the very persistent with me that I should come to a monthly Citizens Climate Lobby conference call. I even blogged about Carol in January 2013, Want to change the world? Be Persistent!

I attended a CCL meeting at Carol’s home in April 2012 and immediately became hooked. I then volunteered with CCL for over 10 years. During the summer of 2012 while I was working at Crater Lake, my goal was to start a CCL chapter in Ashland, Oregon. I perceived Ashland as a very progressive community that cares deeply about the Earth and natural environment. I thought it would be a great fit for a CCL group. Plus, I wanted to have a local CCL chapter that met while I was spending my summers working at Crater Lake. In January 2013, my friend Amy Bennett called to inform me that the southern Oregon CCL chapter that still meets in Ashland, Oregon had been established. To this day, it’s one of my proudest accomplishments. 

I started to embody Will Steel’s energy, vision and determination as I threw myself into volunteering for CCL for climate action. Like Will Steel, I wrote letters to the editor and opinion editorials (op-eds) to newspapers to urge members of Congress and the public to support CCL’s carbon fee and dividend policy. I was so proud when my first op-ed was published in my hometown newspaper the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on April 19, 2013, For Earth Day, a GOP free-market solution to climate change. One year later, for Earth Day 2014, the Post-Dispatch published another op-ed I wrote, For Earth Day: Asking our elected officials to be climate heroes.

Photo of an opinion editorial by Brian Ettling in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on April 22, 2104.

On one my cross country drives from St. Louis to Crater Lake, I was invited to be a guest speaker at Grand Canyon National Park on May 13, 2013. I gave my Crater Lake climate change evening program to an audience of over 200 park visitors and staff at the Shrine of the Ages Auditorium. This was my biggest audience ever for a climate change presentation. 

In July, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published my op-ed, What Keeps Me Up Late at Night. In October, I was on a roll getting climate change op-eds mentioning Crater Lake published in newspapers across Oregon, such as the Klamath Falls Herald and News, Medford Tribune, Grants Pass Daily Courier, Bend Bulletin, Eugene Register-Guard, the Salem Statesman Journal, Ashland Daily Tidings, and Oregon’s largest newspaper in circulation, the Oregonian, out of Portland, Oregon. In 1885 after he saw Crater Lake, Will Steel wrote to newspapers across the United States in his campaign to make Crater Lake into a national park. I did not match Steel’s efforts to submit letters to the editor in newspapers across the U.S. However, I did get published in newspapers across Oregon in 2013. Hopefully, Will Steel was impressed. 

As I blogged about previously, in August 2013, I joined with friends with the southern Oregon Chapter of CCL in lobby meetings with the Medford, Oregon office district staff of then Republican Congressman Greg Walden (OR-02) and Democratic U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon. I remember it as a fun and empowering experience, even if we could not find much agreement in our meeting with Walden’s Deputy Chief of Staff. Merkley’s staff was pleasant and totally agreed with us that climate change is a huge concern. However, neither Congressional staff did not seem to have much to say about the carbon fee and dividend policy.

Those Oregon lobby meetings inspired me to organize my own lobby meeting when I spent the next winter in St. Louis. I organized first my first lobby meetings with the district office of my Missouri Republican member of Congress, Rep. Ann Wagner (MO-02), on February 14, 2014. I don’t have memories of what was said in that meeting, since so much time has passed. However, I remember it being a great experience that we respectfully listened to Rep. Wagner’s staff, and they listened to us. We agreed to meet again in the future to have more discussions.

Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteers, including Brian Ettling, meeting with staff of Congresswoman Ann Wagner at her Ballwin, Missouri office on February 14, 2014.

In a sense, I loved organizing and attending CCL lobby meetings with Congressional staff that it energized me to travel 8 times from 2015 to 2019 to lobby Congressional offices for CCL for climate action, specifically their carbon fee and dividend policy. In November 2015 and 2016, I flew from St. Louis to Washington D.C, which was roughly a two-hour flight each direction. 

When my wife Tanya and I moved to Portland, Oregon in February 2017, it would take me all day to fly to Washington D.C. I would typically catch a 5:30 am to 6 am flight from Portland and arrive in Washington D.C. very late that afternoon or evening. It was amazing to travel that quickly across a continent. When William Gladstone Steel made his numerous trips from Portland, Oregon to Washington, D.C. from 1885 to 1902, there were no airplanes and airports then. He would be riding trains across the United States. No doubt these trips would take several days to get there. I can’t image the sacrifices he took to travel all the way to Washington D.C. and back on those trains to lobby in Washington, D.C. After I moved to Oregon, I marveled at his dedication and determination to take lobby trips in the era he lived before modern air travel.  

I loved every moment lobbying in Washington D.C. In November 2016, Tanya and I had the thrill to also lobby elegant Parliamentary offices in Ottawa, Canada for Citizens Climate Lobby Canada. I relished the excitement of putting on my best and only dress suit to take the DC Metro commuter trains to the U.S. Capitol. Then seeing the iconic U.S. Capitol Building up close. 

Once I would pass through security to enter the Congressional Office Buildings, it was a fun corn maze to try to find specific Congressional offices where I had scheduled meetings with Congressional staff. It was fun to plan the lobby meetings with other CCL volunteers attending the meetings with me. It was always enjoyable to meet with the Congressional staff to listen to where they are at with climate policies and then petition them to support our carbon fee and dividend bill. I enjoyed the debriefing meetings with the CCL volunteers afterwards and then writing thank you cards which I then dropped off at the Congressional Offices. 

I wonder if Will Steel had as much fun as I did. However, he probably did since he traveled to Washington D.C. so many times. Even more, he did not take it personally when members of Congress would tell him no to his request to make Crater Lake a national park. After all, he famously said, “I got licked so often that I learned to like it.” 

Brian Ettling getting ready to lobby Congressional offices in Washington D.C. on June 11, 2019.

My highlights as a volunteer Climate Change Lobbyist 

Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) trains their volunteers for the Congressional Lobby days to be respectful, grateful, and appreciative when we lobby Congressional staff and members of Congress. Even more, they want us to be more interested in what the Congressional staff and members of Congress are saying than what we have to say. As a result, over the years, CCL has established a reputation on Capitol Hill of being friendly, appreciative, and great listeners. 

Thus, members of Congress and their staff would say that they enjoyed and looked forward to their lobby meetings with CCL. I had conservative Republican Congressional staff, who I probably did not see eye to eye much with them on policy, tell me how much they liked meeting with me. I especially heard this from the staff of GOP Rep. Ann Wagner. When I spent my winters in St. Louis volunteering with CCL from 2013-2017, I lived in Rep. Wagner’s district. I worked very hard to develop a good rapport with her Ballwin Missouri office and Washington D.C. staff. 

The last time I lobbied her Ballwin MO office in March 2017, I brought homemade chocolate chip cookies from my mother-in-law Nancy. At first, the staff was hesitant to take them fearing that the cookies were store bought and I spent a lot of money buying them. They did not want to be perceived as violating ethical rules for accepting expensive gifts. Only when they fully realized that the cookies were homemade and not a paid gift, they started devouring the cookies. I wonder what Will Steel would have thought about my homemade cookies as lobbying gifts. 

In November 2017, I let Congresswoman Ann Wagner’s office know I had moved to Oregon, I was no longer a constituent, and I might not be lobbying her office anymore. The Legislative Assistant was very complimentary saying that I was still more than welcome to come lobby their office anytime. I found that comment to be very heartwarming. 

All my lobby meetings in Washington D.C. and in the local Congressional offices were always with Congressional staff. The exception to this was when I went to a ‘Missouri Mornings’ coffee gathering in U.S. Senator Roy Blunt’s office. This was a more coffee meet-and-greet where Missouri constituents who happened to be in Washington D.C. could stop by Senator Blunt’s Congressional Office to briefly meet him, shake his hand, and get their picture with him. I did go one time. The picture taking and interaction with Senator Blunt was so brief that I was not able to urge him to support climate legislation. However, this meeting was another great opportunity to chat hand an offhand conversation with his staff to urge his support for climate legislation. 

In November 2016, I signed up for a similar office meeting with U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri. Her morning coffee meeting seemed to be open to any citizen wanting to discuss politics and policy with her. She had a female group of Georgetown University Law students in the meeting with her, as well as a couple of constituents from Missouri like me. She gave great career advice to the female law students. She urged them to get more involved in politics because we do need more women in politics.

Brian Ettling meeting with U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill from Missouri on November 17, 2016.

Each of us at the coffee table shared why we were there. When it came to my turn, I stated it was because of climate change. This meeting happened just two weeks after the November 2016 Presidential election where Donald Trump was just elected President. Claire very angry how voters had chosen Republicans in Missouri and nationally. She remarked, “I hate to be less than lady like and say this but, here it goes. To me, it felt like voters in Missouri and middle America gave the Democratic Party the middle finger.” 

After I shared my concerns about climate change, she retorted, ‘Good luck with anything good happening with climate policies for the next four years.’ Shen pointed her finger at me and snarled, ‘Oh, the Keystone XL pipeline will definitely be passed now.’ 

Sadly, Senator McCaskill was a supporter of the tar sands oil pipeline which would have gone from Alberta Canada down to Texas and Louisiana to the oil refineries there. It was a disappointment that she was still a strong supporter of that policy and she felt so pessimistic about climate policy with Trump becoming President in a few months. Thus, it was not a productive meeting for me to urge her to support CCL’s carbon fee and dividend policy. However, I still felt very happy that I was able to talk to her directly about supporting CCL climate policies, even if she was not in the mood to listen. 

Besides my very brief interactions with Senators Claire McCaskill and Roy Blunt of Missouri, all my Washington D.C. lobby meetings were with Congressional staff.  While that might disappoint some people who want to directly lobby their members of Congress for a policy, I was perfectly fine with meeting with Congressional staff. After all, Congressional staff has the ear of the member of Congress and regularly interacts with them. If the Congressional staff does not like to policy or bill you are advocating, they will probably advise the member of Congress not to support it either. On the other hand, 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 happened to me in June 2019 when CCL volunteers and I met with the Washington D.C. Congressional staff of Rep. Fredericka Wilson, Florida District 24. We had a very productive conversation with her Legislative Correspondent, Devin Wilcox. Devin seemed very supportive of the CCL carbon fee and dividend bill we were urging her to support, known as the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (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.

Brian Ettling (far left) as with a group of Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteers as well as staff of Congresswoman Frederica Wilson at Rep. Wilson’s office on June 11, 2019.

The Florida CCL volunteers, and CCL Washington D.C. staff stayed in touch with Devin for months afterwards. I stayed in touch with the Florida CCL volunteers 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 96 of her U.S. House colleagues to co-sponsor the EICDA on February 24, 2020. 

Unlike William Gladstone Steel, I was not able to get Congress to create a Crater Lake National Park in my years of climate lobbying. However, I still felt like such a sweet victory when I was part of the effort that led to Rep. Wilson co-sponsoring a climate bill. 

Lobbying Oregon Legislators for Climate Action 

In the summer of 2018, I started volunteering with Renew Oregon with their efforts to work closely with Oregon state legislators to pass a cap and invest bill. For Renew Oregon volunteers like me, much effort would be needed to regularly lobby state legislators to urge them to make passage of the cap and invest bill a high priority.

That summer, I also started writing 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. I always enjoyed my interactions with him. We had a great rapport. Diego was always very supportive of my climate lobbying and organizing. 

Periodically, I sent him letters and cards urging him to support the cap and invest bill, which became known as the Clean Energy Jobs Bill or HB 2020 in the 2019 Oregon Legislative session. From my conversations with him, I had no doubt that he would vote yes on these climate bills. 

On February 6, 2019, Renew Oregon had a lobby day at the Oregon state Capitol to meet with the state legislators to urge them to support The Clean Energy Jobs Bill. When I met with Rep. Hernandez inside his office, he said, ‘Look right behind you, Brian.’

Photo from Brian Ettling of letters that he and other constituents wrote to Oregon Rep. Diego Hernandez. Photo taken on February 6, 2019.

When I looked right behind me on his bulletin board, he had attached with push pins all the letters I sent him over the previous months. There were at least 3 letters from me. Apparently, Diego liked to display letters from constituents, and most of the letters tacked up on the bulletin board were from me. This showed me very clearly that elected leaders do read letters from constituents and hang on to them when considering policy decisions and votes.

Rep. Hernandez laughed with delight as I was amazed seeing my letters and taking pictures of them hanging from his bulletin board. He continued to be very supportive of my climate lobbying and strongly supporting the climate bills I advocated. He probably would have supported those bills even without my lobbying. However, I think he liked that he had constituents like me cheering him on and strongly urging him to support climate legislation.

Sadly, Rep. Diego Hernandez resigned from office on March 15, 2021 due to sexual harassment charges filed against him from staff and lobbyists at the Capitol. The House Ethics Committee planned to recommend a House floor vote to expel him. We must believe the women and I thought he should be fully accountable for his actions. I was very disappointed that he did not act in a professional manner towards women in his position of power. I considered him to be a friend. I texted him on the day he resigned to offer that I am there for him if he ever wanted to talk. It was sad and totally understandable why he had to resign from the legislature.

While lobbying state legislators with Renew Oregon in 2019-2020, I built very good relations with other state legislators in the Oregon House and Senate. As I blogged about previously, during the summer of 2020, I held Zoom and phone meetings with Oregon Legislators that I met during my lobbying for the 2019 and 2020 cap and invest bills. As a Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) volunteer, I urged them to endorse the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (EICDA).

As I organized CCL volunteers across Oregon, we successfully urged over 30 Oregon legislators to endorse the EICDA by early 2021. September 17, 2020, I met by phone then Rep. Tiffiny Mitchell to ask her to endorse the EICDA. In addition to her endorsement, Tiffiny asked if she could introduce a statewide resolution supporting the bill. Because of a great rapport I had built up with Senator Michael Dembrow and his friendship with Tiffiny Mitchell, he 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 Republican Senate caucus, joined with all the Democratic Senators present to vote to support SJM 5. Unfortunately, SJM 5 fell short of receiving a floor vote in the Oregon House in June 2021. The exciting part was that 30 House members, including 7 Republicans, signed on to co-sponsor SJM 5. The Oregon House has 60 members. Thus, half the chamber were co-sponsors of SJM 5.

Screenshot from the Oregon Legislative Information System (OLIS) of the Senate Floor vote for the SJM 5 Resolution. Photo taken on April 7, 2021.

More recently, as I have blogged about, I developed a good rapport with my current Oregon legislators Senator Kayse Jama and Representative Andrea Valderrama, as well as other nearby Oregon Legislators, as I have lobbied them for various climate legislation. 

My favorite part of my William Gladstone Steel Ranger Lodge talk 

One particular section of my Will Steel talk I hope really stuck in people’s minds. This was the central part of my Will Steel talk that deeply connected with me: 

“After Will Steel saw Crater Lake for the first time, it literally changed his life. When he went back up to Portland Oregon, he started a petition drive. He got hundreds of signatures from friends, associates, and anyone he could find to start a campaign to make Crater Lake a national park. On top of that, he wrote close to a thousand letters nationwide basically every major magazine and newspaper in the country. He proclaimed that Crater Lake should be a national park. 

Even more, he wrote every single member of Congress a letter trying to lobby them to make this a national park. However, none of these efforts were enough. William Gladstone Steele then had to make numerous trips to Washington DC to personally lobby senators and congressmen to make this a national park. He became such a fixture at the Capitol that senators and congressmen would duck around doors and hallways whenever they saw him. 

They thought that Will Steel as a pest and a crackpot. They probably told him, ‘Will Steel, go home! Give it up! We are not going to turn your little lake into a national park!’ 

But Will Steel would not give up. He said, ‘I got licked so often that I learned to like it!’

After 17 years of having a force of will and a persistent determination, Congress finally gave into William Gladstone Steel to get him off their backs. In 1902, Congress passed a law to make Crater Lake into a national park. President Theodore Roosevelt signed it into law on May 22, 1902. Today Crater Lake National Park is the fifth oldest national park in the United States. 

William Gladstone Steel is quite a success story. But think about it. From the first time he saw Crater Lake until it became a national park, took 17 years of his life for his dream to come true. 17 years that’s a long time. It’s about the same amount of time it takes to raise a child from when they’re born until about the time, they’re ready to graduate from high school. 

17 years. So, what does that say? 

  1. It says that one person. Any one of us here today can make a difference. 
  2. It also says never give up on your dreams, no matter how crazy they may be.
  3. It also says it may take an incredible amount of persistence and determination, as well as hearing a lot of ‘no’s for your dreams to come true.”  

The part of my talk that would get a big laugh from the audience was when I said that Will Steel “became such a fixture at the Capitol that senators and congressmen would duck around doors and hallways whenever they saw him.”

To emphasize this point, I pretended to duck behind a wall just for a moment during my talk acting like I was a U.S. Senator or Representative avoiding Steel at the Capitol. The audience seemed to know exactly what I was doing which made my talk even more humorous. It was one of my favorite highlights from this talk and a line that stuck in my head for how determined he was in his lobbying to urge members of Congress to make Crater Lake into a national park.

Brian Ettling presenting his ranger talk at the Great Hall of the Crater Lake Lodge on May 22, 2016.

Like Will Steel, someone tried to avoid me with my climate lobbying  

When I was starting to write this blog, I remarked to my wife Tanya, “At least no members of Congress or state legislators tried to duck around doors and hallways when they saw me.” 

“Actually, they have,” she responded, and we both laughed. She remembered me telling the story of how Oregon Senator Laurie Monnes Anderson went out of her way to avoid me.   

On June 25, 2019, I was lobbying as a Renew Oregon volunteer at the Oregon Capitol building in Salem, Oregon to urge state Senators to hold a vote to pass the Clean Energy Jobs Bill, HB 2020. The Democratic Senators had the votes to pass the bill. Unfortunately, the Republican state Senators fled the state to deny the 2/3 required quorum to hold a floor vote in the Oregon Senate. The Democratic Senators who remained at the state Capitol were unsure what to do. 

Renew Oregon wanted volunteers like me to continue raining a presence inside the Capitol Building. They asked us to continue wearing our Renew Oregon t-shirts. They wanted us to be seen in the lobby of the Senate offices and in other parts of the building by the Democratic Oregon Senators. We didn’t want the Democratic Senators to give up on HB 2020. The Democratic Senators were under a lot of pressure to kill this bill so the Republican Senators would return to the Capitol, and they would have the required quorum to pass the state budget and all the remaining bills in the session. The Oregon Constitution stated that the Legislative session had to end by midnight on June 30th. Otherwise, all the bills would die. Thus, it was extremely tempting for the Democratic Senator to sacrifice HB 2020 for all their other legislative priorities. 

As I was sitting in the lobby in front of the Oregon Senate offices, Oregon Senator Laurie Monnes Anderson of Gresham came out of her office talking to some of her staff. At that time, Senator Monnes Anderson held the position of President pro tempore of the Oregon Senate, which is one of the most powerful positions in the Oregon Senate. According to Ballotpedia, “The Senate president pro tempore (“for the time being”), or pro tem, is the second-highest-ranking leadership position in the U.S. Senate and most state Senate chambers (such as Oregon). The president pro tem presides over the Senate body in the absence of the Senate president. In most cases, the president pro tem is a senior-ranking member of the majority party.”

With her high-ranking position, Senator Monnes Anderson was going to be a key vote to keep HB 2020 alive or to kill the bill to pass all of the other pending state legislation when the Oregon Legislative session ending in just a couple of days. We desperately needed her support.  

Senator Monnes Anderson knew me from attending the joint town halls she held in Gresham with Representative Carla Piluso that winter and spring. Just one month before, on May 29th, three Renew Oregon volunteers and I met with her in her office to lobby her to support HB 2020. She took her picture with us holding up the sign that read “Clean Energy Jobs.” In late June, I ran into her in a stairwell in the Oregon Capitol when the Senate was getting close to have a floor vote on HB 2020.

Oregon Senator Laurie Monnes Anderson holding up “Clean Energy Jobs” sign meeting with Renew Oregon volunteers, including Brian Ettling on May 29, 2019.

I was wearing my “Clean Energy Jobs” t-shirt when I saw her in the stairwell. I commented about the situation, “Isn’t this exciting?” 

She gave a tepid and guarded response of “Yes” without saying anything more. 

Thus, she clearly saw me and knew who I was on June 25th when I sat in a chair in the lobby in front of the Senate offices. While walking and talking to her staff into the lobby, she looked up and saw me. She then turned white like she saw a ghost. Without saying a word to her aides or me, she quickly turned around to take another set of stairs to the Senate floor. I had no plans of saying anything to her. However, I had no idea I had the ability to scare high-ranking Oregon elected officials. I was simply there as a physical presence to urge Oregon Senators not to give up on the Clean Energy Jobs Bill, HB 2020. Unfortunately, just my presence in the Oregon state Capitol, as well as other Renew Oregon volunteers that day, really scared the hell out of her. 

I had forgotten that story, but my wife Tanya had not. She reminded me of it this past week as I wrote this blog. Hopefully, William Gladstone Steel would have been proud of me Just like him, some legislators when out of their way to avoid me when I tried to lobby them. In his case, he was urging members of Congress to pass a law to designate Crater Lake as a national park. In my case, I urged Oregon legislators to pass impactful cap and invest climate action legislation.

My New Toast to William Gladstone Steel 

For 17 years, Will Steel never gave up on his dream for Congress make Crater Lake into a national park. In my case, I will never give up on the Oregon Legislature and Congress passing laws to act on climate change. Will Steel famously said, “I got licked so often that I learned to like it.” 

In my case, it stings badly when state or federal level climate legislation I am working on gets defeated. I don’t think I will ever learn to like it, but I am going to stay tenacious and persistent until we pass the necessary climate legislation to reduce threat.  

I always ended my Crater Lake Lodge ranger talk with the toast, “So, in conclusion, to William Gladstone Steel, The Father of Crater Lake National Park. He did so much throughout his life so we could enjoy this beautiful view from the back porch of a Crater Lake Lodge here today. Cheers!” 

After writing the blog, I think I will end with this toast: “So, to William Gladstone Steel, The Father of Crater Lake National Park. He did so much throughout his life to inspire me to be the climate change lobbyist that I am today. Cheers!”

Brian Ettling giving a at toast to William Gladstone Steel at the ranger lodge talk at the Great Hall of the Crater Lake Lodge on May 22, 2016.

Brian Ettling March 2023 ©

Leading a Climate Change speaking tour across Oregon in 2017

Brian Ettling at Pilot Butte in Bend, Oregon on Monday, October 30, 2017

As climate organizer, one of the actions I am most proud is leading a speaking tour across eastern and southern Oregon for Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) in October 2017. Many CCL friends and volunteers helped make this tour a success. However, it was also one of the bravest and boldest feats I have done driving 1,600 miles myself in my own car to 11 cities over 12 days.

During this 2017 tour, CCL Oregon had an active website where I blogged daily updates about the tour, oregontour.org. Unfortunately, that website was no longer maintained a couple of years afterwards. Fortunately, with the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, also known as web.archive.org that allows people to go “back in time” and see how defunct websites looked in the past. Thank goodness for its founders, Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, for developing the Wayback Machine to provide “universal access to all knowledge” by preserving archived copies of these now non-functioning web pages, such as oregontour.org.

Because of that Oregontour.org website, for years I did not bother to post about that tour on this blog because I took it for granted that the website would always be there. I noticed this website had disappeared in 2021. I then emailed the Portland CCL volunteer who created the website, Nathan Grey, to see if he could help me revive the website. He responded that he didn’t think there is an easy way to reconstruct it. However, he gave me this link find some snapshots of it on the Wayback Machine. I was relieved to see that important chapter of my life was still preserved and archived there.

This 12-day tour from October 24, 2017 to November 4, 2017 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.

Brian Ettling speaking at the Cook Memorial Library in La Grande, Oregon on October 25, 2017.

Starting the 1,600 journey of this climate change speaking tour from Portland, OR

From my home in Portland, Oregon, I drove on the first all the way to Baker City, Oregon to give a community presentation. This was about a 234-mile one way drive to far eastern Oregon. During that drive, not far from my home on I-84 in the Columbia River Gorge, I heard a loud bang underneath my car as I ran over something, not knowing what it was. Fortunately, my car was fine to complete this journey as I worried my car might have been messed up somehow.

It felt like a long drive to Baker City, but I did arrive around late in the afternoon, plenty of time before giving a presentation that evening at the Baker County Library. Two Portland CCL volunteers, Barry Daigle and Jason Lewis met with me at majestic Geiser Grand Hotel in downtown Baker City the to go over the logistics for the next two days. They were originally from that area. They each generously drove from Portland to Baker City to partner with me for these events. They used their local connections to encourage local residents to come to the Baker City talk that evening and the talk in La Grande the next evening.

The trip felt like it was off to a great start because they pointed out to me the front page of the Baker City Herald announcing my talk at the local library that evening. We were not sure what the attendance would be. We were happy that fifteen people did attend.

After Baker City, I spent the next day giving a climate change presentation and newspaper editorial board meeting in La Grande, which was only about an hour away from Baker City. After La Grande, I spent the third day of the trip driving to John Day, Oregon, which was about a three-hour drive. The fall colors of the Aspen trees looked amazing and the 9,036 foot tall Strawberry Mountain looked so majestic towering over the John Day area. I just had to stop at a rest area for awhile to admire the stunning beauty and try to capture it on film.

Image by Brian Ettling of the Strawberry Mountain, located just southeast of John Day, Oregon. Photo taken October 26, 2017.

The fourth day, I drove two hours to Burns to give a presentation. Between giving the presentations, driving to the presentations, setting up for the presentations and various meetings I would have in these towns, I had other tasks. One of the tour organizers, Forrest Roth, told me I must blog at the end of each day to promote the progress on my journey. Very late at night, I would email my daily blog entry and photos to Forrest. He then generously edited what I wrote and uploaded my blogs and images from that day to the Oregontour.org website.

I started to feel bone tired by the third day of my trip. On long car trips, I have always enjoyed when family, friends, or my wife Tanya drives, and I can just sleep in the car. With just me driving, there was no rest for the weary. I could have used a nap so bad! The spare arid eastern Oregon scenery kept me going. It was so beautiful. Sometimes I would drive many miles without seeing another car or person. It made me feel like I was truly in the rugged wide open spacious country of the west.

Every audience for each presentation was so different. My first two presentations in Baker City and La Grande were mostly seniors. High school students in John Day, Oregon made up nearly all the audience on my third night. In Burns, I gave the climate talk in the adjacent community of Hines. It turned out to be a very progressive audience where some of audience members skeptical of the moderate market-based carbon fee and dividend approach that I advocated.

A couple of days later in Redmond, there was a couple of people in their 70s that were quite negative. The woman yelled out that she didn’t believe me when I shared my fear of exposure breathing dirty polluted air of a nearby coal plant growing up near it in St Louis, MO. The man wanted to question the science of climate change and all my sources.

It was exciting to do all this public speaking. At the same time, I never knew what angle they were going to come at me with their questions and comments. At each stop, a CCL volunteer from Portland or nearby city would assist me with setting up the presentation space and networking with the locals attending. Since I was driving by myself several hours from one Oregon city to another, it was always a godsend to see them.

Pacific Crest hikers talk about ‘Trail Angels’ that help them on their journey. I had ‘tour angels’ that helped me along the way such as Barry Daigle and Jason Lewis in Baker City and La Grande, Eric Means meeting up with me on his motorcycle in John Day, Russ Donnelly meeting up with me in Burns/Hines, Russ and Suzanne Butterfield partnering with me in Prineville, Redmond, and Bend, and Sherrill Rinehart working with me in Lakeview, Klamath Falls, Medford, and Grants Pass. Yes, I was driving by myself sometimes for long stretches, but a Tour Angel met me at each location, as well as very friendly local volunteers of the towns where I was speaking.

Portland CCL volunteer Eric Means and Brian Ettling in John Day, Oregon. Photo taken October 27, 2017

Each time, the CCL team in Portland and around the state found local volunteers in advance where I could spend the night in their homes. Each of these homes I stayed in during my trip were always very comfortable. The hosts were always so warm and welcoming. I just wanted to crash in their homes. The problem was that I would get in their homes late after doing my evening presentations and chatting with the attendees afterwards. Then, the next morning, I would need to leave early to drive to the next city. Or, I had morning obligations in that same town, such as meet with the mayor, do a radio interview, newspaper editorial board meeting, meet with Congressional staff, and squeezing some sightseeing.

My two-year wedding anniversary fell in the middle of this trip, and I really did miss my wife, Tanya. I love traveling with her and being around her. She is always so supportive when I give my climate change talks. She would have liked to have seen the scenery in eastern and southern Oregon that I experienced. It would have been fun for Tanya to meet the people along with me. Like any couple, we would have had fun afterwards chatting about the people we enjoyed meeting and those that were a challenge.

Having said that, I love traveling and being on the road. In a sense, I was living one of my favorite Willie Nelson songs, On the Road Again or the Johnny Cash song I’ve Been Everywhere. Even more, I was talking about climate change every single day with actions like presentations, meeting with local officials, chatting with local residents, radio interviews, newspaper interviews, and Congressional staff meetings. In March 2017, I did a mini climate change speaking tour in Missouri organized by my CCL friend George Laur. These trips traveling around a state would start to exhaust me. At the same time, these trips were also exhilarating for me that I was possibly making a difference for climate action.

Brian Ettling speaking in John Day, Oregon to a group of mostly high school students on October 26, 2017.

How The Oregon Stewardship Tour came together for me to take this journey

I got the idea for this tour from my CCL friend Peter Bryn who had organized a tour around Texas in 2015 called ‘Texas Energy Freedom Tour!’ Five CCL volunteers, Peter Bryn, Sandy Pinto, Ricky Bradley, Larry Kremer, and Brett Cease j conducted a successful 29-day, 30-city roadshow.

They 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.

This looked like a lot of fun, so I wanted to organize similar tours for my home state of Missouri and my adopted state of Oregon. I chatted with Peter a couple of times on the phone in early 2017 for his advice to organize an Oregon tour. One of the keys that Peter advised me was to form an organizing committee to plan an Oregon Tour. After I moved to Portland in early February 2017, I worked with CCL Greater Northwest Regional Coordinator Tamara Staton and CCL Portland Group Leader Daniela Brod to form a tour committee.

Other CCL volunteers from Portland and around Oregon did coordinate with the committee which ultimately help me undertake this tour in late October and early November. At one point, early September, it looked dicey that the tour could happen. Tamara even said later on that she came close to pulling the plug at that point. However, the committee worked hard to find the interested people in the eastern and southern Oregon cities to pull it together.

At the same time we were striving to put together an Oregon tour, CCL volunteers in Washington state were organizing their own state tour. They called their excursion the “Water, Wind & Fire” tour. Led by Washington Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteers Steve Ghan, Dr. Sara Cate, and John Sandvig, and Jen Syrowitz of Audubon Washington, they completed a successful 15-day, 12-city tour through Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho. Their tour started just as mine was ending. From November 2-17, they held 31 events, including:

15 public presentations
3 individual meetings with government leaders
7 meetings with community leaders
5 radio interviews
1 TV interview

During the summer, John Sandvig and I had phone calls to exchange ideas to make our tours successful. The difference between ‘Texas Energy Freedom Tour!’ and the Washington State “Water, Wind & Fire” was that there was a group of people completing those tours. In my case, it was just me driving around the state giving all of the presentations, doing all the radio and print interviews, and doing what it took, along with the local volunteers to make our tour succeed.

Promotional image for the 2017 Oregon Stewardship Tour where I was the lead presenter and organizer.

We called our Oregon Tour “The Oregon Stewardship” Tour. We thought that taking climate action, especially with urging Congress to pass a carbon fee and dividend, would be one of the best ways to be good stewards of Oregon’s precious air, land and water. The goal was to go to the most conservative parts of eastern and southern Oregon to see if we could make an impact to get more volunteers in those areas for CCL. During the summer, it was understood that at least one other person was going to join me for this tour. However, he dropped out in early September. Thus, it still felt like the weight of the tour was all going to be on me, even if there were volunteers helping me at each location.

The Highlight of the Oregon Stewardship Tour: Visiting Lakeview, Oregon

The weight did take its toll on me. When I was staying in Bend around the 7th day of the tour, I noticed that I was starting to come down with a cold. Fortunately, I had a light schedule that day. Bend CCL volunteers and I had a meeting with the Bend Office with the District Director of GOP Congressman Greg Walden. My hosts in Bend generously allowed me to stay for a day to rest up before continuing on the next leg of my trip. Resting for that day helped a tiny bit, but my body seemed worn down by the tour. I am so glad I plowed ahead to complete the tour.

From Bend, I drove to Lakeview, Oregon on November 1, 2017. I had a 3-hour drive to Lakeview, which is about 14 miles north of the northeast California border. Lakeview was one of the highlights of my trip. It’s located in one of the least densely populated areas of the United States. My host was Jim Walls, a local resident who 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. One of the first things Jim told me was,

“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 Walls was the 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 and the efforts of LCRI, Lake County had become one of the first counties in the U.S. to be a net exporter of clean energy.

After I arrived in Lakeview, Jim gave my friend Sherrill and me a tour of the massive field of solar panels next to the town. These solar panels and geothermal wells were providing not just enough energy for Lakeview, but these Lakeview clean energy facilities were exporting energy to California. Jim mentioned that the new tax revenue from solar enabled Lake County to hire new staff for the Lakeview hospital and boosting other job growth for the local economy. All the solar and geothermal looked like the future for the United States and the world. It gave me so much hope. Jim’s efforts have not gone unnoticed.

Brian Ettling with Jim Walls in Lakeview, Oregon on November 1, 2017.

10 years ago, Jim Walls gave a TEDX talk, Lake County, Oregon – America’s 1st Zero-Energy County: Jim Walls at TEDxOSU. In 2020, Lakeview’s large scale solar projects and Jim Walls were featured in the documentary The Other Side of the Hill, which explores the impacts of a changing climate in rural Eastern Oregon. Jim Walls is quite a visionary and a trail blazer showing that the United States, especially rural deep red conservative U.S, can move away from fossil fuels to a clean energy future.

Jim had a great way speaking to his conservative neighbors and fellow community members. When he introduced me when I gave my presentation at that evening, Jim said, “I am not a gambler, so who am I to go against 97% of climate scientists are telling us that climate change is real and we need to do something about it. I believe we should leave the planet stronger than we found it, especially for my 14 grandchildren.”

Pushing myself to complete the tour while savoring the experience

After Lakeview, I drove over to Klamath Falls the next day. The first item on my schedule that day was to give a climate change talk to the Mayor of Klamath Falls and 8 other staff from various government agencies invited by the mayor. That evening, I gave my presentation to a group of residents in Klamath Falls. When I worked at Crater Lake National Park as a park ranger for 25 years, I went to Klamath Falls on many of my weekends for grocery shopping, eat at a local Vietnamese Restaurant, and occasionally see a movie. It was a dream come true for me to give a climate change talk in a community I had been to so often.

On November 3rd, I had another two-hour drive from Klamath Falls to Medford, Oregon. The weather had been pleasant, even Indian summer like weather, for much of my trip. Not so that day. The weather was very rainy even a bit snowy driving over the mountain pass from Klamath Falls to Medford. I was very stressed to drive in that weather over the mountains to make it to my lobby meeting in time at the Medford office of Congressman Greg Walden. It was good to see my Southern Oregon CCL chapter friends at this lobby meeting, especially since I had co-founded that chapter four years earlier.

CCL volunteers Sherrill Rinehart, Forrest Roth, David Morse, and Brian Ettling with Rep. Greg Walden’s Southern Oregon Director, Katelyn Pay. Photo taken on November 3, 2017.

In the afternoon, I had a fun radio interview with independent Ashland radio station KSKQ 89.5 FM. My host and friend in Ashland, Oregon, Sherrill, had a reception for me late in the afternoon with local CCL volunteers. Even though I was feeling blah, I still met up with my friends Graham and Aubrey in Talent to go out for a lovely dinner with them. Talent is located 10 miles up the road from Ashland. I pumped myself with hot tea during dinner to keep myself going.

My cold was raging then from all the running around with this tour, excitement, rushing to make it to events on time, all the talking, and the weather bouncing around from hot to cold. I was dousing a lot of hot tea so I could speak and lessen the irritability of my sore throat.

Saturday, November 4th was my final event. I had an hour drive to Grants Pass for my last climate change presentation of the tour. I doused a lot of hot tea and spoke sparingly beforehand to save my voice for the event. Half of the audience was CCL volunteers from the Southern Oregon Chapter there to cheer me on and to engage with the few locals attended. It was a relief to give my final talk to a friendly group as I felt physically exhausted and was fighting a cold during this last day. I had mixed emotions because I loved hanging out with them. At the same time, after 12 days on the road, I just wanted to go home and start feeling better.

When the event finished that afternoon, I had a five-hour drive from Grants Pass to go home to Portland OR. I did not feel like driving. At the same time, I could not wait to see my wife Tanya. Being reunited with her gave me the much-needed inspiration to make it back to Portland that Saturday evening. I just wanted to sleep in on that Sunday to try to recover from that cold.

Brian Ettling in Grants Pass, Oregon. Photo taken at the end of the tour on Saturday, November 4, 2017.

Lobbying in Washington D.C. for climate action and my final thoughts

Just one week later, on Saturday November 11th, I flew to Washington D.C. for the Citizens’ Climate Lobby November Conference and Lobby Day. On Tuesday, November 14th, CCL had our lobby day meetings with Congressional Offices at Capitol Hill. One of the meetings was with the DC office staff of Congressman Greg Walden. The Congressman hoped to join us for this meeting. However, he was held up on the House floor and could not make it on time. I presented to Walden’s staff a final report on my tour across his Congressional District, one of the largest Congressional Districts in the U.S.

One of the motivations for organizing this tour across this district was to show that he does have many constituents who care about climate change. I was able to present a big stack of constituent letters from attendees at my talks during the tour. I ended up speaking to over 180 of his constituents at all the talks I gave.

When southern Oregon CCL volunteers and I had a meeting at Congressman Walden’s Medford Office in August 2013, the staff informed us that “businesses and rural residents were not expressing climate action as a high priority.”

I did my best to show on this tour that climate action is a priority for many of his constituents. 2017 was an awful year in Oregon for wildfire smoke and many acres of forest that had burned. Many people, including constituents in his district, saw climate change firsthand. They wanted action from him, members of Congress, and our government. Congressman Walden did say publicly that climate change is real, and we must address the problem. Even more, he prided himself on driving a Toyota Prius to use less gasoline and emit less carbon dioxide. Yet, it was still hard to get him to budge to support CCL’s carbon fee and dividend policy.

Brian Ettling speaking at Lake County Senior Center in Lakeview, Oregon on November 1, 2017.

Thus, the tour ultimately did not do much to move the needle with Congressman Walden. That did not bother me. I did my best to swing for the fences. I poured my energy into that tour and gave it my all. I would rather have tried and fallen short than not tried at all and always have regrets. As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, it is one of the climate actions that I am most proud of to this day. It was one of my boldest and bravest feats.

I had fellow climate organizers in Portland that were very impressed that I had completed that tour. For years afterwards, I had some climate Portland area climate advocates tell me they were amazed that I had accomplished that tour. The Climate Reality Portland Chapter invited me to speak about this tour at their December 2017 meeting. I got invited to give other climate talks in the Portland area after I completed that tour.

After the tour, I was very exhausted and needed some time to breathe. I probably should have done a better job to follow up with the most enthusiastic people I met during the tour who expressed an interest in starting CCL chapters in their communities. I did call the most interested individuals a few times for several months afterwards. Sadly, as time passed, their interest faded in starting local chapters. I still hope I planted some seeds and inspired someone in eastern and southern Oregon with that tour to act on climate.

As a side note, this blog is just a summary for what happened on that 2017 Oregon Stewardship tour. For more details of the daily occurrences on that tour, I wish I could still recommend the website from that tour, oregontour.org. However, since that website is no longer active, thanks to the the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, you can still check out more details of that tour at https://web.archive.org/web/20190109033303/http://oregontour.org/

Brian Ettling in Hines, Oregon on October 27, 2017.

Working at a climate change museum exhibit in 2011

Photo of Brian Ettling at the Climate Change Exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center on March 25, 2011.

“I have never seen someone going to work so happy before,” said my mom. At that time, I was working at the climate change exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center in the spring of 2011.

My mom was 100% correct. This was a dream come true to work at this temporary traveling exhibit, Climate Change: The Threat to Life and A New Energy Future. This exhibit was open to the public at the St. Louis Science Center from January 9 to May 15, 2011. For years, I had been very worried about climate change, so this was an ideal and serendipitous fit for me to me working at this exhibit in my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. The only downside that it was a temporary museum exhibit, and I would never find a job like that again.

Growing up by forests and nature in Oakville, Missouri

I was born in St. Louis, and I am a 1987 graduate of Oakville High School in south St. Louis County. Even more, my family has lived in the St. Louis area for several generations.

In 1973, my parents moved to Oakville, Missouri, located at the most southern part of St. Louis County. I really fell in love with the nature by our house. Oakville had a very sleepy almost rural feel to it back then. We were one of the first houses built on our block in our subdivision. During the summers if we were outside, we could really hear the crickets in the forests around our house and an occasional owl. At night, the roads would get quiet. Sometimes, we could even hear the barge traffic on the Mississippi River, which was less than a mile away as the crow flies.

A big forest bordered the back side of the house another forest was across the street behind those houses. Heck, the name of the subdivision was Black Forest, which seemed to perfectly fit the feel of the area. It was heaven to explore these forests as a kid to follow the creeks as far back until the vegetation became too unforgiving and the rocks seemed too treacherous to explore. Up the street, a horse farm bordered our cul-de-sac. It was fun to stare at the horses and the big rolling field where they comfortably called home.

Brian Ettling’s childhood home in Oakville Missouri. Photo taken by Brian in the winter of 1986

My parents never seemed to mind that I was exploring the woods and neighborhood alone or with friends, as long as I came home in time for dinner and arrived home when it was dark. They were busy working, socializing with neighbors and extended family, barbequing, working on the house and doing their thing. They seemed to like my spirit of adventure to be outside. My parents and grandparents would get a kick out of me telling them that I hopped on my bike to chase the occasional rainbows. I could never reach that mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that I thought was real.

It was a magical childhood with a home that seemed like it had a connection with the outdoors. Our neighbors all knew each other. All of us did not know what to do when I cow became loose on our block one Friday evening. The cow had a bell tied around its neck announcing its presence to all of us. That ringing sound brought us all out of our homes. It dumbfounded us about what to do about the cow. We debated about calling the Police. The cow didn’t know what to do either. It was very scared. It howled in such a way that it wanted to go home until a nearby farmer sheepishly retrieved it that evening.

After we moved there, houses sprung up little by little on our street. One time, a big pile of dirt was in front of a house under construction put there by the construction crew. On another summer evening, a large snake laid on top of the dirt mound. Again, this brought the neighbors and our family out of the house with fascination. The snake looked beautiful yet threatening. Like the cow situation, we did not know what to do about the snake either. We admired it, yet we didn’t want it to harm anyone. The kids wanted to get close to poke it, but the parents forbid. The snake got quite irritated as the center of unwanted attention by all of us. Finally, it figured that it had to slither away from us, and it did.

During a couple of weekends during the summer, my parents would take the family on church camping trips in state parks in the Missouri Ozarks, that would be a couple hours of driving from home. My parents would be so happy to visit with their friends and fellow adults that they did not notice when I would slip away to hike in the woods by the campgrounds. I felt like I was in my full glory discovering a new forest, riparian area, or just a new natural area away from home. These camping trips in Missouri also brought a lifelong love for nature for me that eventually inspired me to work as a park ranger.

As I went into high school, I would enjoy riding my bike or walking several miles to the nearby parks of Cliff Cave and Bee Tree Parks. Once there, I loved to admire the wide and historic Mississippi River, that fellow Missourian Mark Twain had made so famous. No, I did not read his books. However, my parents took our family to see the 1973 film The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at a nearby drive-in theatre. The movie scared me badly, especially the scenes with the villain named Injun Joe. At the same time, I found myself carrying on the spirit of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn. It was heaven for me to hike in the woods, up and down the river bluffs and down to the river shoreline. The huge barges carrying coal and different agricultural products up and down the river now would pass by now and then. They were very impressive to watch from the top of the bluffs or from the river’s edge.

Photo of Brian Ettling taken on Good Friday, April 1986.

I loved going to these parks in all seasons and different times of day to admire the lushness of the trees full of leaves in the summer. Winter brought stark barren trees with no leaves in winter and the sight of snow on the ground sometimes. In autumn, the bright fall colors were on the trees and I loved kicking up the piles of leaves covering the trails. The spring was an enchanting time of cooler comfortable temperatures yet hinting that summer was coming with some flowers blooming and the trees budding in their spring glory.

I could not get enough of this nature by my home. It was my happy place. It was where I wanted to be more than anywhere. In high school, when I was finally old enough to go on dates, I went on one of my first double dates to Bee Tree Park in Good Friday, 1986. It was a fantastic day just to hang with my best friend, Scott, his girlfriend Trisha at that time, and a gal that I liked then Tammy. Scott barbequed for us, and I led us on hikes down to the Mississippi River and back.

I have always felt sad for children that were not able to connect with nature like I was growing up in Oakville, Missouri in the 1970s into the 1980s. My wish is that every child could have had a childhood as wonderful as mine. I was so carefree exploring the woods by my childhood home and nearby parks that I did not want to grow up or do anything else.

Discovering Climate Change for the first time while living in St. Louis

By 1988, it was time for me to move on. I was enrolled to start attending William Jewell College in Kansas City, Missouri in the fall. I loved the woods and local parks by my home. At the same time, I dreamed of seeing and journeying to iconic places elsewhere in the United States. I had pictures on my closet door of New York City, the Redwoods, Yosemite National Park, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Niagara Falls, the Rocky Mountains, downtown Chicago, and a large poster of Mt. Shuskan in North Cascades National Park, Washington.

I wanted to enjoy and relish those nearby parks of Cliff Cave and Bee Tree during my last summer before starting college and eventually following my dream to live in other parts of the U.S. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other ideas that summer. The summer of 1988 had a terrible heat wave and drought for the Midwest. The Mississippi River dropped to the lowest level I had ever seen in my life so far. The drought and heatwave made national news and a topic of conversation on people’s minds that year. It just did not seem natural. Something seemed off with the nature that I knew from my home area.

My fears intensified that summer when Dr. James Hansen, then Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, rang the alarm bell. He testified to Congress in June 1988 that “It is time to stop waffling…(T)he evidence (of global warming) is pretty strong.” As a 20-year-old living in St. Louis MO at that time getting ready to start college, I will never forget reading about Dr. Hansen’s testimony and seeing it on TV. With this extreme heatwave and drought that summer, I saw with my own eyes and took pictures of the Mississippi River at record low levels. Dr. Hansen’s words seemed like an eerie warning from what I was seeing around me then.

Photo by Brian Ettling from Bee Tree Park Park, MO of the Mississippi River at a record low level during the summer of 1988

After what I saw that summer and learned about global warming, I felt a bit more assured that fall when global warming became a topic during the 1988 Presidential campaign. Republican Presidential candidate George H.W. Bush promised that if he was elected President, he would counter ‘The greenhouse effect with the White House effect.’ I was a Reagan Republican then, so that sound bite messaging sounded good to me then.

When I was in college, I did not think much about global warming when I was studying business administration in college. The exception was when progressive students in my dorm would bring up news about a large iceberg breaking off the coast of Antarctica ‘the size of Rhode Island or the Island of Manhattan’ to remind me that President George H.W. Bush was not doing much about global warming when he was President. I did not say much, but deep down I knew they were correct. President George H.W. Bush did not seem to do much about this problem as President. The exception was that he did attend Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro United Nations climate in 1992, which did broker some important agreements for that time, as the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Finding my climate change passion while working in the national parks

When I graduated from William Jewell College in 1992, I said goodbye to Missouri and started working in the national parks. In 1992 and many years afterwards, I spent my summers working in Crater Lake National Park, Oregon and my winters in Everglades National Park, Florida.

In 1998, I started giving ranger talks in the Everglades. Visitors then asked me about global warming. Visitors hate when park rangers tell you, “I don’t know.” Soon afterwards, I rushed to the nearest Miami bookstore to read all I the scientific books I could find on climate change.

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

Photo by Brian Ettling of wild Flamingos in Everglades National Park. Image taken around 1999

I became so worried about climate change that I quit my winter job in Everglades National Park the year in 2008. I started spending the winters in St. Louis with my family to see if I could start organizing for climate action. I did not know how I was going to do this, but I was still determined I was going to make a difference to reduce the threat of climate change.

In the fall of 2009, a good friend and fellow park ranger at Crater Lake National Park knew I did not have any plans for the winter once I reached St. Louis. He then talked me into housesitting at his mother’s house in Ashland, Oregon for the winter. His mother, Barbara, decided by buy an RV and travel across the U.S. He and his mother desperately needed someone to watch her home and take care of her cat. At that point, I was unsure what to do with my life especially with this climate change mission that I had.

By 2009, for seventeen years, I had worked as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon in the summers. Everglades National Park, Florida was where I worked in the winter up until 2008. I absolutely loved my job as an interpretation ranger at Crater Lake giving ranger talks, guided hikes, leading evening campfire talks, and narrating the boat tours. I loved every minute of standing in front of an audience, in these iconic places sharing about nature.

Pursuing my climate change calling in Ashland, Oregon and St. Louis, Missouri

When I arrived in Ashland, Oregon in the beginning of October 2009, I had too much free time. I had no plans, except to housesit. Ashland was very beautiful to walk around town and take pictures of the fall colors. Yet, I wanted to do something more for climate action. I had no idea what. I looked into studying at Southern Oregon University at their Masters of Business sustainability program. However, the professors and program did not seem to be a good fit for me.

Photo by Brian Ettling of Ashland, Oregon. Taken on October 22, 2009

I then went to see my friend Naomi Eklund in Ashland who is a professional life coach. During our conversation, Naomi became impatient with my hemming and hawing of wanting to do something to make a difference to reduce the threat of climate change. I kept giving her nebulous answers of my life’s vision and it was making her exasperated.

Then she pressed me to answer her directly: “What do you really want to do with your life?”

“Fine!” I yelled with emphatic exasperation, “If I could be anything, I would like to be the ‘Climate Change Comedian’!”

My friend Naomi nearly fell out of her hear laughing and responded: “That great! I would like you to go home and grab that website domain right now!”

I went home immediately and bought the domain, www.climatechangecomedian.com.

Little did I know that my time in Ashland would soon be over. Barbara, the owner of the home where I was housesitting, decided that RV living was not for her. She returned to Ashland to live in her home around Thanksgiving. She then decided she did not want me living in her spare bedroom, so I was needed to find a different place to live for the winter. I loved Ashland, but it did not feel like home for me. I felt like I got everything I needed in those two months in that conversation with Naomi. My parents moved into a new home in St. Louis. They wanted me to come stay with them for the winter.

I was excited to do another cross-country drive like my previous years going back and forth between Crater Lake and the Everglades, stopping in between to see family in St. Louis. This trip, I routed myself to visit my friend Dana in San Francisco. I would then drive down California Hwy 1 along the Pacific Coast to see the Bixby Bridge and Hearst Castle. I then visited my friend Stephanie at Death Valley for a couple of days. I moved on spent the night in Las Vegas. I then stayed with my friends Steve and Melissa in Flagstaff. They talked me into hiking down into the Grand Canyon by myself, one of the best experiences of my life.

During this road trip, when I visited my friend Dana in San Francisco, I met up with her and friends for delicious sushi in the downtown area. Dana and her friends had an evening public holiday reception at the California Academy of Sciences museum, located from the heart of Golden Gate Park. This was a stunningly beautiful museum open in the evening for this community reception. In the middle of this museum, I noticed an exhibit, Altered States: Climate Change in California.

I was very impressed with the information and educational displays about climate change. I made a mental note that I wanted to eventually work in a climate change exhibit like this.

The winter of 2010 in St. Louis, Missouri turned out to be very productive for me. A family friend, John, helped me create my website, www.climatechangecomedian.com, which is still an active website to this day. My sisters booked me to give ranger/climate change talks at my nieces and nephews schools, and for their boy and girl scout groups. I created my own climate change PowerPoint talk, Let’s Have Fun Getting Serious about Solving Climate Change.

Screenshot of the title slide from Brian Ettling’s first climate change powerpoint from 2010.

I started sharing this PowerPoint talk with friends in St. Louis. I then showed it with fellow rangers at Crater Lake National Park in the summer of 2010.

Unfortunately, during the summer of 2010, I got involved in a relationship with a female ranger at Crater Lake National Park that distracted me from pursuing my climate change path. It was a very blissful summer relationship at Crater Lake. However, in the fall and winter, it turned into a nightmare for each of us. Our personalities constantly clashed. No matter what I tried to twist myself into a knot to please her, I was never good enough for her. The relationship left me more depressed as I poured more energy into it. One of the biggest issues is that she could not see that I had any life direction, even though I kept explaining about my life’s mission to make a difference to act on climate.

She finally broke up with me in early January 2011. I was totally heart broken. It took me many months to try to heal from that relationship. In January 2011, I needed something to get my mind off what had happened. I briefly volunteered for the Missouri Botanical Gardens for their Earthways Center, leading a Historical House Tour program for them in February 2011.

In February 2011, I joined South County Toastmasters to improve my public speaking skills and follow my ambitions to be a good climate change communicator. That same month, I started writing this blog and posted two entries that month.

Working at the Climate Change Exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center

In early 2011, I drove around St. Louis trying to find something for me, especially a job. One day, I noticed a huge banner by the St. Louis Science Center for their temporary Climate Change Exhibit. I also heard radio advertisements for it on the local NPR (National Public Radio) station KWMU. After it dawned on me that the St. Louis Science Center had a climate change exhibit, I made it my mission in life to go see it to try to work there. I did not care if I was just going to volunteer or get paid. I had steel determination that I was going to work in that exhibit.

When I visited the exhibit, I talked to a staff person working at the exhibit. He encouraged me to apply. He heard that there was an opening and advised me to apply fast. I immediately went home and applied online. To my surprise, I soon got an interview. It felt like I had the interview went perfect. The St. Louis Science Center offered for me to start on March 14, 2011. My job title was a Special Exhibits Assistant at The Climate Change Exhibition. After seeing the great climate change exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences over a year earlier, plus seeing this amazing exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center, I was ecstatic to be working at a climate change exhibit, especially in my hometown of St. Louis.

Image of Brian Ettling taken while working at the St. Louis Science Center. Photo from April 11, 2011

It was such a Zen, peaceful and blissful experience to work at this exhibit. One of the first things I noticed was that not that many Science Center visitors were entering this exhibit. Many times, it seemed like the exhibit was like an empty tomb, especially on weekday mornings. The only sounds you would hear would be some of the video displays on constant loops. I didn’t like standing around so I would walk around the exhibit for what seemed like several times an hour. It only took about 5 to 10 minutes to walk through the exhibit without stopping.

Typically two other staff members, besides me, wearing our long sleeve green Climate Change St. Louis Science Center shirts, roamed through the exhibit. We would be eager to talk to someone or anyone. The Science Center wanted us to engage with the attendees. However, many visitors just wanted to walk through the exhibit at their own pace and absorb the exhibit on their own without any interruptions. The staff would end up chatting with each other quite a bit, which was really frowned upon by the Science Center supervisors. I would try to quickly end the conversation if I saw a Science Center management type person because they really did not want us to be “fraternizing.”

When I had a chance to chat with my co-workers, they told me that sometimes a few visitors would come to the St. Louis Science Center looking to argue with staff. This would happen when the Science Center would run temporary science exhibits for what some members of the public and media perceived as controversial, such as the previous exhibit on Charles Darwin and then the climate change exhibit. The staff really did not want to argue with those visitors. Even more, the Science Center management did not want them getting into a harsh exchange with those visitors. Those employees were trained to just share with those contentious visitors that the Science Center was there to just promote science. That’s it. My co-workers advised me to do the same if I encountered any argumentative visitors about climate change. Fortunately, I don’t remember getting much hostile visitors.

We had very special cleaning cloths and solutions to keep the displays looking clean and shiny. We had very specific instructions on which cloths and solutions to use so we would not scratch up the displays. I had a tremendous sense of pride working in this exhibit after years of working in something like this. Thus, I had a lot of pride cleaning the displays before and after the Science Center would open each day. I would also clean during the day if the exhibit was not getting much foot traffic.

Image of Brian Ettling by the entrance of the Climate Change Exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center. Photo taken on March 25, 2011.

I loved briefly chatting with the attendees at the exhibit if they were open to chatting with me. Nearly all the conversations were very positive. I did have a few cranky people that would want to nitpick about some of the scientific statistics posted on the exhibit displays. However, the positive conversations way outweighed the few argumentative people.

Sadly, some people, including families, would just walk through the exhibit without stopping. To those folks, I would stop to ask them, “How are you doing? What do you think of the exhibit?” Sometimes those folks would want to chat. Other times they did not. I didn’t care if they wanted to chat or not. I wanted them to think about climate change.

The Most Rewarding Aspects about working at this Climate Change Exhibit

From my positive interactions with the attendee participants and my pride in doing extra cleaning to keep the exhibit looking pristine, my co-workers seemed to take notice and really seemed to like working with me. One day my co-worker Eli humbly said to me out of the blue, “Brian, you make me a better person.”

That was one of the nicest compliments anyone had given me. I felt very touched.

Because the exhibit was often devoid of visitors, especially during weekday mornings and late afternoons, I started taking notes in the exhibit. I meticulously wrote down in my notebooks every word of text on the exhibit displays and videos. My supervisors and co-workers never seemed to mind that I did this as long as I engaged with visitors once they entered the exhibit. Before I knew it, I filled up four notebooks of my writings quoting everything in the exhibit. I still have those notebooks to this day.

Image of Brian Ettling with his nephew Andrew and his niece Rachel. Photo taken at the Climate Change Exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center on April 8, 2011.

Before I worked in the exhibit, I felt like I did not know much about climate change to be able to converse about it as a park ranger, Toastmaster, public speaker or even in casual conversations with friends and community members. This exhibit was a huge gift in helping me feel more knowledgeable and confident to speak about this subject. I will always be grateful for the two months I had working at this exhibit.

My parents enjoyed visiting the exhibit. They were so proud to see me working there. At one point at home, my mom said to me, “I have never seen someone going to work so happy before.”

One day, I saw my older sister at the exhibit. At that time, she worked as a teacher at a St. Louis area Catholic high school. The teachers, including my sister, led the students on a field trip of the St. Louis Science Center, which happened to include this Climate Change exhibit. When these teachers and students entered the exhibit, they had the tendency like all the other teachers and students I saw to just briskly walk through the exhibit without giving it much thought.

I was not going to let that happen though when I saw students and teachers. I would abruptly stop the students and teachers at the giant piece of coal near the exhibit entrance. I would ask the students why the piece of coal was there. I would ask them what the significance of that giant piece of coal was. Most of the time they would not have an answer since I caught them off guard. I would point to exhibit display texts in that area that coal is what funded the industrial revolution. It was the primary source of energy over the 200 years.

Then, I would ask the students if coal is good or bad for humans. If the students answered me, some would respond it was good and a few other students would say that it was bad. I then would answer that it was both. Coal enabled us to have the technology to enrich our lives. However, coal, oil, and natural gas were bad because they contributed to climate change. Hence, the exhibit they were visiting.

I encouraged the students to think about that as they wandered through the exhibit. I then urged them to think about ways we can be less dependent on coal and other fossil fuels in the future to reduce the threat of climate change. The teachers always seemed to be impressed that I was willing to go out of my way to engage with the students. After I engaged with the students, they tended to then go through the exhibit at a slower pace and looked to be absorbing more of the information. The day my older sister was there she did not say anything to me. However, she did give me a big smile. She seemed very proud to see me there. She looked delighted that I took time to engage with the students at her school.

My parents made two additional trips to bring their grandkids, my nieces and nephews to this exhibit. It was such a thrill to see them and for them to see me at this exhibit. At that time, my oldest niece, Rachel, was 14 years old and her brother/my nephew Andrew, was 8 years old. My other niece Bailey was 11 years old and her brother/my nephew Sam was 9 years old. Andrew liked hamming it up in front of the mirrors at one part of the exhibit.

Image of Brian Ettling with his nephew Sam and his niece Bailey. Photo taken at the Climate Change Exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center on April 9, 2011.

Another part of the exhibit had index cards to fill out for people to write their solutions to reduce the threat of climate change. My nephew Sam wrote “I recycle.” It was fabulous for me to get my pictures with my nieces and nephews at this exhibit. One of the biggest reasons for me to work at this exhibit and all of my climate actions over the years was to try to fight for a better future for them. I hope they will think about me someday that I was trying to do all the actions I could for a better world for them.

The exhibit, Climate Change: The Threat to Life and A New Energy Future.

Just outside the entrance of the exhibit, as well as on the website, it was written:

“Climate Change: The Threat to Life and A New Energy Future was organized by the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), New York, in collaboration with the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, United Arab Emirates, The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, The Field Museum of Chicago, Instituto Sangari, São Paulo, Brazil, Junta de Castilla y León, Spain, Korea Green Foundation, Seoul, Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Papalote Museo del Niño, Mexico City and Saint Louis Science Center…

• Climate Change at the American Museum of Natural History is proudly presented
by Bank of America.
• Major support has also been provided by The Rockefeller Foundation.’

It was very intriguing for me that the exhibit was partially funded by Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage and United Arab Emirates. No doubt the United Arab Emirates obtained their wealth from profits of the oil and natural gas extraction. I would have loved to know why they funded this exhibit. What was their motivation? It amazed me that no visitors or exhibit staff noticed who were the primary donors. Even more, Bank of America partially funded the exhibit while continuing to bankroll major fossil fuel projections in the U.S. and internationally that contributed to climate change. On top of that, it was also funded by The Rockefeller Foundation, which was established in 1913 by Standard Oil magnate John D Rockefeller. A man that struck it rich in the U.S. oil business in the 19th century.

The funding for the exhibit would probably raise eyebrows by some climate advocates. None of this bothered me because I thought it was a great and very scientifically sound exhibit on climate change. I was glad they funded it to educate the public about climate change. They were certainly helping me out to be more knowledgeable about climate change. Detractors would probably say that funding from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Bank of America and even the Rockefeller Foundation amounted to “greenwashing” while all these organizations continued to majorly profit from fossil fuel investments. I would have never quarreled with someone if they had pointed that out, but no one ever did.

The Curators who created the exhibit were very prestigious scientists. Dr. Edmond A. Mathez was The Curator at Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at AMNH, as well as a Senior Research Scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and Adjunct Professor at the City University of New York. Dr. Michael Oppenheimer was a top climate scientist at Princeton University. I knew of Dr. Oppenheimier from interviews he gave on climate change documentaries that I had watches years earlier. Thus, I had full confidence these scientists oversaw ever sentence and the smallest bit of details for this exhibit to make sure it conveyed the most accurate depiction of climate change science.

The exhibit was divided up into nine sections:
How Did We Get Here?
Climate Change Today
Changing Atmosphere
Changing Ice
Changing Ocean
Changing Land
Adaptations
Making a difference
A New Energy Future

When you would first walk into the exhibit, you would be greeted with a giant piece of coal in the middle of the first section. The first text to greet you stated: “Coal: The Rock that burns began a revolution.” Industrial Revolution, that is.

The next text box said: “Today, Atmospheric CO2 is at a level that has not been seen on Earth for at least 800,000 years and probably much longer.” You are then starting at a giant wall chart showing a big orange line progressing upward that “tracks the levels of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere over the last 400 years.”

The next text stated, “Coal provides 40% of the world’s electrical needs.” The following panel: “Energy derived from coal creates more CO2 than the same amount of energy from other fuel sources.”

The exhibit then connects the dots that humans burning fossil fuels, especially coal, over the past 250 years is currently causing climate change. The exhibit then had separate sections to demonstrate how human caused climate change is impacting our air supply/the atmosphere, melting the land and sea based glaciers, the ocean, and the land.

My desire to keep working and improve this temporary Climate Change Exhibit

In the Changing Ice section of the exhibit, I created short presentations for children on the importance of Arctic Sea ice for polar bears and us. I brought with me my Grandpa Ettling’s very old small handheld shaving mirror. According to my dad, this mirror was from around the time of World War I. In this Changing Ice section, not far from a stuffed polar bear, was a display using an overhead lamp that would shine on white blocks.

Photo of Brian Ettling in the Changing Ice section of the Climate Change Exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center. Image taken on March 25, 2011.

This display demonstrated the sun’s albedo, which is the amount of sunlight or solar radiation reflected by a surface. Bright white snow, such as the polar and Greenland sheets, reflect almost 90% of the sun’s light back to space, cooling the earth. According to the text at this exhibit, “The surface of the deep ocean is very good at absorbing heat. It soaks up heat almost as effectively as asphalt on a city street.” Unfortunately, with climate change, more of the reflective polar sheets are melting, reducing the sun’s albedo, and warming the oceans and the earth more.

I then shared with the students that less reflective ice reduces the icy areas for polar bears to live. Less reflective polar ice means more climate change for us. I even brought in a tennis or racket ball once or twice. I tried using the bouncing ball to get the students thinking about how the reflective nature of polar and glacial ice. The racket or tennis balls were more awkward to carry around. Even more, I worried about them bouncing too much and damaging exhibit displays. The bottom line was that I was willing to go above and beyond to engage with students and children visiting the climate change exhibit.

My willingness to engage with students using props caught the attention of some of the local teachers visiting the exhibit. Before I knew it, I was exchanging contact information with the teachers. In my spare time, I assisted middle school to high school teachers developing lesson plans for engaging their classes with the special climate change exhibit.

My Science Center supervisors and co-workers did not seem to mind that I experimented bringing props from home to have more meaningful engagement with the school children visiting the exhibit. I was extremely proud to be working at this exhibit. I really wanted to make the most of this opportunity.

From the first days that I started working there, I noticed this temporary traveling display was only showing at the U.S. museums of American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York, The Field Museum in Chicago, and The Cleveland Museum of Natural History. That was just the U.S. version of the exhibit. If I remembered correctly, an additional international version of the exhibit existed traveling to international museums funding the exhibit, such as Instituto Sangari, São Paulo, Brazil; Junta de Castilla y León, Spain; Korea Green Foundation, Seoul; Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen; and Papalote Museo del Niño, Mexico City.

Photo of Brian Ettling at the entrance of the Climate Change Exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center. Image taken on March 25, 2011

At that time, I remembered reading that the exhibit traveled from the Chicago Field Museum where it was displayed in 2010 to the St. Louis Science Center. When the exhibit closed in St. Louis in May 2011, it would then travel to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where it would during the summer. I reached out to the Cleveland Museum to see if they could hire me for when it ran there in during the summer, but they did not seem interested in hiring me.

In late June 2011, when I was working for the summer at Crater Lake, I had a phone meeting with Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, one of the original curators of the exhibit. I called him at his office at Princeton University. I thanked him for his efforts putting together this exhibit. I also expressed what an honor it was for me to chat with him, since I had seen him on video documentaries about climate change. I asked him if he thought there was going to be a future for this traveling exhibit. He seemed doubtful. Sadly, I was not able to partner with him to help him create an updated version of this great exhibit.

On February 14, 2012, I visited the AMNH in New York City while I was there to check out the Columbia University master’s program in climate sustainability policy. At that point, the exhibit had wound down. They were doubtful they wanted to continue the temporary climate change exhibit. Thus, they were not interested in hiring me to contribute my ideas to create the next generation of the exhibit to make it more family friendly, kid friendly, and school friendly. I thought the exhibit needed to be more hands on with activities and games for kids to help them, their parents, and their school learn more about climate change. Unfortunately, I was not successful in my conversations with AMNH.

I was able to get my foot in the door at the AMNH in New York City because a friend of a friend worked there. This AMNH staffed member, Stephanie, worked at Crater Lake National Park in 1991, the year before I started. Thus, we did not know each other from Crater Lake, just mutual friends. When I somehow found out during the summer of 2011 at Crater Lake that Stephanie worked at AMNH, I asked my friends if they could introduce us. I was so glad they did. At that February 2012 meeting at AMNH, I was not successful at finding a job to continue the Climate Change traveling exhibit. However, Stephanie did get me free tickets to enjoy the AMNH for the day, including a Planetarium show.

Photo by Brian Ettling of the entrance of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City. Image taken on February 14, 2012.

The AMNH did have helpful information about climate change in the geology section of the museum. I took digital images of their information on recent significant volcanic eruptions and ice core sample information that I was able to use in future climate change talks. Even more, the AMNH was right across the street from Central Park in Manhattan. Thus, I had fun touring around upper Manhattan for a day that I never would have realized I would do from a year earlier working at the Climate Change Exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center.

The long term positive impacts for me of working at this Climate Change Exhibit

Although I was not able to obtain a long-term fulfilling successful career from working at this climate change exhibit in St. Louis, this exhibit led other life changing opportunities for me. In addition to this exhibit, the St. Louis Science Center held some public lectures in the winter and spring of 2011 so St. Louis area residents could learn more about climate change.

In April 2011, I attended a St. Louis Science Center lecture where the invited speaker was Jim Kramper, Warning Coordination Meteorologist with National Weather Service. He spoke on “Climate Change – What We Really Know.” At that event, I met Larry Lazar, a local St. Louis area businessman. Over the past few years, Larry read a lot of scientific articles on climate change. He became very worried and interested in this subject to attend that lecture. Larry and I struck up a conversation with our mutual interest in climate change after that lecture.

That summer, I returned to work at Crater Lake National Park, but Larry and I stayed in touch. In October 2011, when I had returned to St. Louis for the winter, Larry and I started meeting for coffee once a week. We would meet very early in the morning before he would drive to work. One morning in late October at Starbucks, Larry announces to me “Brian, I am thinking about creating a climate change meet up group. Would you be interested in joining me?”

Brian Ettling and Larry Lazar. Image taken on January 8, 2012.

That winter, Larry and I co-founded the meet up group, Climate Reality St. Louis. (Currently this group is called Climate MeetUp-St. Louis). Our group focus was to exchange ideas on how we can locally and individually reduce our impact on climate change. We had 14 people at our first meeting December 11, 2011. This was such a productive relationship with Larry that he ended up as the Best Man when I got married to my wife Tanya on November 1, 2015.

Larry and I organized Climate Reality Meet Up events in St. Louis up until January 2017. We packed a room of over 80 people for our last event. We probably would have organized more events, but Tanya and I moved to Portland Oregon in February 2017. Who knows if I would have ever met Larry if I had not worked at the Climate Change exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center.

Even more, I met my wife Tanya through The Climate Reality Meet Up that Larry and I co-founded. Tanya attended our meetings from January 2012. As one of the hosts, I struck up a conversation with her and we started dating over a year later. Hence, I thank Larry for being an accidental matchmaker. Who knows if I would have ever met Tanya if I had not worked at the Climate Exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center.

Finally, one of the guest speakers who came to our Climate Reality Meetup group during the winter of 2012 was Carol Braford. Back then, Carol was the St. Louis group leader with Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL). Carol is still active to this day with CCL as the Midwest or “Tornadoes” Regional Coordinator. During the winter of 2012 at Climate Reality Meet Ups, Carol Braford was the very persistent with me that I should come to a monthly Citizens Climate Lobby conference call. I even blogged about Carol in January 2013, Want to change the world? Be Persistent!

I attended a CCL meeting at Carol’s home in April 2012 and immediately became hooked on CCL. I was very involved with CCL for over 10 years. In January 2013, I co-founded the southern Oregon CCL chapter that meets in Ashland, Oregon. I ended up going to 8 CCL Lobby Day conferences in Washington D.C. from 2015-2019 to lobby Congressional offices for climate action. I was even was a breakout speaker for some of their conferences. Tanya and I traveled to Ottawa, Canada to attend the CCL Canada Conference in November 2016, where they invited me to be a breakout speaker. I ended up leading two speaking tours across Missouri for CCL in 2017 and 2018. On top of that, I led a speaking tour across Oregon for CCL in 2017.

No, working at the Climate Change exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center in March to May 2011 did not lead to a long-term job organizing for climate action. I am still looking for that steady job in climate change organizing. However, I learned so much about climate change working at that exhibit. It gave me much needed confidence to speak and give presentations for climate action. Even more, working at that Climate Change exhibit in 2011 led to many rewarding opportunities and adventures, including finding my wife Tanya. For that, I will always be grateful.

Photo Tanya Couture and Brian Ettling. Image from their wedding on November 1, 2015.

For Climate Action, the best advice I ever received

‘Do you know who your member of Congress is? Wait! Better yet: Do they know who you are?’
– Educator, Climate Reality Leader and Citizens’ Climate Lobby organizer Greg Hamra

I first heard Greg’s advice on a YouTube video, PEOPLE’S CLIMATE MARCH, that was created by Producer and Director G.J. (Gerald) Clarke with his production company, The Ledge Media. I met GJ Clarke at a Climate Reality Project Training in 2017 and discovered this 12-minute video around that time. This video was a short documentary of the 2017 People’s Climate March in Washington, D.C.

This march took place on April 29, 2017, marking the 100th day of Donald Trump’s Presidency. It was a huge protest by climate organizers across the United States to speak out against Donald Trump and his administration’s rollback of climate and environmental policies. It was estimated that over 200,000 people participated in the D.C. march, as well as a million locations throughout the U.S. and other parts of the world. My wife and I attended a People’s Climate March in Medford, Oregon on that same day.

Somehow, I had discovered Gerald’s video through Climate Reality Project soon after he had released this documentary on YouTube on May 29, 2017. The video was enjoyable for me to watch to see how many friends I could recognize since this short documentary centers around Climate Reality’s involvement with this march. In the video, I spotted friends Laura Betts, Olena Alec, Tim Ryder, Joshua May, Harriet Shugarman, as well as Greg Hamra. Even more, it was great to see former Vice President Al Gore shaking hands with some of the march attendees and participating in the March. I met and chatted with Al Gore at the 2015 Climate Reality Training in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I found him to be very kind, friendly, and engaging. He thanked me for my climate organizing. I blogged about it afterwards.

A humorous moment in the PEOPLE’S CLIMATE MARCH video comes when Greg Hamra is wearing his purple octopus costume. Greg’s costume represents when an octopus washed up in a Miami, Florida parking garage in November 2016 during one of the highest “king tides” during the year. A high tide no doubt made worse by sea level rise caused by climate change. Greg’s flamboyant costume caught the attention of billionaire Richard Branson who was attending the march with Al Gore. The video shows Richard Branson getting his picture while shaking hands with Greg wearing his octopus costume. Greg steals the show in this video. Not only with his costume, but also with what he has to say.

Greg Hamra and billionaire Richard Branson at 2017 People’s Climate March.

I have known Greg for years, primarily through Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL). I met him in person when we were attending the CCL Conference in Washington, D.C. in November 2015. We total agree on the actions needed to solve the climate crisis. Thus, I fully applaud what he says on this video.

Greg stated: “Citizens’ Climate Lobby is a 60,000 plus volunteer organization and we are the only NGO (nongovernmental organization) that’s solely dedicated to educating members of Congress about economically viable solutions to climate change. A lot of people are emersed in personal lifestyle greening. We’ve been doing that for 40 years. We are losing the war…

What we need is political will for a livable world. It’s not enough to change your lightbulbs. We must change our leaders and our laws…

Poking holes in the planet, to set on fire what comes out to power our industry, buildings, and vehicles. We have to reduce our emissions. So, there is no amount of personal lifestyle greening that you are going to do that’s going to stop that. There’s one thing that will and that’s putting a price on carbon. A tax or a fee and returning the money to citizens. That’s one way to do it. A carbon fee and dividend. Some people say that you shouldn’t call it a tax if the government is not allowed to keep it. And if you return it back to citizens and money goes back into the economy, that’s good for everyone.

Protesting, shouting, complaining, marching. Is it effective? Maybe. Maybe not. When it’s The People’s Climate March and there’s 400,000 people and it’s all over the media, I think there’s an impact to that. That’s one day a year ago and (today) and last week, the Science March. But, if we don’t take that and get active and all we are doing is just spending our time making ourselves feel good (he demonstrated patting himself on the back) by changing our lightbulbs, taking a shorter shower, and taking our bikes to work, and getting loud once in a while, and carrying a placard in the street, and you don’t know your representative. Wait! And, they don’t know your name, you’re not doing a good job.”

To make his point even more clearly to the audience at home, Greg stopped looking at the interviewer and looked directly into the camera to say: And you don’t know your representative. Wait! And, they don’t know your name, you’re not doing a good job.”

That final sentence in Greg’s long statement for the camera is the best advice I have ever heard for climate action. This is something for all of this to ponder: Do you know who your U.S. Senators and your member of the U.S. House of Representatives is? Do you know who your state legislators are? Greg’s words have been bouncing in my head ever since I saw this 2017 video.

Brian Ettling with Greg Hamra at the Citizens’ Climate Lobby Conference in November 16, 2015

The Importance for Climate Action of knowing the name of your Member of Congress

Greg had reinforced something I read in 2013 edition of Sam Daley-Harris’ book, Reclaiming Our Democracy: Healing the break between people and government. Sam Daley-Harris is the founder of RESULTS, an anti-poverty and anti-hunger NGO that regularly lobbies Congress since 1980 to fund tens of billions of government funding for the fight against poverty and hunger. In the first chapter, Sam writes about speaking hundreds at high schools in 1978 about world hunger. He was talking about building “political will” to end hunger. He wrote:

“I didn’t have any sense of what “political will” was, but I knew it might start with a basic awareness of who represented us in government. So, at the beginning of the first class, I asked 25 students a simple question. The responses changed my life.

The question was: ‘Who knows the name of your member of Congress?’ I added: ‘I don’t want to know if you’ve written them or met them, just their names.’
Five hands went up.
‘Only five hands?’ I thought.
But it got worse. I called on the first student. He named the governor.
‘No’ I said, ‘I’m looking for the name of the person who serves you in the U.S. House of Representatives.’

He didn’t know. Four out of 25 did. In the next classroom none of the 28 students knew. I was hooked. Over the next two years, 1978 and 1979, I asked 7,000 high school students to name their member of Congress¬––200 knew the answer, 6,800 didn’t. Later, when RESULTS started and things got difficult, this experience served as part of my foundation, part of my grounding. It gave me a direct sense of what needed to be done. We had to find a way to generate the political will–¬–we had to teach the skills of democracy and acquaint people with their government, starting at the most basic level. The seed had been planted.”

RESULTS volunteer Marshall Saunders asked Sam Daley-Harris to advise him when Marshall founded Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) in 2007. Marshall wanted to try to duplicate the success of RESULTS had in successfully lobbying Congress to fund billions of dollars in anti-poverty programs. Marshall wanted Sam to mentor him to copy the ongoing lobbying success of RESULTS so CCL could persuade Congress to pass effective climate legislation. Sam was happy to coach Marshall. When I first became involved with CCL in 2012, they often talked about Sam. CCL would sometimes invite Sam come in as a guest speaker on their monthly conference calls and Washington D.C. conferences to share his wisdom.

Thus, CCL inspired me to read Sam’s book Reclaiming Our Democracy soon after I joined them in 2012. CCL trains its volunteers, such as Greg Hamra and me, to develop positive relations with our members of Congress and their staffs to try to urge them to pass CCL’s policies to address climate change, primarily a carbon fee and dividend. With my involvement in CCL, I started meeting with the staff of my members of Congress as far back as August 27, 2013.

My first attempts at lobbying Congressional Offices for Climate Action

After I became involved in CCL in May 2012 while spending the winter in St. Louis, Missouri, I was determined to launch a chapter in southern Oregon, preferably Ashland, Oregon. While working as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon, I loved driving down to Ashland on my weekends to do my grocery shopping and see friends. I noticed that it had a very progressive, save-the-earth vibe that would be perfect for an active CCL chapter. I networked during the summer of 2012 with various Ashland folks who were concerned about climate change to see if anyone would be interested in forming a CCL chapter. I did find some interested folks who formed a chapter in January 2013.

At that time, the chapter was led by Susan Bizeau. During the summer of 2013, Susan pushed hard to have meetings with the district staff of Republican Congressman Greg Walden (OR-02) and Democratic U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon. I drove an hour and a half from Crater Lake to these district offices in Medford, Oregon to join them in their lobby meeting. I remember it as a fun and empowering experience, even if we could not find much agreement in our meeting with Walden’s Deputy Chief of Staff. Merkley’s staff was pleasant and totally agreed with us that climate change is a huge concern. However, they did not seem to have much to say about the carbon fee and dividend policy.

Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteers and Brian Ettling lobbying staff of U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley at his Medford Oregon District Office on August 26, 2013.

As the expression goes, ‘Rome was not built in a day.’ This lobby meetings showed me that it was going to have to take a lot more relationship building, encouraging more constituents to write letters and contact their members of Congress, and more lobby meetings before either of these offices could begin to shift their positions to support carbon fee and dividend.

Following the positive experience of lobbying in Oregon, I first lobbied the district office of my Missouri Republican member of Congress, Rep. Ann Wagner (MO-02), on February 14, 2014. That meeting was 9 years ago. I don’t have memories of what was said in that meeting, since so much time has passed. However, I remember it being a great experience that we respectfully listened to Rep. Wagner’s staff, and they listened to us. We agreed to meet again in the future to have more discussions. I remembered the staff telling us that they had received a ‘biggest pollutor’ award from the Missouri Sierra Club, which was just handed to the office and then the local Sierra Club just left. Wagner’s office much preferred CCL’s approach to listen and try to find common ground.

Photo by Brian Ettling (blue shirt) of a lobby meeting with Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteers with staff of Congresswoman Ann Wagner in St. Louis, MO on February 14, 2014.

For me, it felt like the most empowering thing I could do for climate action was to have these lobby meetings with the staff of my member of Congress to urge them to pass legislation for climate action. It mystified me then and today why more people who are concerned about climate change do not call, email, write letters, and lobby their members of Congress. Yes, I have enjoyed over the years marching in the streets with thousands of other climate advocates and attending a street protest now and then. However, I always wanted to do something to act on climate on a much deeper level. As much as possible I want to be in The Room Where it Happens as they sang about in the Broadway Musical Hamilton:

No one really knows how the game is played
The art of the trade
How the sausage gets made
We just assume that it happens
But no one else is in the room where it happens

No, I was not planning to run for office. For years, I have been intrigued about being a Congressional or legislative staff person. At the very least, I wanted to be in on the Congressional lobby meetings for climate action to try to sway them to support climate legislation. As I blogged about after my first lobbying trip to Washington D.C. in 2015, there are frequent protests outside of the Congressional Offices Buildings and the U.S. Capitol Building. Enough protests that Congressional staff do not really pay attention. They even know which building exits to leave to avoid them. Thus, to me, it always seemed more effective to be meeting with Congressional staff and even face to face meetings with members of Congress than just protesting.

I do get that many climate advocates think it is a waste of time to lobby because their members of Congress are conservative Republicans who are resistant to passing climate legislation. Or their members of Congress are progressive Democrats who already agree with them that climate legislation must be passed. In both cases, they think, ‘Why bother?’ However, I have my own response to that. After I moved to Portland, Oregon, I created this meme on social media to respond to those excuses:

Over the years, I really have enjoyed lobbying Congressional offices with Citizens’ Climate Lobby since 2014 and lobbying state legislators in Oregon since 2018. When I spent my winters in St. Louis, Missouri up until 2017, I would regularly meet with the staff of my Republican member of Congress. The staff would tell me how much they enjoyed meeting with me. They even expressed disappointment when I shared in June 2017 that I had moved to Oregon and would no longer be lobbying their office. They said I was still more than welcome to participate in future lobby meetings with the office. No, I didn’t persuade them to support any climate legislation, but I still learned a lot.

Behind closed doors, they admitted to me that they knew that climate change is real and a threat to our economy and health. They shared that they would be following what happened with the United Nations COP (Conference of Parties) Conferences, COP21 in Paris, France in November 2015, where delegates from nations across the world would be negotiating international agreements for climate action.

Even more, they expressed some interest in the CCL carbon fee and dividend policies that I lobbied their offices to support. However, they would share that they did not get phone calls, emails and letters from constituents urging them to support that policy. Even more, they had concerns about getting in front of their conservative most loyal voters. Thus, they wanted to make sure that we were engaging them and persuading them before they could support such a policy. I thought that was a fair and square demand. They wanted to see there was “political will” before they felt like they could bravely go out on a limb to support our policy.

Photo by Brian Ettling (white shirt) of a lobby meeting with Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteers with staff of Congresswoman Ann Wagner in Washington, D.C. on November 14, 2017.

As Sam Daley-Harris discovered in the late 1970s, members of Congress need to see “political will” before they would decide to support a certain piece of legislation or policy. I always felt like I learned so much from lobbying.

In the 2017 People’s Climate March video, my friend Greg Hamra said it so beautifully and succinctly about the importance of lobbying: “(if) you don’t know your representative. Wait! And, they don’t know your name, you’re not doing a good job.”

Thus, there is another part of the formula or secret sauce. It is not enough to regularly lobby your elected officials, you should be lobbying and engaging with them enough that they know your name.

The Congressional Management Foundation’s insights on lobbying members of Congress

In November 2015, I attended a CCL conference in Washington D.C. The guest speaker was Brad Fitch, deputy director of the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF). Their mission is to work directly with Members of Congress and staff to enhance their operations and interactions with constituents. build trust and effectiveness in Congress. CMF also works directly with citizen groups, such as CCL, to educate them on how Congress works, giving constituents a stronger voice in policy outcomes. In addition, Brad Fitch from CMF spoke at the June 2017 CCL Conference in Washington, D.C.

At the 2015 CCL Conference, I remember Brad Fitch shared a compelling story about a conservative Republican member of Congress meeting directly with a constituent who is struggling with a disease. Before he met with that constituent, he had every intention of voting against that bill that would provide funding for medical research to find cures for that disease. However, after he met with that constituent, heard their story, got to know the person, and learned their name, that member of Congress could not bring himself to vote against that bill.

The lesson was that impactful stories directly from a constituent can move members of Congress. It can be the most effective tool to change the mind of a Congressperson. During his presentation, Brad showed a survey poll of Congressional staff asking them, “If your Member/Senator has not already arrived at a firm decision on an issue, how much influence might the following advocacy strategies directed to the Washington office have on his/her decision?”

Image source: YouTube video, “How to hug a porcupine : Building relationships with lawmakers and why it’s important.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMKP641JwrA

The top answer by far from Congressional staff was that 46% said an in-person visit from a constituent would have “A lot of influence.” This was a huge margin over 8% of Congressional staff saying that a lobby visit would have “A lot of influence.” Thus, Sam Daley-Harris and Brad Fitch held vital messages for me that it is so important to know who our members of Congress are are and to regularly engage them. Greg Hamra’s cemented that point further that they should know us and our names for those key moments when they are deciding to support specific climate legislation bills.

Thus, after Greg Hamra’s statement on the 2017 People’s Climate March video, I made it my mission in life that I was going to show up to lobby my members of Congress and state legislators that they would know my name. Even more, they would know my name when deciding to support which pieces of climate legislation.

My determination that my congressman and state legislators will know my name

Just a few days after the 2017 PEOPLE’S CLIMATE MARCH was released on YouTube, I wrote a letter to my member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (OR-03) in early June 2017. In the letter, I thanked him for his leadership in the U.S. House of Representative for introducing a carbon pricing bill and strongly voting for climate legislation. I then shared my history of working as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park for 25 years. I wrote how I saw the impacts of climate change there with the annual average snowpack diminishing and the summer fire season getting more intense. Therefore, I urged him to support the carbon fee and dividend policy to address climate change.

One week later, I attended a CCL conference in Washington D.C. and was part of a group of CCL volunteers that lobbied his office. During the meeting, Blumenauer’s Energy and Environmental Aide told me that Congressman Blumenauer had seen my letter and had appreciated me writing to him. It felt good that Rep. Blumenauer read my letter and wanted to pass along to his staff during the lobby meeting to let me know he had read it.

Since then, I ran into Rep. Blumenauer numerous times at various events and even attended an in-person lobby meeting with him in Portland, Oregon in October 2019. I am not sure if he knows who I am by now. He has never called me by my name or acted like he remembers me from previous encounters. Still, he sees so many people in Washington D.C. and Portland, Oregon that many people and names becomes a blur after a while. Having said that, I am still grateful that I have put myself out there to promote climate solutions when I see him. No, I was not able to persuade him yet to support carbon fee and dividend or specifically the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (EICDA). At the same time, no one else has had success to convince him to support carbon fee and dividend or specifically the EICDA. For me, trying but not yet succeeding feels much better than not trying at all.

Brian Ettling and Congressman Earl Blumenauer at his event to roll out his Climate Emergency Resolution in Portland, Oregon on July 14, 2019.

In the summer of 2018, I started volunteering with Renew Oregon with their efforts to work closely with Oregon state legislators to pass a cap and invest bill. For Renew Oregon volunteers like me, much effort would be needed to regularly lobby state legislators to urge them to make passage of the cap and invest bill a high priority. That summer fellow CCL and Renew Oregon volunteer met with our Democratic nominee for Oregon Senate, Shemia Fagan. The meeting went amazingly well, and she indicated that she would be a strong supporter of the cap and invest bill, which she was. I always had wonderful interactions with her and her staff. She knew me by name and knew me as a constituent who wanted strong climate policies passed.

Because of the solid relationship I built with her, I was proud to co-host a Zoom fundraising house party for her in October 2020 when she ran for Oregon Secretary of State and won in the November 2020 election. All indications are that she is performing well as Oregon’s Secretary of State. She still seems to be a rising star in the Oregon Democratic party. Who knows if she will have a future opportunity to run for Congress, U.S. Senate, Governor of Oregon, etc. She has certainly proved she is a talented, energetic, charismatic, and successful political leader. If so, I know she would be a strong climate champion from my past conversations with her.

Brian Ettling, 2018 Democratic candidate for Oregon Senate Shemia Fagan, and climate organizer, KB Mercer in Happy Valley, Oregon on August 15, 2018.

That summer, I also started writing 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. I always enjoyed my interactions with him. We had a great rapport. He even showed me some tricks on my iPhone for taking selfies before we took a selfie. Diego was always very supportive of my climate lobbying and organizing. We met for coffee in December 2018 and 2019 to discuss his support for the cap and invest legislation for the upcoming legislative sessions.

Periodically, I would send him letters and cards urging him to support the cap and invest bill, which became known as The Clean Energy Jobs Bill or HB 2020 in the 2019 Oregon Legislative session. From my conversations with him, I had no doubt that he would be a final yes on these climate bills. If he perceived there was strong environmental justice measures in these bills, he was a strong advocate to support them. I would still write to him though to keep the bill on his radar, to know that he has constituents behind him to support strong climate legislation, and to serve as an example to others.

On February 6, 2019, Renew Oregon had a lobby day at the Oregon state Capitol to meet with the state legislators to urge them to support The Clean Energy Jobs Bill. When I met with Rep. Hernandez inside his office, he said, ‘Look right behind you, Brian.’

When I looked right behind me on his bulletin board, he had attached with push pins all the letters I sent him over the previous months. There were at least 3 letters from me. Apparently, Diego liked to display letters from constituents, and most of the letters tacked up on the bulletin board were from me. This showed me very clearly that elected leaders do read letters from constituents and hang on to them when considering policy decisions and votes.

Letters from Brian Ettling on the office bulletin board of his state Representative Diego Hernandez. February 6, 2019.

Rep. Hernandez laughed with delight as I was amazed seeing my letters and taking pictures of them hanging from his bulletin board. In my climate PowerPoint presentations later that year, I would stress as an effective climate action of writing to your elected officials. I shared the story of Diego hanging my letters on his bulletin board and show the picture. It would get a big laugh from the audience that most of the letters were from me. I have friends who have seen my climate change talks from 2019 who still talk about those images to this day.

Rep. Hernandez continued to be very supportive of my climate lobbying and strongly supporting the climate bills I advocated. He probably would have supported those bills even without my lobbying. However, I think he liked that he had constituents like me cheering him on and strongly urging him to support climate legislation.

Unfortunately, Rep. Diego Hernandez resigned from office on March 15, 2021 due to sexual harassment charges filed against him from staff and lobbyists at the Capitol. The House Ethics Committee planned to recommend a House floor vote to expel him. It is important to believe the women and I thought he should be fully accountable for his actions. I was very disappointed that he did not act in a professional manner towards women in his position of power. I considered him to be a friend. I texted him on the day he resigned to offer that I am there for him if he ever wanted to talk. It was sad and totally understandable why he had to resign from the legislature.

Relationships with Oregon legislators with SJM 5 Resolution and ongoing to this day…

The good news was that I had also built up very good relations with other state legislators in the Oregon House and Senate. As I blogged about previously, during the summer of 2020, I started meeting by Zoom and phone with Oregon Legislators that I had met during my lobbying for the cap and invest bills in 2019 and 2020. As a Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) volunteer, I urged them to endorse the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (EICDA).

As I organized CCL volunteers across Oregon, we successfully urged over 30 Oregon legislators to endorse the EICDA by early 2021. September 17, 2020, I met by phone then Rep. Tiffiny Mitchell to ask her to endorse the EICDA. In addition to her endorsement, Tiffiny asked if she could introduce a statewide resolution supporting the bill. Because of a great rapport I had built up with Senator Michael Dembrow and his friendship with Tiffiny Mitchell, he 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.

Brian Ettling with Oregon Senator Michael Dembrow in Portland, Oregon on January 3, 2019.

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

Even though House Democratic leadership did not allow for a vote on SJM 5 because they thought it was “too bipartisan,” all the House co-sponsors who supported SJM 5 showed we could have easily passed this resolution through the Oregon House.

Many these co-sponsors that signed on because of Zoom lobby meetings and phone calls I had with them. Many of these state legislators still knew my name from the 2019-20 lobbying I did for the cap and invest bills. Getting to know many of these legislators and the positive efforts that many legislators took to help with this effort was a fantastic experience, even if SJM 5 failed to get a floor vote in the Oregon House.

In the middle of this lobbying effort, my new Oregon Representative and Senator turned out to be very supportive. In January 2021, Shemia Fagan resigned as my Oregon Senator to become Secretary of State. Community organizer Kayse Jama was appointed as the Senator replace Shemia soon afterwards. Before his appointment as Oregon Senate, he called me in January 2021 to get to know me. After Kayse Jama was appointed, I met with him, and he seemed positive about supporting SJM 5.

During the April 7th Oregon Senate floor vote on SJM 5, I still had his personal cell number from his January phone call. I texted him to thank him for his vote. He texted back with a very lovely response, “NO! Thank you for all your advocacy! It was my pleasure to vote for this.”

Brian Ettling with Oregon Senator Kayse Jama in Portland, Oregon on July 30, 2022.

When I saw Senator Jama at an Oregon Democratic Party fundraiser in December 2022, I mentioned to him that I hoped to meet in January to discuss top priority climate change bills. He responded that he always enjoys meeting with me to hear about about climate bills that are important to me. He seems to take my views into consideration. He would probably vote for these bills anyway but seems happy that he has constituents like me advocating for these bills.

In January 2021, a friend talked me into briefly becoming a Multnomah County Democratic Party Precinct Committee Person (PCP). When Diego Hernandez resigned in February 2021, the Multnomah County Democratic PCPs were scheduled to take a vote for a recommendation to the Multnomah County Commissioners to appoint a replacement. In early March, only one candidate called me, Andrea Valderrama, to ask for my vote.

It was a great phone call. She immediately impressed me that she would be an excellent Oregon Representative for my district. Even more, she took an interest in me as a community member and person to learn about my interests. I mentioned to her about the SJM 5 resolution. She immediately took an interest in supporting it and co-sponsoring it. In her earliest days as an Oregon Representative, she was very helpful in co-sponsoring SJM 5.

More recently, Oregon Legislators representing the nearby Gresham area, have asked me which climate legislation I would be supporting for the 2023 Oregon Legislative session. They know me by name. They have told me that they like to converse with me about climate legislation when they see me at community events, their town halls, and lobby meetings.

Thus, Greg Hamra’s advice, ‘Do you know the names of your members of Congress and state legislators? Wait! Better yet: Do they know your name?’ is still bouncing around in my head 6 years later and having a huge impact on me.

Giving my climate change ranger talk at Grand Canyon National Park in 2013 

Brian Ettling at Grand Canyon National Park. May 6, 2013.

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

This was a very intriguing question posted to me by my friend Pete Peterson on December 5, 2011 on Facebook. I had just posted an update attending the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in San Francisco, California, one of the most prestigious annual scientific conferences in the world. I was there to network and see the presentations of the world’s best climate scientists and communicators in the world.

At that time, Pete was a Supervisory Park Ranger at Grand Canyon National Park. I knew Pete from when both of us worked for the National Park Service at Crater Lake National Park from 2003 to 2005. We had struck up a friendship and had reconnected just a couple of years before on Facebook. I was at AGU to see if it could lead to new opportunities for me as a climate change communicator. Although Pete was not attending AGU, an opportunity like what Pete was throwing out to me was something I hoped could be gained by spending time at this AGU.

In the previous two years, I had developed the www.climatechangecomedian.com website in 2010 and I started giving my climate change evening ranger program at Crater lake National Park in August 2011. Pete was following my developments as a climate change communicator and giving climate change ranger talks at Crater Lake. He shared my deep concern about climate change. He thought my efforts could be helpful to inspire the park rangers he supervised at the Grand Canyon to chat with the public more effectively about climate change.

My first two times seeing the Grand Canyon

I latched onto Pete’s invitation because I loved Grand Canyon National Park. I first saw the Grand Canyon on a family cross country vacation in the summer of 1987 and thought is was stunningly beautiful. Afterwards, I jokingly said that we did the Clark Griswald 1983 Vacation Movie thing of just visiting the south rim of the Grand Canyon National Park for a few hours. I recall we were only at Grand Canyon Village (or Canyon Village as the park employees like to call it) on the south rim for a couple of hours. Unfortunately, we had a lot to see on this very long looping road trip from St. Louis to Denver, Rocky Mountain National Park, Salt Lake City, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Las Vegas and then back home.

We were there on a beautiful sunny day, late in the afternoon and we only had a couple of hours there before we need to drive a couple of hours to Flagstaff to spend the night. The late afternoon sun seemed to shine a light on the beauty and cast dark shadows of the canyon formations. Although it was way too quick, we relished the time we got to there and I vowed to return for a longer visit.

Brian Ettling at Grand Canyon National Park. July 1987.

After I graduated from college in 1992, I worked summers at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon and winters in Everglades National Park, Florida. Working in the national parks, inspired me to fall in love with all the national parks. I wanted to see as many of them as I could during the travel times in April and October when I traversed across country on road trips from Crater Lake to the Everglades. My first girlfriend and I traveled to see Grand Canyon National Park in October 1995.

This time, we made a point to spend the night in lodging at the most inexpensive place at Canyon Village to give the national park a bit more time than when I saw it on our family vacation in 1987. This time, my then girlfriend and I drove the entire length of the Desert View Drive, which skirted along the south rim 23 miles from Canyon Village to Desert View. Like my first visit in July 1987, it was a clear sky and lovely day to take in the magnificence of the Grand Canyon.

In the years that followed, I kept bouncing back from Crater Lake National Park, Oregon to Everglades National Park, Florida, driving a different cross-country trips in between to see other national parks and scenic places. I had always wanted to return for a visit to the Grand Canyon, but I didn’t seem to have the time in at least other trips that I drove across Arizona.

Hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon in December 2009

In December 2009, I visited my friends Steve and Melissa who lived in Flagstaff, Arizona, on a cross country trip from Oregon to St. Louis. Steve worked as a back country law enforcement ranger at Grand Canyon National Park. The three of us became good friends spending several winters as next-door neighbors in Everglades City while working in Everglades National Park. During my visit, we were swapping ranger stories from our experiences working in the national parks.

At one point, Steve just said to me out of the blue, ‘Would you like to hike to the bottom of Grand Canyon National Park?

“Yes!” I quickly responded. “I would love to do that someday.”

“No,” Steve sighed. “I am talking right now, while you are visiting us.”

“But, I don’t have backpacking gear,” I sheepishly confessed.

Steve then explainded, “I will set you up with a backpack and all the equipment. You will spend the night at the Phantom Ranch Ranger Station at the bottom. There’s a guest room there at the law enforcement housing there where you will stay. You will just need to bring a change of clothes and lots of food.”

Photo by Brian Ettling of the Grand Canyon near the South Kaibab Trailhead from December 20, 2009.

Immediately, my gut told me that this was a once-in-a lifetime experience that I could not refuse, so I instantly said yes. Steve went to the grocery store with me to help me stock up on lots of food. He advised me that I will be burning a lot of calories hiking down and then back up the trail. Thus, he recommended that I bring the amount of food I would normally eat, plus 20% more for the energy my body would need. Even more, he recommended lot of carbohydrates such as crackers, bread, etc. that will keep me fueled up and retain water. His advice was vital since I did not have a clue how to hike the Grand Canyon. I adhered to every tip he gave me.

Steve even generously lent me his YakTrax Traction Device or “shoe chains” to slip over my hiking boots for the upper part of the trail. I just shorten the name to “YakTrax” whenever I use them. Canyon Village is over 7,100 feet above sea level. It had snowed there recently. Thus, the upper part of the trail was a sheet of ice with well over 1,000-foot drop offs on one side of the trail. When I started walking the trail, those YakTrax were a life saver because the ice did not look forgiving at all. It wanted to cause one to slip and go shooting off the edge. With the YakTrax and my trekking hiking poles, I felt I was in full command of the icy trail. The YakTrax helped me feel like I was walking on a hard dirt surface.

Recent photo of the YakTrak traction devises my wife and I use to walk on icy and slick snowy surfaces.

Steve advised me to park my car at Canyon village near the Bright Angel Trailhead. I would then ride a free shuttle bus from Canyon Village a couple of miles to the South Kaibab Trailhead. I was there one week before Christmas, and I was amazed how many other hikers and backpackers were using the shuttle bus and were at the trailhead. The Grand Canyon bus shuttle felt more like an airport city bus service at rush hour. Even more, it was fascinating to see all the people at the South Kaibab trailhead with their hiking and backpacking gear, probably most of them knew a lot more about how to plan for this trip than I did.

By this time, I had worked 17 years in the national parks. During much of that time, I had issued backcountry permits to visitors wanting to overnight backpack in Everglades National Park. The park trained me on the advice to give the back country campers on the gear they would need and how much time to allow to travel to various backcountry camp sites. Thus, I knew some, but my lived experience was still very little. I did join friends and co-workers on overnight canoe trips in the Everglades and once I overnight backpacked with a girlfriend in Redwoods National Park. As long as someone else planned all of these trips and lent me some of their gear, I was always a ‘yes’ to do a trip like that. As far as me planning an overnight backpacking trip, never.

Photo from Brian Ettling. Upper part of the South Kaibab Trail of the Grand Canyon. December 20, 2009

I had grown very spoiled to hiking on day trails in the national parks and then returning to sleep in my park housing comfortable bed at night. I also enjoyed staying in a motel in or near a national park to do day hikes and sleeping in a comfortable bed at night. Or I would visit a friend during a cross country trip who lived in or near a national park to do day hikes and then stay in their spare bedroom at night. The closest to ‘roughing it’ for me was driving my car to a park or nearby campground, pitching my tent, and then hiking all day in a national park. Even when I was camping in a tent, I would still go out of a nice meal at a lodge restaurant in a national park or eat in a nice restaurant for dinner and breakfast in a nearby town.

Thus, when I was seeing all these serious backpackers and hikers on the shuttle bus and at the South Kaibab Trailhead, I got a momentary churning in my stomach with an internal voice saying to me: ‘What the hell are you doing? You are out of your league!’

At the same time, I was in safe hands with Steve. He loved his job of working as a backcountry ranger at the Grand Canyon and regularly hiking down and up the canyon. He knew exactly what I needed to pack and which trails to use to have an excellent trip. Steve was one of the smart rangers I had met. A man of great intelligence and a very deep thinker. He really should have been a scientist. Sometimes, I felt intimidated by all of his knowledge, but honored that he would let me hang around him as a friend. With Steve advising me on this trip, I felt like a pro.

As far as trail options, Steve advised me to take the South Kaibab Trail down and then return the next day on the Bright Angel Trail. The South Kaibab Trail is considered much more scenic than the Bright Angel Trail. From the Canyon Village trailhead to Phantom Ranch, the South Kaibab Trail is 7.4 miles long and has an elevation drop over 4,900 feet. The Bright Angel Trail is 9.9 miles long and has an elevation drop of almost 4,500 feet. Thus, the Bright Angel Trail is a bit less strenuous and steep going back up to Grand Canyon Village.

I started down the South Kaibab Trail late morning on December 20, 2009, just five days before Christmas and around the time of the winter solstice. It looked like winter at the top with the upper portion of the Grand Canyon covered and snow. There was high wispy clouds that made the sky looked overcast. It looked and felt like winter at the upper part of the Grand Canyon.

Photo by Brian Ettling of the Grand Canyon taken at the South Kaibab Trailhead on December 20, 2009.

As I walked down the trail, the beauty of the Grand Canyon was beyond words. For the previous four summers at Crater Lake National Park, I had walked down and up the Cleetwood Trail once or twice a week to narrate the boat tours as a park ranger. The Cleetwood Trail is 1.1 miles long and drops in elevation around 700 feet and has some lovely views of Crater Lake. The Cleetwood Trail is noted as a strenuous trail in Crater Lake information sources, not recommended for visitors with health issues. At 7.7 miles long and an elevation drop the South Kaibab Trail felt like ‘many Cleetwoods’ with the physical exertion going down the trail with many incredible views. It felt like every time I turned a corner on a switchback on the trail, I got a new view of the Grand Canyon. I could not take enough pictures.

This was a life changing experience and one of the highlights of my life to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. This was something that I hoped to do in my wildest dreams, but I probably would not have been able to do without the connections of my friend Steve. He set up the backcountry permit for me, got me a reservation at the spare bedroom at the ranger station, loaned me the gear, advised me on what food and trails to take, and gave me the confidence that I could do this. I will always be grateful to my friends Steve and Melissa for this opportunity.

There were surprises on this trail such as tunnels, especially as one gets close to the bridge that goes across the Colorado River. Except for the occasional planes flying overhead and hikers that I ran into less and less the further I got down the trail, it was a very peaceful and quiet experience. I had also never been on a trail with so many switchbacks on a trail. Even more, this was the most water bars I had seen on a trail, especially the last couple miles of the trail. A water bar is defined as a rounded wooden or rocky ridge in the trail or ridge and channel constructed diagonally across a sloping road or utility right-of-way that is subject to erosion. Used to prevent erosion on long, sloping right-of-way routes by diverting runoff at selected intervals.

Photo by Brian Ettling of the switchbacks and water bars on the South Kaibab Trail in the Grand Canyon.

With the steepness of the South Kaibab Trail, plus the water bars, turning the trail into steep steps, I started getting shin splints or cramping on the sides of my legs on the last mile or so down the trail. It started to hurt to walk in that last mile, even though the scenery was still incredibly beautiful, and every step got me closer to the destination of Phantom Ranch. I was certainly looking forward to a good night sleep to rest my legs and I knew I was going to sleep well from all the exercise.

The bottom of the Grand Canyon was fascinating. The Colorado River made an ever present sound of water rushing by in a hurry. The foot bridges across the river almost looked like a miniature New York City span bridge, like the George Washington Bridge. I got there a half hour before it got dark to take in the scenery there. It was fun to touch the purplish colored Vishnu rocks along the trail as I got close to Phantom Ranch. Geologists consider those rocks to be almost 2 billion years old, probably the oldest rocks on Earth I have touched and seen up close. As I was losing daylight at the bottom, I photographed 4 deer foraging on grasses and leaves of the bushes along the shoreline of the Colorado River.

The two law enforcement rangers at the park housing were pleasant but surprised to see me inside the shared housing unit. I shared that their co-worker and my friend Steve Rice had reserved the extra bedroom for me for the night. They made me feel right at home as one was cooking and the other one was sitting on the couch watching TV. I brought from deep inside my backpack the packaged food for my dinner. It all tasted so good after a very big day of hiking.

Silver Bridge spanning the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon by Phantom Ranch.

Not much to do at Phantom Ranch and I was wiped out from the long hike, so I went to bed early and got a very good sleep. The next day, I woke up early but very rested, eager to complete the over 9 miles and the 4,500 feet elevation gain of the Bright Angel Trail. The weather was overcast for the second day, which was fine for me. I just didn’t want it to be cold and rainy on the slog back up the trail.

One of the changes I noticed going back up the Bright Angel Trail, as opposed to the South Kaibab Trail, was that the mule trains went up and down the trail. The first mule train I saw just had a lead rider and they looked like they were carrying supplies down to Phantom Ranch. The mule trips had a person riding on each mule down to Phantom Ranch. The riders looked so thrilled to be riding the mules, posing for pictures that I took of them. Maybe I had been hiking too long and getting delusional, but I could have sworn that some of the mules on the mule train were even smiling at me.

Photo by Brian Ettling of a mule train near the bottom of the Grand Canyon on the Bright Angel Trail.

Lots of switchbacks going up the last few miles of the Bright Angel Trail. In a sense, it feels like you will never get to the top. It felt like I was getting closer when I started seeing the snow covering the upper Grand Canyon on the last upper mile or so on the trail. However, when I reached the trailhead of the Bright Angel Trail and soon saw my car, I was never so happy to see my car after such a long hike. I called my younger sister and a few friends from one of the rim hotels lobbies in Canyon Village to let them know that I had just conquered the Grand Canyon.

I then drove over two hours to Flagstaff to treat myself to a lovely Thai dinner, since Flagstaff has some great Thai restaurants. The next day, I woke up it was December 22nd, and I was going to have to make efficient time traveling on the road to make it home in time for Christmas to see my parents, sisters and their families. With encountering some snowy and icy road conditions in Missouri, I barely made it home on time on the evening of Christmas Eve. This first trip down and up the Grand Canyon was a fantastic experience that I did not know how I would top in my life.

Photo of Brian Ettling from the upper portion of the South Kaibab Trail at the Grand Canyon.

Hiking the Grand Canyon, North to South Rim, November 2010.

One year later, I visited my friends Steve and Melissa in Flagstaff. This time, they had a six-week-old baby Henry and Steve’s sister was visiting to see Henry. Steve and Melissa were happy to see me, but they looked overwhelmed having a new baby. Even more, Steve’s sister was visiting, in addition to me. It looked like they just wanted to get me out of the house, and I did not blame them. Steve then suddenly asked me: “Hey Brian, would you like to hike the Grand Canyon again?

“Sure!” I quickly responded. “I was really hoping you would ask me that again.”

Steve replied: “Since you just hiked to Phantom Ranch last time, I think you should try hiking hiking from the north to the south rim.”

“Wow!” I responded. “How would we make that work?”

Steve: “This is what I am thinking. We will drive separately to the north rim tomorrow. We will need to camp in a campground, somewhere north of the North Rim. You will park your car at the parking lot at the North Rim. Melissa will drive your car to the South Rim, to the South Kaibab Trail parking lot. It will take you about 3 days to hike Rim to Rim. I will supply you with a tent, sleeping bag, and water filter if you don’t have one. How does that sound?”

This sounded like another incredible adventure that I could not say no. The next day, we did leave Flagstaff with Steve, Melissa and Henry in one car and me driving my car. This was an impressive drive into northern Arizona. We stopped at the Navajo Bridge, which crosses the Colorado River 470 feet (143 m) above the water, spanning the steep cliffs of Marble Canyon on either side. Steve, Melissa, Henry and I stopped to walk the Old Navajo Bridge. With the high elevation of the bridge that seemed to soar above the river like a bird, I felt high anxiety walking on that bridge. I was afraid to take any pictures with the thought that a puff of wind or an unexpected bump could send my camera falling into the deep river canyon below. Thus, I clung to my camera instead of taking any pictures of this engineering marvel.

While walking halfway across the Old Navajo Bridge, I momentarily forgot my intense fear of heights. I was excited to spot some endangered California Condors nesting and hanging out under the new bridge. I bravely got out my camera while safely standing several feet back from the bridge railing. Even with the fear of heights I experienced on the bridge, I could not pass up this opportunity to take a picture. This was the first time I remember seeing and photographing California Condors, one of the most endangered bird species in the world.

Photo by Brian Ettling of a California Condor perched on the underside of the New Navajo Bridge, located just west of Page, Arizona.

That evening, we did camp north of the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park. I remember that it was quite windy and even a bit cold that night. Steve, Melissa, and Henry were in a tent not far from me. Henry did cry a couple of times during the night. However, Steve and Melissa seemed thrilled to be taking Henry on his first camping trip of probably many in the future.

The next day, we drove to the parking lot of the North Rim of the North Kaibab Trailhead. There was not another car in sight. It was a huge parking lot that looks like it is probably bustling in the middle of summer. That day it looked like a deserted place that no one dares to visit this time of year. Steve and Melissa were eager to get back to Flagstaff, so I handed Melissa my keys and soon they were gone.

I actually had some fear in my stomach doing a solo backpacking trip for the first time in my life. I asked as many questions as I could before they left. At the same time, I got the feeling that they got tired of my questions and just wanted to leave. It was time for them to set me free on this journey. I was now completely on my own without another person in sight. Steve and Melissa had just given me one of the best gifts in my life. Yet, part of me was wondering: What in the hell did I get myself into?

The North Kaibab Trail was spectacular in its own way, different than the South Rim Trails. It starts at a higher elevation of over 8,000 feet, but it did not feel as steep going down, However, there were still lots of narrow switchbacks and several bridges connecting the switchbacks to wind down into the Grand Canyon. The solitude was fantastic. I don’t think I saw another person the whole time I was hiking that day. Maybe one or two other people hiking or at the campsite that evening. The only sound I heard the entire day was the late fall wind whistling through the canyon. The sound seemed to warn that winter is coming and won’t be avoided if one spends too much time in the canyon. The north side of the canyon looked lusher with some small trees, bushes and some grass than I had remembered walking on the south rim trails a year before.

Photo by Brian Ettling of the northern rim of the Grand Canyon near the North Kaibab Trailhead.

I made it to Cottonwood Campground to spend the night. Not far from the campsite, Steve advised me before the trip to fill up on water for the next day, using the water filter he lent me. to get It ended up being kind of a warmish night without a cloud in the sky. The stars were fabulous without hardly any city lights. I remember pulling down the tent for part of the night just so I could fall asleep seeing the stars. The next day was a relatively flat seven-mile hike to Phantom Ranch, with some interesting short side trail to see a waterfall, Ribbon Falls. I did see a small number of hikers that day, primarily by Ribbon Falls

I made it to Phantom Ranch by late afternoon. Steve arranged for me to stay at the VIP cabin at Phantom Ranch, one of the nicest places I have stayed anywhere. This is the cabin where the park superintendent stays when visiting Phantom Ranch. Its where other dignitaries liked to stay when they hiked the Grand Canyon, such as the late Senator John McCain. Recently, it had been renovated. It felt like the Hilton there with a four-poster full size bed, a washer/dryer, automatic dishwasher, a phone and plenty of outlets to charge the battery of my digital camera, my cellphone and my iPod. Steve heavily emphasized in his authoritative law enforcement ranger voice, but also speaking as a good friend going out of a limb for me, that I will leave the cabin “as immaculate as I found it, if not cleaner.”

I could not help myself that I called my mom and my then girlfriend from the land line phone at the VIP Cottage using my long distance calling card. The reception was great as I shared with them that I was at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Phantom Ranch primarily had tent camping sites, cabins, and four hiker dormitories (two for men and two for women). It felt like I was staying at the best place by far at Phantom Ranch. I was certainly not roughing it that night.

Photo by Brian Ettling of arriving at Phantom Ranch at the Bottom of the Grand Canyon.

That evening, I went to a ranger campfire talk led by a ranger named Mandy Toy. She shared how she typically works around two weeks straight in the canyon and then she gets two weeks off. The starting day of her shift is walking down the Grand Canyon and her ending shift day is walking back up the Grand Canyon. She loved her job but reflected that it gets hard on the knees. She informed us that one of her co-workers had to quit after doing that job for years because it became too hard on her knees.

The next day, I went back up the South Kaibab Trail, doing the trail in reverse from the previous year. As I walked across the bridge that goes above the Colorado River, I got to wave and briefly say hello with some of the water rafters below me. They were full of enthusiasm to be rafting down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. I then had to hike up the South Kaibab Trail, 7.4 miles from Phantom Ranch with an elevation gain of almost 4,900 feet.

With my fully charged iPod, I listened to my favorite music most of the day to motivate me to go up this steep trail while seeing and stopping for the magnificent scenery along the way. The weather was mostly sunny that day, with lots of blue sky, but still, lots of small puffy clouds for dramatic effect for photos. With the bright sun, the different colors of the rocks in the canyon seemed to pop out more to make fabulous photos.

From the year before, I learned firsthand that November and December are ideal months of the year to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. In the winter, in those months the average high temperature at Phantom Ranch is around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. In the summer, the temperature at Phantom Ranch can be well over 100 degrees. My friend Steve told me the well-worn joke at the Grand Canyon that ‘Only fools and rangers go down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon in the summer.’

Brian Ettling near the trailhead of the South Kaibab Trail at the Grand Canyon. November 2010.

In late afternoon, I was so happy to see my car parked not far from the South Kaibab Trailhead. Melissa and Steve did a fabulous job of getting my car their safely so I could drive it away from the canyon.

This was a life changing experience for me. It was the first time I had overnight backpacked by myself. I had really stretched myself out of my comfort zone. It was very rewarding to jump at an opportunity that may never come again and to be open to big opportunities that can appear out of nowhere. It reinforced my deep love for the national parks, the outdoors, and connecting with world class wilderness areas. Even more, it reminded me of the incredible planet where we live. Finally, it inspired me on a higher level to want to protect our planet from the threat of climate change and other human caused harms.

After this successful trip hiking from the North to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, I did not know how I would top that for a Grand Canyon experience. Fortunately, my friend Pete Peterson had an idea for me that could top that.

Giving a climate change talk to over 200 park visitors at Grand Canyon National Park

Just one year later, December 5, 2011, Supervisory Ranger Pete Peterson asked me in a Facebook post:

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

With all 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 still a huge opportunity not to be dismissed because it is Grand Canyon National Park.

Pete Peterson and I kept in touch over the next year 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 arrived the day before I was scheduled to speak driving into the East Entrance on Hwy 64. I drove on The Desert View Drive, stopping at the Desert View and other pullouts to get views of the Grand Canyon that day. The canyon looked at bit hazy, but it was still a magnificent site, bringing back great memories of hiking to the bottom just a couple of years before.

At the Desert View Visitor Center, I saw the signs advertising the upcoming ranger evening programs at Grand Canyon Village. It was exciting to see my name and ranger talk listed on the posted public announcement of the scheduled evening ranger programs.

Photo by Brian Ettling of the flyer advertising his special guest evening program at the Grand Canyon

As I arrived to stay with Pete and his wife Carrie at his home in Canyon Village in late afternoon, Pete informed me that I would be speaking at the Shrine of the Ages Auditorium in Canyon Village. Pete shared that many of nearby Grand Canyon Park rangers were excited for my talk and planned to attend tomorrow. Even more, these talks were well attended by park visitors, so I should expect an audience of over 200 people.

My talk, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, was geared for a Crater Lake audience, so we agreed that I needed to include some information about the Grand Canyon. Gulp! I only had 24 hours to learn some facts how The Grand Canyon was impacted by climate change and how the Park Service is responding to the threat of climate change. Pete had a busy day for me the next day to meet with park scientists and give me tours of Park buildings that were recently designed to be energy efficient and park friendly.

Tomorrow was going to be a very stressful day. It was really sinking in that I only had hours to learn about the impacts of climate change on the Grand Canyon and how the park was taking action to be part of the solution. I would then be presenting this information to an audience of over 200 park visitors, staff and even park scientists in the audience. Most of this park staff and scientists probably had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Grand Canyon. It felt like I had only given myself a few hours to put together and defend a masters dissertation for a huge audience. Just like each time I start my hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, part of me wondered: What in the hell did I get myself into?

A photo by Brian Ettling of a rocky mountain elk in park housing in Grand Canyon Village. May 6, 2013.

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.

At the end of the day, Pete and his wife Carrie took me to see a wonderful sunset from an overlook of the Grand Canyon somewhere in the Canyon Village area. The overlook was crowded with lots of other 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 wanting to be there, even if it felt like I had to out elbow others to get a photo.

Photo by Brian Ettling of the Grand Canyon colors highlighted from the rays of the setting sun.

Tuesday, May 7th turned out to be me a very busy day for me. Pete first scheduled me to speak briefly towards the end of the weekly park ranger staff meeting about my efforts talking about climate change using humor. This was the first thing in the morning of a required staff meeting. I felt a little intimidated because I did not know these rangers and they didn’t know me. Pete had me speak right before the meeting adjourned, so many of these folks were eager to just start their work assignments for the day. Basically, I was nervous. I didn’t feel funny in that moment, and they didn’t feel like laughing with any humor I might have wanted to share at that moment. It did not feel like my day was off to a good start.

I had to shake off that morning experience that got off to an ok start and go with the agenda that Pete had planned for the day. One of our first meetings was with Stephanie Sutton, District Interpretive Ranger for Canyon Village. She briefed me on the science of phenology, which is the study how seasonal life cycle events for plants and animals are impacted by variations in climate. Of special concern at Grand Canyon are the gambel oaks.

According to Stephanie, with the warming climate temperatures, gambel oaks are now putting out their leaves earlier in the spring. The winter moth caterpillars then emerge earlier to take advantage of the earlier leaves. Unfortunately the Pied Flycatcher still arrives around the same time during the spring migration only to find all the caterpillars gone into their cocoon stage. As a result of no food, scientists noted up to a 90% population decline of the Pied Flycatcher.

PowerPoint slide from Brian Ettling’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly presentation at Grand Canyon National Park. Images and information courtesy of Grand Canyon park ranger Stephanie Sutton.

This helped to share how climate change was impacting the Grand Canyon. It was good evidence to latch onto how climate change was impacting the trees and birds of the Canyon area. The Grand Canyon itself is hundreds of millions of years old. The rocks don’t care about modern climate change. Heck, the rocks have seen many climate changes. On the other hand, climate change can literally spell death for some of the trees and plants that calls the Grand Canyon home. Thus, I had something to point out how climate change was impacting the park’s ecosystem.

As I continued to quickly learn and cram to give my Grand Canyon Evening program that evening, I learned that Grand Canyon National Park is doing what it can to be a Climate Friendly Park. Pete showed me where The South Rim Visitor Center has multiple solar panels to provide most of its electricity. He then took me to see a large cistern tank next to the visitor center to reclaim rainwater for landscaping and restroom toilets. Pete then showcased on this tour how South Rim Village has a very convenient shuttle bus service and bike rentals so visitors can drive less and not idle in traffic jams.

Array of free standing solar panels shown during a tour of Grand Canyon National Park facilities by park ranger Pete Peterson.

Next Pete showed me the recently constructed maintenance and natural resource offices are LEED certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) by the US Green Council. According to Grand Canyon Park signage, “All new buildings in the park meet strong standards for sustainable materials and energy efficiency. Building features include:
· Passive heating and cooling
· Low-flow plumbing fixtures.
· Efficient lighting
· Recycled materials

I spent time in the park library throwing these images in talk of photos I had just taken with Pete hours early on our tour. While I was doing this, my old Toshiba laptop was periodically crashing and not cooperating. This was sending my blood pressure through the roof since it was just counting down to a couple of hours until my talk. Internally, I was really wondering what I had gotten myself into this situation. I felt way in over my head at that moment.

Around 4 pm in the afternoon, Pete scheduled for me to meet with an air quality researcher in the park. For years, The Grand Canyon was known for having poor air quality due to its proximity to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, The Navajo Coal Plant by Page, Arizona, and other sources of air pollution. The good news is that the Navajo Coal Plant, the largest coal plant in the western US when it was in operation, was demolished in 2020.

Photo by Brian Ettling of the eastern view of the Grand Canyon from a Desert View Drive overlook. The view looked diminished from possible hazy from weather and possible pollution on May 6, 2013.

When this researcher met with me, she was devastated because she had just been ordered within the last day or two to remove her scientific air monitoring equipment from the Canyon. She had to walk into parts of the Canyon herself to remove some of the equipment. In a sense they were her “babies.” She was a mom herself and she did not know how she was going to explain this to her kids someday.

Thus, she did not know what she could share with me for my evening program happening in a couple hours about the air quality issues in the Grand Canyon. I felt sad and outraged for her. However, it was also a relief that she did not have any ready information for me since I had so much to cram in my presentation happening soon. My stress level was off the charts with my laptop computer not performing well as I was trying to piece together a PowerPoint talk in less than 3 hours. Yet, I found myself consoling and trying to give hope to this career scientist who felt very despondent in that moment. We both were extremely worried about climate change. I encouraged her to join groups that gave me hope at that time and now, Citizens’ Climate Lobby and The Climate Reality Project.

After my meeting with this researcher, my laptop worked well enough to put the final touches on my Power Point happening in less than 2 hours. I then went to the Shrine of the Ages Auditorium to meet up with Pete Peterson and another ranger that would be assisting me that evening, his name was Shawn Eccles. It turned out that he had a climate change talk that he was giving regularly at the Grand Canyon. We had time before my talk for Shawn to show it very briefly to me. It was a great talk. I asked if he could give me a copy of his PowerPoint and he very graciously shared it with me.

Pete, Shawn and I made sure my slides worked well on the big screen, which they did. I was ready for my 7:30 pm ranger talk. Pete lent me a National Park Service polo shirt to wear that evening. The program was a blur. Unfortunately, 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. Their seemed to be a whole section of park rangers in one part of the audience, which I hoped to chat with afterwards.

Brian Ettling getting ready to speak at the Shrine of the Ages Auditorium at Grand Canyon Village on May 7, 2013.

After my talk was completed, some people lined up to compliment me on my talk. Unfortunately, I had one gentleman who was there with his wife that asked to see some of my slides. I generously pulled up some of my slides, and he started nick picking on the climate science on some of my graphs, saying, ‘That’s misleading!’ ‘Where did you get that information?’ ‘You are not showing the complete picture here.’

It took me a few minutes to comprehend that he was a climate and science denier who strongly objected to my talk. A small group of rangers waited patiently to chat with me after my talk, but they finally gave up and left as this climate denier hogged this time with me. I found the climate denier to be very draining. I should have said to him as he kept droning on with all the critiques of my talk, ‘Sir, I hope you don’t mind, I hope we can continue this conversation at a later point. However, right now I want to chat with some of my fellow rangers who came to this talk to see what they have to say.’

Finally, Pete interrupted to introduce me to a high school science teacher at the Grand Canyon who really liked my talk. Yes, there is a large enough staff and families living in Canyon Village and the surrounding area that the Grand Canyon has its own high school. We started having a great conversation. However, the climate denier was still standing next to me. He chimed in to offer his unsolicited opinion that “scientific consensus does not matter.”

The high school teacher just rolled her eyes. However, this had been a very long and stressful day for me. By this point, I had enough of his comments. I retorted, “Scientific consensus does matter. It is how we get to all our new understanding of science. It does not look like you understand the basic concept of science. I am sure that this teacher or her students would be happy to explain it to you.”

The climate denier then became more irritable. His wife gently led him out of the auditorium acting like she wanted to go home for the evening. It was great to finally to have a lovely conversation with the science teacher and another park ranger that wanted to briefly chat with me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the climate denier having a strained conversation with his wife by the auditorium entrance looking like he wanted to engage with me more, but she was not having it.

Photo of Shrine of the Ages Auditorium at Grand Canyon Village in Grand Canyon National Park.

Pete later that evening told me that he thought I went too far in admonishing that park visitor and found it to be unproductive. The National Park Service really tries to maintain positive relations with the public, even when visitors disagree with NPS policies and actions. The NPS really does want park rangers to treat visitors with the upmost respect. NPS trains its frontline interpretation rangers that interact with the public in a way showing that “The Visitor is Sovereign” and has a “Visitor’s Bill of Rights:

To have their privacy and independence respected.
To retain and express their own values.
To be treated with courtesy and consideration.
To receive accurate and balanced information.”

Pete felt like I had been a bit harsh with the climate denier, even if he disagreed with everything the climate and science denier was saying. He didn’t think that debating the denier was helpful as the scientific community has already made up its mind.

I did agree with Pete that I let my conversation with the science denier go on too long, which probably led me to argue with him. By arguing with him and strongly pushing back against his opinions, all I did was alienate him. That was a shame. At the same time, I still thought it the image was funny of him hanging out at the auditorium entrance wanting to argue more with me, but his wife would not let him. I sure wish I could have heard what his wife and him were saying.

It was a very 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 day afterwards, I was able to enjoy 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 as even a more rewarding place for me with my memories of seeing it the first time with my family, hiking to the bottom twice, and then speaking to my largest audience ever about climate change.

I once worked with a ranger at Crater Lake National Park who said that he thought that the Grand Canyon just looked like a ‘giant hole in the ground. That’s it.’ I can share from personal experience that the Grand Canyon is not ‘just a hole in the ground,’ but one of the most beautiful, awe inspiring, rewarding, and challenging places I have ever seen.

Brian Ettling at Grand Canyon Village by the Bright Angel Trailhead. Photo taken May, 8, 2013.

For Climate Action, Persuading a member of Congress to co-sponsor a climate bill in 2020

Brian Ettling getting ready to lobby Congressional Offices on Capitol Hill, June 11, 2019.

“We have a hot tip for you!” my friend John Van Leer and I shared with staff of a member of Congress on June 11, 2019.

We just came out of a productive meeting with the staff of Democratic U.S. Representative Frederica Wilson, Florida District 24. During the staff indicated to us that there was a good possibility Representative Wilson could be open to co-sponsoring a climate bill we met with her office to urge her to support a climate bill, The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (EICDA).

John Van Leer and I were part of a lobby team that met with Rep. Wilson’s office during the lobby day happening with Congressional Offices as part of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) June 2019 Conference in Washington D.C. At that conference, over 1,000 CCL traveled from across the United States to lobby 528 Congressional Offices on Capitol Hill.

At that time, we lobbied members of Congress to support and even co-sponsor the EICDA. This bill would have put a fee on carbon pollution to speed up the switch to 100% clean energy. The money collected from fossil fuel companies would then go back to Americans in the form of a monthly dividend check so that all Americans could afford the transition.

Brian Ettling attending a Citizens’ Climate Lobby conference in Washington D.C. in June 2017.

As a climate organizer, I have volunteered with CCL since 2012. Thus, for years, I believed that putting a price on carbon is a top solution to reduce the threat of climate change. As long as I had been involved with CCL, they affirm that putting a price on carbon with a carbon fee and dividend is “the single most powerful tool available to reduce America’s carbon pollution.”

U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch from Florida introduced the first version of this carbon pricing bill in Congress in 2018. He re-introduced the EICDA in April 2021, with along with 28 House co-sponsors. It was a big priority since 2018 for CCL volunteers to help Rep. Deutch get more co-sponsors for this bill. Eventually, through our lobbying he enabled Rep. Deutch to have 96 co-sponsors for the EICDA.

As a very committed and enthusiastic CCL volunteer, I was personally determined to persuade a member of Congress to co-sponsor the EICDA. These CCL Congressional Lobby days happen twice a year, typically the second Tuesday in June and the second Tuesday in November. For those of us attending these conferences, we would typically have around 4 to 5 Congressional lobby meetings on Capitol Hill. CCL would generally assign a lobbying team for each meeting of around 5 CCL volunteers, with a priority for constituents of that member of Congress to attend those meetings.

CCL tries to email a schedule of which Congressional offices the attendees will be lobbying on Capitol Hill several days before the conference. This helps the volunteer participants to start planning their meetings and organizing with the other lobby team participants in advance. With these schedules, the participants know the times and locations of the Congressional Offices beforehand. This information is helpful to know where to go for the lobby day to navigate the 535 Congressional offices spread out over five office buildings.

Occasionally, CCL assigns participants Congressional lobby meetings with the note of “TBD”, meaning “To be determined.” That means the Congressional Office has not yet scheduled a time for a lobby meeting. The Congressional office usually does find a time on their schedule for the lobby day, sometimes giving the meeting time the day before. This was the case for the meeting with staff of Rep. Fredericka Wilson. I received my CCL Congressional Lobby Day schedule on Thursday, June 6th with a TBD noted.

The lobby leader for this meeting, John Van Leer, did not get a confirmed meeting from Rep. Wilson’s office until 2:21 pm on Monday, June 10th. It was set for 10:30 am the next day, Tuesday June 11th. Until I received that meeting time, I was unsure if I would fit into my schedule with the other lobby meetings that I would be attending on the lobby day. The good news is that it did fit into my lobby day schedule for June 11th. The bad news was that I was not able to make the preparation meeting for the lobby team at 7 pm on that Monday, due to other lobby prep meetings I was participating. Thus, I would be “winging it” for this meeting on Tuesday.

Brian Ettling (far left) as with a group of Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteers as well as staff of Congresswoman Frederica Wilson at Rep. Wilson’s office on June 11, 2019.

I was able to meet with the other five lobby team participants in front of Rep. Wilson’s Congressional office 15 minutes before the meeting started to develop a lobby plan. I had no idea before I stepped into this Congressional office that this turned out to be the most rewarding lobby meeting that I had ever attended. Since 2015, this was my 7th time attending a CCL Congressional Lobby Day on Capitol Hill. During that time, I lobbied the staff of progressive and conservative members of Congress. Before that meeting, I never had any luck persuading them to support carbon fee and dividend or the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (EICDA).

CCL heavily emphasizes to lobby participants not to share what happens inside these meetings so that we can maintain a trusted level of confidentiality with these offices. Having noted that, I still want to share what I saw in the lobby meeting since it was such an amazing experience. Besides the six CCL volunteers including me, two interns and a Legislative Correspondent, Devin Wilcox, from Rep. Wilson’s staff met with us in the meeting room in her office.

The interns and Devin asked excellent questions about the EICDA to see if this could be something that Rep. Wilson could possibly support. They were “kicking the tires” to look for any weaknesses that could be a deal breaker for them. As the meeting progressed, we got a very positive vibe from Devon. He even explained one aspect of carbon fee and dividend to the interns better than an answer that we could have given them. He seemed to be clearly on our side.

I very distinctly heard Legislative Aide Devon Wilcox say towards the end of the meeting that he felt his boss Rep. Wilson could easily co-sponsor our bill. John Van Leer and I kept chatting with Devon even after the meeting was over.

I asked Devon if he would have a conversation with Rep. Ted Deutch’s staff about the EICDA.

His response: ‘That’s easy! They are right next door.’

I told Devon that CCL has an office nearby in Washington D.C. and asked him if it was ok if CCL reached out to him. He was very agreeable and receptive to that.

When I mentioned that Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee was a co-sponsor of our bill. Devon got excited: ‘We really like her!’ He seemed very impressed that Rep. Lee was on board.

I remembered Devon wanted to get in the weeds with us on a level that the paid experts, such as Rep. Ted Deutch’s staff and CCL DC staff should be answering his questions.

John Van Leer and I left the meeting in total agreement that Rep. Frederica Wilson and her office, especially with Legislative Assistant Devon Wilcox, was amiable with our policy and bill. We agreed that Rep. Wilson was a great candidate to be a co-sponsor for our bill.

Brian Ettling and Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteer John Van Leer. Photo taken on June 11, 2019.

John and I both felt like ‘the iron was hot’ after our conversation with Devon Wilcox. We believed strongly that this should be on the radar of CCL Washington D.C. staff and Rep. Ted Deutch’s staff. We felt like CCL DC office and possibly Rep. Ted Deutch’s office should reach out to Devon and Rep. Frederica Wilson’s office soon.

Thus, John and I immediately walked across the hall to Rep. Ted Deutch’s office to see if we could meet with his Energy Aide, Josh. The receptionist tracked him down for us.

“We have a hot tip for you!” John Van Leer and I shared with Josh as we recalled what just happened in Rep. Fredericka Wilson’s office. This aide took notes and a keen interest from our meeting. We encouraged him to reach out to Devon as soon as possible to answer the questions that we could not.

During the lunch break at one of the Congressional cafeterias, I shared with Danny Richter, then the CCL Vice President of Government Affairs, what happened at the meeting in Rep. Wilson’s office. Danny seemed skeptical at first. He thought maybe I was exaggerating how well the meeting went. However, I did follow up with an email to Danny, including sending a screenshot of Devon’s business card.

One week later, Danny did respond to my email in a more receptive way:
“Thanks Brian,
appreciate you following up. We have a meeting with Josh scheduled to follow up on highlights from the conference, and this is on our list to discuss.
Good to see you again!
-Danny

After the June 2019 conference, I would check in with John Van Leer and other Florida CCL friends around once a month to see if they were having any success in persuading Rep. Frederica Wilson to co-sponsor the EICDA (also known then as H.R. 763). Nothing much seemed to be happening, but my Florida CCL friends appreciated when I would prod them now and then for any progress. The situation felt hopeful that if a volunteer or staff person from CCL could meet with Devin, I felt confident that we could close the deal for Rep. Wilson to co-sponsor our bill.

In January 2020, my friend, Greg Hamra, who lives in Miami, Florida, sent me an email that “Apparently Frederica Wilson is coming along.” He shared an email thread from another CCL volunteer that “This is exciting news that Rep. Wilson indicated that she is planning to co-sponsor H.R. 763”

Finally, on Febuary 24, 2020, I saw on the EICDA website that Rep. Frederica Wilson had officially co-sponsored the EICDA. It was such a joy to announce this publicly on my Facebook and Twitter. I shared that “I was (part of a team) lobby meeting with her DC office last June that helped persuade her to become a co-sponsor. This is one of my proudest moments as a #climate organizer!”

Screenshot photo of U.S. Representative Frederica Wilson taken from www.energyinnnovationact.org

Why am I telling you this now?

To this day, this is still one of my proudest moments as a climate organizer to play a role in persuading a member of Congress to co-sponsor a climate bill. In my numerous other lobby meetings, I had no success like that. It felt like in some small way I had made some kind of difference in the world for climate action.

I meant to blog about this as soon as it happened in 2020. At that time, I was super busy lobbying on the state level volunteering with Renew Oregon to push a cap and invest bill during the Oregon Legislative session. Unfortunately, during the first week of March, Republicans walked out of the Oregon Legislature to prevent a vote, which killed the bill. This left me feeling very deflated. Even more, the COVID pandemic shutdown happened in mid-March 2020. That sent me into a very deep depression since I was no longer able to meet with people for climate action, organize events, attend lobby meetings, give climate presentations, and stay busy traveling outside of the home to act on climate.

My depression during the pandemic was so consuming that I did not write another blog entry until December 30, 2021. I am now determined to go back to tell the high and low parts of my climate change organizing story that I may have missed writing about previously over the years.

Looking back now, I feel very blessed to be able to accomplish what I have been able to achieve as a climate organizer. Now, I can say that I am very proud to be part of a team that helped persuade a member of Congress, Rep. Frederica Wilson, to co-sponsor a climate change bill.

I hope you will get involved with the climate movement to accomplish something as big or surpass me to achieve something bigger. Hopefully, you will out do me. If you do, I will be the first to congratulate you. If we can compete against each other for bigger climate actions, this will be a competition where the planet and all of us wins.

For Climate Action, rising above my lowest moment in my climate organizing

Photo of Brian Ettling taken in March 2010.

The last several of years of organizing for climate action left me feeling depleted, empty, and unappreciated. It made me question if I have made any difference at all. Yes, the COVID pandemic that started in 2020 played a role, but it is not the major cause. I have felt like the climate movement has kept me at arm’s length, and it led me to feel burned out.

The story really goes back to November 2016 in Kansas City, Missouri. A climate group I had organized with for years, Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL), had a regional conference. During a brainstorming session during the conference, we determined that the best way to get more people involved was to have a state tour across Missouri. It would be composed of speaking events to expose the public to the organization and the climate solutions it advocated. 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 to complete this tour. That part didn’t bother me. I figured the money would work itself out, one way or another. As we kept brainstorming about this, they wouldn’t let this issue go. They kept trying to hammer how I was going to pay for this tour. I was annoyed that they weren’t supportive and trying to think outside the box how we were going to grow Citizens Climate Lobby and 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 had also 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 had been invited to be a guest speaker and lobby members of the Canadian parliament for a Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada conference. She sounded rather cool 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 didn’t have the words at the moment 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 am failing to see your logic how my own fund raising for a tour would compete with fund raising of the national organization.’

It made me see 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 learned for the first time being 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 was going to have to learn again and again.

The good news is that I didn’t let Madeleine stop me. I ended up giving two climate change speaking tours in Missouri. The first tour was in March 2017, when I spoke at a nature center to an audience of over 100 people in Jefferson City, Missouri. Two days later, I gave a talk to over 60 people at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. The second tour was in October 2018 when I spoke at my alma mater, William Jewell College in Kansas City, University of Missouri in Columbia MO, St. Louis University, and alma mater high school, Oakville Senior High in Oakville MO. No, I was never going to let Madeleine win. However, her phone call in November 2016 really left a bad taste in my mouth. It still hurts to this day to feel like my climate efforts were being squashed by a top leader in a big climate organization.

Brian Ettling giving a climate change talk at his alma mater William Jewell College in October 2018.

Since that November 2016 phone call with Madeleine, I had other big setbacks and disappointed as a climate organizer that left me feeling burned out when the COVID pandemic started in the United States in March 2020. I alluded to this at the beginning of this blog. I hope share more about my high and low moments taking climate action in my future writings. Except for this paragraph and the next two, I actually wrote all of this blog in November 2021, when I was going through another very low period in my climate organizing.

However, when I traveled in North Carolina in November 2022 to give two climate change talks, I felt like I was a happy warrior again. In my previous blog, My Climate Change Comedian Story, I wrote that “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.”

Not sure what I am going to do exactly in 2023, but I am excited to lobby, organize, give speeches, write and do whatever it takes for climate action in this new year.

As a side note, December 7, 2021, CCL sent out a press release that Madeleine Para was promoted as the new Executive Director of Citizens’ Climate Lobby.

Brian Ettling, a 1987 graduate of Oakville High School, speaking to students there on October 16, 2018.

For Climate Action, my Climate Change Comedian Story

Image of Brian Ettling taken in April 2016 at the Tennis Channel TV studio where Comedy Central’s Tosh.o is filmed in Los Angeles, California.

“Fine!” I responded with emphatic exasperation, “If I could be anything, I would like to be the ‘Climate Change Comedian’!”

My friend Naomi nearly fell out of her hear laughing and responded: “That great! I would like you to go home and grab that website domain right now!” I immediately went home after I wrapped up this conversation and did just that.

This event happened in Ashland, Oregon around in the fall of 2009. At that time, I was housesitting for a friend. I didn’t know what to do with my life. For seventeen years, I had worked as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon in the summers and Everglades National Park, Florida in the winter. I absolutely loved my job as an interpretation ranger at Crater Lake giving ranger talks, guided hikes, leading evening campfire talks, and narrating the boat tours. I loved every minute of standing in front of an audience, in these iconic places sharing about nature.

In 1998, I started giving ranger talks in Everglades National Park, Florida. 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 library to read all I the scientific books I could find on climate change.

I learned about 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 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 the year before 2008. Up until 2017, I still worked my summer job Crater Lake National Park. I was not ready to give up my summer job there because of the incredible beauty there and the enjoyment I had wearing the ranger uniform while engaging with park visitors. In the fall of 2009, I had too much free time housesitting. I moved there with no job at that time trying to ponder what to do next with this climate change mission for my life.

This led to my conversation with my friend Naomi in Ashland where she pressed me to answer her directly: “What do you really want to do with your life?”

My answer of “The Climate Change Comedian” had a lovely ring and synergy to this for me to latch onto. When I started giving ranger talks in the Everglades in 1998, I discovered that park visitors wanted some humor in ranger talks. They are on vacation, so they wanted to see that I was not taking myself too seriously.

I even created my jokes as a park ranger, such as:

“What did one continental plate say to the other after the Earthquake?”

Any guesses?

“It’s not my fault!”

Yes, I will admit that joke is a dad-joke groaner and that did not fit into any of my ranger talks. However, some of my fellow rangers thought that was hilarious. They even stole that joke from me to use it in their ranger talks.

At the same time, the science of climate change is deadly serious. It has the potential to kill millions of wildlife and people, as well as causing catastrophic harm to our planet. Thus, I had this calling to do something to educate people about the threat of climate change using the skills I acquired as a park ranger to educate, entertain, and inspire an audience. In late November 2009, my friend decided he did not want to spend the winter traveling in an RV, getting snowed out in places like Montana. He moved back to his house in Ashland. We quickly concluded that it was not going to work for me to live in his house.

Developing and Promoting myself as “The Climate Change Comedian”

I then quickly decided to move back to my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri to live with family for the winter. St. Louis has deep ties for me since it was the place I was born, went to high school, my parents and adult sisters lived there. It would be a nurturing place for me to be for those winter months. I only lived in Ashland, Oregon for a couple of months. However, I got exactly what I needed there. Advice that would change my life to be ‘The Climate Change Comedian.’

The other advice Naomi gave me in Ashland was to immediately start creating my own climate change presentation. As a park ranger that gave evening talks in the Everglades and Crater lake, I learned the skill of using Power Point to create engaging and educational presentations with some humor sprinkled in. In January and February 2010, I created my own climate change presentation called “Let’s Have Fun Getting Serious about Climate change.” I started practicing this talk with friends in 2010 and into 2011.

In St. Louis, a family friend named John helped me create The Climate Change Comedian website, www.climatechangecomedian.com, which is still an active website to this day. My friend John encouraged me to start writing blogs for that website, which I have done sporadically to this day.

I started giving climate change talks locally in the St. Louis area in the fall of 2011, but I felt I was not getting notoriety or making a name for myself nationally. To up my exposure, I created a YouTube video on January 10, 2014, with my then girlfriend and now spouse since 2015, Tanya Couture. The video was called, “The Climate Change Comedian and the Violinist.” I soon followed up this video on month later with a YouTube video with my mom, Fran Ettling, in February 2014, “Climate Change Comedian and the Pianist!” One year later, in March 2015, my mom, Tanya and I followed up that video with a YouTube video featuring my dad, LeRoy Ettling, “Climate Change Comedian and his Skeptical Dad!”

In these videos, I developed a tag line where I would promote myself as being very funny. In each of these successive videos, Tanya, my mom, or my dad would strongly respond, “You are not that funny!” I came up with that hook because I don’t consider myself to be that funny, even if I had given myself that title. In all honesty, I didn’t know what to do with that title of the “Climate Change Comedian” besides those videos and the climate change talks I gave around the St. Louis area.

Appearing on national TV Comedy Central as “The Climate Change Comedian”

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 1st. 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 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.

He then inquired: “Do you have any plans next week?”

“Well,” I responded, “My wife did plan a quick honeymoon trip. It was to stay at bed and breakfast that we had received as a wedding gift.”

“Where?” he asked with curiosity, probably thinking of the traditional honeymoon places of Paris, Hawaii, the Poconos, Niagara Falls, the Bahamas, etc.

“Augusta, Missouri!” I enthusiastically responded.

“Augusta, Missouri?” he seemed genuinely confused.

“Augusta, Missouri is wine country!” I said with much delight looking forward to this trip that my wife had been planning.

“Augusta, Missouri is wine country?” he replied with even more confusion, probably thinking about Napa Valley, California, and other more renowned wine regions.

“It’s wine country for Missouri,” I stated with as much local pride as a I could.
The staff person from Tosh.o then asked me. “We would like to fly your mom out to Los Angeles also. Can you ask her if she would be interested?”

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.”

Her mood then shifted to a sterner tone: “You better call Tanya and ask her immediately if this is ok. She has been planning this trip to Augusta for a while!”

I immediately called Tanya to share everything. She encouraged me and my Mom to jump at this opportunity. She then inquisitively asked: “Have you ever watched Tosh.o?”

I then lied and said, “Yes!”

All that I really knew about Tosh.o was on before the Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, that we faithfully watched at that time. However, that was all that I knew about the show.

Like any good wife when they know their husband is lying, Tanya wasn’t buying it.
She then pressed me, “Have you ever really watched this show?”

“No,” I sheepishly confessed.

“Can you please watch the TV show before agreeing to anything like this in the future?” she stated with an irritation in her voice.

Without mentioning this conversation to my contact at Tosh.o, the staff felt so bad about what they perceived as intruding on my honeymoon that they offered to fly Tanya out to LA also on that trip, as well as my mom and I.

Brian Ettling, his wife Tanya Couture, and his mom Fran Ettling at LAX in April 2016

The three of us had a blast flying out to Los Angeles over a 24-hour period for this trip. The host Daniel Tosh turned out to be very gracious to my mom, Tanya and me. After we had arrived to at the TV studio to meet with staff and prep with the make team before we went air, Daniel arrived about 30 minutes later. He came into the studio yelling, “I am sick, and it is the fault of one of your kids!”

It felt hilarious, like a scene out of a movie or TV show where the big star comes in to be filmed making a big entrance, while they are feeling hung over, with a big ego, and everyone must scramble to accommodate them. I was nervous about this TV taping, but his entrance set me at ease that he did not take himself too seriously. He was clearly indicating that he there to have some fun, even if he was not feeling well.

Something that was very apparent was that his staff was very loyal to him and really liked working for him. The driver who picked us up, dropped us off at a very bland exterior office warehouse area with a sign that said, “The Tennis Channel.” Honestly, until I read that sign, I had no idea that there was a Tennis Channel. Soon after we arrived, Daniel Tosh’s staff explained to us that he started out his show years ago using the TV studios of the Tennis Channel because it was the least expensive studios he could find for the show. He then kept using that studio to save on costs and to pay his staff well. This went further to help me feel like I was in good hands that day.

Soon after Daniel entered, he walked up to the green screen area where he would be interviewing me. I reached out to shake his hand, but he refused saying that he did not want to get me sick with the crud he had. He then advised me to just be myself and not try to be overly funny. He cautioned me to not be a clown on TV, unless I wanted to come across that way. He indicated that he intended to be the funny one. I had zero experience appearing on TV, so I appreciated all he did to make me feel comfortable when we taped the TV interview.

Our TV segment centered around poking fun at Fox News, conservatives, FOX News TV host Sean Hannity, as well as poking fun at me. After the TV interview, Daniel and some of the writers shared with me how they all had conservative, Fox News watching, Rush Limbaugh listening, Dads like mine. Thus, it seemed like all of us were working out our “Daddy issues” with this TV comedy sketch that day.

After we wrapped up the taping, the crew invited us to join them for lunch where they had a big spread catered Cuban food. I had not seen Cuban food since I had worked in the Everglades nearly ten years earlier and I was surprised to see it in LA. Their response was “Of course you can get Cuban food here! It’s LA! You can get everything here!”

As we were getting ready to leave, Daniel Tosh came over to graciously say goodbye to us. He seemed pleased how well the TV taping went with my mom and me. He did not shake hands with us since he did not want to get us sick, but he did allow us to get a picture of him and me to mark the occasion.

Oh, and the good news was that I did not catch any cold, flu, illness, or crud that he had at that time!

As we said goodbye, a driver came to pick us up. He offered to drop us off at the airport or anywhere we wanted in LA. The catch was that if he dropped us off anywhere other than the airport, we would then have to find our own way back to the airport. We asked to be dropped off at the house of my dad’s cousin in Hawthorne, which is just minutes from LAX. During this trip, my mom was in touch with my Dad’s cousin. She was thrilled to see us and to spend a couple of hours with her at her home before she drove us to the airport.

At the airport, my mom joked with some random people that she had joined Tanya and me for our honeymoon trip. All three of us thought it was funny. Tanya and I still went to Augusta, Missouri, later that week to enjoy a brief honeymoon trip. Yes, the wine was great there! There was no traffic on the streets of Augusta. Tanya and I walked down the middle of the streets in Augusta since it was so peaceful there. It was world of difference from LA!

At the studio, Tosh’s staff informed us that the segment that we taped would probably air sometime in late July or early August. For months, Tanya, my mom and me were very nervous how the show could be edited in such a way that we could end up looking very bad. The show finally aired on the Comedy Channel on August 2, 2016, Climate Change Comedian – Web Redemption Tosh.o

The impact of my appearance on Comedy Central TV’s Tosh.o

When the show aired, I was working at Crater Lake. For the park ranger staff, every Tuesday evening The Crater Lake Science and Learning Center scheduled a “Casual Conversations” lecture with a visiting park research scientist or Crater Lake staff researcher. These events were a great way to mingle with park staff and outside researchers, as well as learn about their findings. On that evening, I did not attend since I was nervously anxious to see how my TV appearance. Even more, I learned afterwards that hardly anyone working in the park attended because they were at home to see me on TV.

It aired at 7 pm Pacific time and 9 pm Central time, where my Mom and Tanya saw it in St. Louis. My mom and Tanya each called me to say how relieved they were that the show turned out well and how proud they were of me. We were all so excited we got to experience the taping in LA together. The humor on Tosh.o was way to raunchy and tasteless for my mom, Tanya and me. We would joke that we felt like we had cleaned up the show for a few minutes with our segment. For months afterwards, my mom would walk up to young people to ask them: “Have you ever seen Tosh.o on Comedy Central? My son and I were on that show!” The young people she encountered and older friends of my mom, including her dentist, were very surprised to see her on Tosh.o. That was amazed me because her appearance on the show was very brief.

Screenshot image of Fran Ettling and Brian Ettling on a repeat airing of their original appearance on Tosh.o on August 2, 2016. Image shot by high school friend Randy R. Eichholz on January 24, 2017.

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 that would tag me on Facebook that they had seen 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.

My other media appearances as “The Climate Change Comedian”

As the Climate Change Comedian, I did not know how I would top that appearance on the show, nor did I have ambition to top it. That Tosh.o appearance and that title did feel like it opened some doors for me. Two years later, I was honored to appear on my friend Peterson Toscano’s podcast, Citizens’ Climate Radio, on the May 29, 2018, episode, “Climate Comedy.” Peterson is a great comic performance artist. If you listen to the podcast, it felt we had a great rapport in this interview with our love of comedy. Near the end of our interview, Peterson loved the quote I shared from climate speaker Dan Miller in his 2014 TED talk: “Society conspires to suppress the discussion of climate change. As someone who talks about climate change a lot, I can vouch for this. For me, talking about climate change (can feel) like farting at a cocktail party.”

On March 4, 2020, Puppet comedian Chad Bird interviewed me for the last 18 minutes of the Climate Pod. At that time, I was primarily lobbying as a volunteer for Renew Oregon to urge legislators to pass a state level cap and invest bill to reduce the threat of climate change. Chad Bird asked me primarily about how Oregon Democratic legislators during that 2020 session could not pass strong climate change legislation. The bill failed because of an absurd GOP walkout. As a climate organizer and wannabe comedian (I agree with my critics that I am not that funny) for over a decade, I had many highlights, such as meeting and having a conversation with former Vice President Al Gore. He’s at the top of my list. After that, I would say that I really enjoyed my interaction with Chad Bird.

Composite image of Chad Bird with Brian Ettling. Image source: Brian Ettling

Even more, Tosh.o invited me to be back on this show on November 10, 2020. It was a fun experience to return to the show. With the COVID pandemic still raging, my appearance was on Zoom this time. It was great to interact with Daniel Tosh again. As they say in the movies, ‘The sequel was not as good as the original.’ Tosh was starting to wrap up his series on Comedy Central. I appeared as part of a panel of four previous guests he had on the show. With all the quick editing of the comments from each of the panelists, none of the comments I made about climate change made it into the broadcast. Thus, it felt like a bit of a letdown compared to the first appearance in 2016. At the same time, it was good to get paid, have fun on TV and brought back great memories of my first appearance where I did get to chat about climate change.

Even if my second appearance on Tosh.o did not feel as good as the original, it was one of my highlights of the pandemic. I didn’t feel like laughing much when COVID was raging due to the reports of all the people dying, the economic downturn, President Donald Trump pathetic response including digesting bleach, and for all the lives it disrupted, including mine. I felt a lot of guilt and depression because I did have my health, my wife Tanya, and a safe place to live. So many people struggled with the illness and way too many families lost loved ones. I strictly adhered to the social distancing and staying at home. At the same time, the isolation took a huge psychological toll because I am a people person who loves to be around people to chat, network, organize and attend meetings for climate action.

Screenshot image of Brian Ettling as part of a panel on TV Comedy Central’s Tosh.o on November 10, 2020. Photo taken by Lisa Hunt, Brian’s older sister.

The COVID Pandemic killed my enthusiasm for Climate Change Comedy

Before the pandemic, I was always on the go attending meetings, giving climate change talks in the Portland OR area, meeting up with fellow organizers and friends, carpooling to the Oregon Capitol in Salem to lobby legislators, testifying and attending legislative committee meetings at the Capitol, flying to Washington D.C. twice a year to attend Congressional lobby meetings, participating as a mentor and speak speaker at Climate Reality Project Trainings, traveling to other states to give climate change presentations, and traveling back to St. Louis once or twice a year to see family and give climate change talks there. It was almost non-stop climate action where I was gone from home during the day or evenings often. When the pandemic happened, it all went away. I did not know what to do with myself. With the heaviness of the pandemic hanging over everything, I just did not feel motivated to write or do anything, especially climate comedy.

To find a way forward, I drew upon my experience lobbying and meeting with state legislators to urge them to pass climate legislation. During the summer of 2020, I started meeting by Zoom and phone with Oregon Legislators that I had met during my lobbying for the cap and invest bills in 2019 and 2020. As a Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) volunteer, I urged them to endorse the federal carbon pricing bill supported by CCL, The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (EICDA).

September 17, 2020, I met with Rep. Tiffiny Mitchell to ask her to endorse the EICDA. In addition to her endorsement, Tiffiny asked if she could introduce a statewide resolution supporting the bill. The resolution was introduced on the Senate floor February 4, 2021, when it officially became known as Senate Joint Memorial 5 or SJM 5. One year ago in January 2022, I detailed this experience in a blog I wrote, I led the effort for Oregon Senate to pass a Climate Resolution.

One of the biggest thrills of my life happened when SJM 5 passed the Oregon Senate on April 7th by a vote of 23 to 5, with 6 Republican Senators, half of the Oregon Republican Senate caucus, joined with all the Democratic Senators present to vote to support SJM 5. When SJM 5 moved on to the Oregon House that spring, it ended up with 30 House members, including 7 Republicans, endorsing SJM 5. Sadly, SJM 5 died towards the end of the legislation session when the House Democratic Leadership decided not to bring it up for a vote.

The resolution falling short was something I was prepared could happen. During the previous two legislative sessions, I had lobbied hard with Renew Oregon in their efforts to push the Oregon Legislature to pass carbon pricing legislation. In the 2019 and 2020 legislative sessions, the Democrats had the votes to pass the bills. Unfortunately, the Republicans would just flee the state to deny a quorum for a floor vote, which killed both bills. I had deep emotional scars from those experiences to know that you can never count on legislation to pass until it does.

The worst part of this experience was the bitterness by the core CCL volunteers who worked most closely we me. With the bill failing short, they directed their anger at the state legislators and me. They took actions that I felt like were burning bridges with the legislators in their last-minute attempt to pressure them to pass the resolution. I wanted no part of their actions, which damaged our relationships. This situation left me feeling burned out as a climate organizer with no energy for climate comedy.

The only joke I could muster at that time was to say: “I just want to go to grad school for organizing to learn how to ‘stand down’ upset fellow organizers once a bill we have worked on for many months fails.”

That summer and fall, I wrote extensively about my frustration over the years as a climate organizer to see if I could possibly turn that into a book someday. In the middle of writing that story in September 2021, I got a Facebook message from my Climate Reality friend Raj, who lives in India. He wrote:

“Hey Brian, how are you? A friend is organizing an event using comedy and climate change around COP26. I mentioned you and she wanted to connect. Do leave your email if you are interested.”

I did reply with my email and received an email from another climate organizer. He wrote that he was part of a group organizing actions for the United Nations COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland. They envisioned calling it “UNITED COMEDIANS FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE” / bringing laughter to science on a serious note!”

I admired their energy and enthusiasm to bring humor to that conference that held in November 2021. However, I politely declined writing, “To be honest, I have not felt that funny since then, especially with the pandemic.”

They sent me a couple of emails to try to coax me to join them, but my heart was just not into it at the time. I had no energy for climate organizing in the remaining months of 2021. I had zero interest in climate change comedy at that time.

Getting my groove back as “The Climate Change Comedian”

In addition to the dreary shadow coming out of the COVID pandemic and falling short with the 2021 Oregon SJM 5 climate resolution where I was the lead organizer, watching on TV the events of the insurrection of the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021, shook me to the core. After that happened, I was determined to do all I could in 2022 to organize and work on Democratic campaigns. It felt vital for me to work for candidates that would shore up our democracy, abortion rights, and would prioritize climate legislation.

In March 2022, my Climate Reality friend Raz Mason invited me to work on her Oregon Senate campaign as “The Volunteer Coordinator.” I relished this role to deliver lawn signs, recruit volunteers, organize fundraising house parties, call friends to contribute to her campaign, and knock on doors for the Senate district where Raz was running on the southeast exurbs of Portland, Oregon. I worked all spring and summer in this role until Raz became worried about her campaign funds running too low to pay me.

In September, Raz encouraged me to apply to be become a full-time paid canvasser for the East County Rising (ECR) community organization. ECR is a social justice organization that focuses on getting out the vote to elect progressive Democratic local candidates for the eastern part of the Portland metro area. I canvassed full time for ECR, knocking on thousands of doors in the final two months of the campaign, up until the November 8th election.

Self photo of Brian Ettling canvassing for East County Rising endorsed candidates in Gresham, Oregon (part of the Portland metro area) on September 21, 2022.

While I exclusively focused for most of 2022 on organizing for Democratic candidates who would be strong advocates for democracy, a woman’s right to choose and climate action, I got an email from Robin Riddlebarger, Park Superintendent of Hanging Rock State Park, North Carolina 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’re thinking about options. 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 and virtual 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 and shared my speaking fee. I made it clear that they would have to reimburse my airline expense. This would be in addition to my speaking fee, which was not going to be cheap since they would be flying me from Portland, Oregon to North Carolina. 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. The four of us 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. I always say I don’t know if the park is my husband or my child but it’s something more than a job. 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 really touched my heart. As a professional speaker that loved to entertain, educate and inspire audiences, this looked like a challenge I was definitely up to do. It seemed like a great fit for me. I wanted to give a presentation that could provide hopefully some healing for them while entertaining and inspiring them. I figured I was their ideal person for this.

Robin and I kept in touch over the summer and fall to work out the logistics. The North Carolina State Parks Superintendents Conference was scheduled for November 14-16. The timing was perfect. It would be two weeks after the election, when my temporary canvassing job would be completed with ECR. By late in the election season, I was feeling worn down by canvassing all summer and into the fall with the heat, rain, smoke, aggressive dogs, and rude people I would encounter daily who would slam their door in my face.

This would be a much-needed working vacation. I had only been to North Carolina one previous time. This would be a new state for me to give a climate change talk. Before the pandemic, I had given climate change talks in 11 U.S. states, plus Washington D.C. and Ottawa, Canada. I loved giving climate change talks in new states! In October, I started preparing my slides for the presentation. Since I worked in the national parks for 25 years, it felt like this was an audience where I could speak their language of loving their park job while hating the bureaucratic system that manages the parks.

The title of this presentation was “Our Parks: Places of fun, healing, and inspiration to change the world.” I gave this talk at the beginning of the conference at the Haw River State Park Conference Center to about 44 North Carolina state park superintendents on November 14, 2022. This was my first in person talk in almost three years since I gave my last presentation at a public community Meeting in Portland, Oregon on March 2, 2020. The superintendents laughed at some of my jokes, but my timing was rusty since I had not performed live in years.

Brian Ettling speaking to 44 North Carolina state park superintendents at Haw River State Park Conference Center on November 14, 2022.

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 practiced my talk for Tanya before leaving for North Carolina, she strongly advised me to not use that joke because it might hurt the feelings of HR staff who love their presentations about policies. However, when I shared Robin’s email in my talk, the HR line received a big laugh from the audience. The organizers of this conference joked about that line afterwards and 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.”

Self photo of Brian Ettling getting ready to give a climate change talk to 56 middle & high school students in Ocracoke, North Carolina on November 18, 2022.

Why did I share this very long story with you?

First, I enrolled in a “Writing Your Story” continuing adult education class at my local community college that starts today.

Last week, the instructor left a voice message on my phone to welcome me to the class. She offered that I was more than welcome to bring some of my writing to read to class if it is no longer than 5 minutes.

I started writing a brief account of my story of “The Climate Change Comedian.” As I began writing the story, I realized I had never written the full story. Once I start writing, I have a hard time stopping. Brevity has never been my strong point.

As French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote in his Lettres Provinciales,
“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

Bottom line: I need a really good editor!

For me, it is great to have a full account of this part of my story as I hope to turn my life story into a published book someday. Even more, if life does not give me an opportunity to write that book, I hope someone would be able to use my writings to turn it into a written biography about me.

This class starts today. This week, I decided to write much more condensed version for the class. I then broke it up into two parts since I will only have about 5 minutes to share my story. Here for my blog, it is great to have a longer and more in depth version to share.

Second, While the threat of climate change is deadly serious and potentially catastrophic, it is vital that we find a way to have fun communicating about it.

Many people think of the topic of climate change as depressing, demoralizing, and even fatalistic. ‘Yeah, global warming is bad, but there’s nothing I can do about it,’ someone might say.

I always hope to convey that climate change is very serious, but we can’t take ourselves too seriously. Climate scientists still think there are actions we can take to lessen the threat. If we have hope, we have a chance. Hope can lead to a sense of humor. A sense of humor often has a key ingredient of creativity. Creativity plus fun can provide the inspiration to take the needed actions to reduce the threat of climate change.

I hope to write a future blog with the title “For effective Climate Action, Have Fun!”

I was long overdue writing the full story how I became “The Climate Change Comedian.” I hope my story will inspire you to have fun saving the planet. Even more, I hope my story will inspire you to book me as a guest speaker for your group that is entertaining, educational, and inspiring as “The Climate Change Comedian.”

Brian Ettling getting ready to give a climate change talk at the Haw River State Park Conference Center on November, 14, 2022. Image source: Brian Ettling

For Climate Action, stop shaming fellow climate advocates

In any battle or war, nothing can be more demoralizing than taking friendly fire from your fellow allies. As a climate organizer, I consider climate shaming (criticizing a fellow climate activist for not taking actions such as owning an electric car, installing solar panels, going vegan/vegetarian, flying in an airplane, having children, etc) very infuriating. I have been on the brunt end of this several times over the years and I have no patience for it now. For climate advocates, it is time to stop shaming our fellow climate advocates NOW.

It started the day after Christmas, December 26th, when I posted on Facebook: “For #ClimateAction, 7 years ago today, (my wife) Tanya and I test drove a Tesla to learn more about Electric Vehicles. I am still a huge fan of EVs and Teslas, but not of their CEO, Elon Musk.” The picture and the original post popped up on my Facebook memories. The original post from seven years ago: “Tanya and I test drove a Testa, a 100% electric car today. It was a lot of fun. I hope to blog more about the experience soon.” Yes, blog about it soon afterwards, I did. Just four days later, December 30, 2015, I blogged, With climate change action, you can receive far more than you can seek.

My wife Tanya and I love EVs (Electric Vehicles). With my climate organizing, for years I have dreamed about owning a car that is not dependent upon fossil fuels/gasoline for fuel and emits carbon dioxide from the tail pipe that contributes to climate change. Tanya and I were newly weds, getting married the month before, in November 2015. This was a very sweet gesture for her to book a free appointment for us to test drive a Tesla. Even more, the cost was free. Thus, I highly recommend everyone go for a test drive of an EV so they can see how quiet, quick and enjoyable they are to drive.

Brian Ettling and Tanya Couture test driving a Tesla Model S on December 26, 2015.

Not long after I posted this 7th anniversary of our Tesla test drive, my mother-in-law Nancy commented in jest: “It suits you!!!” I responded: “Yes, Nancy…Tanya and I dream of having a nice electric car someday. So, yes, it does suit me. My green Honda Civic is still going strong that is almost 21 years old. I have also heard that one of the greenest things you can do is to keep your present car running as long as you can. We also have the problem of living in an apartment without the ability to charge an electric vehicle yet.”

Just a few hours later, this was where the ugly monster of carbon shaming reared its head. A friend named David wrote: ‘Brian Ettling: just remember that “green” Civic at say 40 miles/gal Is putting out .6lbs CO2 per mile or nearly 3X that of a Tesla on the Oregon grid.’ Ouch!

I had reached my limit with what I perceived as carbon shaming over the years, so I was not going to let that comment slide. Years later, someone had shamed me on Facebook because my wife and I had thought about having kids. This person was very worried about over population, fair enough. So am I. However, this is a sensitive subject for my wife and I since we met later in life. As it turned out, too late to have kids. We would have loved to the opportunity to create our own children. This person would not listen to my reasoning and kept wanting to lecture me how having children is bad with overpopulation. That conversation left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Sadly, I have encountered other carbon shaming over the years from not buying an EV yet, flying on airplanes to attend climate conferences, etc. Apparently, I am not the only climate advocate on the receiving end. Climate scientist Dr. Katherine Hayhoe tried to address some of the biggest topics of climate shaming in her 2018 Global Weirding video, ‘The easiest ways to fix climate change is population control and going vegan – right?’ One year later, climate scientist Dr. Michael E. Mann addressed these same concerns in a 2019 USA Today opinion commentary he co-wrote fellow Penn State Professor Jonathan Brockopp, You can’t save the climate by going vegan. Corporate polluters must be held accountable. Their op-ed stated: “Many individual actions to slow climate change are worth taking. But they distract from the systemic changes that are needed to avert this crisis.” Taking even more direct aim at carbon shaming, they wrote: “a focus on personal action can divide us, with those living virtuously distancing themselves from those living ‘in sin.'”

In 2021, Dr. Mann wrote his most recent book, The New Climate War: The fight to take back our planet. In chapter 4 of this book, Dr. Mann devotes pages to the futility of carbon shaming for those who are not vegan, still flying, having children, etc. Dr. Mann frequently points out that he gets his ‘electricity from renewables, has one child, drives a hybrid, and does not eat meat.’ However, that has not been enough for the purists criticizing him. It’s a “purity test” where no one, not even the top climate scientists in the world can measure up. It’s incredibly unproductive for decarbonizing the U.S. and global economy to reduce the threat of climate change. In 2022, I wrote blog to review of The New Climate War when the paperback edition was released in the spring. In my blog, Dr. Michael E. Mann says: ‘We need urgency & agency to solve the Climate Crisis’, I applauded Dr. Mann devoted for drawing attention to the harm of shaming in the climate movement. I stand with Dr. Mann, Dr. Katherine Hayhoe and others denouncing carbon shaming. It must end now if we are serious about fully addressing the climate crisis.

Image given by permission from Dr. Michael E. Mann

With my deep animosity when I see carbon shaming, I posted this response to my friend David on Facebook: “Hey David! Careful what you say there, buddy. I am sensing some ‘carbon shaming,’ which I don’t really appreciate. Unfortunately, I live in the U.S, where sadly, most places, you need a car to get around. When I bought my “green” Honda Civic almost 21 years ago, it was the most fuel efficient economical car I could afford then. If you spend much time with me, you would know that I don’t like to drive and I use public transit as much as possible. I live in Portland, Oregon, which does have great public transit and I do use it as often as possible. You don’t need to remind me how much CO2 my car emits. As a climate organizer, I find that to be rather insulting. If you are reading this post, I will notice that I love EVs and want to own one. However, I can’t afford one right now. Even more, I live in an apartment complex with no access to charging. I keep my car running in top condition to get the best mileage and my wife depends upon this car for work. When I do eventually have to replace my “green” Honda Civic, I hope to get an EV. Instead of wagging you finger at me, I wish you would spend more time lobbying and engaging your elected officials for more mass transit, policies to incentivize charging outlets for apartment owners, more charging stations, and more affordable EVs.”

I then shared a photo of me from 2019 using public transit of me sitting on board the MAX light rail commuter train, taken in October 2019.

David replied: “ah Brian I DO lobby (CCL – Citizens’ Climate Lobby) and write Congress often and even write a monthly opinion column in the local paper. But I find those fully walking the talk to be most convincing. Yes you are doing many good things and have a plan to do more in the future. That is all good. But if we who are truly concerned about climate change do not ourselves change how could we expect others to change?”

My response: “David: I wish you could shadow me for a day in Portland OR because I do take public transportation a lot. To the extent that I feel very spoiled living in Portland and I will probably feel frustrated moving to another city where the public transit is not as good, unless I move to NYC, Washington D.C, Vancouver B.C, Boston, or a couple of other North American cities with amazing public transit. I always try to take public transit when I attend climate organizing meetings in Portland, meeting up with friends, going to see movies, going downtown, to the airport, various jobs I have held, or even to some of the trails that my wife and I enjoy hiking. As a matter of fact, I don’t think my car would have lasted this long if I would have been using it to run around for all of these short trips. Even more, my wife needs this car for work. My wife has dutifully taken buses and ridden a bike to work when I absolutely needed the car for work or my organizing. Sadly, we live in a part of Portland that is not bike friendly, even though we live in a city that is very bike friendly overall. If I had a huge Cadillac or Hummer that I was constantly driving all over the place, then you could call me out for not “walking the talk.” However, I wish you could shadow me to see how often I use public transit, such as what I did this evening to meet up with a friend.”

At this point, my friend Claire stepped in to comment: “This conversation is utterly frustrating.

I am walking the walk in every way I can. I’ve a long climate mitigation to do list I made nearly a decade ago and just about everything is done on it. One thing after another done. Electric cars, heat pumps, superinsulation, heat pump hot water heater, solar panels, electric lawnmower, recycle, reuse, reduce…I do everything I can think of right down to using a bidet instead of toilet paper.

And you know what? All those actions eliminate a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the US emissions. Heck, they eliminate a fraction of my own footprint when you consider the roads I drive on and the public buildings I frequent.

Our personal actions are critical because they are political speech. They convey the depth of our convictions and our commitment. They scream to others how much this matters.

But without public policy changes, these are a drop in the bucket.

And here’s the thing, being able to afford all the stuff I’ve done is a privilege. I’m really fortunate.

What is really great is the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law. Those will make these actions more affordable and accessible to more folks. But even that spreads the incentives over a span of a decade.

There should be zero shame in our climate efforts. There should be a boatload of making electrification and decarbonization affordable and the most accessible option.

Climate action is not penance. It must not be made into penance. It has to be integral to mainstream life.

In the meantime, each of us must find the things we can do (lobby, protest, drive electric, superinsulate our home, frequent businesses that do the same, buy solar, eliminate meat, reuse grocery bags…) and push for support for the things on that list that we cannot do.

Because our system is designed to make this hard. Impossible for many.

Stop climate-shaming people.

Brian Ettling is a dedicated climate activist finding every avenue where his skills and passion can work. We would be very fortunate if everyone was doing just that.”

The list my friend Claire Cohen-Norris created in January 2019 to reduce her carbon footprint

At this point, I admired David for conceding in this discussion and trying to seek common ground. He wrote: “Claire: There is no shaming. I was just point out a fact that EV’s do have a much lower carbon footprint than burning gas. That is ALL I said. Sorry as I did not mean to hit such a sore spot. I respect Brian and I do appreciate what he does do.”

Claire had more to say in her exchange with David that you can find in comments on this Facebook post from December 26, 2022.

At this point, I decided it was good for me to extend an olive branch to David. I admired his passion as a climate advocate with his comments on my wall, even if I thought he was going a bit too far. I wrote back to him: “Thank you for your comments, David. I absolutely know that EVs have a much lower carbon footprint than burning gas. Don’t get me wrong, I love EVs. I have EV envy when I see friends and strangers drive theirs down the street. This green Honda Civic is the first car I ever owned and I do want to see how long it will last. At the same time, it won’t last forever. It will be 21 years old in February. At some point, it will wear out. When it does, my wife and I hope to get an EV or EV hybrid that we can afford. Until then, I will continue to be using public transit as much as I can, getting our bike fixed up, and keeping this car running in the best shape possible.”

Furthermore, I appreciated Claire’s input and positive support of my climate organizing on this chat thread. Thus, I wanted to respond to her. Thus, I posted: “

Thank you so much for your comments Claire Cohen-Norris because I really do appreciate all that you do and always learn from your comments. You have been a model climate advocate for me with getting electric cars, heat pumps, super insulation, solar panels, electric lawnmower, recycle, reuse, reduce, etc. You amaze me and I say that with all sincerity.

Claire’s 2022 EUV (Electric Utility Vehicle) Chevy Bolt.

I am sorry if this conversation frustrated you because I do love a good debate now and then. I don’t mind people questioning me, as long as they know that on my wall, I am going to push back when I feel like they might have gone too far. Yes, I will admit that I am a sensitive person and sometimes this gets me into trouble when I should let more things slide.

At the same time, I am sensitive when I feel there’s any kind of shaming among fellow climate advocates. 11 years ago, a fellow climate advocate tried to shame me for flying to San Francisco to at attend the American Geophysical Union Conference to learn what I could from the world’s top climate scientists about climate change. A few months later I flew to Washington D.C. and New York City to look into grad schools to be a better climate advocate. This person did not realize that I had sometimes gone through many years of not flying to do these actions to further myself as a climate advocate. This person did not make a good case for himself because he said that he refused to fly or travel to see his grandchildren. Thus, he had not seen them in years. It is sad if we become too virtuous in our climate actions that we harm relationships with our families and love ones.

My wife and I met in our 40s. We would have loved to have children, but it just did not work out. However, I still had more than one climate advocate shame me at even the thought of having children. That was very painful for me to be shamed that way. Thus, I am sensitive to the potential of shaming.

My thought is that if one wants to go vegan or vegetarian to “save the planet,” go for it! Even more, I encourage them if they can afford to have their friends and family over now and then and cook the most tasty vegan/vegetarian food they can . Make that food so good that they will be dying for the recipes. One of my all time favorite stories is about Linda McCartney (Paul’s wife). In the 1990s before she passed away, a couple of her vegetarian cookbooks were published. She had some people come up to her to say, ‘You know that people are stealing your recipes and claiming them as their own.’ Her response: ‘Good! Now I can retire!’

As advocates we should be doing what we can and having fun doing it that people will want to steal our ideas and actions.

Having said that, I can and should do better. Last week, the weather got unseasonably cold in Portland OR, down to the 20s. That’s cold for here, but laughable if you are from upstate NY and many places in the U.S. As a result of this cold, our apartment complex asked us to keep our heat on all night, open our kitchen & bathroom cabinets underneath the sinks, and let the water drip all night so that our pipes would not freeze. We dutifully did this to protect our pipes, but this was the antithesis of everything I try to do as a climate advocate. Even more, I am going to dread the heating bill when it comes. Then I remembered that I was given a weatherization kit from a local community organization 5 years ago that had been gathering dust. I broke out the kit, but I am not good at ‘fix it/carpentry/home repair’ stuff. Thus, I tucked it back in the bag and sheepishly put it back in the corner. Even worse, I had recently borrowed an electric drill from a friend to try to buff the UV haze off one of my car headlights, which I was able to fix. Thus, I do have potential here. I think my solution is that I am going to have to invite a fellow climate advocate friend over, the same one whom I borrowed the drill, to finally weatherize my apartment.

On October 30, 2022, I (Brian Ettling) successfully changed the lightbulb on my 2002 Honda Civic. It shows I have potential to possibly fix things and weatherize my apartment.

The point I am trying to get to is that the airlines do give us the best advice on all of this: ‘In case of an emergency, put your oxygen mask on first. THEN assist your children or those needing help around you.’

Thus, if a climate advocate has the means, yes, please do buy an EV, get solar panels, an electric heat pump, etc. However, their job is not done. THEN they have to help their neighbors to get these products also by publicly lobbying and advocating them to be as affordable as possible. They should do these things in a spirt of fun and engage their neighbors when they have questions about it so that their neighbors will then want to ‘Keep up with the Jones’ in the best way.

I always enjoy our conversations and I learn so much from you. I hope I get a chance to meet you and (your partner, who am I also Facebook friends) someday.”

For me, a good conversation is about learning from others, testing previous held ideas, gaining new knowledge, shedding incorrect assumptions, standing firm on principles, and finding common ground so that everyone feels like they gained from the experience. While I felt strongly that David veered into carbon shaming me with his comments, I still felt like David and Claire challenged and inspired me to be a better climate organizer.

Now I just have to reach out to my friend to see if he will help me with my weatherization for my apartment. Stay tuned!

Brian Ettling taking Amtrak to give a climate change talk at the October 2019 National Association of Park Rangers Conference in Everett, Washington. Brian loves traveling by trains to go “car free.”

Dr. Michael E. Mann says: ‘We need urgency & agency to solve the Climate Crisis’

Image used by permission by Dr. Michael Mann

Looking to read a good book for what you can do for the problem and solutions to climate change? I highly recommend climate scientist Dr. Michael E. Mann’s 2021 book (soon to be a paperback edition coming out on May 10, 2022), The New Climate War: The fight to take back our planet.

Dr. Michael E. Mann is the Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State University. He is also the director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC). In Fall 2022, he will become Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication.

As you read this book, you will be able to dig deeper into Dr. Mann’s message that ‘We need urgency and agency to solve the climate crisis.’

My Admiration for climate scientist Dr. Michael E. Mann goes back many years

For over a decade, I have been reading Dr. Mann’s books and following his appearances the media. As a seasonal park ranger in Everglades National Park, Florida in the 2000s, I took an interest in organizing and giving public presentations in climate change as far back as 2008. To prepare for my own climate change presentations in 2010, I read Dr. Mann’s book, that he co-wrote with University of Pennsylvania Professor of Geosciences Lee R. Kump, Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming, The illustrated guide to the findings of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). I mentioned his famous Hockey Stick Graph in the very my very first powerpoint that I created to share with friends in 2020, “Let’s Have Fun Getting Serious about Resolving Climate Change.”

Dr. Michael Mann’s 2008 book.
Image source: michaelmann.net/books/dire-predictions

In February 2011, I joined my local Toastmasters public speaking support group in my hometown of St. Louis MO to be a better public speaker for my climate change advocacy. About one third of this group were climate change deniers or doubtful of the science of climate change. On February 16th, I gave my “icebreaker” speech where I shared that I joined Toastmasters to be a more effective climate change communicator. Afterwards, one of the climate denier club members immediately challenged me with a question. She wanted me to address in a speech this question: ‘What is the exact evidence that scientists know that humans are causing global warming?’

Her question seemed like a fun challenge for me to learn what is this key bit of evidence that we can point that humans, not natural causes, are the primary cause for present day climate change. The best source I could find then was was the text and graphs from Dr. Mann’s book, Dire Predictions on pages 34-35, with the heading, “Couldn’t the increase in atmospheric CO2 be the result of natural cycles?”

With so many climate deniers and doubters in this Toastmaster audience, plus climate change considered to be a dour subject by others undecided members, I knew this was going to be a heavy and awkward experience to give this speech. It felt like it was going to be as about awkward as farting or passing gas at a cocktail party. Thus, I decided to acknowledge the obvious and call my speech I AM GOING TO DROP A STINK BOMB ON YOU!

Unlike many other speeches, I was not voted Best Speaker for this speech when I gave it on April 13, 2011. However, I was grateful this climate denier Toastmaster challenged me with that question. With reading Dr. Mann’s book, it helped cement in my mind how we knew a key bit of evidence that points to humans as the major influence on present day climate change.

As my interest in communicating and organizing in climate change became more of a passion in 2011, a friend in Washington D.C. urged me to attend the AGU (American Geophysical Union) Conference in San Francisco CA in December 2011. Many of the top climate scientists and science communicators would be giving presentations on the science of climate change and science of communicating about climate change. Thus, I made arrangements to crash on a friend’s couch in San Francisco so I had a place to stay while attending the conference. It turned out to be very valuable advice for my friend to push me to attend AGU. I attended so many outstanding climate change presentations and had a chance to meet so many renowned climate scientists and communicators.

Scott Mandia, professor of Earth and space sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York, and Brian Ettling. Scott graciously introduced Brian to Dr. Michael Mann at the 2011 AGU conference.

During the first morning of AGU, I ran into a friend, Scott Mandia, professor of Earth and space sciences and assistant chair of the Physical Sciences Department at Suffolk County Community College, New York. He encouraged me to follow him around to hang out for a few minutes before we headed to attend a lecture. As we walked into one of the conference rooms, I saw Professor Mandia walk right up to Dr. Michael E. Mann. I was stunned to see this well known climate scientist in person. Scott introduced me to Dr. Mann. I was tongue tied and star struck to be introduced to him on the spot. Dr. Mann was minutes away from giving his presentation, so I did not want to be a any kind of distraction. I enjoyed his talk. I wish I would have brought my copy of his Dire Predictions book for him to sign after his talk.

In email exchange over a year ago, Dr. Mann responded that he did remember meeting me a number of years ago and he enjoyed it! Very kind of him to say that. I felt more like an interloper at AGU just trying to soak up all the information on climate that I could. I was not presenting a published paper, a ground breaking study, or findings from research, nor was I known in the climate community. I had just started giving my climate change evening program at Crater Lake National Park in August 2011. Just two weeks earlier, I gave a speech to my Toastmasters group about individual climate change solutions, called ‘It is Easy to Be Green’. I was voted as Best Speaker by my fellow Toastmasters for that speech. None of these personal accomplishments were going to turn heads at AGU, nor should they compared to excellent science presentations from the distinguished scientists at this conference, such as Dr. Mann. It is an honor that Dr. Mann might just remember me from our 2011 very brief introduction.

Dr. Michael Mann’s 2013 book. Image source: michaelmann.net/books/hockey-stick


Just a few month later, in March 2012, I blogged a review of his 2012 book, Dr. Michael E. Mann’s Hockey Stick Book is a ‘Very Gripping Read.’ In the blog, I contrasted Dr. Mann with “the polar opposite of the Dos Equis `Most Interesting Man in the World’ beer ads.” It seemed funny when I wrote that 10 years ago. However, the more I see Dr. Mann on TV and hear him in recorded podcast and radio interviews, I think that Dr. Mann has a very compelling personality, with a great sense of humor who would be an enjoyable presence at any kind of gathering. I was so inspired by his 2012 book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, that I wrote a second blog about Dr. Mann one month later for Easter 2012, False Witnesses whose Testimonials Did Not Agree. In both blogs, I really connected with Dr. Mann’s “six stages of denial” that climate deniers cling to avoid accepting the reality of climate change.

I was big fan of Dr. Mann’s 2017 book, The Madhouse Effect, with illustrations by the Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Tom Toles, to push back against climate denial. Unfortunately, I was not able to review the book due a busy 2017. That February, my wife and I moved from St. Louis MO to Portland OR. In March 2017, I gave a climate change speaking tour across my home state of Missouri. I then worked my summer job as a seasonal park ranger at Crater National Park from May to October. Most of 2017 was also spent planning and leading a climate change speaking tour across Oregon in the last week of October to the first week of November.

In November 2020, Comedy Central’s Tosh.o invited me to appear again as “The Climate Change Comedian” after my successful appearance on the TV show in August 2016. This time, as the comedy would take center stage on this show, I still wanted to try to slip in a climate change message if possible. With the pandemic, I had not given a climate change presentation in months and I was feeling very rusty. Thus, I emailed Dr. Mann for his advice for climate change messaging for this TV appearance, and this was his response:

Hi Brian…
Sounds like a great opportunity indeed. These days, my messaging is focused on just two words: urgency and agency.

Yes, bad things are happening, we can see them playing out in real time now. But we can prevent the worst from happening. Assuming the election goes our way, there will be leader ship once again in Washington DC. And we have ready climate plans on the table from both Congressional Democrats and the Biden campaign. We need to hit the ground running, and in his perspective first hundred days, Biden and a hopefully Democratic Congress need to pass a climate plan that put a price on carbon, incentivizes clean energy, enforces regulations, and blocks support for new fossil fuel infrastructure.

That’s sort of my elevator pitch!

That was an amazing gift to exchange emails with one of the world’s top climate scientists, Dr. Mann. After his email, I wrote up my own answer to prepare to a climate change elevator pitch for this Tosh.o appearance. I practiced it over and ever to have it memorized to try to say it naturally during the TV taping. Because of the COVID pandemic and the short notice to film, this time I was filmed at home over Zoom, not flown to Los Angeles like the previous taping. Thus, it was nice not to have to leave home. As I shared with Dr. Mann over email afterwards, very disappointing that I was not able to squeeze in any message on climate change. This was his very gracious response:

“HI Brian,
Happy to have been of any help. Sorry they didn’t use that material.
I’ve had a number of frustrating experiences before where a lot of stuff (and what I considered was the best stuff), got left on the cutting room floor.
It’s one the real challenges in the world of media interviews.
Good on you for the effort though, keep it up. It will ultimately pay off!”

It was around this time that I heard from Dr. Mann that his newest book, The New Climate War, would be be release in January 2021. I was really looking forward to reading and reviewing in early 2021. However, I was very busy from January to June 2021 leading the effort for Oregon Senate to pass a Climate Resolution on April 7th that almost passed the Oregon House in June. For the last two years during the pandemic, I was not motivated to write or blog due to a bad depression I felt at that time with the social isolation.

Daniel Tosh, host of Comedy Central’s Tosh.o with Brian Ettling in April 2016.

The comedic Adam McKay film “Don’t Look Up,” which I saw on Christmas evening 2021, finally inspired me to start writing and blogging again. I eagerly awaited for Netflix to start showing the movie on December 24th partially because of Dr. Mann’s glowing review. “Don’t Look Up” is about scientists warning their projection that a huge “planet killing” comet will hit the Earth in 6 months unless appropriate action is taken to deflect or destroy the comet. The film stands as a metaphor for climate change. Pardon the pun, but the movie had a deep impact on me. I ended up seeing it twice. I ended up writing a ridiculously long blog about the movie where I quoted Dr. Mann several times.

After writing several blogs in early 2022, I felt motivated to read Dr. Mann’s book and give it a full review.

My Thoughts on Dr. Mann’s 2021 book The New Climate War

Let me say that when I finally read Dr. Mann’s book in early 2022, I really enjoyed reading it. As a climate organizer for over 10 years, I found myself relating with many things that Dr. Mann wrote in this book. I ended up taking over 64 pages of notes from statements Dr. Mann wrote about throughout this book.

In the introduction, Dr. Mann makes it very clear why he calls this book, The New Climate War. On page 3, he makes the case that the past climate deniers (the fossil fuel industry, far right-wing commentators, very conservative Republican members of Congress, etc) “can no longer insist with a straight face, that nothing is happening. Outright denial of the physical evidence of climate change simply isn’t credible anymore. So they have shifted to a softer form of denialism while keeping the oil flowing and fossil fuels burning, engaged in a multipronged offense based on deception, distraction, and delay. This is the new climate war, and the planet is losing.” (his emphasis)

Because I am a climate organizer, Dr. Mann states a position that is music to my ears: “The enemy (mentioned in the last paragraph) has masterfully executed a deflection campaign…aimed at shifting responsibility from corporations to individuals. Personal actions, from going vegan to avoiding flying, are increasingly touted as the primary solution to the climate crisis. Though these actions are worth taking, a fixation on voluntary action alone takes the pressure off of the push for governmental policies to hold polluters accountable.”

Amen, Dr. Michael Mann! Thank you so much for writing this and giving major focus in your book that individual solutions are not enough to solve the climate crisis. I talk more about this further on in this blog about my pet peeve of all the conversations I have had with fellow climate activists lecturing me about individual solutions, such as buying an electric car, going vegan, not flying, not driving, not buying anything, etc. Yes, I try to do many individual actions myself, but I am under no delusions that my individual actions will reduce the threat of climate change on its own merits.

As a matter of fact, I saw writer, climate activist, and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben address this situation when he gave a lecture in Portland Oregon in May 2019 to promote his book Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out. During that lecture, an audience member pressed McKibben why he was not pushing harder for a vegan diet, no flying, and other individual solutions. McKibben responded that he never felt like he was under any delusions that putting solar on his home, changing his diet, and not flying was going to solve the climate crisis. Twice I have seen Bill Mckibben speak in person (more on that later on in this blog). Both times he emphasized creating a climate movement large enough and strong enough to defeat the fossil fuel interests. Thus, I really applaud Dr. Mann’s emphasis on collective action, rather than just individual actions, to address climate change.

Writer, climate activist, and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben speaking at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon in May 2019.

Even more, a couple of times in The New Climate War, Dr. Mann cites a study, which is by David Hagmann, Emily Ho, and George Loewenstein, “Nudgling Out Support for a Carbon Tax,” Nature Climate Change 9, no. 6 (2019): 484-489, that, in Dr. Mann’s words, “actually shows that emphasis on small personal actions can actually undermine support for the substantive climate change policies needed.” With all the attention in the climate movement on individual solutions, this finding should be shouted from the rooftops.

Dr. Mann has given a lot of thought to the word “war” to describe the situation that we are facing to counter act the forces of denial or inactivists, as he would now call them. In the introduction, Dr. Mann directly addresses how he has scientific “colleagues who have expressed discomfort in framing our predicament as a ‘war.’ But, as I tell them, the surest way to lose a war is to refuse to recognize you’re in one in the first place. Whether we like it or not, and though clearly not of our own choosing, that’s precisely where we find our ourselves when it comes to the (fossil fuel) industry-funded effort to block action on climate”

Dr. Mann then devotes Chapter 1 to the “Architects and Misinformation and Misdirection”, such as Frederick Seitz and S. Fred Singer. They were contrarian scientists who came out of defended the tobacco industry in the 1950s from the claims that smoking cigarettes caused cancer to then attack Rachel Carson’s warnings of the danger of DDT, the science behind the hole in the ozone, the dangers of acid rain, the extreme danger of wide scale nuclear, etc. All of this history is also covered more extensively in the Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway’s 2010 book Merchants of Doubt. However, it is good to see Dr. Mann’s perception of this history of science denial.

Even though Dr. Mann is a highly respected climate scientist well familiar with the fine minute technical details of science, I must say I really like his matter-of-fact, plain English writing style in his books. This probably comes from years of experience writing books about climate change to the general public, plus probably having good editors. However, Dr. Mann knows how to write about science that is engaging and easily understood for the person on the street, like me. This includes how he effectively uses humor and sarcasm to make his point. Such as, when he writes on page 16, “Among those contrarian scientists was the very same S. Fred Singer we encountered in the context of acid rain denial. Get used to that name.”

Chapter 2 then focuses how the science denial wars then shift into the climate wars to deny the scientific consensus on human caused climate change. Dr. Mann starts with his own story how he was lured away from studying physics into the field of climate science in the early 1990s. It just a couple of years after Dr. James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, had testified to Congress in June 1988 that “It is time to stop waffling…(T)he evidence (of global warming) is pretty strong.” As a 20 year old living in St. Louis MO at that time getting ready to start college, I will never forget reading about Dr. Hansen’s testimony and seeing it on TV. We were having an extreme heatwave and drought that summer, with the Mississippi River at record low levels, Dr. Hansen’s words seemed like a eerie warning from what I was seeing around me then.

Photo of Mississippi River from Bee Tree Park in south St. Louis County, Missouri during a record drought in the summer of 1988. Image by Brian Ettling

Going into the 1990s, climate science awareness was emerging ever stronger in the public sphere. In 1995 Dr. Benjamin Santer and his IPCC coauthors, based upon the existing knowledge of climate literature, concluded that “the balance of evidence suggests an appreciable (then changed to the word “discernible” in that final IPCC report to please the oil-rich Saudis) human influence on climate.” Barely after the ink had dried on this IPCC plenary in February 1996, Santer was publicly attacked by S. Fred Singer in the journal Nature. Yes, Dr. Mann, like a bad horror movie where the same villain keeps resurrecting like a zombie, we can see S. Fred Singer causing more havoc. Chapter 2 focuses on the other oily (if I can use that term) bad actors defending the fossil fuel interests in the 1990s and beyond.

One nightmare character mentioned in Chapter 2 that never seems to go away is chemist Arthur B. Robinson. In 1998, he joined forces with Frederick Seitz to create the “Oregon Petition,” which had thirty-one thousand signatures of so-called “scientists” to gin up a fake widespread opposition to the scientific consensus of climate change. Dr. Mann stops mentioning Robinson on page 32 to move onto the brief history of other well known climate deniers.

Ironically, I had a brush with Arthur B. Robinson in 2021. He was elected to the Oregon Senate in 2020. In December 2020 to June 2021, I organized an effort with Oregon Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteers to almost get a climate resolution, known as Senate Joint Memorial 5 or SJM 5, supporting federal carbon pricing, to try to pass in the Oregon Legislature. To get SJM 5 through the Senate, it first had to go through the Senate Energy and Environment Committee. On March 11, 2021, this committee ended up voting in favor of SJM 5 by a vote of 4 to 1, including one rural Republican Senator supporting this climate resolution. The one committee vote that opposed SJM 5, none other than state Senator Arthur B. Robinson. He actually held up the committee vote for a few minutes so he could share his scientific opinion that humans can’t cause climate change. During the Senate vote on April 7, 2021, Senator Robinson had to again hold up the vote for a brief speech to share his views how human caused climate change is not real. His Senate colleagues, including many of his fellow Republicans, just ignored his remarks. SJM 5 ended up sailing through the Oregon Senate by a vote of 23 to 7 with all the Democratic Senators, plus 6 Republican Senators voting for it (which was half of the GOP Senate caucus). Thus, I can personally attest to Dr. Mann that some of these denier characters reported in his book and elsewhere never seem to fully go away.

Oregon Senator Arthur Robinson speaking on the floor of the Oregon Senate, April 7, 2021.
Image source: Oregon Legislative Information System video media

The later part of this chapter is a summary of Dr. Mann’s defense of his “Hockey Stick Graph” from the numerous attacks of climate deniers and the distraction of deniers to create the giant nothing-burger 2009 Climategate email hack. Again, the actual scandal was the hack of private emails among climate scientists, not the content of their emails. Dr. Mann gives a full history of this struggle in his excellent 2012 book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.

Chapter 3 really struck a chord with me with Dr. Mann sharing the story behind the “Crying Indian” ad campaign that aired in the 1970s. I still vividly remember those TV ads showing trash along the side of the road and waterways. Towards the end of the ad, there is a Native American seeing the trash with crying tear of sorrow in one eye, and then the tag line, “People start pollution. People can stop it.” I was just a little child seeing those ads, but it convinced me for a lifetime to never throw litter on the side of our roads.

Dr. Mann points out that ad was nothing more than a charade and a deflection campaing. The character in the ad “Iron Eyes Cody,” was actually an Italian-American actor, not an American Indian. That ad campaign successfully deflected the burden of litter from corporations that produced packaging to consumers.

The litter problem, we were led to believe, wasn’t pollution-generating corporate practices. It was you and me. And the 1970s efforts to pass bottle recycling bills to shift responsibility to beverage producers for packaging waste, then failed. Today, decades later, plastic pollution is so widespread on our planet that it can now be found in the deepest part of the ocean, the Mariana Trench 36,000 feet below. Thus, Chapter 3 is all about deflection campaigns, such as the NRA’s “Gun’s don’t kill people, people kill people”, the tobacco industry blaming flammable furniture, etc. This chapter is setting the table for Chapter 4 how the fossil fuel industry deflects from its responsibility for its leading role for causing climate change to shifting the blame that it’s your/our fault alone.

Dr. Mann correctly devotes pages huge issue of deflection by the fossil fuel industry because we have been so easily deceived by this industry. The New Climate War came out at the beginning of 2021. However, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 causing Americans to worry about a spike in gasoline prices, we are now seeing another deflection campaign by the oil and gas industry to push for more domestic drilling for oil and to ease government regulations. Many Americans still don’t know that oil is a global commodity with the price determined on the global market and the U.S. is already the world’s #1 producer of oil. However, the oil and gas industry wants to convince Americans that ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ will somehow magically lead to lower gasoline prices, climate be damned.

Getting back to ‘It’s YOUR fault’ theme of Chapter 4, Dr. Mann informs us that it was the oil company BP that came up with the concept of the “personal carbon footprint.” This campaign didn’t arise in a vacuum, but rather on the success of the Crying Indian campaign and so many other previously success deflection campaigns. The oil industry wants us as individuals to focus how much oil we are personally using by calculating our personal carbon footprints rather than any kind of collective governmental policy action that could hurt their profits. Dr. Mann quotes environmental author Sami Grover, “Contrary to popular belief, fossil fuel companies are actually all too happy to talk about the environment. They just want to keep the conversation around individual responsibility, not systematic change or corporate culpability.”

Sadly, it does not stop there. The oil industry, prominent media like The New York Times, and even many climate advocates have incorrectly solely focused on individual solutions, such as going vegetarian/vegan, not flying, not driving or driving less, etc. Again, Sami Grover: “Ask your average citizen what they can do to stop global warming and they will say, ‘go vegetarian’ or ‘turn off the lights,’ long before they talk about lobbying their elected officials.”

That quote really connected with me because I traveled to Washington D.C. eight times in four years (2015-2019) to lobby Congressional offices to act on climate. Plus, I have carpooled with climate advocates to travel to the Oregon state Capitol in Salem numerous times to urged elected officials to pass strong climate policy. Yet, so many fellow climate advocates I encounter in person and on social media don’t seem to understand the importance of voting and lobbying elected officials to prioritize climate policies. Sadly, many climate advocates have been egged on by the climate deniers, or as Dr. Mann calls them now the inactivists, and even the Russians on social media, to just shame fellow climate advocates for flying, eating meat, etc. I really do appreciate the space the Dr. Mann devoted in Chapter 4 on the harmful nature of shaming in the climate movement.

Brian Ettling lobbying Congressional offices as a volunteer for Citizens’ Climate Lobby for climate policy June 2018.

As I also mention in the next section, I have had my fill of shaming by so called climate advocates for for personal decisions such flying, having kids, sometimes eating meat, not buying an electric car yet, etc. The shaming has been so irritating for me that it reminds me of a documentary I saw in 2009 called Lord Save Us from Your Follows by writer & director Dan Merchant. This film asks if evangelical Christians are actually turning Americans away from religion with their heavy preaching of moral values. Some climate advocates may also need to question their tactics with shaming. Dr. Mann cites climate-messaging expert Max Boycoff of the University of Colorado for noting that “flight shaming” for example “is one of the more unproductive ways to have a conversation. Boycoff thinks that all shaming does is make people feel bad, it’s “blaming other people while not actually talking about the structures that give rise to the need or desire to take those trips.”

As a climate organizer looking to struggling to find a way to make collective and systematic change, I loved what Dr. Mann wrote at the end of Chapter 4, “We should all engage in climate-friendly individual actions. They make us feel better and they set a good example for others. But don’t become complacent, thinking your duty is done when you recycle your bottles or ride your bicycle to work. We cannot solve this problem without deep systemic change, and that necessitates government action. In turn, that requires using our voices, demanding change, supporting climate-focused organizations, and voting for and supporting politicians who will back climate-friendly policies––which includes putting a price on pollution––the topic of the next chapter.”

For the past 10 years, I volunteered with Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which primarily advocates for a federal price on carbon. I strongly support a carbon price because most people don’t have time to research whether products they are buying were manufactured and transported using a lot of fossil fuels or not. A policy like carbon fee and dividend puts a tax on the pollution at the source, the oil well, natural gas well, or coal mine, and then that fee is carried over into the cost of the product. Thus, hopefully an apple produced locally using an electric tractor, would be cheaper than an apple shipped from Chile. Thus, I was thrilled to see Dr. Mann devote an entire chapter to this book to carbon pricing.

Unfortunately, Dr. Mann points out on page 108 that carbon pricing “Carbon pricing gets attacked by both left and right wing politics.”

As a Democratic leaning voter, I was particularly dismayed that the Green New Deal (GND), first promoted by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019, advocates against a price on carbon. Even worse, “A letter signed by 626 groups, including Greenpeace and 350.org, was delivered to every member of Congress in early 2019 laying out support for a GND, while stating that the groups ‘will vigorously oppose any legislation that…promotes corporate schemes that place profits over community burdens and benefits, including market-based mechanisms…such as carbon and emissions trading and offsets.” (emphasis added)

Dr. Mann then touched upon how “the Sierra Club helped defeat a 2016 climate tax initiative in Washington (state) because its leaders felt it didn’t satisfy principles of social justice.” That felt like a heartbreak for me since I contacted climate friends in Washington state to urge them to support this ballot initiative. Dr. Mann then warns that “there is a fairly aggressive effort underway by some on the environmental left to turn support for the GND in its current form (including opposition to carbon pricing) into a purity test.”

Dr. Mann makes a good point about carbon pricing, “Despite the divisiveness that has risen around the role of carbon pricing, there is nothing intrinsically partisan about it.” Unfortunately, “It is only relatively recently, as efforts to implement carbon pricing have actually started to move forward––that we’ve seen support for carbon pricing start to erode on both sides of the political spectrum.”

I applaud Dr. Mann for calling out climate and energy policy writer & podcaster David Roberts for being “misguided” in his opposition to carbon pricing. Sadly, Roberts opposition to carbon pricing has steadily continued since the publication of The New Climate War at the beginning of 2021. On January 24, 2022, Roberts gleefully shared a new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change by political scientists Matto Mildenberger (UC-Santa Barbara), Erick Lachapelle (University of Montreal), Kathryn Harrison (University of British Columbia), and Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen (University of Bern). The paper looked at public opinion in the places where carbon fee-and-dividend policies have been implemented, Switzerland and Canada. The headline of Roberts’ blog and podcast was Do dividends make carbon taxes more popular? Apparently not.

Climate and energy policy writer & podcaster David Roberts. Image source: David Roberts Public Facebook page.

Roberts was all too happy to report from the findings of this paper that ‘Refunds don’t change opinions much (for supporting carbon pricing after they are implemented), many recipients don’t know they exist, and additional information about refunds often doesn’t help (increase their support).’ As a strong supporter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s carbon fee and dividend policy, I was skeptical of this new paper and Roberts’ eagerness to showcase it to confirm his opposition to carbon pricing policies.

Fortunately, I was not the only one annoyed by this January 24th blog and podcast of David Roberts. Gerald Butts, who was principal secretary to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from 2015 to 2019 and Trudeau’s closest personal advisor, and Catherine McKenna, who was the minister of environment and climate change during the same period, noticed the January 24th piece. “They objected to (Roberts’) conclusion that dividends did not make the carbon tax more popular in Canada.”

Roberts then generously had them on his February 16th podcast to set the record straight. According to Roberts, “We talked about how the carbon tax was conceived, what enabled it to secure majority support (yes, they say, refunds were important), and where the politics of carbon pricing stand as we move into the 2020s. Not only were my spirits lifted — it’s nice to know there’s a sane country out there somewhere — I learned an enormous amount. I think you will too.”

It was great to see Roberts, who I really do admire for his opinions on climate policy, change his tune, at least for this climate podcast and blog, on carbon pricing. Roberts is a proud climate curmudgeon who is skeptical that government and society can enact the needed policies to reduce the threat of the climate crisis. However, with his spirits lifted in his conversation with Gerald Butts and Catherine McKenna, hopefully he will stay hopeful for the future, especially with carbon pricing policies.

Anyway, along the lines of that spirit of hope, Dr. Mann reports that on page 117 that “Republican pollster Frank Luntz found that Republican voters under forty favor a fee and dividend model by a whopping 6 to 1 margin.”

Sadly, Dr. Mann informs us on the next page that “Ironically not only is there an increasing tendency among progressives to oppose seeking a middle ground when it comes to climate policy, but we’ve arrived in a “bizarro” world where the climate-change talking points employed on the political left are sometimes virtually indistinguishable from those on the political right.” One example of this that he gives is former Democratic Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard. She came out on record during the 2020 Presidential primaries against a price on carbon with a stand weirdly in agreement with Putin’s Russia and the Trump Administration.

Since I consider myself a pragmatic climate advocate who strongly supports carbon pricing, it excites me that Dr. Mann states his position towards the end of this chapter that “Carbon pricing is one of the most powerful tools we have for (the systematic changes needed to address the climate crisis). Taking that off the table (as some on the far left and the climate inactivists would love to do) would constitute unilateral disarmament in the climate wars.”

In Chapters 6 and 7, Dr. Mann then shifts gears to point out the ways the climate inactivists put their thumbs on the scale for false solutions while sabotaging support for renewable energy. One example, among many distractions of the inactivists is the crocodile tears that birds are killed by wind turbines, even though the Audubon Society, which actual mission is to protect birds, supports wind turbines. Chapter 7 goes into the non-solution solutions promoted by the inactivists such as natural gas, unclean coal with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), geoengineering, just planting trees, nuclear energy, “adaptation” and “resilience.”

Wind turbines just west of Great Basin National Park, Nevada in May 2010. Photo by Brian Ettling

In Chapter 8, I applaud Dr. Mann strongly criticizing the climate “doomists” who believe it is too late to act on climate. These individuals and groups exaggerate the threat climate change, which ultimately does a disservice to everyone wanting a healthy planet to live. As he titles this chapter, “The Truth is Bad Enough.” At the start of this chapter, he makes a strong point that “doomism today poses a greater threat to climate action than outright denial.”

Climate advocates will often refer to climate change as driving a car too fast in a fog when you don’t know where we could fall off a cliff. Dr. Mann likes to push back though to assert that “There is no cliff that we fall off of at a 1.5°C (2.7°F) warming 2°C (3.6°F) warming. A far better analogy is hat we’re walking out onto a minefield, and the further we go, the greater the risk. Conversely, the sooner we cease our forward lurk, the better off we are.”

I have thought frequently about Dr. Mann’s minefield analogy. I think it synergizes well with statements of the late climate scientist Dr. Stephen Schneider, who is a hero of Dr. Mann and mine. Dr. Stephen Schneider was the first scientist I turned to in 1998 read his books on global warming to learn about this issue. Dr. Schneider used to say that if we keep burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gases the planet may respond with “nasty consequences” or “nasty surprises.” Thus, Dr. Mann’s warnings about climate change remind me of the warnings that Stephen Schneider was trying to alert the general public over 20 years ago.

Sadly, Dr. Stephen Schneider passed away in 2010. If he was still alive, he probably would be shocked to see so many extreme weather events influenced by climate change such as the 2020 Australian bush fires. This was an extreme weather event made worse by climate change that forced Dr. Michael Mann to cut his Australian sabbatical short and return to the United States. With this in mind, Dr. Mann gives us this sobering message:

“So yes, it’s fair to say that dangerous climate change has already arrived and it’s simply a matter, at this point, of how bad we’re willing to let it get. While climate-change deniers, delayers, and deflectors love to point to scientific uncertainty as justification for inaction, uncertainty is not our friend here. It is cause to take even more concerted action…The consequences of doing nothing grows by the day. The time to act is now.”

Even more, “It is our decision-making henceforth that will determine how much additional warming and climate change we get.” Again, Dr. Mann is clearly telling us that it’s up to us with our actions to determine how much of a threat climate change will be in the future. With this in mind, it’s important that we don’t get distracted by the deniers or delayists but also not the doomists either. As Dr. Mann writes: “It is appropriate to criticize those who downplay the threat (of climate change). But there is also danger in overstating the threat in a way that presents the problem as unsolvable.”

Dr. Mann then provides a great quote by clean-tech author Ketan Josh, “Doomism is the new denialism. Doomism is the new fossil fuel profit protectionism Helplessness is the new message.”

Dr. Mann warns that “Climate doomism can be paralyzing. As one observer noted, ‘[climate] doomism has been used as a tool to turn people off action and to pervert election results.'”

I could write many paragraphs agreeing with Dr. Mann’s strong pushback against the “doomist” messaging that sadly sways a number of potential climate advocates from taking significant climate action. It always makes me sad and leaves me feeling deflated when friends and some well known individuals voice their opinion that there’s not much we can do to avoid a bleak future with climate change. I will never buy into that. At the same time, it’s so important that we collectively and individually take all the climate actions that we can to avoid stepping out further into the climate minefield. Thus, Dr. Mann does provide inspiration and hope for me to fight on at the end of this chapter when he writes:

“We do not face a scenario of near-term societal collapse or human extinction. The only assurance of such scenarios would be our abject failure to act. If there were not still a chance of prevailing in the climate battle, I would not be devoting my life to communicating the science and its implications to the public and policy makers. I know we can still avert catastrophe. And I speak with some authority on the matter. As a scientist who is still engaged in climate research, my views are informed by hard numbers and facts. In the final chapter of the of (this) book, we confront the remaining front in the new climate war – ourselves, our own self-doubt that we have it within ourselves as a species to meet the challenge at hand.”

Indeed, the final chapter of The New Climate War is titled “Meeting the Challenge.” Dr. Mann begins the chapter by writing:

“Despite the challenges detailed in this book, I am cautiously optimistic ––that that is to say, neither Pollyannaish, nor dour, but objectively hopeful––about the prospects for tackling the climate crisis in the years ahead.”

There’s so much more I would like to comment, but I want to give others a space to read this chapter and the book to develop their own opinions and responses. Like I wrote previously in this review blog, this book really connected with me on many levels. Thus, it has been hard to write a brief review with so many items that I want to comment about.

Bottomline: I highly recommend the 2021 hardback version of the book. At the same time, I look forward to the paperback edition coming out in May 10, 2022 to see if Dr. Mann has included any updated thoughts.

My one suggestion to Dr. Mann: ‘Give the Do-ers very clear marching orders’

In The New Climate War, Dr. Mann proclaims on page 45 that ‘The most hard-core (climate) deniers are in the process of going extinct (though there is still a remnant population of them). They are now being replaced by other breeds of deceivers and dissemblers, namely downplayers, deflectors dividers, delayers, and doomers.” (his emphasis)

That would make for a great group of Seven Dwarfs for the next Adam McKay (writer/director of the film Don’t Look Up) like climate change Hollywood satire! Seriously, though on the flip side, I would like to add another D to Dr. Mann’s list. Unlike the other Ds, this is a good D. This is a D of what I call the folks like me who want to be the Do-ers. In other words, folks like me who want to Do Something Now for climate action.

These would be the folks who are paying close attention to what Dr. Mann is writing about in this book and other publications, his public speeches and media interviews, etc. The segment of the population who are paying attention to the latest IPCC reports, published scientific findings on the climate, and credible media reports on the climate. As a result, they want to Do Something Now for climate action. Sadly, the other seven Ds that Dr. Mann wrote about in his book do take up most of the oxygen in the room. Yes, I do get why he focused on them since we do need to understand our opponents in The New Climate War.

The good news is that there are a lot of us Do-ers or Do Something Now folks for climate action. The most recent Yale Global Warming’s Six America’s Survey from September 2021, published in January 2022 shows that 33% of Americans are alarmed about climate change. That’s one in three Americans! This survey defines Alarmed as “convinced global warming is happening, human-caused, an urgent threat, and they strongly support climate policies.”

When you add in that 25% of Americans are concerned about climate change. This survey defines Concerned as the people who “think human-caused global warming is happening, is a serious threat, and support climate policies. However, they tend to believe that climate impacts are still distant in time and space, thus climate change remains a lower priority issue.”

When you combine the Alarmed and Concerned segments of the American population, that’s 58%, a clear majority of Americans who think human-caused global warming is happening, is a serious threat, and support climate policies. On the other hand, only 9% of Americans are Dismissive of climate change, meaning they “believe global warming is not happening, human-caused, or a threat, and most endorse conspiracy theories (e.g., ‘global warming is a hoax).’ Sadly, it’s the Dismissives, especially those who are members of Congress, fossil fuel executives, and right wing media figures, who still can garner way too much attention in the public sphere with their outlandish statements, outsized media influence, and piles of lobbying money to sway Republicans and the Senator Joe Manchins in Congress. Dr. Mann refers to the climate deniers as inactivists, which he defines as The forces of inaction – that is fossil fuel interests and those who do their bidding – (who) have a single goal of inaction” as the forces we must overcome in this new new Climate War.”

Yes, in order to win a war, especially The New Climate War, you must successfully define and learn the tactics how to prevail against your opposition. At the same time, the do-ers, climate warriors, and alarmists do need clear precise marching orders to defeat our opponents and reduce the threat of the climate crisis. That’s exactly what I did when I saw writer, climate activist, and founder of 350.org Bill McKibben give a public presentation at St. Louis University in November 2012. During the question and answer time with the audience, I was the first one to walk up to the microphone and ask him directly: “What’s our marching orders, Bill?”

His response: “Contact your local college or university as a student, professor, or alumni and ask them to divest their endowment from fossil fuels.”

Brian Ettling speaking with Bill McKibben at Washington University in St. Louis on November 1, 2012.

That was clear enough and I did just that. Four months later in February 2013, I did write to the President of my alma mater, William Jewell College, to ask him to consider divesting William Jewell’s endowment from fossil fuels. I followed it up with a letter to the editor to the William Jewell student newspaper urge the students, faculty, and administration to divest the college’s endowment from fossil fuels. I didn’t stop there. As a 1992 alumni, I made connections to arrange for the college President to call me that summer to have a conversation about divestment. Was I successful? No. However, I blogged about my efforts to hopefully inspire others to copy my efforts. Even more, following those marching orders from Bill McKibben gave me confidence to do more for climate action.

Dr. Mann does have a great succinct message in this book regarding climate action that “There is clearly a sense of urgency. But there is also recognition of agency – a sense that action is possible, that our future is, at least to an extent, still in our hands.”

If you recall above, that’s also the theme, urgency and agency, in the email response that Dr. Mann sent me in November 2020. Again, his very generous advice when I was getting ready to appear on a national TV comedy show to possibly discuss climate again. In The New Climate War, Dr. Mann does give a lot of great advice and insights for fighting this war, such as staying objectively hopeful that we do have the tools and ability to reduce the threat of the climate crisis and disregard the Doomsayers. He urges us to support and respect the climate youth activists, such as Greta Thunberg, Alexandria Vilaseñor, and Jerome Foster (who I had the privilege to meet and attend lobby meeting with at a Congressional office for climate action at a Citizens’ Climate Lobby conference in Washington D.C. in November 2018).

Jerome Foster II (second from left) lobbying with Brian Ettling (center) at the Washington D.C. office of GOP Congressman Greg Walden, November 2018.

Even more, Dr. Mann advises us to Educate, Educate, Educate our friends when a false claim about climate change moves outside of the denalist echo chamber and tries to infest well meaning folks that we know. It’s important that we arm ourselves with helpful credible sources like skepticalscience.com to be able to rebut to help the confused middle so they can join us battle. Finally, Dr. Mann hits hard on this crucial idea that “Changing the system requires systematic change.”

I can’t applaud enough for Dr. Mann emphasizing this thought throughout his book. As a matter of fact, that has been my biggest frustration with the climate movement, the lack of organizing together on systematic solutions. My pet peeve is all the conversations with fellow climate activists lecturing me about individual solutions. I had a block a climate activist on Facebook who would not stop harping on me that my wife and I should not have kids. This is a very sensitive subject for me because my wife and I got married in 2015 when I was 47 years old and she was 40 years old. We would have loved to have children of our own, but it was not meant to me. This activist would not stop browbeating me about this. He nearly had me crying as I tried to explain the situation. I finally had to block this person to end the conversation for once and for all. Thus, for anyone reading this, please be sensitive when bringing up the subject of world population and having kids. I respect anyone who decides not to have kids due to bringing them into the world in the midst of the climate crisis. At the same time, for others like me, not having children is a very touchy subject since it was not meant to be for my wife and me.

I have met folks who just thought that living in an eco-village, eating a vegan/vegetarian diet, not driving, or flying was doing their part to solve climate change. I do admire and appreciate their actions. At the same time, it’s not enough. As Dr. Mann stresses in this book systematic change is needed. I proudly drive 20 year old manual transmission green Honda Civic. It was the most fuel efficient car I could afford when I bought it new in 2002 and it still runs great today at over 300,000 miles. My wife and I fully know that this car won’t last forever. We get really excited when we see a Tesla or any kind of electric car when we go out for a drive. When my car does eventually seem to be on its last legs, we plan on replacing it with an electric car. We test drove a Tesla in December 2015, so it has been a dream for my wife and I to get an electric car for years. Yet, whenever I post about my car on social media when it hits a major milestone such as 300,000 miles or 20 years old, some of my climate friends will post “You need to get an electric car!” Yes, my wife and I know this!

Brian Ettling and his wife Tanya Couture test driving a Tesla in St. Louis MO on December 26, 2015.

I could go on and on about the tunnel vision about individual solutions. Yes, they are important, but they are not the cure all. I will never forget a statistic mentioned towards the beginning of the January 10th, 2020 Climate One Podcast, INCONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION: THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT YOU DON’T KNOW YOU HAVE by host Greg Dalton: “The small choices we make everyday can have a big collective impact on climate. But experts say individual actions can only get us about 30 or 40 percent of the way to safety. The rest falls on governments and companies.”

Dr. Mann does a superb job of stressing that individual actions are not going to cut it towards reducing the climate crisis. Page 264 he writes: “The answer is that there is no path of escape from climate-change catastrophe that doesn’t involve policies aimed at societal decarbonization…We won’t get those policies without politicians in office who are willing to do our bidding over the bidding of powerful polluters. That means we must put pressure to bear on politicians and polluting interests. We do this through the strength of our voices and the power of our votes.” (My emphasis)

Right on, Brother Mann! Preach! Preach! Having said that, I would invite Dr. Mann to go much further. I think he needs to be even more clear and direct in his marching orders of what climate advocates need to do right now. A good example of this was one of the promotional interviews with the cast of the “Don’t Look Up” film in December 2021. Around the 13 minute mark of this YouTube video, comedic actor Jonah Hill asks: ‘What can one person do to take climate action?’ Leonoardo DiCaprio’s response: ‘The #1 thing is vote in elections for people who take climate change seriously.’

Having said that, I would really encourage Dr. Mann to be very direct with his marching orders in future writings, media interviews and public talks. Literally, I can’t stress this enough as a climate organizer, PEOPLE DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO TO TAKE CLIMATE ACTION. Sadly, according to the Yale Global Warming’s Six America’s Survey, this includes many of the Alarmed segment of the U.S population. “Most (Alarmed) do not know what they or others can do to solve the problem (of climate change).”

I heard Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz say directly in his keynote address at the Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) Conference in Washington D.C. in June 2017, now on YouTube. He noted at the 24:45 minute mark that the number one question of the Alarmed and Concerned, which is currently 58% of the U.S. population is ‘Ok! I get it! Climate change is real, bad, scientists agree, and we need to do something, but what can I do?’ Sadly, we have millions of Americans in these groups that want to do something, but they don’t know what to do. Dr. Mann and I both know that we ultimately have to change the government policies. This then consequently involves larges numbers of the Alarmed contacting and engaging with their elected officials, especially their members of Congress. Sadly, large percentages of the Alarmed and Concerned are still not contacting their members of Congress. When the Yale Global Warming’s Six Americas asked the Alarmed and Concerned why aren’t they contacting their members of Congress. The number one response was no one asked them to contact them! Dr. Leiserowitz then jokingly yelled at the CCL audience of committed climate activists: “JUST ASK!”

Even more, Dr. Jennifer Carman, a postdoctoral associate with the Yale Program, spoke about this when she was the guest speaker for the Citizens’ Climate Lobby March 2022 Monthly Meeting. She highlighted that of the Alarmed group, recent findings show that just 34% are politically active, 46% are willing to take action, and 20% are inactive at this time. She stated that “We found from our research that one of the big barriers that prevents people is that no one has asked them (to take action).”

Image source: Citizens’ Climate Lobby March 2022 Monthly Meeting.

I know from Dr. Mann’s public statements and an email exchange with me that he is hesitant of crossing “the line of being policy prescriptive rather than just policy informative.” That’s fair. Dr. Mann is one of the most respected climate change scientists who is willing to engage the media and the public on climate science. As he talked about in The New Climate War and his previous books, speaking publicly about climate science was not something he envisioned for his career. Specifically, he was forced to “go public” when he was unfairly attacked by climate deniers and denying elected officials going back many decades now. He has proudly embraced his public role to defend himself and climate science. I applaud this. Dr. Mann is one of my heroes. His books and public appearances has had left a big impression on me. Even more, he has been personally generous to me with his time and advice.

Having said that, I do want to push back a bit against the hesitation of Dr. Mann and other climate scientists who don’t want to be policy prescriptive or put on a spot to advocate for specific solutions. Many climate scientists feel like it’s “not my job” to go beyond working on the science and publishing the results. Sadly, as I wrote about above, we are not making the progress that we need because many Americans who alarmed about climate change don’t know what to do, what to say, who to contact or what or what solutions to advocate. Sadly, too many of the most committed climate advocates are caught into side show distractions about just going vegan, preaching about over population, or even giving dangerous doomerism or nihilistic messages that ‘It’s too late!’ Just like the deniers, the climate advocates caught up in bad messaging can also take up the oxygen in the room, leaving the public confused, which inadvertently, helps the deniers and inactivists that Dr. Mann and I want to defeat in this New Climate War.

Thus, I would really encourage Dr. Mann and other climate scientists to come up with very clear marching orders and specific advice on what the millions of us climate do-ers can jump in and immediately do. We are standing by eagerly wanting to help! As I blogged about over 10 years ago, a climate advocate friend of mine had just returned from a presentation by Project Ocean at a conference. That speaker stressed the point that when people hear they have cancer, they do not research the molecular biology of cells. They want the solutions now on how they can fight cancer successfully. ‘Is it exercise, diet, meditation, prayer, medication, surgery, sense of humor, or anything else Doctor?’ The huge planetary problems associated with climate change can be very scary for your audience to comprehend. What is your solutions for them?

I had this happen to myself recently when I felt a very severe pain in my left arm in late December 2021. Ironically, I had basically the same injury in December 2015 that I blogged about then. Like any pain, I denied it was happening for a few days and even weeks. I then started putting a pack of ice on my arm hoping that would do the trick. It did not. I finally went to see my doctor on January 12th this year. With any family doctor/general physician, I knew in this specialized age of medicine that my doctor was not going to be able to heal me on the spot. She diagnosed the problem as a rotator cuff strain. However, she didn’t then say, ‘Sorry it’s not my job to fix it.’ She did what any good doctor would do, she assigned me to a specialist. In my case a physical therapist, who could help me with daily exercises to regain my mobility in my left arm, reduce the pain, and bring me to a road of recovery. After several months of physical therapy, I can report that I am completely healed and basically back to normal.

Another way to think of this is something I heard from a very influential climate scientist, the late Dr. Stephen Schneider, a who is hero of Dr. Mann and I. In 1998 when I needed to learn something fast about global warming to answer visitor questions as a naturalist guide in Everglades National Park, I went to a Miami bookstore and bought Dr. Stephen Schneider’s book, Laboratory Earth: The Planetary Gamble We Can’t Afford to Lose. I then became a fan and follower of Dr. Schneider’s public statements and warnings about climate change. In his TV, documentary, and recorded podcast interviews, I found him to be a master of using amazing metaphors and analogies to explain to non-scientists the complex science of climate change in a way that the public could truly understand. In my opinion, no scientist or communicator before or since can touch the outstanding communication style of Dr. Stephen Schneider.

Dr. Schneider had a fantastic metaphor, ‘Would you argue with you doctor over a heart condition?’ in a 2006 HBO climate change documentary, Too Hot Not To Handle. This analogy is still stuck in my mind sixteen years later. I blogged about this back in 2015.

Here is the full quote from Dr. Schneider:
“Some people say ‘When you are sure about climate change, then we will do something about it.’
Suppose your doctor says ‘Well, I am very concerned about your heart condition. I think you should be on a low cholesterol diet and exercise.’ Would anybody say to their doctor ‘If you can’t tell me precisely when am I going to have the heart attack and how severe it will be.’ then why should I change my lifestyle?’

That is how absurd it is that when the political world tells us in the climate world: ‘tell us exactly how bad it is going to be and when and when you are sure, come back and talk to us.’ That is not the way it works in any other form of life. Not in business. Not in health. Not in security. We have pretty good ideas about what could happen. We do not have the detailed picture and we are not going to for several decades. What we are doing is taking a risk with the life support system of the earth and humans have to decide if we want to slow that down.”

This is a brilliant quote to respond to the vast climate denial that was happening in 2006 and is still lingering around today in 2022. Again, on the flip side, there are also millions of climate alarmed citizens and even climate do-ers, who would hear these warnings from Dr. Schneider, like I did back then in 1998 and 2006, and Dr. Mann today, and would respond, “Ok, Doc, I get it! tell me what I should do right now now to reduce the threat of climate change.”

If I could have Dr. Mann and other climate scientists sit down to watch one video of my frustrations with how we communicate how climate change to this day, it would be this short clip from the 1992 Spike Lee film Malcom X. In this scene, a sympathetic young white woman expresses admiration for Malcolm X and his fight for racial equality. She directly asks him what she can do. Sadly, his response was “Nothing.”


Director Spike Lee included this scene in his film because Malcolm X wrote about this encounter in his autobiography. Upon later reflection, Malcolm X seemed to regret that he wished he could have had a better answer for her in that moment.

Too often, I have felt the same way in my eleven plus years of being involved in the climate movement and asking climate organizers to mentor me so I could become an effective full time climate organizer. I blogged about this twice of very deep personal frustration five years ago. Often it has felt like climate scientists don’t have that clear answer when the public asks them: “What can I do?” On page 222, Dr. Mann admitted to learning the hard way in his public presentations that he gave for years that he “focused only on the on the science and the impacts, because I am a scientist. I would then only pay lip service to ‘climate solutions,’ with the obligatory final slide.” Afterwards, audience members frequently gave him this feedback, “That was a great presentation. But it left me so depressed.”

As he reflected on this audience feedback, he thought his presentations were deficient. He needed to also include “reasons for hope” in his public lectures. I applaud Dr. Mann’s candor to adjust his public presentations to include hope to try to inspire his audience to take climate action. From 2010 to 2019, I gave over 200 climate change public presentations in 10 U.S. states, Washington D.C. and Ottawa Canada. I tried to learn and evolve to give my audiences very specific solutions they could do on the spot (signing letters to members of Congress) and to take with them after they got home. It’s so important that we are improving our messages that our audiences have hope and know exactly what they can do to act on climate.

Brian Ettling speaking at the Florida Citizens’ Climate Lobby Conference in February 2018.

An audience eager for Dr. Michael Mann and David Wallace-Wells to focus on climate change solutions

From pages 205-217, Dr. Mann is quite critical of author David Wallace-Wells’ July 2017, “The Uninhabitable Earth” New York Magazine article and then subsequent 2019 book by the same title. He gave a searing opinion about Wallace-Wells’ New York Magazine article writing, “It was to climate doom porn what Shakespeare is to modern literature. Yes, Wallace-Walls article and then best-selling book did have a profound impact on the larger conversation on climate. I totally agree with Dr. Mann that the article did “present an overly bleak view of our climate future.” The 2017 article didn’t connect with me. Back in 2008, I had seen the National Geographic climate change documentary Six°Degrees Could Change The World and read the book it was based on, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by journalist Mark Lynas. I thought that 2008 National Geographic documentary and Mark Lynas’ book had already informed me what could happen if humans don’t act to reduce the threat of climate change. Thus, I found David Wallace-Wells’ 2017 New York Magazine article did not connect with me at all.

Even more, I had already learned as far back as 2011 that dire messaging does not work. Even worse, it can have a backfire effect causing people who hear climate doom messages to be even less likely to take climate action. In December 2011, I heard Susan Joy Hassol, Director of Climatecommunication.org speak at the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco. During her presentation, she stated that “Most people will find it difficult to accept the science of climate change if they feel there is no solution.” She was citing the December 2010 research paper, Apocalypse Soon? : Dire Messages Reduce Belief in Global Warming by Contradicting Just-World Beliefs by Matthew Feinberg and Robb Willer who uncovered this finding with experimental studies on 97 Berkeley undergraduates. Susan Hassol explained to me by e-mail soon after her lecture, “that people who believe in a ‘just world’ have trouble accepting something that is hopeless.” Too much emphasis on doom and gloom without providing hope can influence people to be even more pessimistic about climate change and the science that supports it.

In 2017, Dr. Mann expressed his concern about the 2017 David Wallace Wells article in a Facebook post writing, “The evidence that climate change is a serious problem that we must contend with now is overwhelming on its own. There is no need to overstate the evidence, particularly when it feeds a paralyzing narrative of doom and hopelessness. I’m afraid this latest article does that.” Dr. Mann’s strong criticism sparked a lot of discussion, which led to a November 2017 New York University event, called “The Doomed Earth,” where Dr. Mann had an in person discussion with David Wallace-Wells, narrated by Robert Lee Holtz, a science writer at the Wall Street Journal. Dr. Mann mentioning this event on page 209 inspired me to find the YouTube video from this event.

Why mention all of this? At the 1:05 (one hour and five minute) mark on this video during the question and answer period, a participant asks the audience: “A show of hands. How many people here are frustrated and want to hear about solutions?”

It’s off camera, but the participant remarks that a number of people raised their hand wanting to hear about solutions. This prompted the host Robert Lee Hotz to point out that the symposium with Dr. Mann and David Wallace-Wells was about climate change communications. This audience member then quotes Kurt Vonnegut that “In American history, in the battle of forces between good and evil, greed and compassion, there’s only one thing that has made a difference and that’s organizing.”

This audience member then asks Dr. Mann and David Wallace Wells, “What have you come across in your writings that has excited you about some new ways to organize that could solve ‘the mother of all challenges,’ which is to recruit a lot more people to do a lot more courageous tasks (to solve the climate crisis?”

Although this audience member was very long-winded and irritating to watch as he hogged the microphone to plug his app and organizing group, I still thought his question was spot on though as a long term climate organizer with similar frustrations.

Before he got to the point of his question, he defined the ‘mother of all challenges’ as “If the major grassroots organizations are going to have any success in the very near future to be able to recruit the vast larger numbers of people that they need to do the much bigger tasks from willing to get arrested at a pipeline to be willing to knock on 200 doors on a weekend to get the right person elected. We’re going to need some way to solve that problem, which I call ‘The mother of all challenges.’ (Which is) what can we do to get a lot more people to wiling to join groups to do a lot bigger things than to just show up at a protest, which really does not do much or just call your members of Congress?”

David Wallace-Wells then responded that “What I find interesting is that most of the people who have asked about what they can do in the aftermath of my (New York Magazine) piece were really focused on personal consumption choices and…”

The audience member then interrupted Wallace-Wells to say, “I call that the lifestyle delusion.”

David Wallace-Wells felt a little defensive and replied, “I am actually totally with you and I feel like what I actually say is that organizing is actually the thing to do…It’s good to live in a responsible way, but political organizing is overwhelmingly the thing that is going to solve the problem if we are going to solve the problem.”

The audience member then interrupted to ask: “Then that begs the question: How can we organize in a lot more cleverly and a much more bigger way?”

In my opinion, Wallace-Wells struggled to answer that question when he responded, “To me, it feels like, first of all, the climate is doing a lot of the work for us…with the extreme weather, with the hurricanes and the wildfires, that I do think the public is really waking up to climate change in a much more profound way than they ever have before. And I think it is important to keep in mind, given what I was saying earlier about the incredible speed in which we have created this problem with that the fact that the public is even aware at all, on some level should be a cause for hope rather than a cause for despair…”

Dr. Mann: “I would underscore some of (David Wallace-Wells) points that if you take an issue like gun control, upwards of 90% of the American public supports common sense gun legislation. Yet, we have a gerrymandered Congress which is not willing to do anything about the problem. And, so public acceptance and even public concern in the political system that we operate in today is not always sufficient. It is necessary, but not necessarily sufficient for political change.”

I thought this was an interesting exchange and brief conversation. However, like many of us in the climate movement that want to do something, I wanted to hear more. To me, this brief conversation at this public discussion with Dr. Mann and author David Wallace-Wells shows that there is a segment of the public that is very hungry to hear more about climate solutions and how we can organize politically to try to solve the climate crisis.

In a future book by Dr. Mann or other climate scientists, I would like to hear more specific climate solutions and marching orders on what we can do. Let me add, that it’s ok if Dr. Mann does not have all the answers or does not feels comfortable suggesting solution as an impartial climate scientist just trying to provide non-biased scientific answers. 11 years ago, I heard a scientist with the National Park Service, Patrick Gonzalez, say at a government climate conference that “it took millions of actions by people to get us into the climate crisis, and it will take millions of actions to get us out of it.”

The key question is which solutions are needed to solve the climate crisis?

After all, it was an overwhelming consensus of climate scientists over many decades who established through science that climate change is real, bad, happening right now, it’s caused by us humans, and we can limit the damage if we choose. In 2018, the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) released a summary report that we must cut our global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and down to net zero by 2050. By how? What are the best scientific solutions to get us to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050?

At the very least, I would like to see Dr. Mann in a future book or writing point us to the solutions that we should be doing. Or, to be respectful of his position to not be prescriptive, who can he point us to that can show us the modeling, range of solutions, or needed collective actions to get us globally to net zero by 2050? Is it Project Drawdown or 2017 book Drawdown: The most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, edited by Paul Hawken? Is it the 2018 book Designing Climate Solutions: A Policy for Low-Carbon Energy by Hal Harvey, CEO of Energy Innovation? Is it the En-ROADS Climate Solutions Simulator that was created by Climate Interactive? It is not one of these?

For the millions of of climate do-ers who want a road map how we globally get to net zero by 2050 based on the best science, which is the collective solution. To quote the 1996 film Jerry Maguire, “You had us at hello,” Dr. Mann, with your published papers, books, public presentations, and media appearances on climate change. Just advise or point us in a direction with very clear marching orders on what we should do next for climate action.

Brian Ettling speaking at the Beyond Coal Rally in St. Louis, MO in April 2013.

In September 2018, a friend on Facebook asked me “When you have time I would love to see some everyday things we can do to help the earth.” Thus, I responded with this blog in December 2018, For Climate Action: 8 Everyday Actions you can do to help the Earth. No, I just did not give my friend a list of individual solutions for her to feel better. My top solutions were:
1. Vote in every election for candidates who support climate action.
2. Regularly contact your members of Congress
3. Organize
4. Talk about climate change to your friends, family, co-workers and neighbors.
5. Weatherize your home
6. Install solar
7. Switch to an electric car, if you can afford it.
8. Be hopeful

Oddly, my friend hoped I would tell her to bring her reusable bags when she goes grocery shopping. Yes, that is helpful for the planet to not use single use paper and plastic bags when one is grocery shopping. Yes, do that! And, we need folks to take many additional actions to reduce the threat of climate change.

My advice for Dr. Michael Mann for messaging for climate action

If Dr. Mann is open to it, maybe we could even write a joint guest opinion in a newspaper sometime on ways that climate do-ers can take action now.

Conservationist writer and activist Edward Abbey once wrote: “The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders.”

In 2022, I would say that the idea that climate change is real, it’s human caused, it’s bad, scientists agree, and we can limit it if we chose needs no defense. It only needs more people taking action.

Therefore, if I could advice Dr. Michael Mann on a concise message for climate action, it would be:

“Yes, we have urgency to try to reduce the threat of climate change now. At the same time, we must step up our personal agency to vote, organize, and support strong climate candidates in the November 2022 mid term elections. Then, after we elect them, we must strongly lobby them to prioritize effective climate legislation.”