For Climate Action, giving oral testimony to legislative committees, Part 2

This is the second part of a blog I wrote on May 2, 2023, For Climate Action, giving oral testimony to legislative committees. After I posted that blog, I gave oral testimony five additional times. In September 2023, I gave oral testimony online to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, (NHTSA) about Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. In January 2024, I gave oral testimony to the Oregon Legislative Joint Committee on Transportation. In February 2024, I gave oral testimony three times to Oregon Legislative committees.

As a climate organizer, I find it to be one of the most empowering things I can do to give oral testimonies to legislative and regulatory committees to urge them to enact strong climate policies. Thus, I want to share the text, videos, and even stories from giving these oral testimonies.

1. September 2023 Oral Testimony to NHTSA about CAFÉ standards

As a climate organizer in Portland OR, I volunteer with MCAT (Mobilizing for Climate Action Together) which is affiliated with OLCV (Oregon League of Conservation Voters). With my interest in mass transit, I joined MCAT’s Transportation Committee in January 2023.

On September 20, 2023, one of the leaders of the MCAT Transportation Committee, Rich Peppers, sent out an urgent request, ‘We’re looking for 2 or so people who’re willing to testify, remotely, in favor of national EV policy at a hearing on September 28th (next week) but with the registration deadline within two days, by this Friday, Sept. 22nd. The national League of Conservation Voters (LCV) wants testimony from around the country to demonstrate the need and urgency. If you’re willing to sign up, please let me know so I can report it back to (OLCV).’

LCV led this effort to urge OLCV to recruit a couple volunteers to testify in favor of federal clean car policy. LCV thought it was crucial that the NHTSA hear from citizens across the country, and OLCV wanted Oregon to show up strong.

The next day, I decided to volunteer to give online testimony for this hearing. I signed up to give live testimony at the NHTSA website. After I signed up, I realized I was not sure what to say. I created a rough draft of my testimony. I then approached OLCV staff to give me feedback for my draft testimony. Julia DeGraw and Britney VanCitters from OLCV graciously proofread my testimony so I felt ready to give it at the hearing on Thursday, September 28th.

While I waited much of the day to give my testimony, I kept editing down my words before I gave it on that Thursday afternoon. I did not know if I could get a recording of my oral testimony afterwards, so I took my iPhone and recorded myself as I gave it live. I then uploaded the video to YouTube so you can see it.

Here are the written remarks of my testimony: 

Thursday, September 28 Testimony to NHTSA about CAFE standards

My name is Brian Ettling, and I am here as a private citizen in Portland, Oregon. For 25 years, I worked as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon, one of America’s most scenic treasures. Crater Lake is not close to any major cities or industrial areas, so it prides itself as having some of the cleanest air in the U.S.

Unfortunately, I saw climate change while working at Crater Lake with a diminishing annual snowpack and more intense wildfire seasons. The smoke from the wildfires was hazardous to breathe at times and forced visitors with health issues to cancel their vacations. Scientists tells us that the largest source of climate change pollution in the U.S. now is vehicle tailpipe emissions from burning gasoline and diesel. Air pollution from burning these fuels kills around 9 million people a year globally and negatively impacts the health of millions of Americans.

In 2017, I quit my Crater Lake seasonal ranger job to become a climate change organizer to reduce that threat and deadly air pollution. Sadly, I left the high air quality of Crater Lake to live by a major busy street in northeast Portland, Oregon.

Recently, I was alarmed to read a New York University study that living by a busy urban road can raise the risk of premature death by 20 percent. The American Lung Association reports that adults living closer to a busy road or highway—within 300 meters—may risk dementia. The Environmental Protection Agency’s website states that “research has demonstrated that exposure to pollutants emitted from motor vehicles can cause lung and heart problems and premature death.”

Thus, I am scared about the long-term health impacts of living next to a busy road. My wife and I frequently open our windows in spring, summer and fall to cool down our apartment, which lets in the dirty emissions from nearby vehicle traffic.

With my fears of inhaling toxic vehicle pollution, I urge NHTSA to finalize the strongest possible CAFE standards. Vehicle manufacturers have the technology to meet strong standards. Many recent analyses have shown that strong fuel economy standards will save consumers money at the pump, provide access to the most efficient versions of gas-powered vehicles, and encourage transition to more zero-emission vehicles. This is a win-win-win for healthier air and a safer climate, better health outcomes, and more money saved by consumers.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify.

I felt edgy waiting hours to give this testimony. Many people signed up nationwide to provide oral testimony. Some did not show up, which pushed up my time to testify. On the other hand, it was fun to testify in the comfort of my own home. Overall, I felt pleased to give this testimony to increase the CAFE standards to decrease harmful greenhouse gas pollution

2. January 2024 Testimony to the Joint Oregon Legislative Transportation Committee

On January 6, 2024, the Oregon Legislative Joint Committee on Transportation scheduled a public hearing in Gladstone OR, a community in the southern part of the Portland metro area. The hearing was to get public input on possible tolling, congestion pricing, and possible funding for the replacement I-5 bridge that connects Portland to Vancouver WA. The MCAT Transportation Committee supports tolling and congestion pricing to reduce vehicle emissions on Oregon’s highways, especially in the Portland area.

I decided to start 2024 on a good note by giving oral testimony at this hearing. My friend from MCAT, Catherine Thomasson planned to attend this hearing. She agreed to give me a ride so I would not have to drive my own car there. When we arrived, nearly everyone from the Gladstone area came to strongly object to any thought of the state of Oregon administering tolling or congestion pricing.

I was one of the very few people who came to testify in favor of tolling and reducing emissions from vehicle traffic. I had to wait several hours to testify at this hearing. It was well worth the wait. The audience grumbled during my oral testimony. Someone even yelled from the audience as I was giving my testimony, “Did your ride your horse here today?”

I like going against the grain if I think that society is heading in the wrong direction. I love speaking out for what I think is best, especially for climate action. Thus, it was an honor to give oral testimony that day.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get a photo of myself testifying. The Oregon Legislative committees are normally excellent capturing video recordings of their hearings. However, for whatever malfunction, the recording did not have a video during the last couple of hours of the hearing. Just the audio was recorded. Thus, you can hear what I have to say at 1:45:44 of the recording. However, you cannot see me. That was a disappointment that of no video my hearing.

Oral Testimony to Joint Committee on Transportation on January 6, 2024

My name is Brian Ettling, and I live in outer northeast Portland. For 25 years, I worked as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon, one of America’s most scenic treasures. Crater Lake is not close to any major cities or industrial areas, so it prides itself as having some of the cleanest air in the U.S.

Sadly, I saw climate change at Crater Lake with a diminishing annual snowpack and more intense wildfire seasons. The smoke from the wildfires was hazardous to breathe at times and forced visitors with health issues to cancel their vacations. Scientists tell us that the largest source of climate change pollution in the U.S. and Oregon now is transportation caused by vehicle tailpipe emissions from burning gasoline and diesel. Air pollution from burning these fuels kills around 9 million people a year globally and negatively impacts the health of millions of Americans and tens of thousands of Oregonians.

In 2017, I quit my Crater Lake ranger job to become a climate change organizer to reduce that threat and deadly air pollution, the leading cause is transportation. Thus, today I urge you to design our transportation system to optimize safety, climate, maintenance, as well as reducing congestion. We should use a variety of funding sources to replace the gas tax as that decreases due to greater fuel efficiency and electrification.

Let’s shift from fuel tax to multiple other mechanisms, such as
Congestion pricing
VMT or Vehicle Miles Traveled tax graded for vehicle efficiency
Road user fees, such as local tolling projects.
EV purchase or registration fees
Vehicle weight tax
Cordon charges
Parking charges
Tire fees.

If we don’t expand highways, we have enough funds to build a better transportation system. As a state, we also need to be investing more in light rail, bus, and passenger rail transportation to assist Oregonians who can’t drive, don’t like to drive – like me, and shouldn’t be driving – like me (FYI: I drive slow so don’t drive behind me after we leave this hearing today. I tend to cause my own traffic congestion. I drive a green Honda Civic). Anyway, we need to invest, not just in roads, but in other multimodal options to reduce vehicle congestion and deadly pollution.

I love taking Tri-Met (MAX and buses) in Portland instead of driving and taking Amtrak to cities outside of Portland. If you saw my driving, you would agree we should be investing more in that and not roads. Thank you for your time!

3. February 8, 2024 Testimony to the Oregon House Committee about the COAL ACT

As a member of MCAT, I became aware of Divest Oregon in early 2022. They are “a statewide grassroots coalition of individuals and organizations representing unions with PERS (Oregon Public Employees Retirement System) members, racial and climate justice groups, youth leaders, and faith communities with the goal of calling the Oregon State Treasury to account for its funding of climate devastation rather than prudent investing in a sustainable future.”

MCAT is part of the Divest Oregon Coalition, along with the Climate Reality Portland Chapter where I am an active volunteer.

For last several years, Divest Oregon pushed hard for bills to divest Oregon’s Treasury from fossil fuel investments. During the Oregon Legislative of 2022, Divest Oregon advocated for Treasury Transparency bill (HB 4115-3). The bill mandated that the Treasury disclose all of the assets they manage. Prior to the drafting of this bill, the Oregon Treasury did not list public equity nor fixed assets investments on their website, especially if their investments involved corporations extracting, distributing, or selling of fossil fuels.

The Transparency bill passed the Oregon State House and then ran out of time to be considered by the Senate during the short 2022 Feb-March session. Even though the bill died in the Oregon Senate, Divest Oregon still felt like they scored a victory. After they filed a public records request and got a bill submitted to the legislature, the Treasury posted the investments in the two missing asset classes.

For the 2023 Oregon Legislative session, Divest Oregon lobbied for the passage of Treasury Investment and Climate Protection Act (HB 2601). After this bill was introduced in the Oregon House in January 2023, the House Speaker referred it to the House Committee Emergency Management, General Government, and Veterans. The bill had a couple of public hearings. But the bill died in the committee.

According to Divest Oregon, HB 2601 died because the Oregon State Treasury publicly opposed the transparency legislation and successfully lobbied behind the scenes to stop the bill. However, it was not just the OR Treasury, led by Treasurer Tobias Read, that objected to the bill. One of the big three public employee unions, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, sided with the OR Treasury and State Treasurer Read in opposing the bill.

After the defeat of the 2023 bill, Divest Oregon changed tactics to work with Treasurer Read on a bill that he could support. In the latter half of 2023 when the Oregon Legislature was not in session, Divest Oregon proposed the COAL Act (Clean Oregon Assets Legislation) for the 2024 OR Legislative session to divest the Treasury from any coal investments.

Divest Oregon organized a lobby day at the Oregon state Capitol in Salem on January 10, 2024 that I participated. The legislature was not in session, but the legislators had a workday at the Capitol with committee and lobby meetings.

This was a very productive lobby day at the Capitol for me. I was part of a lobby meeting with Representative Hoa Nguyen who agreed to sign on as a co-sponsor of the COAL Act. I then participated in a lobby meeting with my Senator Kayse Jama and his Chief of Staff Kien Truong. I thanked Senator Jama for being a Chief Sponsor of the COAL Act. I then led a lobby meeting with Abigail Kirshy, the Chief of Staff for my Representative Andrea Valderrama, to urge her to support and co-sponsor the COAL Act.

After our morning lobby meetings, Divest Oregon had all the lobby participants reassemble in a meeting room of a nearby church for lunch. The champion of the bill, Representative Khanh Pham spoke to us to thank us for our lobbying efforts that day and we got a group photo with her. This lobby day showed that the COAL Act seemed to have strong momentum and support in the legislature to pass during the month-long short session.

On February 8th, I returned to the Oregon Capitol to lobby with MCAT for their first of three Thursday lobby days. We had meetings with legislators and their staffs to urge them to prioritize climate policy and funding bills during this short legislative session. That afternoon, the House Committee on Emergency Management, General Government, and Veterans scheduled a hearing for the COAL Act (HB 4083). Since I was already present in Salem for the MCAT lobby day, I choose to attend this hearing and to testify in favor of this bill.

I was part of a carpool for this MCAT lobby day. I successfully talked everyone in this carpool to attend this afternoon hearing at 1 pm. They were enthusiastic about watching this hearing and supportive of me giving testimony. Fortunately, the MCAT lobby day was scheduled to wrap up before 1 pm, so this hearing was not in conflict with any scheduled lobby meetings.

When I arrived at the hearing for this committee, Oregon Treasurer Read and Representative Khanh Pham were the first two public officials to testify in support of this bill. Unlike the 2023 Treasury Investment and Climate Protection Act that Treasurer Read opposed, it was a positive sign that he fully supported the COAL Act. This was a great signal to legislators on this House Committee that Treasurer Read and Oregon Treasury was fully onboard this bill.

After Treasurer Read and Representative Pham gave their testimony, the committee opened up the testimony for the general public. I signed up online to testify the day before. I was surprised when the Committee Chair, Representative Dacia Grayber, called my name to testify.

I then walked up to sit at the table and speak into the microphone to give my oral testimony to the committee. The committee limited our testimony to less than two minutes. I was relieved my testimony was at one minute and 40 seconds, well below the two-minute limit.

Our carpool group soon left for the drive back to Portland soon after my testimony to try to beat the rush hour traffic. They were all complimentary of my testimony and seemed impressed with the personal story I shared.

Here is the video of my testimony and below that is the written remarks of my oral testimony.

COAL Act Testimony to the Oregon House Committee on February 8, 2024

Representative Grayber and members of the Committee:

My name is Brian Ettling and I live in NE Portland.

I am here today because of my dad, LeRoy Ettling, pictured here with my Mom.

For the past 11 years dad has struggled stage 4 bladder cancer. Because of the cancer, he lost his ability to walk and now lives in an assisted care facility.

In 2013, my Dad had a huge tumor and kidney removed. The doctors thought my Dad was a smoker since his cancer is consistent with a life-long smoker. My dad was always a non-smoker.

However, we lived for about 33 years a couple of miles from a coal fired power plant in St. Louis, Missouri that had no modern pollution controls, increasing the risk of his cancer.

Scientific research has known for decades that burning coal is a known human carcinogen that impacts the health of workers and the surrounding communities.

Burning coal is bad for our health and it is also a waste of our taxpayer dollars.

I read that the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) and the Oregon Treasury Short Term Fund have between $700M and $1B invested in coal over the past 3 years in publicly traded funds.

To be blunt, Coal is an investment loser. According to Divest Oregon, PERS coal investments underperformed by $340 million dollars, compared to if the state had alternatively been invested in the S&P fossil fuel free index fund instead.

I ask you to pass the COAL Act bill for my Dad, all of our families and our kids.

Thank you!

4. February 13, 2024 Testimony to Joint Transportation Committee about WES Study Bill

A few days later, I learned the Joint Transportation Committee scheduled a hearing on the WES Study Bill (SB 1572). I strongly supported this bill for the OR Legislature to require the Department of Transportation, in partnership with the Westside Express Advisory Committee, to study extending the Westside Express Service (WES) commuter line from Wilsonville to Salem.

The WES Commuter Train currently runs from Beaverton, a western Portland metro community, to Wilsonville, a community just south of the Portland metro area. I lobbied in Salem many times. In addition, I drove from Portland to Salem on other occasions to give climate presentations in Oregon or pass through Salem with my wife to sightsee and visit friends in other parts of the state. Driving from Portland to Salem or the other direction during the intense rush hour traffic I found to be very frustrating. My wife works near our apartment in outer northeast Portland. Yet, she has co-workers who commute from Salem each day.

For years, I believed that Oregon must have more commuter train service from Portland to Salem to reduce the heavy traffic on this route. Thus, I fully supported of this WES study bill to investigate the feasibility of extending the WES commuter train to Salem. I followed this bill closely from when I first heard about it in the last week of January 2024. After receiving an MCAT Transportation Committee action alert about this bill, I called and emailed the Chairs and Vice Chairs of this committee to ask them to schedule a hearing on this bill in one of their first committee meetings during the February legislative session.

In the first week of February, I then received a notice from Oregon Legislative Informative System that the Joint Transportation Committee scheduled a hearing on the WES Study Bill on Tuesday, February 13th. I was not planning on traveling to Salem to attend this hearing in person. I had no interest in fighting the traffic, the wear and tear on my vehicle, the cost of gas to drive there, and time expense of several hours to go in person to be at this hearing in person. I was excited I could sign up for to give online oral testimony in the comfort of my own home.

Here is the video my online oral testimony for the WES study bill. Below that is the written testimony I read for my oral testimony.

February 13, 2024 Testimony for WES Study Bill to Joint Transportation Committee

Members of the Committee.

My name is Brian Ettling. I live in northeast Portland.

I am here to represent MCAT (Mobilizing for Climate Action Together) Transportation Committee. We stand with 1000 Friends of Oregon, Climate Solutions, No More Freeways, and the Environmental Center to strongly support SB 1572, which establishes a task force to study the feasibility of extending the Westside Express Service (WES) commuter rail to Salem, incorporating additional local stops. This initiative is crucial to creating a more connected, efficient, and sustainable transportation system in Oregon.

We urge you to pass SB 1572 because investing in an expanding commuter rail services and infrastructure:

• Advances Oregon’s Vision for a Truly Multimodal Transportation System.

• Creates options other than driving that will help ease the frustrating congestion that many of you face regularly on your commute to and from Salem.

• Can significantly reduce traffic-related accidents, injuries, and fatalities on our roads by encouraging less driving, which is linked with higher levels of safety for all transportation users.

• Offers an effective alternative to car usage, potentially lowering harmful vehicle pollution and improving Oregonians’ air quality, thereby contributing to a healthier planet. Expanding rail access is critical to meeting our climate goals.

• Is a cost-effective approach to transportation. It presents long-term savings on road maintenance, eases the need for road expansions.

• Provides greater access to jobs, education, and healthcare, especially for individuals without a car. One in four of Oregonians can’t drive due to age, disability, or cost.

The proposed expansion of WES will stimulate economic growth, encourage transit-oriented development.

Again, please pass SB 1572.

Thank you for your time.

5. February 22, 2024 Testimony to the Oregon Senate Committee about the COAL Act

One week later, on Thursday, February 22nd, MCAT held another lobby day at the Capitol to meet with legislators and staff to urge them to pass climate policy and funding bills during the last two weeks of this legislative session.

By this point, the COAL Act had successfully passed out of the House Committee on Emergency Management, General Government, and Veterans. On Monday, February 19th, the Oregon House voted to pass the COAL Act on a party line vote of 33 to 24. This bill then moved to the Oregon Senate where it was assigned to the Senate Committee on Energy and Environment. This Senate Committee scheduled a hearing for the COAL Act on February 22nd at 1 pm.

Ironically, I planned to be at the Capitol for this MCAT Lobby Day on February 22nd. Like the February 8th lobby day, MCAT planned to have all the lobby meetings finished before 1 pm. Therefore, I decided to sign up to give oral testimony for the COAL for this Senate Committee. Like the lobby day on February 8th, I succeeded in persuading the carpool group that I commuted with to Salem to stay longer so I could give oral testimony.

Before I entered the Committee room to testify, Doyle Canning enthusiastically said hello me. She was the Legislative Director for Rep. Khanh Pham, the Chief Sponsor for the COAL Act. Doyle remarked she liked the testimony I gave about the COAL two weeks ago. She wondered if I signed up to give testimony at the committee hearing starting in a few minutes. I assured her that I planned to testify. She said my previous testimony would be great if I gave it again. I appreciated her compliment, and then I informed her that I prepared new testimony for this hearing. She was delighted I was testifying, and she looked forward to my testimony. She commented, ‘Whatever you say in your testimony, if it is like the previous time, I know it will be good.’

I appreciated her kind words because I love giving oral testimony on climate bills, but I still get nervous hoping I prepared well. It did not take long for my name to be called to testify. Not as many members of the general public looked to give testimony as when the hearing was held in the Oregon House Committee two weeks prior.

Like my oral testimony in the Oregon House for the COAL Act previously, I thought it went well. I was thrilled I spoke around one minute and 40 seconds. This was well below the two-minute limit the Committee Chair set for oral testimony. It was about the same amount of time as my COAL Act oral testimony to the House Committee two weeks before.

Here is a video of my oral testimony with my written remarks below the video:

February 22, 2024 COAL Act Testimony to OR Senate Energy and Environment Committee

Senator Sollman and members of the Committee:

My name is Brian Ettling and I live in NE Portland.

I was a seasonal park ranger for 25 years from 1992 to 2017 at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon.

I loved my park ranger job but, sadly, I saw climate change while working there, I observed a diminishing annual snowpack and a more intense fire season with more smoke in the summertime. I became so worried about climate change that I spent my winters in my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri organizing for climate action as far back as 2010.

On December 11, 2012, I noticed this headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Poor, Black and Breathless: Asthma Strikes Many Here.” The front-page article stated 1 in 5 children, primarily children of color, struggle with chronic lung diseases, such as asthma, in the St. Louis area. That was twice the national average of U.S. children with asthma.

How do children get asthma? Primarily from dirty air pollution. Around that same time, I learned that St. Louis burned twice as much coal, over 80%, than the national average.

Scientists estimate the air pollution from burning coal, oil, and natural gas kills around 9 million people globally a year, including in Oregon. Burning coal also disproportionally impacts the health of seniors, children and communities of color, such as Xavier Miles, who was 8 years old when this photo was taken.

Burning coal is an investment loser for Oregon’s Treasury, it’s like investing in arsenic.

I ask you to pass the COAL Act bill to divest in coal investments for our families and our kids.

Thank you!

On March 7, 2024, The Oregon Legislative session ended with mixed results for me in my efforts giving oral testimony to legislative committees. The bad news is that the WES study bill died in the Joint Ways and Means Committee after successfully pass out of the Joint Committee on Transportation. I am still not sure why this bill did not pass.

In the local legislative town halls that happened since the end of the 2024 Legislative session, I attended these town halls to ask the Portland area legislators why the WES study bill did not pass and urged them to reconsider the WES study bill in the 2025 Legislative session. The legislators looked genuinely stumped when I questioned them why the WES study bill did not pass. Some of them did not seem to know about the bill. Other legislators thought it would probably be re-introduced as part of the massive 2025 transportation package for Oregon. Either way, I plan on being a squeaky wheel and steady advocate to make sure that the WES study bill will be seriously considered by the Oregon Legislature in 2025.

The good news is that the COAL Act passed the Oregon Legislature and was signed into law by Governor Tina Kotek on April 4, 2024. As a climate organizer, it was a thrill for me to be part of an effective campaign to reduce investments and dependence on the dirtiest of fossil fuels, coals, that contributes ton climate change.

Final Thoughts

Along with lobbying U.S. Congressional and Canadian Parliamentary Offices, talking directly with my members of Congress and Oregon legislators, planning three large climate events, giving climate change talks in 12 U.S. states, completing climate change speaking tours across Oregon and Missouri, writing climate change opinion editorials published in newspapers, and participating in climate change radio and podcast interviews, I feel like giving oral testimony to Oregon Legislative committees to support climate bills is one of the most empowering climate actions I have done. It is intimidating to give oral testimony to legislators. I spend a lot of time writing my testimony in advance. I then frequently practice it with a timer so I can speak it under the allotted two minutes. This means I keep editing my testimony down to keep it under two minutes.

I am always relieved when my testimony is over. To be honest, it is nerve racking to give oral testimony. When preparing, I strive to share a compelling story, with solid supporting facts, and a sticky message to persuade legislators to support specific climate bills. This might be a stressful experience for some climate advocates that they may choose to forgo. However, I am grateful for the times I gave oral testimony over the last six years. I think it is satisfying.

Stay tuned! I will give more oral testimony to legislators during the 2025 legislative session. Thus, at some point, I will write a part 3 blog to giving oral testimony to legislative committees.

“Don’t hold your breath at seeing Denali. It’s probably not going to happen. Professional photographers wait days, if not weeks, to get that perfect picture of the mountain that you see on postcards.”

This was the friendly advice of local Alaskans when my parents, younger sister and I traveled to Alaska during a three week vacation in July 1988. When we started our trip in Fairbanks, we struck up conversations with local Alaskans while we visited for a couple of days. Our family is outgoing and gregarious. We loved chatting with strangers when we were on vacation. In turn, the resident Alaskans were curious about our family. They inquired where we were from in the lower 48 states and what we hoped to see in Alaska.

For anyone conversing with us, my parents shared the full trip itinerary that they had a Lutheran Marriage Encounter Convention to go to in Anchorage. Thus, they hired a travel agent to assemble this trip to fly to Fairbanks, take the Alaskan Railroad south, stopping in Denali National Park for a couple of days, then reaching our destination of Anchorage to stay with friends and attend the convention. With the locals, I got straight to the point. I hoped to see Mt. McKinley in Denali National Park or on the train ride down to Fairbanks. They rolled their eyes because most visitors they encountered really wanted to see the mountain. Their typical response:

‘Good luck! The mountain is typically shrouded behind clouds. People living in areas with views of it can go for weeks without seeing it. Don’t get your hopes up high. Most visitors don’t get to see it, except for the images they take home on the postcards they buy.’

I sensed an ingrained skepticism with Alaskan residents thinking that tourists like me would not have a visible view of the mountain, nor should we expect to see a view just because we traveled far to see Alaska. My stomach churned as they cautioned me that my odds were low in seeing the mountain. I appreciated their honest sincerity, but I hoped they were wrong.

The Prominence of Denali or Mt. McKinley?

Denali is on my mind these days because President Donald Trump. When he became President on January 20, 2025, Trump proclaimed in his Inaugural speech that the name of mountain Denali would be changed back to Mt. McKinley. He did this in response to President Barak Obama endorsing his Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell to change the name from Mt. McKinley to Denali in 2015. Denali means “the high one” or “The great one” by the Native Alaskan people known as the Koyukon Athabascans. Ironically, President William McKinley never saw it when it was named after him in 1896. He had no significant historical connection to the mountain or to Alaska. I doubt Donald Trump has ever seen the mountain. If he did, he would understand why most Alaskans call it Denali. I saw it. It made a huge impression on my life.

Prompted by the passage of a resolution by the Alaskan Legislature in 1975, Governor Jay S. Hammond formally requested the Secretary of the Interior direct the U.S. Board of Geographic Names to change the name to Denali. For many decades, Denali was still the common name used in the state and was traditional among Alaska Native peoples. Thus, I will use the name Denali to refer to the mountain for the rest of this writing, in deference to the people of Alaska.

Denali deserves respect for its massive size. According to Alaska.org, “From its base to its summit, Denali rises about 18,000 feet, about one third more total height than the same measurement for the world’s tallest peak, Mount Everest. That makes Denali the tallest mountain in the world—measured from base to peak—that’s wholly above sea level.”

Talking my parents and younger sister into visiting Alaska

Growing up in St. Louis, Missouri in the 1970s and 1980s, I dreamed of seeing the snowcapped mountains in the western United States. Missouri has no towering jagged snowy mountains, just the rolling hilly mountains of the Ozarks.

While in high school, I decorated my bedroom wall with a poster of Mt. Shuksan, located in North Cascades National Park, Washington. When I hung the poster, I had no idea of the name of that mountain or where it was based. I endlessly stared at this poster of a broad sided craggy mountain with several glaciers resting on it and pockets of snow clinging to it. I knew I wanted to see mountains like this someday when I had an opportunity.

My parents participated in an organization called Lutheran Marriage Encounter when I was growing up. They first went on a weekend marriage encounter retreat in 1975. They enjoyed attending the annual national and international conventions that took place over the years in various locations such as Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Dallas, Denver, St. Louis, etc. In early 1988, I overheard them saying that the 1988 Marriage Encounter Convention would happen that July in Anchorage, Alaska. I immediately asked them if all of us could go to Alaska on a family vacation while they thought about traveling there to attend this convention.

My parents love to travel like I do. They were immediately sold on the idea. I graduated high school in May 1987. I was on a gap year getting ready to start college at the end of August 1988. During that year, I worked as a cashier at a nearby gas station to save up some spending money for college. I used some of my earnings to go on trips, such as with a friend to see Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in February 1988. In September 1987, my mom went along with me on an Amtrak train trip from St. Louis to see New York City to Boston and back. After the Pittsburgh trip, I was eager for my next big trip.

As soon as my parents mentioned Alaska as a summer destination for them, I knew I wanted to go there. I figured it would be the perfect family vacation. I will always appreciate that they quickly agreed with me that we should go there as a family. My older sister Lisa lived on her own in St. Louis and was no longer interested in joining family vacations. My younger sister, Mary Frances, was a junior in high school, still living at home. She seemed fine with the idea of traveling to Alaska with us.

God bless them! My parents welcomed my ideas in planning this trip. My dad was a passenger and freight train fanatic. I suggested that we take an Amtrak train from St. Louis to Seattle, Washington and then fly to Alaska. On the return flight from Alaska, we would take Amtrak from Seattle back to St. Louis. My parents liked that idea. If we went to Alaska, I thought we should really see Alaska. Not some puny trip to Anchorage.

With my dad’s passion for trains, we agreed we should fly to Fairbanks and then take the Alaskan Railroad down to Anchorage, stopping at Denali National Park for a couple of days in-between. This was 1988 before the internet, when travel agents exclusively organized trips like this. My parents went to the travel agent in the strip mall near our home. She did her magic to put together an itinerary for everything we had in mind and even for things we had not thought about. She suggested a rafting trip on the Nenana River near Denali National Park.

The idea of travel agents now sounds about as quaint now as rotary phones, fax machines, television reception using rabbit ear antennas, smoking in restaurants and airplanes, corner pay phones, Blockbuster Video renting movies on VCR tapes, etc. But that’s the world I remember in the 1980s. The travel agent’s office was a world of its own. Inviting posters on the wall of Florida beach scenes with palm trees, European Castles, and cruise ships floating near tall Alaskan glaciers. There were no booking airline tickets, hotel reservations, car rentals, and outback excursions at home back then. One was at the mercy of their local friendly travel agent. Fortunately, this travel agent pieced together a fabulous trip to Alaska for our family in July 1988.

The getting ready for journey to Alaska and the cross-country train trip

I knew this might be the only time I seeing Alaska, so I bought a new camera. I purchased a Pentax K1000 35 mm film camera. Digital cameras did not exist then. If one wanted to take photos, you had to put a spool of film in the camera which shot a maximum of 24 or 36 photos. If you were lucky, the extra amount of film at the beginning or end of the roll might allow you to snap an extra photo or two. The key was not exposing the end of the film roll to light when installing it or taking it out of the camera. Hence, the half overexposed photo of the Alaskan Pipeline you will see scrolling down this blog.

My best friend Scott and his dad Ty recommended the Pentax K1000 camera. I admired both for their photography skills. In addition, I purchased a 100 to 200 mm zoom lens that was compatible for this camera. I figured the zoom lens gave me a better opportunity to photograph distant mountains or wildlife that I might see in Alaska. Scott and Ty thought I made a good choice with the zoom lens to try to get quality photos from this trip.

Unfortunately, I only shot about one roll of film before this trip. I took photos of downtown St. Louis and from Bee Tree Park near my parents’ home. This local park had picturesque cliff views of the Mississippi River. The photos turned out crisp and clear from my practice photos. Unfortunately, I did not spend enough time learning the shutter speeds to take superb photos. Most of my photos from that Alaska vacation were blurry since the shutter speeds I used were too slow. It was a crushing blow when the developed photos were ready to be picked up at my neighborhood Walgreens. Looking back now, I still captured some good memorable photos from the trip. However, it’s the memories of that fantastic trip that sustains me to this day.

We started the trip with an Amtrak train from St. Louis to Chicago, Illinois. My parents were perpetually late for nearly everything growing up. I remember it was a stressful experience barely catching this train on time. I was internally furious at them for making it such a close call that could have ruined the entire trip. At the same time, I was so relieved we made the train before it left the station, and we were successfully on our way!

From our connection in Chicago, we started heading west on Amtrak. We had sunny skies in Denver, Colorado. We had lovely views of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. It made me eager to imagine how much higher the mountains might be in Alaska.

In Salt Lake City, Utah, our train split up. One train engine pushed half the cars to San Francisco, on a train route known as the California Zephyr. A different locomotive engine pushed our passenger cars with a destination of Portland, Oregon. We traveled on a train route named The Pioneer. It was my first time seeing Oregon. One of the highlights of this cross-country train route was traveling through the Columbia River Gorge.

The Gorge was impressive with towering hills and mountains on either side as the wide Columbia River straddled the Oregon and Washington border. I distinctly remember getting a quick peak of the 12,000-foot-high Mt. Adams as the train rode west of Hood River. My wife Tanya and I moved to Portland, OR in 2017. I feel nostalgia for that first train ride now when we drive through Hood River on I-84. This freeway goes along the same route through the Gorge as The Pioneer did, and I get that same fast glimpse of Mt. Adams that I saw from the train in 1988.

That train ride through the Gorge gave me a yearning to see more of Oregon. It motivated me four years later in 1992 to take a seasonal job at Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon so I could see more of the state. Sadly, The Pioneer Amtrak route was discontinued in 1997. However, current efforts are trying to enable Amtrak to bring back that train route.

The train made a stop in Portland that allowed us to stretch our legs on the train platform before we rode onto Seattle, Washington. From Seattle, we caught our plane to Fairbanks, Alaska. The plane ride was not memorable except my younger sister sat near a smoker. Mary Frances did not like to be around cigarette smoke. She claimed she was allergic to it. My sister and mom asked the flight attendant if the passenger could stop smoking since it caused problems for them. The passenger did not care and he smoked even more cigarettes. Thank goodness the rules changed years later, and one cannot smoke on commercial flights anymore.

Having a quirky time in Fairbanks

We arrived in Fairbanks late in the afternoon. The airport looked geared for a small town dumped in the middle of nowhere. We rented a car to explore Fairbanks for a during our two night and one full day visit. We ate a delicious Alaska salmon dinner at an outdoor local establishment with picnic tables along the small Chena River. The fish was cooked on open flame barbeque pits. It was some of the best tasting fish of my life. This area was called Pioneer Park. It had old western style store fronts and homes, commemorating early Alaskan pioneer and gold rush history. The food was so tasty that we went back for a second night for dinner.

After dinner on the first day, we stopped by a grocery store to get some items. A store clerk named James who was about a couple years old than my sister struck up a conversation with her. My sister was impressed that he was friendly, kind, easy-going, attractive, and he wanted to get to know her. He asked her out on a date for the next evening. She was thrilled for a chance to go out on a date with a local Fairbanks young man. She asked my parents if it was ok to go out the next evening and my parents were fine with it. We all thought it was funny that my sister caught the attention of a local resident.

On our arrival day in Fairbanks, we were amazed it was still daylight at 10:30 pm. My dad and I took a drive to see the famous Trans-Alaska pipeline. It is 800-mile-long oil pipeline. It runs from Prudhoe Bay on the northern edge of Alaska to the town of Valdez in southern coastal Alaska. At the Valdez Marine Terminal, oil is loaded onto tankers for shipment to global markets. Construction of the pipeline took three years from April, 1974 and finished in June, 1977.

I remember seeing the Alaskan Pipeline on the TV news as a child. It seemed to be a big deal for American ingenuity at the time. Plus, the U.S. staggered with ongoing oil crises in the 1970s. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) boycotted American markets in 1973-74, plus gasoline price spikes due to inflation. The pipeline seemed to be an answer to American oil production woes. According to the ConocoPhillips website, this pipeline was “the world’s largest privately funded construction project when it was built, at a cost of $8 billion.”

In its own way, the pipeline was an iconic engineering marvel. It set a standard for design which endures to this day. Its distinctive zig-zag looks allow the pipe to flex in the event of an earthquake. More than half the pipeline runs above ground, cradled by metal supports, so the hot oil does not melt the permafrost that is prevalent along the route. I vaguely remember as a child that it was controversial with environmental protesters trying to stop it. With all the effort to construct this pipeline, keep the oil flowing, heat the oil so that it does not freeze in the frigid Alaskan winters, and maintain the pipeline, I wonder now if it would be cheaper to switch to clean energy. Just a thought.

My dad and I noticed how quiet it was by the pipeline since we outside the developed area of Fairbanks. It was silently doing its job, without any protesters or signs of workers fiddling with it, at this spot. We were curious to see the Alaskan Pipeline since it made so much news when it was completed in 1977. With its meandering design stretching out to the horizon, it seemed like America’s modern answer to the Great Wall of China. Even more, my dad and I appreciated that we could look at it at 10:30 pm with plenty of daytime on this long July Alaskan day.

We then went to the local grocery store to see people shopping. It was busy like it was 5 pm, rather than almost 11 pm. We laughed as I remarked to my dad, “Don’t these people ever sleep?”

The next day, we explored a museum in Fairbanks where they were constructing a totem pole outside. We went to a shopping mall where they had adult Bengal Tigers and one cub in tiny cages that looked like jail cells. We wondered: What did these tigers do wrong? One tiger in the cage was trying to sleep off the experience in this brightly lit mall. Another tiger just paced back and forth in the cage that was way too small. Even more oddly, they had a bamboo booth set up to get photos with the with the Tiger cub.

That evening, Mary Frances went on the date with James. It was after 10:30 pm. My sister was not back at our hotel room. My mom sat on a bed worried. My dad anxiously paced the small hotel room, like the tiger in the cage that was too tiny we observed earlier that day. He exclaimed, “I should not have let her go out on this date, especially to stay out this late!”

I sarcastically replied, “Gee, Dad, you should not have told her that it was ok to stay out until it got dark!”

Fortunately, they laughed at my joke. It broke up the tension in the confined hotel room.

A few minutes later, my sister strolled in the room. Mary Frances said she had a lovely evening with him. James asked her about our vacation plans. She told him that we would be in Anchorage later that week. He indicated he would drive from Fairbanks to Anchorage when we there to meet up with her. We thought that was funny Fairbanks to Anchorage is about 360 miles apart or a 6-and-a-half-hour drive without stopping. My sister thought it was flattering and endearing. At the same time, my sister thought there was zero chances of seriously dating this guy. First, he lives in Alaska, and she lives in Missouri. Talk about a long-distance relationship! Second, she was still a teenager in high school not really interested in seriously dating anyone yet.

When we were in Anchorage later this trip, James showed up driving all the way from Fairbanks hoping to spend time with her. My sister, my parents, and I all thought it was amusing and odd. Mary Frances met up with him again. However, that was a very long drive to find out she was not going to be his girlfriend.

Exploring Denali National Park

The next day, we boarded the train in Fairbanks to head to Denali National Park. I was amazed how sparse civilization was and no sightings of people from Fairbanks to Denali. The pine trees stretched for miles, but they all looked stunted and puny. They had an enchanting deep green color. However, a tall tree in an Alaska only seemed to stand about 5 to 7 feet tall.

We arrived at the train station in Denali. We then traveled the main park road in the park the only way one could: with a group of fellow tourists on packed board an old school bus. We had a naturalist guide narrating the tour while driving the bus. He had a long deep brown hair and beard. He looked like a cross between Jesus and someone who had spent years living as one with the Alaskan wilderness. He was a terrific storyteller. He may have influenced me more than he or I ever knew. Just over 10 years later in the Everglades, I would be narrating tours there while having a very long hair and beard.

This naturalist did a fabulous job at pointing out the wildlife and slowing down the bus so passengers on both sides could see the animals. We had a wolf strolling down the road alongside the bus for a several yards. A distant moose grazed within a low patch of trees watching us as we observed her. We then spotted a grizzly bear mother and two cubs in a grassy plain a couple hundred yards from us.

Our naturalist guide drove us to the end of the road where Denali would greet us on a clear day. However, it was an overcast day with the tops of all the nearby mountains shrouded. I started to believe that the resident Alaskans were correct: It is nearly impossible to see Denali when you are in Alaska. I crossed my fingers I might have better luck later this trip.

The next day we went rafting on the Nenana River. My parents, sister, and I loved the rafting trip. It was the first time we had ever seen a Bald Eagle. It glared down at us from a tree not far from the raft. The water was calm and relaxing. The color of the water was gray, opaque, and chalky. This was my first time seeing a glacier fed river and it fascinated me. This was not a white water or white-knuckle rafting trip. I recall the rafting trip as serene, relaxing, and mellow.

The rafting guide advised us to not go swimming since the temperature of the water from being a glacier fed river was only a few degrees above freezing. He warned that we could get hypothermia fast since the water was so cold. The murky color of the water and the sudden knowledge of the frigid water temperature canceled any temptation for us to go swimming.

Our guide was young, just a few years older than me. I turned 20 years old during the trip. He liked his job and told many funny jokes. The way he enjoyed his job made me wonder if I should look for recreational jobs in the outdoors or a national park. I was not interested in a rafting job, but I was intrigued to work someday in a scenic area leading narrated tours.

Like the previous day, it was overcast with no mountain peaks in sight. The Denali National Park naturalist guide from the day before and the rafting guide that day affirmed that is very unlikely to see Denali since it is covered in clouds most of the time. I still hoped that all the Alaskans I encountered about this would be wrong.

After the rafting tour, we ate dinner at Grande Denali Lodge. As my mom, sister, and I waited outside for my dad who was in the restroom, we saw hordes of people getting off and on buses and even the train. Most of them were senior citizens. One of them even farted and did a weird dance afterwards to shake it off. My mom made a joke that for now on when she saw crowds of seniors, she would start referring to them as The Alaskan Crowd.

Denali can’t hide itself forever, or can it?

The next day we boarded the train to start heading south to Anchorage. The train trip would take several hours to reach Anchorage, if not most of the day. The train would spend a great deal of time traversing around the east edge of Denali National Park. It was another overcast Alaskan day. It appeared doubtful I would see the mountain. The Alaskans I met were not with me on this train, but they would have laughed at me straining my eyes looking out the train window to get any kind of sight of Denali.

Then it happened an hour into the train trip. The clouds parted! The mountain was out! We had a blue sky with a few small clouds in front of Denali, but not enough to block the view of it.

Denali was a huge glistening white marvel of nature, rising twice as high as the mountains in front of it. I never saw anything more gigantic in my life. Most iconic mountains such as Mt. Hood, the Matterhorn, Mt. Fuji, the Grand Tetons, etc. look more like they rise to a very fine pointy church steeple top. Not Denali. It looked like a mammoth wall of rock, snow, and ice. It gave the impression that it was a lofty Himalayan Mountain that got lost and ended up in the middle of Alaska all lonesome by itself.

I could not stop taking photos of it. I remember my Dad was ecstatic to see the mountain like me. Fortunately, I used a fast enough shutter speed on my camera to get decent photos of the mountain. The local Alaskan experts were wrong! I could actually see the mountain!

I was glad the Alaskans warned me that I would probably not see Denali. It made the experience of glimpsing the mountain on the train that much sweeter. The train was beneficial because as it went along the curves, we got various looks of the iconic peak, revealing an enormous size from different angles. It finally got to the point where I could only see Denali from the back of the train. Even more, the clouds were moving back in to obscure the mountain again.

It was as if Mother Nature and Denali said to me, “Yeah. I will give you one quick view of the mountain, but that’s it!”

Seeing Portage Glacier just outside of Anchorage, Alaska

Obviously, seeing Denali was the highlight of the trip. The rest of the Alaskan trip was fun after we arrived in Anchorage. We liked exploring the Anchorage Museum showcasing Alaskan history, art, culture, and science. My favorite artwork was large landscape painting of an Alaskan wilderness scene. A rushing river flowed through it with tall hills with dark trees on both sides of the river. A majestic view of Denali dominated the background. The painting signaled to me how Alaskans revere this mountain. The artist who painted it showcased the beauty of the mysterious highest point in North America that many visitors travel a long way but fail to see. The painting seemed to say, ‘Behold this sacred mountain that is tough to get a view!’

In the central large open space of the Anchorage Museum, we watched two folk dancers perform traditional Slavic and Russian dance moves. They looked to be in their 70s with their whitish hair and appearance. Yet, they performed their dance moves with a rigid precision. They both looked to be barely over 5 feet tall as they danced to the Eastern European folk music. With their small size, they looked like figurines for a wedding cake. They were probably Anchorage residents. Their clean well maintained Slavic outfits showed that they took the music, dancing, and clothes seriously while sharing their love for it with the museum patrons.

We then walked to the Anchorage Mall and noticed the ice-skating rink used by several locals in mid-July. This fascinated our family coming all the way from Missouri to see Alaskans ice-skating in the middle of summer. We were tempted to join them, but no one in our family, especially me, felt brave enough to ice skate that day.

The Sugar family attending the Marriage Encounter Convention hosted us for several days. The family was Al, Joyce, and their daughter Amy, who was around my age. The Sugars took us to see the sights of Anchorage, such as the Portage Glacier, in their family recreational vehicle (RV). I never saw glacial ice up close before. With Amy’s help, I even held some in my hands. I felt grateful to photograph this glacier July 1988.

In 2008, twenty years later, I decided to be a climate change organizer. I heard stories since then how Portage Glacier retreated due to climate change. One story was from a fellow climate advocate and friend, Larry Lazar. He was my best man when I married my wife Tanya on November 1, 2015. Yale Climate Connections published Larry’s story in January 2015. He went to Alaska on a family vacation in June 2008. But they “couldn’t see the glacier anywhere.”

Larry read a sign at the Visitor Center how the glacier retreated due to climate change. The sign had a profound impact on him. Up to that point, he did not accept the reality of climate change. When he returned to St. Louis from his 2008 Alaskan trip, he started reading the science on climate change. This led to Larry attending the 2011 Climate Change Exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center, where I worked at that time. Larry and I became friends. We co-created the St. Louis Climate Reality Meet Up in October 2011. Today it is known as Climate Meetup-St. Louis.

Larry and I became Climate Reality Leaders in August 2012. We gave joint Climate Reality climate change presentations from December 2012 until Tanya and I moved to Portland, Oregon in February 2017. Larry regularly told his 2008 Portage Glacier story in our joint talks and media interviews. While I totally accepted the science of climate change and saw the negative impacts while working in the national parks, I did not want to fully grip Larry’s story of not seeing Portage Glacier when I heard him share it from 2011 to 2017. We were strangely connected seeing Portage Glacier 20 years apart: 1988 for me and 2008 for Larry.

I selfishly want to remember it today how I saw it when Al Sugar and his family took my parents, younger sister, and I to see it in July 1988. It was a delightful day in Alaska that I was glad to experience. I would probably feel sick to my stomach to see photos of the retreat of the Portage Glacier now compared to when I saw it in 1988, almost 40 years ago.

The final days of our trip visiting Anchorage, Alaska

On the way back from the glacier, we saw a female Dall Sheep with a small lamb following not far behind her. Al Sugar climbed to the roof of RV to get a better view of the sheep. He generously offered to use my camera with the zoom lens on the RV roof to get some photos of the Dall Sheep for me. I still recall the lump in my throat as I handed him my new camera and lens as he hung over the side of the RV requesting that I hand my camera to him. I really didn’t want him to drop my camera since I bought it so recently.

I asked him if he understood how to operate my camera, since I barely knew how to use it. Al assured me that he did. He got some decent photos of the female Dall Sheep and her lamb that I would not have been able to get otherwise.

It was good to see these sights in Anchorage because I never saw Denali again after gazing at it on the train. Al Sugar told me that on a clear day Denali is easily spotted from Anchorage. The mountain is located about 130 miles north of the city — “about 130 miles away as the raven flies.” However, the weather was overcast over the entire time we were there. It only seemed like a pipe dream for me to see the mountain from Anchorage.

I celebrated my 20th birthday in Alaska. We spent the day at the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage. Similar to the Fairbanks shopping mall, I observed animals in cages looking bored or confined. I saw the polar bear close up behind the zoo bars. It looked it like had a sense of humor because it turned around with its backside to us and started peeing. Maybe it was just relieving itself. Or, sending a message that it didn’t like the tourists, including us.

As the visit to Alaska closed, we went up to Far North Bicentennial Park which had an overlook to get a bird’s eye view of the Anchorage skyline and city limits.

Then it was time leave to Alaska and fly back home to the lower 48 states. We had clear skies from Anchorage to Seattle with a chance to see lots of coastal snowy mountains from Alaska to British Columbia and down to Washington state. I got glimpses from my airplane window seat of Mt. Baker, Mt. Rainier, and an aerial view of downtown Seattle.

We then had an amazing train ride on the Amtrak Empire Builder, which travels from Seattle to Chicago. The train left the station with clear views of the Seattle Space Needle and Mt. Baker heading north before then heading east. We had great views going along the edge of Glacier National Park, Montana. The train stopped long enough in Bismarck, North Dakota for passengers to step outside and stretch their legs. Even if it was for a few minutes, it was a thrill for our family to claim stepping our feet in a new state for us, North Dakota. The train went on through Minneapolis and then back to Chicago. We then caught another train back to St. Louis.

I am grateful for my parents and Mary Frances for their openness to take this trip to Alaska.

Final Thoughts

St. Louis looked drab after returning home from Alaska and riding a train to see the northwestern U.S. states of Oregon and Washington. While in Alaska, I bought a poster of Denali which I hung on my dorm wall when I started William Jewell College in Kansas City, MO at the end of August 1988. For months afterwards, I chatted about that Alaska trip with friends, family, my college classmates, my roommate, and anyone starting a conversation with me. I took a Communications 100 Class that fall. One of my first speeches was about my trip to Alaska.

It was too remote for me to return to Alaska. But I yearned to return to the Pacific Northwest. I wanted to stare at snowcapped mountains and live close to them. I graduated from William Jewell College on May 17, 1992. That evening, I boarded an Amtrak Train for a cross-country train ride to Los Angeles, California. I then transferred to another train which took me to Klamath Falls, Oregon. The last morning of my train ride, I awoke with the metal wheels squealing as the train navigated the sharp curve to skirt the edge of the 14,000-foot Mt. Shasta in northern California. While not as tall and enormous as Denali, this mountain looked huge. Like Denali, Shasta heralded me on this clear morning as a towering mountain with its fresh winter snowpack still clinging to it. Mt Shasta greeted me with a friendly, “Welcome to the Pacific Northwest!”

At Klamath Falls, a gift store employee at Crater Lake National Park named Kevin picked me up at the train station. I spent the summer working in the gift shop at Crater Lake. I could not get enough absorbing the beauty of the snowy peaks that ringed the deep blue cobalt lake. More big mountains covered with snow stood on the horizon outside the park, such as Mt. Shasta.

I ended up working 25 years as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park and Everglades National Park, Florida. While working in the national parks, I saw climate change negatively impacted those national treasures. It triggered my passion to organize for climate action.

Denali looms large in Alaska and in my memories. It is massive in size. It had a huge impact in my life to move to the Pacific Northwest to be near snow covered mountains. It played a role in my lifelong love of nature and an inspiration for me to be an advocate to care for our planet. May this sacred mountain inspire you, as it did for me.

Two kinds of people exist in our world: those who have experienced a total solar eclipse and those who have not. It is that simple. You have either witnessed a total eclipse of the sun or not. No, if, ands, or buts. Seeing a partial solar eclipse does not count as impressive as they are. Words, including anything I write here, won’t do it justice. Any analogy I want to compare it with won’t do. I risk falling into clichés.

Seeing a Total Solar Eclipse possibly like seeing a live baseball game for the first time

The closet I can compare observing for a total solar eclipse is a May 2023 AARP Bulletin essay from legendary sportscaster Bob Costas, “Visiting Yankee Stadium with Dad.” It’s his reflection on “the first major league game I can recall. Over 6 decades later, it remains one of my most memorable.”

My mom mailed a hard copy of this subscription article to me that arrived in the mail recently. I write ‘hard copy’ loosely because she ripped the article out of the magazine so it arrived in three separate pages in no order. With those loose pieces of paper, trying to decipher the article from beginning to end felt like an archeologist trying to resemble an ancient treasure map. Or an income tax preparer trying to organize loose receipts from a shoebox for tax deductions.

For Costas, the actual game played that day was not significant. The Orioles won 7 to 2 over the Yankees. It was the experience spending time in the ballpark with his dad that day. Costas attested it to “Many fans of a certain age have likened walking for the first time up the tunnel leading to their seats to the moment when Dorthy is transported from black-and-white Kansas to Technicolor Oz. Like entering a different and, for a kid, enchanting world.”

Costas then paints a description of seeing the baseball field, the feeling of being in “a baseball cathedral…’The House that (Babe) Ruth Built’”, his dad teaching him how to keep score, and the fans exited the ballpark by way of the field. To top it off, Costas and his dad walked by Yankee Stadium’s famous Monument Park, which had monuments back then to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and their manager, Miller Huggins. The 7-year-old Costas cried when he saw those “monuments” thinking they were their cemetery headstones. His dad then did his best to change his mood by hoisting Bob on his shoulders as they bobbed along to exit.

That was 1959. Costas remembers it like it was yesterday. His dad died when Bob was 18 years old. Costas went on to broadcast many playoff and World Series games. His biggest regret was never taking his dad to be with him to one of the games he broadcasted. However, his son was at his side when he worked many of those baseball games. Costas attended thousands of games. But he recalls his first game at Yankee Stadium as a 7-year-old with his dad most fondly.

I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, as a third generation fan of the St. Louis Cardinals major league base team. I enjoyed attending Cardinals baseball games as a kid. I even played for a little league baseball team around the time I was in first grade around 1974. Thus, I understand how Bob Costas fell in love with baseball.

This is what I think seeing a total solar eclipse is like: a life changing moment like what Costas experienced watching at a baseball game with his dad for the first time.

My wife Tanya and I missing out on the Total Solar Eclipse in 2017

On August 21, 2017, a solar eclipse happened across the United States from northwestern Oregon to South Carolina. Tanya and I had many family members and friends who witnessed that solar eclipse in the zone of totality. In February 2017, Tanya and I moved permanently to Portland, Oregon. She accepted a job as a cytotechnologist in a nearby medical lab from where we live in northeast Portland. This was my last summer working as a seasonal naturalist ranger at Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon. Both Tanya and I were outside of the area of the total eclipse. It literally passed between our locations.

At Crater Lake around 10:15 am, I looked up with special eclipse glasses to see the moon blocking most of the sun. I watched the partial eclipse from the second story balcony deck from my seasonal park housing. Looking around, everything looked normal. It was a smoky summer at Crater Lake from Oregon forest fires. The air smelled like a campfire and the outside visibility looked less than ideal for a clear day. A tinge of smoke lingered in the air making it harder to see the nearby mountains in the park, making everything look a bit orange. I did not start work until noon that day. While I watched from home how the surrounding world reacting to the eclipse, the TV blared CNN to see how areas across the U.S. encountered the total eclipse.

CNN TV crews showed spectators cheering in areas experiencing the full shadow of the moon. Sadly, some parts of the U.S. were overcast and could not see the moon blocking the sun, just grey clouds and everything getting darker. When the eclipse passed over Oregon, Crater Lake was not in the zone of totality. Outside my balcony deck, it looked like the orange haze dimmed slightly but not much. The park housing is near the main park road that visitors and staff use to drive through the park. During the partial eclipse, the road and the park became silent. It felt like visitors and employees wanted to contemplate the moment and experience the phenomenon, not driving their cars or talking loudly while the partial eclipse happened.

Tanya went outside her work to see the partial eclipse in Portland. She took photos of the unusual shadows on the ground of the impaired sunlight mostly blocked by the moon shining light through the leaves of the trees above her. Since we first started dating in 2013 and got married in 2015, we yearned to be together to experience events like that. It was sad we were separated by work to not be together to witness it in Portland, Crater Lake, or the zone of totality.

This was a different story for our families back in St. Louis, Missouri, which was the inside the area of the total solar eclipse. Tanya’s parents live the western suburbs, Creve Coeur. Their home was barely in the totality zone, so they drove to a secluded spot south to be in the center of the total eclipse. Tanya’s brother lived in the city of St. Louis, just outside of the total eclipse area. He drove to Tanya’s parents’ house to see the eclipse there with this dog.

My parents lived in south St. Louis County. Their house was positioned in the zone of totality. They decided to stay home to watch the eclipse. My younger sister Mary Frances and my brother-in-law Robb drove to my parents’ house to watch the total eclipse together. It was a typical hot and humid day outside in St. Louis. My dad told me afterwards that the temperature dropped several degrees during the total eclipse. It felt cold for him during the totality to be outside in shorts and a t-shirt. After the eclipse passed, my Dad frequently shared how their two cats seemed confused by the total eclipse. When my parents, sister, and brother-in-law went back inside, the cats had a bewildered look on their faces as to say, ‘What happened? Please tell us what happened? Is everything ok? Are you ok?’

I had fellow ranger friends at Crater Lake who took off work to drive to see the total solar eclipse that day. They all seemed to enjoy the experience. But they came back to Crater Lake with stories of intense traffic tie ups leaving the zone of totality after the eclipse. Some of them were stuck in their cars for hours waiting for the traffic to move.

Planning a Trip to St. Louis see the Total Solar Eclipse in April 2024

The stories good and bad intrigued me to see a full and total eclipse for myself if the opportunity happened. I noticed in the news in 2017 that the next full solar eclipse would be on April 8, 2024. This solar eclipse would have a different path than the 2017 eclipse. The 2024 eclipse U.S. path started from lower southwestern Texas, then traveled through the cities such as San Antonio and Dallas, touch the southeastern corner of Oklahoma, through the center Arkansas, especially the Little Rock area. The eclipse would then go through Southeastern Missouri and Southeastern Illinois. It would then continue through Indiana, Ohio, the Great Lakes Of Erie and Ontario, and then up the U.S. Canadian eastern border before exiting in Maine.

The town of Carbondale, Illinois piqued my interest because it would be one of the few U.S. towns in the path of the 2017 and 2024 total eclipses. Carbondale is a two-hour drive or 100 miles southeast of St. Louis. I started scheming so that Tanya and I could combine a trip to see the total solar eclipse with a visit to see our parents and families in St. Louis.

Even more, Tanya’s parents, Nancy and Rex, are excellent trip planners. I marveled at the trips Tanya and I took with them over the past 10 years to see family in Denmark, the Olympic peninsula in Washington state, and Yosemite National Park in California. In September 2023, my in-laws organized a trip for 14 of us, including 8 of Nancy’s Danish relatives, to meet in Seattle for a 10-day trip to go see Glacier National Park in Montana. On the way back from Glacier, we spent two days visiting North Cascades National Park in Washington state before returning to Seattle. Rex and Nancy had a detailed itinerary of the motel we would stay each day, where we would sightsee, picnic, and the restaurants where we would eat dinner each evening.

I was confident that if we flew to St. Louis, Tanya’s parents would know the best place to see the eclipse and they would gladly take us there as a family outing. It would be a budget trip to see the eclipse without worrying about expensive hotel reservations, rental cars, meals, etc. Rex and Nancy were excited we were coming to visit them. My parents were thrilled we would visit them. This eclipse was a good excuse to see family. In the worst case scenario that it could be totally overcast during the day of the total eclipse, at least we would spend a week with family.

Tanya’s parents would have probably gone to see the solar eclipse in southern Illinois anyway, regardless of our visit. Like I suspected, they researched the best place to see the total eclipse.

When we packed for the April 6-14, 2024 trip to St. Louis, I decided to pack my heavy but very sturdy 34 year old Bogen Tripod and our complex Canon EOS Rebel T5i digital camera Tanya’s parents gave us for Christmas in 2016. Since 2018, I exclusively used my iPhone 8 for photography. Tanya used the Canon to get the detailed photographs she liked to take. Over the years, Rex gave her as gifts zoom and wide-angle lenses for that Canon camera. Tanya enjoyed having extra lenses on our hikes and sightseeing exclusions to take quality photos.

A couple of years ago, Tanya switched to a smaller Canon EOS digital camera with an adapter to handle her three various lenses. The Canon EOS Rebel T5i camera was sitting on a shelf for a couple of years unused when I decided to take it on this trip. That camera was a gift from Rex and Nancy to both of us, but I never used that camera. It became Tanya’s camera. Suddenly, I needed to familiarize myself with that camera quickly to photograph this complex rare astronomical event. Bottomline line: I had no idea what I was doing with this camera.

When we arrived in St. Louis, I figured Tanya and Rex would quickly teach me how to use this camera to photograph the eclipse. In January 2024, I read an article in Astronomy advising first-time eclipse viewers to not try to photograph it. The writer urged a new eclipse chaser to just enjoy the first-time experience and worry about photographing the eclipse if they see it for a second or third time. Good advice to ponder. But full solar eclipses over the United States have only happened a couple times in my lifetime. I am doubtful if I will see another solar eclipse. Therefore, I wanted photos of this event, damn the consequences!

Tanya and I flew to St. Louis on Saturday, April 6, 2024. On Sunday, April 7th, Rex and Tanya took time to try to teach me how to use the Canon EOS Rebel T5i Camera. Rex went out of his way to create for me a lens filter that I could photograph the sun. The filter subtracts all the bright light so the sun looks like a bright orange spotlight with a black backdrop. It was a joy for me with new toys photographing the sun on that Sunday afternoon to practice taking photos for the solar eclipse the next day. Rex programed the camera with a quick shutter speed to minimize the image from looking shaky, fuzzy, or looking out of focus. At the same time, he set up the camera to have a slow enough shutter speed to draw in adequate light to capture the sun with the eclipse filter on the lens. Basically, we needed a Goldilocks shutter speed for me: fast enough to capture the sun going into the eclipse but slow enough to capture enough light.

I spent some time that Sunday afternoon practicing photos of the sun I got images that I liked. Some of my first photos of the sun were blurry. No worries! I kept practicing with the tripod and long lens to aim the camera at the sun to try to capture the glowing orange light bulb.

Monday April 8th was the big day to see the eclipse. I was as eager as a kid on Christmas morning to see this event. I figured there would be a lot of heavy traffic from St. Louis and elsewhere to southern Illinois to see the eclipse. The eclipse was projected to occur around the Carbondale area around 2 pm. I meekly asked my mother-in-law Nancy if we planned to leave early in the morning to beat the traffic. She firmly replied, “No, we are leaving around 9 am.”

She packed lunches for us. We did not pull out of the driveway until almost 10 am. It’s normally a two-hour drive to Carbondale, but it took us over three and a half hours to drive to the location where Nancy made the reservation. We ran into some traffic delays, road construction, and we got a bit lost with the GPS and maps trying to find the destination.

Nancy reserved parking and spaces for us at the Alto Vineyards in Alto Pass, Illinois. When we arrived around 1:30 pm, we saw hundreds of people in a carnival like atmosphere of music blaring, dancing, wine sipping, children playing with balls, and family groups sitting on blankets waiting for the eclipse to start. By the time we arrived, we had to park near the far end of the parking lot since most of the attendees arrived before we did. We grabbed our lunch bags, a blanket to lay on, folding chairs, my tripod, our cameras, and temporary eclipse safety glasses.

We found a secluded spot in this vineyard next to where some of the grapes grew. We saw lots of people dozens of yards from us, but we had plenty of space to feel like we could have our own conversations without anyone listening to us. Most of the attendees gathered close to the restaurant and bar. They probably wanted to enjoy the eclipse close to their family and friends. Their location was in proximity where they could order more wine, food, and other drinks.

We arrived at our chosen spot just as the moon started first contact crossing over the sun. I hastily set up my tripod and mounted the elaborate Canon camera on it. I immediately noticed the tripod was not helpful. The sun was high in the sky for the middle of the day. The steep angle did not work to point my camera on the tripod at the sun to take photos. Plus, I was using a quick enough shutter speed so my images would not be fuzzy and out of focus. Somehow the Goldilocks setting Rex set up the day before was not locked in on the camera. Rex scrambled to help me as he set up his own camera and tripod for the eclipse. He then advised me to forget about using the tripod and just lie in the grass embankment to take photos. Lying flat on the ground would allow me to be in a steady enough position to take quality photos of the eclipse.

As usual, Rex’s photography tricks helped. I was now off to the races taking photos as the moon crossed about 25% across the sun. As the moon moved further across the sun, it looked like Pac-Man or a cookie with bigger bites taken out of it. As the moon further encroached across the sun, the crowd grew quieter in anticipation something magical was about to happen.

The partial eclipse looked very familiar to me since I saw one at Crater Lake National Park in 2017. When I worked as a naturalist guide in Everglades National Park from 1998 to 2002, I remember seeing a partial solar eclipse when I narrated one of the sunset boat tours. The partial eclipse happened just as the sun was about to set into the Gulf of Mexico. I glimpsed hundreds of sunsets dropping into the ocean while working in the Everglades. This partial eclipse sunset of the most memorable.

On April 8, 2024, as the moon acted like it was gobbling up the sun, I felt like I entered into a new and unknown territory. The moon’s advancement turned the sun into a crescent. Then just a tiny sliver of the sun showed. The stunning part was when the moon covered almost 99% of the sun. Yet, it still appeared like daylight was all around us. Maybe a bit dimmer. It looked like a normal day surrounding us and scanning the horizon. The outside appearance was like when a dark puffy cloudy on a sunny day moves in front of the sun and the brightness of the day is a tad less. That moment showed how powerful the sunlight is even when a small bit of sunshine comes through. It was a revelation how vital it is to use the eclipse safety glasses even when less than 1% of the sunlight hit the area around us. Even that miniscule amount of sunlight could do damage to the eyes without proper protection such as the eclipse safety glasses.

As the moon moved after closer to a solar totality eclipse, everyone at this vineyard grew quiet with anticipation. We all held our breath for what came next.

Then it occurred like a flip of a switch. The moon totally blocked out the sun. It became dark in a second, but not like midnight. It was more like an evening darkness a half hour after the sun set. The crowd let out a huge boisterous cheer like the moon hit a huge home run in a baseball game broadcasted by Bob Costas. Most people there, including Tanya and me, never saw a total eclipse before. We could not contain our excitement. The moon in this total cooperation with the sun put on this spectacle of show that made all of us huge fans of the moon.

Yes, the moon is incredibly beautiful when it is full or even half, quarter, three quarters, waning, waxing, etc. It is lovely to admire when it shines at night, dusk, dawn, or can be seen during the day. I previously saw a huge full moon rise behind Mt. Hood by the duck pond near the location where Tanya and I live in outer northeastern Portland. Several times at Crater Lake, I saw a full moon rise over the eastern side of the caldera as the sun set in the west. I viewed this while leading visitors to the summit on one of my sunset guided ranger hikes up the Watchman Peak.

At our park housing area at Crater Lake, I saw the full moon rise in the east behind a ridge with tall pine trees on Garfield Peak. A bit of moon light would peak between the trees like a spotlight. Then it would rise above the trees in a way that was reminiscent of the Steven Spielberg film E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial. When the large full moon rose above the pine trees at Crater Lake, I imagined Eliot, E.T, and Eliot’s friends riding their bikes in the sky across the full moon with music composer John Williams music soaring in the background.

Yet, this full eclipse on April 8, 2024, was way beyond any brilliant full moon. The moon outdid any performance I had seen it do before. As soon as totality happened, all of us took off our eclipse safety glasses to admire the show of the umbra. The umbra is defined as “The darkest part of the Moon’s shadow, within which the entirety of the Sun’s bright face is blocked.”

The moon now looked like a black hole with the bright white light of the sun flowing off the total darkness of it. I could not stop myself from taking numerous photos. The pearly glow of the sun’s corona was visible to me for the first time in my life. With my camera zoomed in on the total eclipse, I had some chromospheres show up on my photos. They are the thin, red-colored layer of solar atmosphere. They appear as tiny pinkish reddish dots on the edge of the moon blocking the sun. When we saw them during the eclipse we referred to them as solar flares for a lack of knowledge of the correct scientific term.

With the umbra causing a darkness around us, I could hear crickets starting to chirp, thinking it was nightfall. A buzz of conversation stirred in this huge crowd as the spectators shared a joyful celebration of this rare moment. They eagerly chatted with their family and friends astonished what they were witnessing together.

The sky was dark enough above us that a few evening stars began to appear. However, the horizon all around us looked like it was dusk. It looked like it could be daytime in the far distance while we briefly experience a brief midday night experience. This total eclipse only lasted about 4 and a half minutes. I made sure to lie in the grass next to my wife Tanya to take in this mystical moment we were experiencing together and may never experience again.

We then started seeing Bailey’s Beads, shafts of sunlight shining through deep valleys on the lunar limb (edge), they look like a series of brilliant beads popping. The sun became impatient getting blocked by the moon. It was not going to take this blockage much longer. The moon looked eager to separate from the sun and continue its path. Then we got the brief Diamond Ring phenomenon where more of the sun’s corona shines in a corner of the totality. It looked like a spectacular wedding ring that you would love to give to the person you want to spend the rest of your life. I felt like I scored a victory capturing a photo of this Diamond Ring.

Diamond ring signals the end of the solar eclipse totality. Within a second, poof! The total eclipse of the sun was gone. It was over. We now were back to seeing just a tiny sliver of the sun. We grabbed our eclipse safety glasses fast so the suns fast approaching bright rays of light would not damage our eyes.

Many of the spectators, including Tanya and her parents, were now shuffling their feet and looking ready to pack up to leave. Not me! I wanted to stay as long as I could to take in the third contact stage where the moon slowly edges away from blocking the sun. I wanted to take in everything I saw and photograph the sliver of the sun grow into a crescent sun. Then from the crescent sun change into a quarter sun, then a Pac-Man looking sun, then a sun looking like a cookie with a smaller and smaller bite taken from it.

Finally, the moon covered a tiny portion of the sun. The moon and the sun decided that their mutual dance was over. They were on different paths and had different places to go. This very brief but spectacular close relationship was over. I still wanted to take everything in from this occasion. Tanya, her parents, and her parents’ friends who joined us were now back at the cars with all the items we brought with us. Part of me didn’t want to leave. I still wanted to sit there and absorb what I saw. It felt like a life changing experience for me. I did not want it to end.

Before I left this vineyard for good, I felt like the moon gave a masterful performance. I wanted it to take a bow and even do a curtain call. I swiftly gathered up my stuff, folding up my Bogen Tripod, putting Tanya’s Canon Camera back in the camera bag, and finishing the contents of my sack lunch. I hurriedly went back to the cars where the rest of the group gathered before they could realize that I was holding them back.

The Aftermath on my life of seeing the Total Solar Eclipse on April 8, 2024

The detailed conscientious planner that is my mother-in-law Nancy had a hike for us in a nearby state park for us to do next on this gorgeous spring April day. She picked a hike for us to try on the Tree Discovery Trail in the Trail of Tears State Forest. The trail was only .4 miles long. We then hiked on a C.C.C. Heritage Trail which connected to the Discovery Trail, which was another .4 miles. These trails had an elevation gain of 150 feet to the tops of these hills. The trees were mostly bare from their winter shedding of leaves. But leaves were sprouting on several of the trees showing the rejuvenation of life in spring was underway.

For Tanya’s parents, Tanya, and her parents’ friends, the hikes were welcome exercise after standing and sitting in one place for a couple of hours at the vineyard to witness the solar eclipse, plus the three and a half hour car ride to travel to see the eclipse. After the hikes around 4:30 pm, we decided to drive back to Rex and Nancy’s home in west St. Louis County. We hoped the hikes would help clear out the eclipse traffic heading back to St. Louis. We were wrong. We were trapped in long lines of very slow traffic on the state highways from Carbondale to St. louis. It is normally a two-hour drive, but it took us over three and a half hours as the vehicle parade of eclipse chasers crawled through rural southern Illinois back to St. Louis.

We didn’t make it home until after 8 pm. Since we return home so late, the best we could do for dinner was a Domino’s Pizza. With my love of pizza, including Domino’s, this capped off a perfect day for me to see a once in a lifetime event.

The next day, Tanya and I visited my dad who lives in an assisted care facility in St. Louis. I showed my photos from the solar eclipse from the previous day. He was impressed with my photos. He requested a copy of one of my photos of the solar eclipse totality with the white pearly glow of the sun’s corona dancing off the jet-black sphere of the moon blocking the full view of the sun. I mailed the 8×10 inch photo I printed to my dad in early June. During the summer, my mom framed the photo. It is now prominently displayed in my dad’s room.

I made second copy of that same photo I gave my Dad of the total solar eclipse. I framed the photo in the summer of 2024. It is now displayed in our guest bedroom in our home.

Tanya and I returned to Portland on April 14th. I was back to my busy life of climate organizing. I helped organize a Portland Chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) forum for the candidates running to be a Representative for Oregon Congressional District 3. I called my friends and other climate organizations to invite them and almost 200 people attended this event. In late April, I got a temporary job as a field organizer for East County Rising (ECR) knocking on doors in Gresham and the east Portland area to urge voters to support local Democratic legislative candidates. This job ran until the Oregon primary election on May 21st.

In June, I traveled to Washington D.C. to attend the CCL Conference and Lobby Day to meet with Congressional staff at their Washington D.C. offices to urge them to support strong climate legislation. From the end of July to the November 5th election, I worked again as an ECR field organizer to urge voters to support local Democratic candidates who were strong for climate action.

On Thanksgiving, Tanya and I flew back to St. Louis for nine days to visit with her parents and my parents for an early Christmas celebration. From January 5-11, 2025, Tanya and I flew to the Big Island of Hawaii for a vacation to go hiking, swimming at beach, sightseeing, and stay with friends that I once worked with at Crater Lake and the Everglades.

Much happened since the April 2024 trip to see the total solar eclipse. Over the last five years, I had many peak and low moments as a climate organizer. At times, I felt so discouraged that I wanted to quit. However, that solar eclipse trip showed me the beauty to be alive to see a once in a lifetime experience. It reminded me to go for my dreams and aspirations. It challenged me to make the most of out of life and strive to make a difference with my life.

We live on a magnificent planet to witness wonders like a total solar eclipse. Bob Costas still remembers his dad taking him to see a baseball game at Yankee Stadium when he was 7 years old. Costas recalls it as one of the most memorable experiences of his life. This April 7, 2024 memory watching the total solar eclipse with stay with me for the rest of my life. It renewed and uplifted my spirit to roll up my sleeve to take more climate action. I hope you will seek out experiences like this so you can make a difference caring for our glorious planet.

Over the past 11 years, I noticed articles on the internet and social media bout climate grief, climate anxiety, climate depression, climate despair, eco-anxiety, ecological grief, etc.

I will admit at times I felt down about climate change, including today (Please note: most of this blog was written in July 2024). My wife and I are planning a trip next week to North Cascades National Park, Washington for my birthday. As I previously blogged, Heather Meadows and Artist Point at the Mt. Baker Ski Area is my favorite place on the planet. I love the views of Mt. Shuksan and Mt. Baker there. I lost track how many times I visited there since I first saw it in 2009.

I was getting excited for this trip until a friend on Facebook who is a Fire Management Officer for the National Park Service posted about the Pioneer Fire along the northern shore of Lake Chelan in North Cascades National Park. As of July 8, 2024, the fire is only 14% contained with “continued increase in activity and spread in the days and weeks ahead.” Even worse, Level 3 (Go Now!) evacuation orders were recently issued for the areas of Prince Creek down lake to Safety Harbor. This fire putting a damper on my vacation plans is nothing compared the potential property damage with lives damaged and lost because of this wildfire.

This fire is one of many depressing reminders in the news that climate change is here and it is bad. On the news today, Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Texas causing power outages for around 3 million people and is blamed for three deaths. While this hurricane caused havoc in the Caribbean in early July, it alarmed meteorologists and hurricane trackers as “the earliest category five Atlantic hurricane in records going back around 100 years.” According to the BBC, it is a clear “sign of a warming world.”

If that is not enough, the Guardian reported on July 8th, that “US heatwave tied to four Oregon deaths as temperature records are shattered.” The article stated, “More than 146 million Americans under extreme heat alerts as dangerous weather fuels outbreak of new wildfires.” I live in Multnomah County, Oregon. that article noted, “Authorities in Multnomah county – home to Portland, where temperatures broke daily records over the weekend – said they were investigating four suspected deaths tied to the heatwave.”

The Present American ‘Democracy Crisis’ has triggered climate despair for me

For the last several years, I focused on the extreme danger to U.S. democracy. Recent events made the severity more acute that American democracy is teetering on the edge. On July 1st, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Donald Trump “has absolute immunity for core acts.” Their ruling ensured Trump would not be held legally accountable for his actions instigating the January 6th insurrection or stealing federal classified documents until after the November 5th election. The Court assisted Trump’s legal tactics to delay the voters from hearing any evidence of guilt in a court trial. Even worse, if Trump won the Presidency, he could shut down all the legal proceedings against him. Historian Heather Cox Richardson called the Supreme Court ruling “putting their thumb on the scale for Trump.” She went on to call it a “legal coup in our system.”

The maddening part is we need an American President that can communicate well and inspire confidence in the American people about the current dire threat to our democracy. Sadly, President Joe Biden failed to make that case in his June 27th debate with Donald Trump. Because of his advance age of 81, voters were not assured Biden has mental acuity to lead the U.S. during the next four years. In short, Biden’s debate performance was a disaster. It came at pivotal moment when our democracy and climate is in peril if Trump wins.

Heather Cox Richardson warned last year: ‘If former president Donald Trump is elected president or takes the presidency in 2024, we will lose American democracy for our lifetime.’

Four years ago, climate scientist Michael Mann cautioned that a second Trump Presidency would be “game over for the climate.” Last October, he reiterated that opinion with this essay in The Hill, “Trump 2.0: The climate cannot survive another Trump term.”

Ever since the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, the words of Al Gore stuck in my mind that he said for many years, “To fix the climate crisis we need to fix democracy.”

Thus, for the past four years, my hair is on fire that we can’t reduce the threat of climate change if we don’t have a democracy. My climate despair, grief, anxiety, and depression since 2021 is that our climate is “doomed” and it is “game over” if we lose our democracy in the November 5, 2024 election to a wannabe strongman autocratic dictator like Donald Trump.

For my fellow climate advocates, this is not a drill! I still worry that many of them don’t get the serious situation where our democracy currently stands. I felt too many climate and environmental activists did not strongly support Al Gore for President in 2000 or Hillary Clinton for President in 2016. Instead, they spent too much time chasing shiny objects like Ralph Nader in 2000, Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries, or Jill Stein in 2016 general election. To win, we need to truly build a strong coalition across the political spectrum.

My frustration was confirmed in late 2023 when I read the book Facing the Climate Emergency by climate activist Dr. Margaret Klein Salamon. I wrote a blog review of the 2023 second edition of this book in March 2024, Yes, we have a Climate AND a Democracy Emergency.

In my blog review, I penned, “I did not notice a peep about this threat (to our democracy) in Margaret’s book, especially in the 2023 edition. Since January 6th, we are now aware of the daunting threat Trump poses to our democracy and climate. However, I did not see her write at all about this in her book. Furthermore, I have not seen her post anything about the threat to our democracy in her social media.”

I went on to write, “As a fellow climate organizer, I really do need Margaret (and everyone else) to address the democracy emergency in 2024 so we can then face the climate emergency.”

This was not the only blog where I tried to sound the alarm about our democracy. For the last two months of 2023, I wrote an 8 part blog, For Climate Action, let’s protect our democracy. From August 2023 to February 2023, I tried to network my contacts and post on social media for a national march for our democracy. Those efforts went nowhere.

I am not giving up. I refuse to give up for our democracy and our climate. I will get involved with political campaigns to knock on doors, phone bank, text bank, organize house parties for candidates, and do all I can to get out the vote for the November 5, 2024 election. We have too much at stake to lose. I will work as hard as I can for the upcoming election because the future of the world and America depends upon it. As I posted on social media on July 7, 2024:

Finding my purpose to organize for climate action helped me overcome depression

To be completely honest, the democracy crisis since January 6, 2021 actually masks a deeper issue for me. I almost quit the climate movement in 2021 because I felt unappreciated and I did not matter. I felt a very deep amount of pain and hurt as a climate organizer over the years. The hurt is so deep for me that I procrastinated for months and years to write this blog.

For my 8 part blog, For Climate Action, let’s protect our democracy, I began each of those blogs writing: “This is the toughest blog for me to write.” Writing about how the bitter losses of the Presidential elections of 2000 and 2016 were extremely painful for me to write. It opened up old wounds for me to write about to try to heal from that pain. This blog cuts even deeper to write because I feel used and abused by the climate movement.

Upon self reflection, I must be candid I am a highly sensitive person and working 25 years in the national parks skewed my perception of reality. Over 98% of park visitors are kind and in awe when they see park rangers. As a park ranger, many visitors treated me like a celebrity. They wanted their photos with me. They hung on my every word. Many laughed at my jokes that were not funny. I knew it was the uniform that impressed them, not really me. It was a heady experience when so many people liked me. For the rest of my life, I am pegged by many people as a park ranger. Oddly, I have not worked as a park ranger since 2017, seven years go.

I started off as a seasonal concessionaire employee at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon in the summer of 1992 and Everglades National Park in the winter of 1992-93. I fell in love with working and recreating in the national parks. They became home for me. My happy place. A few years working in the national parks, I wanted to become a National Park Service ranger. The pay was better than working for the concessionaire, the uniform was snazzy, and rangers were well respected by the park visitors. I was fortunate to be hired as a summer seasonal entrance station ranger at Crater Lake in the summer of 1996.

I struggled with deep bouts of depression in the 1990s because I wanted to make some kind of difference in the world, but I was unsure how to do that. In January 1998, I became a concession naturalist guide narrating the boat tours in Flamingo in Everglades National Park. That helped me to find a life’s purpose and meaning to be able to chat about ecology, the environment, the Everglades wildlife and the history of the area on a daily basis.

As I often blogged and shared my story in public presentations, a turning point happened in 1998 soon after I became a concession naturalist in the Everglades. Soon after I started narrating the boat tours in 1998, visitors asked me about this global warming thing, which I had scant knowledge. Visitors hate when park rangers and naturalists tell you, “I don’t know.” Visitors expect park rangers to know everything. Don’t you?

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

The information I learned scared me, specifically sea level rise along our mangrove coastline in Everglades National Park. Sea level rose 8 inches in the 20th century, four times more than it had risen in previous centuries for the past three thousand years. Because of climate change, sea level is now expected to rise at least three feet in 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. In the years after 1998, I was not sure what to do about climate change except reading books and watching documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth to educate myself about it.

On October 1, 2007, my mentor, Steve Robinson passed away. He was a seasonal park ranger in Everglades and Crater Lake that I first met him in 1993. He lost his struggle to pancreatic cancer less than two month from doctors diagnosing his illness. His passing left me feeling adrift in life with a deep feeling of sadness. In the winter of 2007-08, I started work in a new location at Everglades National Park. The supervisor at Shark Valley recruited me to work there.

When I arrived in Shark Valley in November 2007, the new location was not a good fit for me. I felt isolated. I had a surly housemate. I missed my Everglades City friends from previous winters. On top of that, I was still deeply mourning the loss of my friend Steve.

In my sleeplessness, depression, and restlessness, I found a clear direction for my life. I decided to carry forth my mentor Steve’s message of protecting our Earth and environment since he could no longer share that vision with others. I resolved this was my final winter working in Florida. For future winters, I would stay with my parents in St. Louis and organize for climate action locally. Once I made that decision in December 2007, my depression at that time diminished.

It was dedicating my life to climate action that helped me overcome this bout of depression.

Finding Comedy in my life’s purpose to become a Climate Change Organizer

For the first several years, I had a string of successes slowly transitioning to be a climate organizer. My background as a park ranger helped open some doors.

Since I was giving up a winter job in Everglades National Park, I needed to find a job when working the winters in St. Louis. I still had my summer seasonal interpretation ranger job at Crater Lake National Park, but I wanted to secure another job for the winter. In May 2008, I visited my parents in St. Louis. I was curious about working at REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc) at their St. Louis store. I went inside the store and asked to speak to the manager. I explained my situation that I was getting ready to work for the summer at Crater Lake National Park. I asked if they would have any positions available for the winter. The manager Jon was receptive. He encouraged me to submit my application and resume to work at the store for the winter, especially for the holidays. With my park ranger background, they seemed eager to hire me for the winter since I had a background in the outdoors. REI’s business focus is selling top quality gear, equipment, apparel, and expert advice for the outdoors. Thus, this was a good fit for me to work there the upcoming winter while I tried to figure out what I would do for climate action.

REI was flexible with my winter starting date. That turned out to be ideal. I ended up working a long season at Crater Lake until October 20th. Friends I knew years earlier in the Everglades invited me to visit them on the Big Island of Hawaii. I stayed with them for the last week in October and the beginning of November. My Crater Lake supervisor invited me to attend the annual meeting of National Park Service Interpreters in the second weekend of November in Vancouver, Washington. After that conference, I started the cross country drive from Vancouver to St. Louis, arriving in mid-November. I missed the seasonal training for the holiday staff, but that did not matter for REI. They were happy to have me working for them.

I had a learning curve to be knowledgable about the REI products and this was my first retail job. REI likes for their sales floor specialists to sell their lifetime memberships. I became adept selling the memberships while engaging with customers in the store. When a membership is sold at the register, the cashiers made a coded announcement over the loud speaker. It let the management and staff know a membership was sold and who was credited for the sale. It was something like ‘224Ettling.’ I heard that announcement several times while I was working there in December 2008. A couple of times, it happened more than once during my work shift. Sometimes the announcements were not far apart. I started turning heads with my fellow employees with the memberships I sold, which boosted my confidence.

REI has a customer discount. It was retail shopping bliss to get that discount on top of reduced price sales for gear in the store. I bought a brand new winter coat for myself, which I own to this day, as well as my first car GPS unit. It was heaven to get good REI stuff while working there for their high quality outdoor products. Sadly, the good times at REI did not last after the new year. The U.S. economy was in the depths of the Great Recession. Retailers like REI had to make deep cuts in their staff to remain profitable. Since I was one of the last ones hired as a holiday seasonal staff, I was one of the first laid off from in January 2009.

It is always sad to leave a dependable job like REI. However, I was not concerned about my next job. Crater Lake hired me back in mid March to work for their spring Classroom at Crater Lake program. I enjoyed leading the snowshoe hikes for the school groups.

During the snowshoe hikes, a highlight was using a big snowy hill for the students to slide down. I always went first to show the students how to slide down the snow. Several occasions, the teachers and adults could not help themselves and slid down the snow. At the end the of program, I would line up the students at the top of a tall snowy embankment. I took off my snowshoes and was about 20 yards away from them. I stood on the paved road at Rim Village and dared them to hit me with a snowball. It was a fabulous workout to dodge the snowballs. The students were hilarious trying to hit me. One kid yelled at me, “Today is your funeral, mister!”

I worked at Crater Lake at my seasonal interpretation job until the end of September. During that summer, I became lifelong friends with fellow seasonal park rangers Graham Hetland and Aubrey Shaw. They lived permanently in Ashland, Oregon where they attended Southern Oregon University (SOU). Graham’s mother lived in Ashland. They needed someone to housesit for his mom, Barbara, for the winter. Barbara planned to go on a cross country road trip in a RV. Thus, they wanted someone to watch her home and her friendly cat, Poppy. I planned to return to St. Louis, but they persuaded me to housesit for their mom.

After I moved to Ashland in early October 2009, I fell into a funk because I was restless to do something for climate action. However, I had no idea what to do.

I decided to go to SOU and meet Dr. Greg Jones, an SOU professor and climatologist. He specializes in the study of climate structure and suitability for viticulture. Specifically, he studies how climate variability and climate change influence grapevine growth, wine production, and quality. At that time, I was interested in attending grad school to learn more about climate change. I was eager to see if he had any advice for me. Even more, I was curious to see if maybe I could get my master’s degree studying under him at SOU.

My meeting with Dr. Jones did not go well. I shared my background of seeing climate change in the Everglades, plus watching the 2006 documentary about Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth. He immediately let me know he did not like Al Gore. He believed Gore was a bad spokesperson to explain to the public about climate change. That did not sit well with me because it was Al Gore and his advocacy that brought me to meet with him in his office. I left this awkward meeting I not knowing what my next step would be to pursue my climate change vision.

A few days later, I visited my friend Naomi Eklund who lived in Ashland for advice. She pressed me on what exactly did I want to do with my life. She kept pushing me harder. Finally, I snapped, “Fine! If I could do anything, I would like to be ‘The Climate Change Comedian!” 

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

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

On December 10, 2009, I left Ashland, Oregon for a cross country drive back to St. Louis, Missouri. During that winter, Naomi advised me to fully develop my website and create my own climate change PowerPoint that I would use for my presentations. Early in 2010, I developed my first climate change PowerPoint, “Let’s Have Fun Getting Serious about Climate Change.” I showed that PowerPoint to friends and family in the St. Louis. A family friend helped me launch my climatechangecomedian.com website that is still active to this day.

During the early months of 2010, my sisters in St. Louis wanted me to speak at my nieces’ and nephews’ schools. My younger sister first booked me to speak at my nephew Sam’s second grade class in St. Charles, Missouri on February 5, 2010. This was my first presentation outside of working as a ranger in the national parks. Before I left St. Louis in late April to return to Crater Lake, I gave several presentations to my nieces’ and nephews’ school, plus an Earth Day presentation for the nearby Catholic school, where my mom would substitute teach.

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

In 2011, things started happening for me as a climate change advocate. After I returned to St. Louis for the winter of 2010-11, I wanted to improve my skills as a public speaker and climate change communicator. I joined a local Toastmasters group, South County Toastmasters, in January 2011. Over the next five years, I gave 20 climate change speeches to this local Toastmasters Club. My fellow Toastmasters voted for me as “The Best Speaker” for 8 of these speeches.

In March 2011, I had the fortuitous luck to be offered a job to work at the St. Louis Science Center’s temporary Climate Change exhibit. This was one of the few climate change museum exhibits in the United States at that time. While working there, I met St. Louis businessman Larry Lazar. We decided to co-found the St. Louis Climate Reality Meet Up in December 2011 (now known as Climate Meetup-St. Louis).

In August 2011, I gave my first climate change ranger evening program at Crater Lake National Park, called The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. I performed this ranger talk at Crater Lake for the next five summers, up until 2017. Over the past 13 years, I ended up giving over 200 climate change talks in 12 U.S. states, Washington D.C, and Ottawa, Canada.

In 2012, I attended a Climate Reality Project Training led by former Vice President Al Gore to become a Climate Reality Leader. I loved attending that training and was honored to be a mentor for 8 addition trainings to guide others become effective Climate Reality leaders. At the May 2015 Cedar Rapids Training in front of the group of my fellow mentors, I personally asked Al Gore how to best respond to his critics.

After I became The Climate Change Comedian, I created some YouTube videos with my wife Tanya, my mom Fran Ettling and my dad LeRoy Ettling. Comedy Central’s Tosh.o noticed these videos. This TV show flew my mom and I to Los Angeles in April 2016 to appear on their episode airing on August 2, 2016. I never dreamed when I gave myself that title I would be on a TV show seen by millions of people. My 2016 guest appearance met the satisfaction of Tosh.o because they invited me back for a second time for their November 10, 2020 episode.

In April 2012, Carol Braford, the St. Louis Chapter Leader for Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) recruited me to volunteer for CCL. I immediately became deeply committed to CCL. While working as a park ranger at Crater Lake National Park during the summer of 2012, I reached out to various climate and environmental advocates in the Ashland, Oregon area. As a result of these interactions, I co-founded the Southern Oregon CCL chapter in 2013 that still regularly meets in Ashland. In 2013, CCL inspired me to write 10 published editorial opinions, two in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and eight in newspapers throughout Oregon.

CCL inspired me to attend 8 of their Washington D.C. conferences from 2015-19 to lobby Congressional offices on Capitol Hill. I loved attending lobby meetings with fellow CCL volunteers to urge Congressional offices to support federal climate legislation. As a climate change organizer, public speaker, and writer, it felt like 2011 to 2019 were very productive years for me. 

My Frustrations and Setbacks as a Climate Change Organizer

During those same years, I had some setbacks and frustrations as a climate organizer. As the disappointments mounted, I felt more depressed and crushed that it seemed elusive for me to find a permanent and stable job in the climate movement.

In an earlier blog, I wrote about how networking and making connections I made as the co-founder of the Climate Reality St. Louis Meet Up group led to a job in late October 2013. Missouri Chapter of the Sierra Club hired me in October 2013 to be an organizer primarily for the Beyond Coal campaign. At the time, it felt like a dream come true to work full time as a climate and environmental organizer.

The job felt like it was not an ideal fit for me just days after I started. Besides the Sierra Club, I organized for Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL), the Climate Reality Project and I was the co-leader of the St. Louis Climate Reality Meet Up group, along with Larry Lazar. I took this Sierra Club job hoping to still coordinate with these other climate organizations. However, the job turned out to be all consuming with no time to interact with those organizations.

The St. Louis Climate Reality Meet Up had an event with a large attendance in November 2013. I hoped to go to recruit volunteers for the Sierra Club and the Beyond Coal campaign, as well as coordinate with those climate activists attending for future coalition organizing events. Sadly, my boss at the Sierra Club did not want me to attend because of a small gathering of Sierra Club volunteers scheduled to meet at the Sierra Club office that evening. I found his decision to be rather short sighted. It felt like we were just not seeing eye to eye on climate organizing.

Even more troubling, I learned that my job was an “exempt” position, not subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime regulations and, therefore, not entitled to overtime pay. It felt like I was working morning, afternoons, and evenings with very little free time. It felt stifling and confining compared to my other climate organizing and my summer job as a park ranger at Crater Lake National Park. Around Thanksgiving 2013, I did not want to do that job anymore, so I gave my two weeks notice.  

It was a huge letdown for me to get a full time permanent paid organizer position that did not work out for me. I felt free I was no longer chained to the endless demands of that job. Yet, I still yearned to work full time as a climate organizer. I set my sights to work CCL or even the Climate Reality Project. Those organizations seemed to have a better work life balance for their employees. I remember CCL’s Executive Director Mark Reynolds and other top CCL staff frequently sharing this E.B. White quote, “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

In December 2013, I requested to schedule a call with Mark Reynolds to ask him how I could work for CCL. He was friendly on the phone but he gave little solid advice, wisdom, or encouragement for me. He mentioned that others were hired by CCL when they showed they created work so valuable that the organization had to hire them to keep them. Therefore, I determined I should then set out on this path to stand out as a volunteer and accomplish things big enough that CCL, Climate Reality Project, or another climate group would want to hire me.

I set myself on becoming a “Super Volunteer” for CCL, Climate Reality Project and other groups. I gave hundreds of climate change talks locally and up to 12 U.S. states, participated in radio and podcast interviews, and wrote numerous newspaper opinion editorials and letters to the editor. I took on leadership roles such as CCL liaison to my member Missouri member of Congress, Rep. Ann Wagner, became co-group leader of the St. Louis CCL group, CCL co-state coordinator for Missouri. I became a breakout speaker for three Climate Reality Trainings and several CCL national conferences. I lead two Missouri CCL speaking tours in 2017 and 2018, plus an Oregon CCL speaking tour in 2017. I became interim Chair of the Climate Reality Portland Chapter in 2019. Yet, none of this seemed to matter when I applied for jobs.

I applied for a Climate Reality Project Engagement Coordinator Position in the summer of 2015. They scheduled for a job interview. I thought the interview went great. I knew the staff member interviewing me from attending some of the trainings. Yet, I never heard back from Climate Reality after that interview. I was not having much luck when I applied for jobs with climate organizations. When Tanya and I moved to Portland OR in February 2017, I knew I wanted to transition out from working as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park to be a full time permanent climate organizer. The climate advocacy world would be different than the National Park Service world where I spent years working.

In blogs I wrote in 2017, I shared my frustration and trying to seek out mentors in Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) and Climate Reality. I felt crushed when people I approached to mentor me that I deeply respected turned me down. I did not let that stop me from giving my all to the climate movement. By 2020 around the same time as the pandemic started, I felt burned and burned out by Climate Reality. When I was the interim Chapter Chair for the Portland OR Chapter during the second half of 2019, the infighting within the Leadership Team wore me out. I prevailed in the struggle to organize three big events for the chapter, but I had no energy left to lead the Chapter by February 2020.

In 2020 and for the first half of 2021, I remained a loyal and dedicated CCL volunteer. This was actually a peak time for me as a climate organizer. I led the efforts for 30 Oregon Legislators to endorse CCL’s federal bill in Congress, The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (EICDA). Out of this effort, I was then the lead organizer for a resolution in the Oregon Legislature as Senate Joint Memorial 5 or SJM 5.

Senator Michael Dembrow proudly introduced SJM 5 on the Oregon Senate floor on February 4, 2021. This resolution called for Congress to pass a bipartisan climate carbon pricing legislation such as the EICDA. SJM 5 passed the Oregon Senate on April 7th by a vote of 23 to 5, with 6 Republican Senators, half of the Oregon GOP Senate caucus, joined all the Democratic Senators present to vote to support it. Sadly, SJM 5 fell short of receiving a floor vote in the Oregon House in June 2021. It was exciting that 30 House members, including 7 Republicans, signed on to co-sponsor it. The Oregon House has 60 members. Half the chamber was SJM 5 co-sponsors.

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

I pleaded with The Oregonian and Oregon CCL leadership to re-edit the op-ed to be more gracious, but they ignored my input. Oregon CCL then organized a protest at the Capitol that I did not want to participate. It looked pointless. OR House Leadership conveyed to me in a clear message that SJM 5 would not receive a vote. The reactions of the CCL Leadership Team after SJM 5 died left me feeling disenchanted with CCL and the climate movement. In the summer of 2021, I stepped away from CCL and the climate movement. I was unsure what to do with myself since I was disillusioned with CCL, Climate Reality, and the climate movement.

With the funk I felt in the middle of 2021, I reached out to a fellow mentor in Climate Reality, Jill MacIntrye Witt. We were both trained at the Climate Reality Training in San Francisco in August 2012. I met her as a fellow mentor at several Climate Reality Trainings we attended since then. Jill works as an a Senior Instructor at Western Washington University in the Environmental Studies and Health and Human Development departments. On top of her deep involvement as a Climate Reality Leader and Mentor in 2021, she expanded into climate coaching as part of the Climate Coaching Alliance. Jill and I scheduled several coaching sessions. Her main advice to me was to journal and spend time writing about climate activism highs and lows. I resisted writing because I was in the middle of a writer’s block, defined by writing expert Mike Rose as: “the inability to begin or continue writing for reasons other than a lack of basic skill or commitment”.

In our coaching sessions, Jill grew frustrated with me that I resisted her advice. At that time, I had not blogged in over two years with my busy schedule in 2019. In 2020, I fell into a deep depression with the pandemic, lack of social interaction, and burn out from all the drama and fighting with the Portland Climate Reality Leadership Team. The first half of 2021, I focused on organizing the SJM 5 climate resolution and then it stung when it fell apart. Finally, the writer’s block damn broke around September 2021. I was writing again. As it turned out, I wrote a lot.

In autumn of 2021, I began writing a blog which turned into over 82 pages. It looked like a possible book with the title, Why I Quit the Climate Movement. However, that title and those writings felt too pessimistic. It seemed best to set those writings aside at that time. The good news is that I published my first blog in two and a half years in December 2021, Climate Action vs. “Let’s Go Brandon!”. A Facebook friend’s snarky post blaming President Joe Biden for high gasoline prices finally spurred me to blog again. I wrote three more blogs in January 2022.

Because of the January 6th attacks on the U.S. Capitol and the precarious state of American democracy, I dedicated 2022 to work on political campaigns for state legislators. I focused on electing local Democratic candidates who would protect our democracy. The good news was I found ways to get paid full time for this campaign work. I enjoyed door to door canvassing, organizing house parties, and fundraising for the Raz Mason for Oregon Senate campaign.

In September, Raz became worried about her campaign funds running too low to pay me. She 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.

Sadly, Raz Mason did not win her Oregon Senate campaign. However, nearly all the candidates that I canvassed for ECR won their campaigns.

In mid November 2022, I traveled to North Carolina to give climate change presentations. Robin Riddlebarger, Park Superintendent of Hanging Rock State Park, invited me to come speak at the annual conference of superintendents for North Carolina State Parks. She saw this Climate Change Comedian website. She wanted me to give a humorous talk during this conference at Hanging Rocks to the Superintendents. She wanted a fun talk from me “instead of listening to boring HR polices that could have been handled in an email.”

My presentation at Hanging Rock went great. The was my first in-person talk since the beginning of the pandemic almost two years previously. I got my groove back with this talk! I did not know when I would return to North Carolina. In October, I messaged friends I knew for decades that lived on Ocracoke in the Outer Banks if I could stay with them. They said yes. However, they insisted I ‘sing for my supper’ by giving a climate change talk to over 50 middle and high school students in Ocracoke. Thus, I gave two climate talks on this 8-day trip to North Carolina.

After this trip to North Carolina, I then had to figure out the job situation. I applied for some legislative aide positions in the Oregon Legislature. (Please note: the rest of this blog was written on December 31, 2024 and January 1, 2025) However, I heard back from none of the legislators when I applied to work for their staff. I felt discouraged seeking to find jobs as a legislative aide or working for Oregon climate and environmental organizations. With the approval of my wife, I spent 2023 writing multiple blogs that focused on my specific achievements as a climate organizer. My goal is to eventually turn my writings into a published memoir about my peak experiences, low points, and perspective as a climate organizer.

In January 2023, I registered for a continuing adult education class at Mt. Hood Community College called Writing Your Story. This class met every Thursday from 1 to 3 pm on Zoom. About fourteen people attended this class regularly. We read short stories we wrote about our lives. We were encouraged to keep our stories would be about five minutes in length so everyone in the class had a chance to share these stories. I loved the regular deadlines the class presented to share stories. We weren’t required to share stories, but it made for an inspiring challenge to consistently share a story. The class motivated me to regularly write my own blogs. It felt like a gift and a bit of fresh air to participate in this class with my dream to become a writer.

In the first half of 2023, I carpooled with over climate organizers to Salem, Oregon to lobby for climate and environmental bills. I joined with OLCV (Oregon League of Conservation Voters), MCAT (Mobilizing for Climate Action Together), Building Resilience and the Oregon Just Transition Alliance to lobby my legislators and other Oregon legislators to pass strong environmental and climate legislation. On one of the trips where I rode with an environmental organizer to Salem, I had a revealing conversation with one of the environmental leaders in Oregon. I remarked how I loved lobbying for climate legislation. This leader responded that the climate and environmental groups appreciate all that I do because they see me as a “Super Volunteer.”

My heart sank into my chest when I heard him say that. I feel like I was being forever boxed in and pigeon-holed as a volunteer. I wondered how I would ever break out of how everyone saw me as a “Super Volunteer” for climate organizing. I desperately wanted to get paid for my work, but it was not happening. Everyone seemed to think of me as a volunteer.

It reminded me of my life as a single man before I met my wife Tanya. I hated being single. I longed to date, fall in love, and get married to wonderful woman. I met many women whom I found to be attractive. I became friends with them. I never wanted to rush into a relationship. When I thought they could be a great match for me, I would gently let them know I wanted to take the relationship to the next level of dating. They would then rebuff me to say they wanted to “just be friends with me.” For most of adult life, I was stuck being single and “in the friendship zone” with women. I hated it, especially when I worked in the national parks. The dating opportunities were limited in the national parks. It sucked!

I gave up my winter job in the Everglades in 2008 to be a climate organizer. Even more, I hope spending my winters in an urban area of St. Louis, MO, even with living with my parents, could help me find my life partner. It worked! Within four years of leaving Everglades National Park, I found Tanya. In November 2011, I co-founded the St. Louis Climate Reality Meet Up (now called Climate Meetup-St. Louis) group to discuss, learn, and take climate action. Tanya came to one of our MeetUps in early 2012. We became friends and started dating a year later. We got engaged on Christmas Eve 2024. Our wedding was November 1, 2015. She is my best friend to this day.

Yet, as I write this blog in January 2025, I am still stuck as a “Super Volunteer” in the climate movement. (Yes, this blog is so painful to write it took me over 6 months to write it!). To clarify, I worked as an ECR Field Organizer (paid canvasser) knocking on doors of undecided and Democratic leaning voters in eastern Portland metro area in May and from the end of July to November 5th. However, I have not yet found a job as a legislative aide or an organizer with an Oregon climate or environmental group.

Our climate and planet is too precious and sacred for me to give up. I will keep volunteering and lobbying for climate action. Yet, I am so tired of being a “super volunteer” for Oregon climate and environmental groups.

My situation reminds me of a story the late Tony Campolo wrote about in his 1997 book, Following Jesus Without Embarrassing God. Dr. Tony Campolo was a professor of sociology at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. He was a Baptist Minister and a leader for the progressive Christian movement. He was a sought-after speaker and a best-selling author of numerous books. Campolo was a personal spiritual advisor to President Clinton during the 1998 sexual misconduct scandal with Monica Lewinsky. I saw Dr. Campolo speak twice on campus when I was a student at William Jewell College from 1988-1992 and I read several of his books since then. Sadly, he passed away recently on November 19, 2024.

In Following Jesus Without Embarrassing God, Dr. Campolo tells the story when he pastored a church in suburban Philadelphia. A Georgia minister sent him a note that one of his most devoted families moved into Campolo’s community. This family was super devoted to the church in Georgia. Thus, this pastor believed this family would join Campolo’s church and greatly contribute to the ministries of this Philly congregation. His friend sent this family’s new address and urged Tony to go to their house and “get them” before another church invited them to join.

Thus, Tony rushed over to the house to meet this family. He rang the doorbell and the father answered. Dr Campolo introduced himself with, “Mr. Holly? I’m Tony Campolo, the pastor of Upper Merion Baptist Church. I understand you’re Baptist, and I stopped by to invite you to be part of our church. May I come in and talk to you about it?”

Mr. Holly looked shocked and fearful. He responded, “How did you find us?”

Tony replied: “The pastor of your church in Georgia wrote and told me that you moved into our community and I should do my best to get you involved in the ministries of our church.”

“Dear Lord!” he yelled. “Is there no escape? Is there no way we can have some peace and time to ourselves? Will there always be somebody out there waiting to get us and swallow us into a hundred and one church programs?”

The man then revealed how their church in Georgia almost destroyed his family. The entire family were so active in the church that they barely saw each other. The hectic schedule led to the family feeling no sense of unity and left them exhausted.

He explained, “This is a family that has been burned out by the church. We’ve had enough, already. When my company had a job opportunity a thousand miles away, I took it, primarily to escape from that church down there. And now I find that they’ve traced my whereabouts and sent you to get me involved in the same kind of rat race again. Well, thanks! But no thanks.”

Dr. Campolo reassured his church would be different, but the man was not buying it. According to Tony, “the man politely, but firmly, ended the discussion and closed the door.”

I admit this was an extreme example. However, it feels too often in the climate and environmental movement that organizations are just looking for “super volunteers.” Yes, I get they have limited funds to hire staff. However, the Bible says “Man cannot live by bread alone.” Neither can activists like me just live by volunteering. We need to find a way to get paid.

When I attend Citizens’ Climate Lobby conferences, Climate Reality Trainings, and other local environmental and climate gatherings, I frequently noticed the audience tends to be older white people (present company included). More diversity of age and ethnicity is needed for the climate movement to succeed. At the Climate Reality Training in Chicago in August 2013 where I attended as a mentor, I expressed this thought to an African American woman that mentored. She smiled and responded: ‘We ain’t gonna win if we are just pale and male.’

I thought her comment was so spot on that I immediately wrote it down on the cover of my notebook and almost fell out of my chair laughing. It was brilliant! At the same time, I wanted to add, ‘Nor are we going to win if we are just rich and retired.’

I am not opposed to fund raising if I obtained a job working for a climate or environmental non-profit. Heck, I raised over $1000 for my Facebook Birthday Fundraiser for Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) in 2018. I started with a goal of $200, but I upped it to over $1000 when I blew past $200. I ended up raising over $1,137 with 35 people contributing. I prioritized fundraising for Raz Mason when she ran for the Oregon Senate in 2018. I persuaded friends, fellow Climate Reality Leaders, and family to contribute several thousand dollars to her campaign. I don’t mind helping an environmental or climate organization raise funds. I just would like to be seriously considered for paid work. I would love to get a chance to prove my value.

This leads to vital questions for all of us in the climate movement: How do you respond when someone says ‘yes’ to join the climate movement? How are you ready to receive someone into the climate movement when you have them at hello? How can you be there for them to keep them in the movement if they are not rich and retired? How can you help folks that are called into the climate movement wanting to make a difference and want to get paid doing that?

In the Bible, Jesus called his Disciples to join him by saying, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Then they immediately left their nets and followed Him. (Matthew 4:19-20)

What are we doing to grow the climate movement to keep recruiting activists and helping them make a living reducing the threat of climate change? The threat of climate change keeps getting worse with 2024 likely to become the hottest year on record. This will break the previous hottest year on record which as 2023. We need the climate movement to be massively expanding since we just elected Donald Trump as President on November 5, 2024 who will proudly be ‘Climate Denier-in-Chief.’ Environmental experts warn Trump will be a ‘Wrecking Ball‘ for global climate action and his Presidency poses ‘major threat to the planet.’

As a climate organizer, this is the biggest source of anxiety, depression, and grief for me: finding a way to be fully accepted into the movement to get paid to do this work as my life’s calling. I long to make a solid living following this path. I gave up a wonderful career as a seasonal park ranger to take this journey. Yet, I feel I have been kept at arm’s length by the climate movement.

Recently, I finished reading marine biologist, policy expert, and writer Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s newest book about climate change solutions, What if We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures. I found her book to be uplifting with her conversations with fellow scientists, artists, farmers, organizers, thought leaders, and movers & shakers. They chat about the actions needed to strive to create a world free from human caused climate change. I recommend this book. It intrigued me to watch her recent media interviews, including her 2022 TED talk, How to Find Joy in Climate Action. It’s a must watch video answering the question: “What can I do to act on climate?”

Near the end of her TED talk, she says to her audience:

“My last challenge to you, then, since all our fates are intertwined, is in addition to leveraging your talents, can you help others in using theirs?”

Now she pointed out that inequality is “one of the major barriers to participation.” She then elaborated,

“Perhaps you know that around the world, it’s people of color who are most heavily impacted by the effects of climate change, whether that’s air pollution, hurricanes, droughts or floods. But you may not know that it is also people of color who are most concerned about climate and most likely to want to be a part of the solutions. In the US, where we have robust data on this, 49 percent of white Americans are concerned about climate, compared to 57 percent of Black Americans and 69 percent of Latinx Americans. Imagine the huge and additional contributions these folks could make if unburdened from the dangerous distraction that is racism. And goodness, do we need all of that ingenuity and leadership. In other words, help us, help you, help us all save the planet…

let’s work to demolish the societal barriers that prevent people from fully devoting themselves
to climate solutions.”

She ends with this call to action, “This is an invitation. Find your role if you haven’t already, encourage others to find theirs. Averting climate catastrophe: this is the work of our lifetimes. Thank you.”

No, I am not a young low income female person of color needing a helping hand to succeed in the climate movement. Yes, do what you can to help them as we keep building the climate movement. However, I could use your help and encouragement to live sucure as a climate organizer. I want them to succeed since it is their future at stake, even more than mine. If you can find a way to assist and be there for me, I promise I will be in a better position to help them.

Thank you so much for reading this blog to the very end that took me six months complete! I started this blog in early July 2024 and I am writing this on January 1, 2025.

This blog is an updated version writing about my U.S. Census Enumerator experience on Facebook on October 13, 2020. Friends gave me many supportive and positive comments. They encouraged me to publish what I wrote. Thus, I wrote an essay the next day for Medium, “Thoughts from a recent 2020 U.S. Census worker.”

In the summer of 2020, I worked as a U.S. Census Bureau Enumerator in the Portland OR area. It was quite an interesting adventure.

I took this job as my patriotic duty to help complete this once in a decade U.S Constitutional requirement to count all persons living in the U.S. to determine total population. This helps us have a better understanding of the demographics of our nation and then Congressional representation. Even more, the once a decade U.S. Census count determines local funding for schools, roads, hospitals, senior centers, parks, etc.

It is a requirement by law that all U.S. households participate in providing an accurate count of persons living in their household. However, very rarely to never is any person held criminally responsible for refusing to cooperate with the U.S. Census. Therefore, participation in the U.S. is ultimately voluntary.

My job from August 1st to October 1st was knocking on the doors of residents to complete Census interviews for those folks who did not complete their Census questionnaire mailed to their households in the spring of 2020. I could only politely ask for their help and cooperation. This made for an interesting job because I had no idea how I was going to be received once I knocked on someone’s door.

Many people were extremely helpful when I knocked at their doors, some even let me inside their homes. Others were extremely hostile and angry beyond any other behavior I had witnessed in my life.

This was an eye-opening experience for me because my previous job working for the U.S. government was when I was a seasonal park ranger at Everglades and Crater Lake National Parks from 1996–2017. In those jobs, most people were extremely thrilled and happy to see a park ranger. I felt like a Disney mascot at Disney World. I received so much love and adoration as a park ranger that it did seem a little artificial to me, even though I absolutely loved that job. It was the best job I ever had. However, I always felt like though that being a park ranger in a national park where most people tell you all day about how much they love you is not how the real world operates. Therefore, I wanted to get other job experiences outside of that when I left the seasonal park ranger life in 2017.

The rude and very nasty response I received from several individuals when I was very meekly requesting their help to complete a constitutionally Census beyond floored me. I never had a job where I had so many doors slammed in my face and individuals saying very nasty and ugly things to me. It stung bad and there were many times where I would go back to inside my car to cry my eyes out.

I will admit that I am a very sensitive person, so the rejections really weighed on my soul. People can say ‘It’s them no you,’ ‘don’t let it bother you,’ and ‘that’s the way people are.’ However, it still does not take the sting away.

I wished that more people could see that I am a human being, just like them. I am just trying to complete a job. That talking in a rude manner does hurt. I imagine that many of those folks were church going individuals too. I remember Mother Teresa once saying that ‘In every situation, we should think of an encounter with another person as Jesus meeting Jesus.’

I had amazing apartment managers who went out of their way to help me. Other apartment managers would be very hostile and non-cooperative. I never said it, but I wanted to say to some of these resistant apartment managers: ‘I live in this community and my wife and I sometimes talk about moving to another apartment complex. Right now, your attitude is showing me that I would never want to live in this housing complex. As a potential renter, you are not selling me on your property.’

Another reason took this job because I love living in Portland OR and I care about my community, especially in NE Portland. I want the federal dollars going to schools, roads, hospitals, senior centers and parks flowing to my area. Thus, it hurt when people refused to cooperate. I would try to explain that a good Census count helps us locally with funding for their kids’ schools, local hospitals when they need it in an emergency, our roads, senior centers, parks, etc. I felt sad in those moments when people refused to hear it when I tried to explain this to them.

Even more, the demographics of the United States and the Portland OR area are changing. We are moving towards a minority majority country. I believe strongly that Black Lives Matter, immigrants are to be celebrated, refugees are to be welcomed, migrant and undocumented workers are to be appreciated to the valuable work they contribute to society, and they should be treated as citizens. I wanted to count as many people of color, immigrants, women, seniors, children, and non-citizens as possible to get the most accurate population count for the 2020 Census.

You would be surprised how many immigrants, refugees, and undocumented residents were very helpful and supportive of my work. Yet, it made me sad when people of color were distrustful of me. I didn’t blame them at all because of the systematic racism and oppression in our country. I always tried to approach anyone I met with an open heart full of love. At the same time, I often wondered if the U.S. Census would have had more success with some people of color if an individual from their community who looked like them was engaging them. I pondered though if some of the people who were leery of me might have still been leery of a Census employee from their own community, thinking that Census employee is just a sell out to the system. It’s tough to say. The bottom line is that sometimes we can become so suspicious of people we don’t know that we end up losing out to getting to know good people who genuinely do want to help us and look out for our best interests.

It’s a good challenge for all of us to be open to get to know and engage with people who don’t look, sound, or believe like we do. Love others, no matter who they are.

I wish more Americans thought through what it means to truly be a patriotic American. It’s not just waving the American flag, standing for the national anthem or The Pledge of Allegiance. It’s not just voting for your favorite political party every 2 to 4 years. It’s not just proclaiming your love for America out loud love to friends, on bumper stickers, t-shirts, etc. It’s not just listening to your favorite American political pundit to tell you how to think how America.

If you love America, it’s about voting in every election and supporting free and fair elections. It’s about rolling up your sleeve to get involved in political campaigns for candidates and issues that you care about. It’s about participating in your child’s school board meetings to make sure your child and all the children in your community are getting the best education. It’s making sure the local fire, police, social services departments have all the resources they need to serve our communities. At the same time, it’s holding public officials and police fully accountable when they trample upon the rights and freedoms of people of color, women, seniors, children, immigrants, and the most vulnerable of our society.

Loving America also means assisting and helping public servants like temporary U.S. Census employees, not slamming the doors on them, giving them hostile comments, or even threatening them with guns.

Yes, public employees might show up at your door when you are eating dinner with your family, intensely working remotely at home with your job, putting your baby down for a nap, making dinner, trying to get home repairs done, etc. Yes, it’s frustrating when they ask for your help when you are in the middle of something else. We get that. We feel terrible encountering you in an awkward moment. At the same time though, sometimes we have hundreds of cases, and we can’t necessarily return at a more convenient time for you.

For some of those individuals who did treat me in a very negative way, I never had any doubt that if I had been seriously injured or any reason in front of their home, they would have come running out to help me until the paramedics came. They would have dropped everything, including family dinner, making dinner, putting the baby down for a nap, a pressing task at their job, an important home repair, etc. to help a person in need.

Completing that Census interview would have taken just a few minutes, and they could have easily gotten back to that precious family time, making dinner, keeping their boss happy, getting their child to lay down for a nap, etc. Refusing to help a Census worker only meant that our computer system was going to log an unsuccessful attempt to interview a household resident. It meant we there then going to have to return to that residence probably another inconvenient time for that resident.

If you took the time to read all of this, my challenge for you today and always is to love everyone. Yes, it is easy to love your family members, friends, celebrities, and people working in jobs that you admire, such as park rangers. All religion whether it’s Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc. all talk about loving one another and welcoming the stranger.

If you are not religious but are patriotic, you can’t say you love America and then treat government workers in a demeaning way. If anything, this COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 taught us who the essential workers are. They are people such as grocery store clerks, truck drivers, EMTS paramedics, teachers, police, doctor’s office staff, etc. We have got to treat them like gold. They are risking their lives everyday so we can have the food and services that we want and need. Please be kind to people who are just trying to make a living. Even more, call out others around you when you see that they are not being kind.

Even if you are not American reading this, we are one human inter-related family. Our DNA is all basically the same. Do a DNA test and you will discover that we are all cousins going somewhere back up the human family tree lineage. We should be kind to each other no matter who a person is and where they live on the planet.

Author Ian MacLaren wrote: ‘Be kind because everyone you meet is facing a hard battle.’

I love the Thomas Kinkade quote: ‘There is no greater wisdom than kindness.”

From now until November, I will be knocking on people’s doors urging them to vote for candidates for the upcoming Presidential election. I know many people hate it when people knock on their doors asking them to support political candidates. However, political campaign experts will tell you that the best way to reach voters is door to door, face to face contact with voters. When a political campaign advocate like me knocks on your door, we are saying that we are not taking your vote for granted. We care enough to reach out to you, listen to you, and earn your vote.

Please be kind to political canvassers that might come to your door this year. One of them just might be me.

Thank you so much for reading this and allowing me to share these thoughts with you.

“I feel a sense of deep connection with people living in climate truth, especially with activists who take risks, put their bodies on the line, rearrange their lives, or otherwise go all-in for the mission. These are my allies, my comrades, my people. Even though we may never meet, we are in this fight together.”
– Dr. Margaret Klein Salamon from her recent book Facing the Climate Emergency.

This is my long-delayed review of Dr. Margaret Klein Salamon’s 2023 second edition of her 2019 book, Facing the Climate Emergency.

My familiarity with Dr. Margaret Klein Salamon

Dr. Salamon is a clinical psychologist turned climate activist who has dedicated her work to helping people to face the truth of the climate emergency and transform their despair into effective action. I first hear of Margaret as the Founder and Director of The Climate Mobilization from 2014-2020. Under her leadership, they advocated an all-hands-on-deck, whole society mobilization to protect humanity and the living world from climate catastrophe.

She is currently the Executive Director of the Climate Emergency Fund, which raises funds for and make grants to the brave activists waking up the public to the climate emergency in the disruptive nonviolent climate movement. Margaret and I have followed each other for years on Facebook and Twitter (X). We have exchanged a few messages in that time.

In November 2011 when I was still spending my winters in St. Louis Missouri, local businessman Larry Lazar and I co-founded and I the St. Louis Climate Reality Meet Up group in November 2011 (now called Climate Meetup-St. Louis) to organize regular meetings and promote events in the St. Louis area to create more awareness about climate change. Larry invited Margaret to be guest speaker online for our monthly event on November 20, 2014. Her topic was ““The Climate Mobilization: A Practical Approach to a Moral Revolution.” I enjoyed her presentation and became an admirer of her efforts to mobilize for climate action with her background in psychological to urge us to think differently to organize for climate action.

Because of my own focus on climate organizing in 2019, I was not aware when the first edition when her book Facing the Climate Emergency was released. However, I became aware of the second release of the book in 2023. She was interviewed twice in 2023 on one of my favorite podcasts, The Climate Pod, most recently on May 31, 2023 talking about “Why ‘Emergency Mode’ in climate activism is Essential.”

When she announced on Facebook last September about the second edition about her book, it promoted me to purchase an electronic version of the book. I commented to Margaret at that time that “I recently purchased your book. It’s the next book I intend to read.” She replied, “yay thank you! I would love to hear your thoughts and reactions.”

I enjoyed reading her book last October. However, I delayed writing a blog review or giving a response to Margaret because of other writings and projects I worked on last fall and this winter. I still feel like this is an important book. I want to give my feedback to Margaret and others who might potentially read it.

As I side note, I will be referring to Dr. Margaret Klein Salamon for the rest of this blog as Margaret. I am respectful of her title and work as a PhD licensed clinical psychologist. Outside of a brief exchange on Facebook, we do not know each other personally. She has never given me permission to call me by her first name. When I chat with elected leaders, academia, or licensed professionals in person, I call them by their title and last name out of respect. That is, unless they tell me to call them by their first name or were introduced to me by their first name. Even more, there’s a history of racism and sexism of calling someone by their first name to deny a person the dignity of being called by their last name and title. That is not my intent here.

I hope by using her first name I will make Margaret more approachable to the reader. I am very appreciative of all her professional work and climate activism. I want readers to seek out her writings, organizations, and support groups she created. The good news is that I have edit control over this blog since it is on my website. If she or others object to calling me by her first name, I will update this blog post to respect that.

Writer Director Adam McKay writes the Foreword to this book

First, I was impressed that Academy Award® winning writer and director Adam McKay wrote the forward to the second edition. I am a fan of Adam McKay ever since I saw his 2015 film The Big Short. It was about a group of investors who foresaw the housing bubble burst in 2008 that led to the Great Recession. The movie displayed great humor as the characters discovered with terror the flaws and corruption of the mortgage market. McKay received his Oscar® for for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work in the film.

I enjoyed his next film, Vice, released in 2018. Similar to The Big Short, this movie had an effective mix of humor and drama to portray the life of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

As a climate organizer, I was very appreciative of his 2021 film, Don’t Look Up. It was about two scientists trying to persuade the world that a catastrophic comet was coming. It was a deliberate allegory for climate change. This was a movie I had longed Hollywood to make for years to bring attention to the climate crisis. Soon after its release, the film became Netflix’s Second Biggest Film Of All Time. I wrote a blog about this film in January 2022, “As a decades long climate change organizer, I applaud Don’t Look Up film.”

McKay begins the Foreword of this book, “Never have I rooted for a book not to have a second edition more than Margaret Klein Salamon’s Facing the Climate Emergency.” He then wrote, “Never have I rooted for a book not to have a second edition more than Margaret Klein Salamon’s Facing the Climate Emergency.”

Not sure if Margaret could help me with this. However, I have a film idea I want to pitch to McKay for a project using humor to reflect on how the greedy love of money is destroying our society and planet. I just not found a good connection yet to introduce me to Adam. Margaret, can you help me with this?

The Preface and Introduction to Facing the Climate Emergency

In the Preface, Margaret informs us, “When I wrote the first edition of Facing the Climate Emergency in 2019, the idea that the climate emergency was profoundly affecting our psychology was still a bit marginal. But conditions are changing rapidly.”

In the Introduction, she then expands how climate change has become exponentially worse in recent years. She warns, “We are in pain because our world is dying, and through our passivity, we are responsible for killing it.”

At the same time, she states, “It’s time to find our maturity and our heroism.”

She then proclaims, “this is a self-help book, but its goal is not to make you feel less pain. Its purpose is to make you feel your pain more directly and constructively, to turn it into action that protects humanity and all life.”

Margaret then shares her example of how she came to center her life around facing the climate emergency in 2012. At that time, she was “a clinical psychologist working on a doctorate degree, preparing to enter private practice and start paying off my six-figure student debt. I avoided thinking or reading about the climate because it made me feel terrified and helpless.”

Then Hurricane Sandy impacted her while living in New York. The event shook her to the core as she started learning about climate change causing her to “reassess my life. I realized that It was my responsibility to do everything I could to halt and reverse the coming catastrophe.”

She chose to leave “the field of clinical psychology––which I love––and dove headfirst into activism. Through her activism and networking, she met Ezra Silk. They “founded and built an organization called The Climate Mobilization or TCM.” It was a think tank and an advocacy organization calling for WWII-scale climate mobilization.

Margaret shared, “With the help of an amazing team of volunteer organizers, we mainstreamed the ‘Climate Emergency’ frame by initiating a city-based Climate Emergency declaration…In 2019, use of the term “Climate Emergency” went up 10,000 percent and Oxford declared it Word of the Year.”

From her story, she boldly asserts, “this book will show you how to join our ranks as members of the climate emergency movement… I will help you transform your despair into a collective effort to build power for the movement.”

She then ends the Introduction, “When you face climate truth and let it transform you, you will become heroic, leveraging your talents, energy, and resources in service of protecting humanity and all life. No one is coming to save us, but together, we might be able to save ourselves.”

This message was music to my hears. I often share my story how I discovered climate change working as a park ranger in Everglades National Park in 1998.

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

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

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

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

I became so worried about climate change that I quit my winter job in Everglades National Park in 2008. I moved back to my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri in the winters to give speeches and organized about climate change. I joined my local Toastmasters Club in January 2011 to be a better climate change communicator. In March 2011, I found a job at the St. Louis Science Center at their temporary climate change exhibit so I could absorb the scientific information at this exhibit and engage with the museum visitors about climate change.

While working at this climate change exhibit, I met local businessman Larry Lazar. We founded the St. Louis Climate Reality Meet Up in November 2011. At one of our monthly meetings, Larry invited Margaret to speak, which led me to stay in contact with her on social media.

By 2017, I was so worried about seeing climate change at Crater Lake national park that I quit my summer job to be a year-round climate organizer. Over my 25 years working at Crater Lake National Park, I saw climate change with my own eyes a diminishing annual snowpack and more intense wildfire season in the summer. Even though I gave a climate change evening program as a park ranger at Crater Lake since 2011, I felt I could no longer be the happy park ranger. Climate change was an emergency for me and my life’s mission to take climate action.

Over the past 14 years, as a park ranger, Toastmaster, Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) volunteer, and Climate Reality Leader, I have given around 300 climate change talks in 12 U.S. states, Washington, D.C, and Ottawa, Canada. I traveled to Washington D.C. 9 times from 2015 to 2023 to urge Congressional offices to prioritize effective climate legislation. I wrote numerous newspaper op-eds and letters to the editor, participated in radio interviews, organized 3 big events – one in St. Louis and two in Portland, Oregon – attended by 80 to 100 people to empower them to act on climate. I lobbied numerous times to state legislators at the Oregon Capitol in Salem and gave oral testimony supporting state level climate bills over 9 times.

Introduction Margaret’s emphasis on dedicating our lives to treating climate change as the emergency that it is certainly piqued my interest to read her book.

Margaret then breaks the book in a five-step guide with the chapters:
Step One: The Climate Truth
Step Two: Welcome Fear, Grief, and Other Painful Feelings
Step Three: Reimagine Your Life Story
Step Four: Enter Emergency Mode
Step Five: Join the Movement and Disrupt Normalcy

Then, her Conclusion: All-In for Life

Step One: The Climate Truth

In Step One: The Climate Truth, Margaret starts with a journalist David Wallace-Wells quote: “It’s worse, much worse, than you think.” She interprets Wallace-Wells’ quote that “it means realizing that many parties are creating an unrealistic optimistic picture of the climate emergency.”

Near the start of the chapter, she frames the climate truth this way, “To respond fully and humanely to the climate emergency, we need only understand the basic concepts of the crisis and its implications, allow ourselves to face and feel the feelings we’re avoiding, and then act.”

She then recounts the misinformation and propaganda of ExxonMobil, David and Charles Koch, the fossil fuel industry and their conservative allies to keep us hooked on fossil energy (oil, coal and natural gas) while they made incredible profits.

Despite the resistance of the entrenched and massive fossil fuel interests, Margaret acknowledged, “In 2022, the Democrats finally passed major climate legislation, known as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), marking a crucial new phase in the fight for real climate action. Independent analysis suggests this bill will, alone, get the United States 40 percent below 2005 emissions by 2030. It is likely to kickstart a clean energy, agriculture, and transport revolution, and the importance of that momentum-building can’t be overstated.”

Margaret credits the “climate emergency activism, Extinction Rebellion, Sunrise Movement, School Strikers, Indigenous water protectors and their many allies and coalition partners who led the way,” otherwise the IRA “would not have been possible.”

She then throws cold water on the IRA, writing “While we recognize and celebrate our successes, we must remain firmly rooted in reality. The bill is wildly insufficient. Because our political system has been captured by big money, this bill didn’t do anything to directly stop or penalize the fossil fuel industry, which is still, suicidally, expanding. It does little for biodiversity or land protection. The bottom line? The IRA won’t be enough on its own to stop the Earth from hitting catastrophic climate tipping points.”

Margaret urges that “We must escalate our resistance. If we don’t, we will soon be living in the Inflation Reduction Act future, where cleaner, cheaper energy, electric cars, and trucks offer a temporarily tolerable lifestyle for the privileged, while electric tanks at the border stop desperate migrants from coming in; where solar- powered air-conditioned indoor farms grow fresh greens and berries for the wealthy, while others choke in dust storms, suffer in heat waves, and starve; and the fossil fuel industry hangs on to wealth and power with increasingly desperate and violent measures. This eco-apartheid has already begun, and we are racing toward total collapse, in which everyone, even the privileged, loses everything.”

Later in the chapter, Margaret discussed sharing her fears about climate and ecological threats in therapy. Her therapist believed she was overreacting. She told Margaret, “You worry a lot about the climate, but you don’t know much about it.” Margaret took on her therapist’s challenge to read the online climate articles and books she had avoided. She read and cited sources in her book that I read years ago, such as Bill McKibben’s Eaarth, Paul Gilding’s The Great Disruption, David Wallace-Wells’ 2017 New York magazine article, “The Uninhabitable Earth.”

As Margaret gained knowledge about the dangerous extent of the climate crisis, it did not immobilize her. It energized her. She reflected, “Once I began to acknowledge the climate’s comprehensive impact, I was able to free myself to fully feel the fear and pain that I had been repressing. It felt like the world was collapsing in on me. But it also felt deeply liberating. I was finally confronting the grief, apocalyptic fear, anger, and guilt that I had been working so hard to deny. Rather than relegating them to the corner of my consciousness, where they continued to nag at me, I put those feelings front and center, treating them—and myself—with compassion.”

Margaret affirms, “Telling the truth about the climate, and treating the climate crisis like the emergency it is, is highly contagious.”

She then gives examples of how “Americans as a nation entered into emergency mode before. She pointed to World War II as the prime example. At the other extreme, the 2020 COVID pandemic was a heart breaking example, “In the United States, low levels of social trust, the lack of public health infrastructure, the failure of leadership from the CDC, and the cynical exploitation of the crisis by the Trump administration and its allies held us back from fully entering emergency mode and undertaking transformative projects, such as installing high-grade ventilation systems in buildings and air-quality monitors in every public space.”

Margaret then cited the historical events as the U.S. Civil Rights movement and the 1980s Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia building in the 1970s and 80s as examples of societal emergency mobilizations where we can learn and receive inspiration.

She ends the chapter on this note, “Thankfully there is a robust movement that is committed to telling the truth, disrupting normalcy, and building power. I call it the climate emergency movement. This movement demands what science and morality tell us are necessary—absolutely no more expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure, instead we need a race to zero emissions that takes ten years or less, plus drawdown and massive ecological restoration. The climate emergency movement is dedicated to disrupting normalcy because normalcy threatens us all.“

Step Two: Welcome Fear, Grief, and Other Painful Feelings

In order to face the climate emergency, Margaret begins the chapter by encouraging us to “learn to feel your feelings.” She concedes that it is “one of the hardest things for humans to do, especially in an alienated society like ours.”

She observes, “Psychoanalysis provides critical insights and tools regarding how to face climate truth, emotionally as well as intellectually. Margaret wishes, “Everyone in the world could access high-quality, emotionally supportive therapy. It can help virtually every problem…For me, therapy has helped in every area––and almost every stage––of my life.”

She spends several pages promoting the idea of seeking professional therapy to be effective and balanced to face the climate emergency. She writes, “Think of therapy as hiring a personal trainer––one that helps you prepare for the marathon of life.”

With her background as a clinical psychologist and her experience of participating in therapy, Margaret invites us to fully feel our fears, grief, pain, and recommends “you try to get comfortable with crying.”

I want to disclose that I took Margaret’s advice to heart. At the end of 2023, I was feeling depressed with a lack of direction for my life. For my New Year’s Resolution, I contacted my health insurance, and I did receive 6 free sessions with a professionally licensed therapist. I found it to be very beneficial. My therapist gave me tools for understanding cognitive distortions that arise internally, recognizing the cognitive triangle where we get trapped in negative and distorted thoughts, and learning the Fair Fighting Rules when engaging with our life partners, family, and friends. I did feel like each session was building back up my self-esteem, self-confidence, and allowing me to think more rationally.

Sadly, I did not have time to assess with my insurance how to continue with my therapy. I became busy with my climate organizing in February. It was a hectic month with lobbying with the Oregon Legislature in session and I participated in candidate interviews with the Oregon League of Conservation Voters Multnomah County Endorsement Team. I hope to continue with more professional therapy soon when my schedule seems to slow down a bit.

Over the past 14 years, I found my climate activism can be psychologically rough with personal guilt over not doing enough to reduce the threat of climate change, jealousy from fellow activists within the climate movement, fellow advocates and organizations ignoring or belittling my ideas for climate action, climate organizations acting in a bureaucratic way that is unsupportive and dismissive of my input and involvement, and my heartbreak of not getting paid jobs within the climate movement. I knew I needed professional counseling for years. This book and Margaret’s advice in the Step Two chapter motivated me to seek therapy at the start of 2024.

Step Three: Reimagine Your Life Story

Margaret kicked off this chapter 3 with the words, “In the context of the ecological emergency, we must each revise our story of self. In this new story, you are the hero. This designation might feel over the top. It might make you uncomfortable. But it’s true: Humanity needs as many heroes as it can get—people who put the mission over their self-interest, people who realize that the mission is their self-interest.”

She shared her family background, growing up “hearing about the Holocaust from my grandmother. Whenever we spoke, whether on a visit, on the phone, or on a family trip, she talked almost exclusively about the Holocaust. She saw everything through its life-altering lens. She carried with her a deep and abiding feeling of betrayal—not just the betrayal she experienced by the Nazis, but the betrayal she experienced by ordinary Germans like her schoolteacher, who refused to acknowledge her on the street after my grandmother was kicked out of school. Hearing these stories at every visit instilled a visceral understanding of the adage that, all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” (her emphasis)

Margaret went on to say, “I know in my bones that terrible things happen. My grandmother told me this over and over, but only by experiencing it myself did I internalize the message: Unexpected catastrophes happen, and we are all vulnerable to them. If we have a chance at preventing them, we must.”

I appreciated Margaret opening up about her family story as well as her high school boy friend’s tragic death. Margaret confided, “During his psychosis, however, I received little of this support—people didn’t want to talk about what was happening to him. They felt uncomfortable. They didn’t know what to say, and wanted to hope everything would.”

I appreciated Margaret’s openness sharing about her life experiences as she informs us, “your challenges and most painful moments have also prepared you for this work.”

I found her story and the other ideas she gave in this chapter as motivating that we can take on this climate emergency.

Step Four: Enter Emergency Mode

Margaret launches this chapter with this quote, “We can rapidly transform our economy and society to beat back a global catastrophe––I know because we’ve done it before. But to solve an emergency like the climate crisis, we must collectively and immediately exit “normal mode” and abandon the gradual policy advocacies and enervated emotional states that accompany it. We need a collective awakening on the scale to our response to a national attack.”

She points to a personal achievement from switching from “normal mode” to emergency mode when “Ezra (Silk) and I had the honor of working with Congresswoman Ocascio-Cortez and Congressman Earl Blumenauer on a national Declaration of Climate Emergency into Congress, introduced in 2019, which would put the House and Senate officially on record acknowledging the existence of a climate emergency and calling for a massive-scale national mobilization that phases out oil, coal, and gas and reverses climate change at emergency speed.”

It was exciting to read this because I live in Portland, Oregon and Earl Blumenauer is my Congressman. I attended his public rally for his Climate Emergency Resolution in July 2019. I chatted with Rep. Blumenauer at this event and got my photo with him. I appreciated that he put climate action as a high priority during his work as in Congress to elevate it as an emergency. It was thrilling to read that Representative Blumenauer worked with Ezra Silk, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez, and Margaret Klein Salamon on this Climate Emergency Resolution. It is a small world, especially in the climate advocacy space to this day.

Margaret stakes the position in this chapter for climate advocates to truly treat the climate crisis like the emergency that it is. She affirms that “It is time for each of us to break the silence about the climate emergency––to tell the truth, loudly, and all the time. Talk about climate is the one mode of engagement that I recommend to everyone.”

She cites studies from the Yale Program on Climate Communication, which has been influential on me over the years as a climate communicator, that “only 9 percent of Americans hear people talk about climate change at least once a week, and only about 15 percent once a month. Yet, the same study found that 35 percent of Americans are ‘very worried’ about the climate.”

Margaret talked the talk on this by creating Climate Emotions Conversations during the COVID lockdown of 2020. She describes it as “a free virtual platform where you participate in a guided video call with a small group of others. You take turns sharing and listening to each other’s climate feelings.”

At the very least, she advocates us to have online conversations to “talk about the climate emergency and the need for mobilization on social media and, depending on your access, on email lists, blogs, or in mainstream publications.”

Climate action starts with regularly talking about it. However, Margaret wants us to step up our game for the climate emergency to be more effective. She states,

“It is irresponsible to say, for example, ‘Just do something on climate,’ and then praise any action or campaign under that banner. That’s the nice and polite approach, and it won’t anger anyone. But it’s not what we need. We have a moral and strategic obligation to rigorously and relentlessly improve––to grow our power, efficacy, and impact. While the climate emergency is accelerating, we can’t settle for ‘pretty good’ because, as Bill McKibben says, ‘Winning slowly is the same as losing.’”

Because I have been very alarmed about climate change for decades, I get what she is saying. For the past 14 years, I aimed to talk about climate change every day with friends, on social media, and by giving over 300 climate change talks in my community and in 12 U.S. states. I lobbied Congressional offices in Washington D.C. numerous times, written newspaper op-eds, given several radio interviews, organized three large events, led 3 state speaking tours: two in my home state of Missouri in 2017 & 2018 and one in Oregon in 2017, gave oral testimony to Oregon Legislative committees several times, etc. I even was interviewed on national TV, Comedy Central’s Tosh.o on an episode that first aired on August 2, 2016 trying to use comedy to elevate the issue of climate change.

Anyone who knows me, knows that climate is an emergency. Like Margaret, I wish that more people considered climate an emergency.

I am on the same wavelength as Margaret when she wrote in Step Two of this book about many people in her life who don’t feel that climate change is an emergency. She reflected,

“Although some people feel visceral anger at oil company executives or GOP politicians, I guess I expect that evil people do evil things. I agree they have committed crimes against humanity and should be tried at the International Court of Justice. I feel angrier with people I know—and often people I love—for failing to protect me and all life. I feel betrayed by my family members who voted for Trump. But also betrayed and abandoned by family members who support my climate activism as ‘my thing,’ but don’t recognize that it needs to be ‘their thing,’ too.”

I hope that Margaret and I can chat more at some point how she, I, and others can exchange ideas how we can best act in this climate emergency. Specifically, how we can elevate climate awareness so that more people, including friends and family, will join us in taking action to elevate the threat of this climate emergency. I will have more thoughts on this later.

STEP FIVE: Join the Movement and Disrupt Normalcy

Margaret commences this chapter to rally her readers to join her in the climate emergency movement, she writes, “Are you ready? Have you faced climate truth and mourned your losses? Are you building emotional muscle––confronting your defenses and experiencing fear and other uncomfortable feelings?…Are you convinced that nothing matters more than solving the climate catastrophe? If so, welcome to the team––climate emergency movement.”

She lets us know that “I sleep soundly, as I have come to the conclusion that sustained escalating disruptive action is the fastest, most effective route to transformative change.”

Her climate movement experience led her to believe, “That is why Climate Emergency Fund exclusively funds groups who take part in disruptive protest––because we believe it is the fastest way to create transformative change. But social and science and history lead to this conclusion.”

She gives the example of 2016 Standing Rock protests “where the Indigenous Water Protectors showed the country what heroism looks like…Congresswoman (Alexandria) Ocascio-Cortez who has championed the Green New Deal and the Climate Emergency frameworks in Congress, cites her time at Standing Rock as critical to her decision to run for Congress.”

For me, I have not felt a calling to do disruptive protests. It is not my cup of tea. Even more, I had Congressional staff tell me that they ignore the disruptive protests, especially from climate and progressive groups, outside of the Washington D.C. Congressional office buildings since those protests are so common. I get fulfillment in the climate movement by lobbying, engaging with my elected officials, organizing community events, supporting strong climate champions running for office, public speaking, writing newspaper op-eds and letters to the editor, etc. I would rather be on the inside “in the room where it happens” than on the outside protesting.

Margaret addresses the lack of enthusiasm with disruptive protests for climate organizers like me with this response, “If you, like me, have trouble imagining yourself directly participating in a disruptive protest, getting arrested, or going to jail, that’s okay. There are so many support roles that need to be filled, so many ways to use your skills and inclinations in support of the disruptive climate movement. Just don’t confuse personal discomfort for strategic evaluation, something I see happen all to often. Nonviolent civil resistance is our best hope.”

She documents the effectiveness of effective protests: “Analyzing the effects of activist movements leading up to recent US climate legislation, researchers at Giving Green calculate that, when political conditions are right, in the United States every ‘dollar spent on activism could remove more than 6 metric tons of CO2e’ (CO2 equivalent) through galvanizing policy change, like the Inflation Reduction Act.”

She adds: “Climate Emergency Fund’s strategy is informed by history. In This Is an Uprising, Paul and Mark Engler lay out the history, theory, and shocking efficacy of social movements.”

Margaret then spotlights of the some of the most effective nonviolent protests in history:

“While violent conflict seems to be a sad part of the human endowment, the ability to wage nonviolent conflict appears to be a core human capacity, as well. The Roman commoner uprising is one of over 1,200 nonviolent campaigns occurring across thousands of years and around the globe, catalogued in Swarthmore’s Nonviolent Direct Action (NVDA) Database. Examples ranger from the Indian independence struggle to the American abolitionists, the suffragettes to the campaign for Indigenous Guatemalans led for rights, to the successful student-led campaign at Harvard to organize a workers union.”

In addition, she points out, “Nonviolence is a strategic imperative for movements, not just a moral one. Movement scholars like Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephen (2012) have found that nonviolent movements to overthrow authoritarian governments are more than twice as likely to succeed as violent movements.”

As the chapter draws to a close, Margaret asks 4 questions to consider how you can most help the climate emergency movement:
o Your body: What risks are you willing to take?
o Your time: How many hours can you give the movement?
o Your skills: What special skills can you offer the movement?
o Your wallet: Are you willing to give away money or fundraise?

Margaret urges her readers to consider fundraising for social change. Two years ago, I worked on the 2022 political campaign for Raz Mason. She ran as the Democratic candidate for the Oregon Senate in a purplish district in Oregon. I knew Raz as a fellow Climate Reality Leader who was running for office to prioritize enacting strong climate legislation. Raz did not win her campaign. However, I had fond memories of organizing fundraising house parties for her. It was empowering to call fellow Climate Reality Leaders and climate friends across the country to raise thousands of dollars for her campaign.

I can attest that fundraising for a political campaign helped me feel like I made a difference. My wife and my mother saw that I had a skill in fundraising. For the best candidate, organization, or cause, I hope to do more fundraising in the future. Thus, I hope more climate advocates would consider fundraising as a valuable endeavor.

Margaret makes a good point that “Core full-time movement staff doesn’t need to be paid a market rate––but they do need a living wage. Then there are other expenses, office space, travel, and printing, to name a few. Simply put, organizations need money!”

Conclusion: All-In For Life

As she concludes the book, I thought Margaret had some inspiring words to get involved in the climate emergency movement.

First, “However (if) you get involved, this path is richly rewarding. You will feel lit up and renewed by the mission. You will be awed by the immensity and beauty of all life. You will be grateful and proud to be in its service. You will have and you will feel connection and belonging with your fellow activists, protectors of humanity and the natural world.”

From my life, I know I am most proud of my accomplishment in the climate movement. People I encounter still think of me as ‘Park Ranger Brian’ since I worked as a seasonal park ranger for 25 years at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon and Everglades National Park, Florida. Even though, I stopped working as a park ranger in 2017, seven years ago, I still encounter friends, even in the climate movement who think of me as a park ranger. I am fine what that.

I am most proud though of my achievements as a climate organizer over the past 14 years. I had all my successes over the age of 40 years old as a climate organizer. When I turned 40 in 2008, I had no idea where this path would take me to act on climate. It’s hard to overshadow people’s perception of me as a park ranger. However, I hope to be remembered for my public speaking and climate presentations, writings, organizing events, radio interviews, and appearing on national TV as the “Climate Change Comedian.”

I would add to what Margaret writes that getting involved in the climate movement will led to connecting with amazing friends, going to places you might not expect, interacting with people you never thought you would meet (I had a peak experience briefly chatting with Al Gore), and accomplishing actions you never thought you could do (I once successfully persuaded a member of Congress to sponsor climate legislation).

I love the quote by Bill McKibben that Margaret would probably agree: “Very few people on earth ever get to say: ‘I am doing, right now, the most important thing I could possibly be doing.’ If you’ll join this fight, that’s what you’ll get to say.”

Second, like any good gymnast or write, I thought Margaret nailed the ending: “It is not a given that we will successfully transform, that this movement will win with enough time to avert civilization’s collapse, but it is our only hope. We must join together to do everything we can to initiate emergency mobilization as quickly as possible. We must turn our pain into action and take personal responsibility for protecting humanity and the living world. We must take our rightful place in the disruptive climate movement. We must become heroes. Onward!”

Well said, Margaret Klein Salamon!

My Criticism of Facing the Climate Emergency

While I found much to admire about Facing the Climate Emergency, I have several criticisms of the book from my own perspective as a climate organizer and 14 years in the climate movement. In the book, Margaret wrote about the importance of being critical of ourselves as climate advocates. She stated,

“The element of rigorously criticizing ourselves is also critical. This is not about meanness, masochism, or purity politics but rather about continual improvement in efficacy and strategy. The ability to self-assess, as an individual and an organization, contains tremendous power. It is not enough to “do something” in the face of the climate emergency. We have to rigorously and continuously ask ourselves, What can I do better? How can I have the greatest impact? And, What can our group do better? How can we have the greatest impact? These are touchy questions. No one likes to have their action, plan, or idea criticized––I know I don’t. But if we are in the movement mentality, we put the success of the movement above our ego. This is an emergency! This is a race against time! We have to ask tough questions.”

Thus, I read items in the book where I did not agree or have a much different perspective.

Margaret’s thoughts on “Fear of Fear,” and Dr. Michael Mann

In Step One (the first chapter), Margaret penned, “In 2017, when (David) Wallace-Wells published his wildly popular article on the possible worst-case scenarios of the climate crisis, he was reprimanded from within the climate movement and called a “doomist.” World-famous climate scientist Michael Mann wrote in response, “fear does not motivate, and appealing to it is often counterproductive as it tends to distance people from the problem, leading them to disengage, doubt, and even dismiss it.”

I thought that she overly relied on Wallace-Wells for trying to make her case that we are living in a climate emergency. Margaret acknowledged that Wallace-Wells was “reprimanded from within the climate movement and called a ‘doomist’” for his 2017 New York article. When I read the article then to see what the buzz was about, I found the article to be a bit over the top and very bleak. It was well written account of the worst possible outcome if we don’t address climate change. However, I found it to be alarmist and uninspiring. It did not really connect with me.

From my background as a park ranger and climate change communicator who has given around 300 climate change talks, I have not seen from personal experience that fear is a motivating factor. In fact, when I spoke too starkly about environmental damage and severe consequences of climate change, I would see my audiences stare at their shoes, get very quiet, and sink lower in their chairs. Reading the room, I could see them start to disengage from my talk.

When I started giving ranger talks in 1998, I noticed two things very quickly. First, national park visitors expected park rangers to know everything. Visitors hate it when park rangers say, “I don’t know.” They were asking me about climate change as far back as when I started giving ranger talks in 1998. At that time, I knew nothing about global warming, but I had to study up on it quickly. Which book did I read first? Laboratory Earth: The Planetary Gamble We Can’t Afford to Lose by climate scientist Dr. Stephen Schneider of Stanford University.

To this day, Stephen Schneider is one of the best scientific communicators about climate change. He had a compelling way of speaking where he would mix in a tad of humor, very clear analogies, fascinating stories, and a straight up view of the science. Tragically, he passed away in 2010. He once remarked that “the end of the world” and “good for you” are the two “lowest probability outcomes.” The truth, he strongly believed, was somewhere between those extremes. As Schneider liked to say, “The truth is bad enough.”

Park visitors wanted my ranger talks to be truthful, grounded in science, and they would call me out if they thought I was bullshitting them. Even more, occasionally I had scientists on my tours who were on vacation, and they would let me know when I was veering from the science.

The second thing I quickly became aware of when I started giving ranger talks is that park visitors wanted to see some fun in my programs. They wanted some jokes. They were on vacation, and they did not want to see me take myself too seriously. If I could explain a scientific concept using humor, they were more likely to grasp it than if I relayed it to them in a dry Dragnet “Just the fact, Ma’am” tone. My experience was that fear does not work for communicating climate change to the general public.

In Facing the Climate Emergency, Margaret doubled down on her defense of David Wallace-Wells and the criticism he received from climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann and others of exaggerating the fear and worst-case scenario in his 2017 New York article. She attacked Mann’s response writing, “These comments reflect what has become orthodoxy in the mainstream, or what I call the ‘gradualist’ climate movement: We must not scare the public; they cannot handle it.”

Margaret didn’t stop there: “This misguided and counterproductive mandate has its origins in the culture of science, which tends to treat emotion as a threat to rationality. The ‘fear of fear’ is reinforced by philanthropy, which is funded by corporations and the very rich, who generally prefer cheerful optimism and more frequently fund direct projects, like land conservation, or reformist political ideas like carbon pricing, instead of investing in a grassroots movement for transformative change.”

She still was not finished: “The claims that ‘fear doesn’t work’ are not only patronizing and cynical, they have also been devastating in terms of mounting a real and timely response to the crisis. These claims are not supported by evidence.”

I 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.

Margaret does not seem aware of the “Apocalypse Soon” study, the work of Susan Joy Hassol, or other researchers who have looked into the best messaging to reach people effectively when communicating about climate change. It raised eyebrows for me how dismissive she was about climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann, one of the most respected climate scientists. Even she referred to him as “world-famous.”

Before writing this section, I wish Margaret had interacted with Dr. Michael Mann to learn more about his perspective on David Wallace-Wells and “doomists.” In the climate movement, we go batty when we hear people deny climate science. “Respect the science and the scientists” we like to say when it comes to climate change, vaccines, and other issues that we need science and scientists to inform and guide us.

Yet, even in the climate movement, one can find activists who reject scientists and economists when their findings differ from the activists’ world view and theory of change. My advice to Margaret is to contact Dr. Mann. One of the email addresses I have for him is [email protected]. I have found him to be very approachable, sincere, and generous with his time when I and other climate friends reached out to him with questions or requests over the years.

I briefly met him when I attended the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco in December 2011. I wrote blog reviews for three of his books, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, The New Climate War, and recently Our Fragile Moment. I nearly agree with what Dr. Mann writes. However, I wish he would write more about climate solutions in his books.

Dr. Mann and I exchanged emails over the years. I find him to be very thoughtful, measured, and open to answer my questions about the science. He took time out of his busy schedule to advise me how to briefly talk about climate change before I appeared on Comedy Central’s Tosh.o in November 2020.

I am not by any means a heavyweight in the climate advocacy or communications world. Yet, Dr. Mann responded to my emails and Twitter messages. I have no doubt that if Margaret contacted him and mentioned that she is Executive Director of the Climate Emergency Fund and the former Director & Founder of Climate Mobilization that he would answer her.

It should be noted that Dr. Mann did not just criticize David Wallace-Wells and then dismiss him. Dr. Mann’s strong criticism of Wallace-Wells 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 of The New Climate War. His perspective inspired me to find the YouTube video from this event. Watching the video, I was amazed how much of the time that Dr. Mann agreed with David Wallace-Wells, yet Mann still quietly held his ground where he thought that Wallace-Wells strayed from the science.

I would encourage Margaret to listen to climate scientists more closely like Dr. Michael Mann in guiding her opinions.

Margaret’s criticism of Al Gore

Embedded in Step one with Margaret’s defense of David Wallace-Wells and her belief that fear can work in communicating about climate change, it irritated me that Margaret also went out of her way to attack former Vice President Al Gore. In the paragraph when she attacked the claims that “fear doesn’t work,” this is what she penned about Al Gore:

“The claims that “fear doesn’t work” are not only patronizing and cynical, they have also been devastating in terms of mounting a real and timely response to the crisis. These claims are not supported by evidence. Further, the hollow optimism and positive messaging have tripped the public’s bullshit detector. People can tell when they are being given a canned message rather than the unvarnished truth, like at the end of An Inconvenient Truth, when Al Gore urges viewers to carpool, check their tire pressure, buy low-wattage light bulbs, and change the settings on home thermostats. We know, with varying degrees of conscious awareness and intellectual understanding, that the Earth’s systems are deteriorating more rapidly than these low-effort tips suggest.”

Ouch. I found that attack on Al Gore to be unnecessary and unwarranted. My question for her is: Why do that? Really? I am a huge Al Gore fan for many decades, like many people in the climate movement. In 1993, I loved reading his book Earth in the Balance. I was excited when he ran for President in 2000, with one of his top issues was the environment and reducing the threat of global warming. I was a Florida voter and I felt crushed when he was defeated by 537 votes in Florida.

I was thrilled when the documentary and companion book An Inconvenient Truth came out in 2006. In 2012, I attended a Climate Reality Training in San Francisco led by Al Gore. I was proud to become a trained Climate Reality Leader. I was selected to be a mentor for 8 Climate Reality Trainings. At four of those trainings, Climate Reality chose me to be a breakout speaker for “Mastering the Presentation and Finding Your Audience.”

Best of all, I got to chat with Al Gore at the May 2015 Climate Reality Training in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. When he met with the mentors attending this training, I asked him the elephant in the room question that no one dared to ask him in the previous training I participated. I pressed him on how to respond to his critics who are the loudest voices in a room spouting climate denial. He was very heartfelt and passionate with his answer. It was a gift of a lifetime. He gives 110% of himself at these three-day Climate Reality Trainings. It does not sit well with me when I see someone, especially a fellow climate advocate, attack him.

So, Margaret did not like the tips during the credits of An Inconvenient Truth. She referred to them as “hollow optimism,” “a canned message,” and “low-effort tips.” Wow! Just wondering if she watched all the tips during the credits of the film. You can find the credits on YouTube.

As a refresher, here they are:

Are you ready to change the way you live?

The climate crisis can be solved. Here’s how to start.

Go to www.climatecrisis.net

You can reduce your carbon emissions.

In fact, you can even reduce your carbon emissions to zero.

Buy energy efficient appliances + lightbulbs.

Change your thermostat (and use clock thermostats) to reduce energy for heating + cooling.
Weatherize your house, increase insulation, get an energy audit.

Recycle

If you can, buy a hybrid car.

When you can, walk or ride a bicycle.
Where you can, use light rail + mass transit.

Tell your parents not to ruin the world that you want to live in
If you are a parent, join with your children to save the world they will live in

Switch to renewable sources of energy.
Call your power company to see if they offer green energy.
If they don’t, ask them why not.

Vote for leaders who pledge to solve this crisis.
Write to Congress. If they don’t listen, run for Congress.

Plant Trees. Lots of Trees.

Speak up in your community.

Call radio shows and write newspapers.
Insist that America freeze CO2 emissions.

join international efforts to stop global warming.

Reduce our dependence on foreign oil; help farmers grow alcohol fuels.

Raise fuel economy standards; require lower emissions from automobiles.

If you believe in prayer, pray that people will find the strength to change.

In the words of the old African proverb, ‘When you pray, move your feet.’

Encourage everyone you know to see this movie.

Learn as much as you can about the climate crisis.

Then put your knowledge into action.

Tell me after reading this list if you find this to still be “hollow optimism,” “a canned message,” “low-effort tips,” and “positive messaging have tripped the public’s bullshit detector.” An Inconvenient Truth and the closing messages during the credits had a huge impact on my life. It planted seeds in me to elevate climate action as my life’s mission and dedicated my life to treat climate change like the emergency that it is. Can we please stop this mindless criticism of Al Gore?

Margaret’s criticism of carbon pricing

In Step One, where I found Margaret making critical statements about Dr. Michael Mann and Al Gore, it looked like she had negative thoughts on carbon pricing.

In this paragraph, she stated, “This misguided and counterproductive mandate has its origins in the culture of science, which tends to treat emotion as a threat to rationality. The “fear of fear” is reinforced by philanthropy, which is funded by corporations and the very rich, who generally prefer cheerful optimism and more frequently fund direct projects, like land conservation, or reformist political ideas like carbon pricing, instead of investing in a grassroots movement for transformative change.”

With far-left climate progressives, it seems to be an article of faith in recent years to say disparaging things about carbon pricing. I don’t understand that reasoning.

In 2008, when I quit my winter ranger job in Everglades National Park to start climate organizing my hometown of St. Louis MO, I knew of no climate organization to join at that time. In January 2011, I joined a local Toastmaster group to be a better climate communicator. In the spring of 2011, I worked at the St. Louis Science Center at their temporary Climate Change Exhibit. That’s where I met local businessman Larry Lazar. We co-founded the Climate Reality St. Louis Meet Up group in November 2011 to organize monthly meetings and events for climate action.

In 2012, Carol Braford from the St. Louis chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) came to several our Climate Reality Meet Ups to invite me to attend their monthly CCL meetings. I joined CCL in May 2012. I liked their carbon fee and dividend solution to put a fee on fossil fuel pollution and return the revenue to Americans in monthly dividend checks to reduce the threat of climate change. Many economists and climate scientists think that a price on carbon is one of the most effective solutions to reduce the threat of climate change.

Over the years, I have been frustrated how many progressives are negative about a carbon tax. A price on carbon is supported by top climate scientists such as Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Katherine Hayhoe and Dr. Michael Mann. Carbon taxes are favored by economists across the political spectrum. According to the January 17, 2019 edition of the Wall Street Journal, “Economists’ Statement on Carbon Dividends,” around 3,649 U.S. Economists, 4 Former Chairs of the Federal Reserve, 28 Nobel Laureate Economists, and 15 Former Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers support carbon pricing.

When we think about our energy costs, we tend to think about the costs of buying gasoline for our cars and the electricity to power, heat, and cool our homes. This accounts for about 30% of Americans carbon footprint. My understanding is that over 70% of our carbon footprint is embedded from the fossil fuels burned to manufacture and transport the products we buy. Thus, putting a price on carbon upstream at the source, the coal mine, oil well or methane well, would cause the price to be passed along to the manufacture and then the customer.

The smarter industries would switch to clean energy to maintain and even lower their prices. The less efficient industries would try to pass along the increased price to consumers. A local apple grown in the U.S. becomes cheaper than an apple shipped from Chile. This would be a win for customers, the environment and local U.S. businesses.

I love the quote by author and educator Anna Lappé,

A carbon price would make every decision easy for consumers to buy the cheaper product made with cleaner energy.

Even more, the monthly dividend check would more than cover the costs of increased prices for low and middle income Americans, helping them to come out ahead financially.

A strong, economy-wide price on carbon help could reduce America’s carbon pollution by 50% by 2030, putting us on track to reach net zero by 2050. Those are the benchmark goals we must reach according to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to avoid dangerous impacts of climate change.

In 2015, after nearly a decade of conservative rule, Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party won a majority of seats in the Canadian parliament and control of the federal government. Part of Trudeau’s election platform was a carbon tax. In fact, the Trudeau Government realized after they won control of government that they could not reach Canada’s 2015 Paris Climate Accord goals without a carbon fee and dividend policy.

Thus, I wish I could somehow convince Margaret the merits of putting a price on carbon is one of the best solutions to tackle the climate emergency. I would also love to see Margaret and her group Climate Emergency Fund coordinate with CCL to lobby together for Congressional policies to reduce the threat of climate change.

Margaret’s criticism of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)

Speaking of building a strong coalition, Margaret seemed to be faultfinding of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was passed by a Democratic Congress in 2022 and then signed into law by President Joe Biden. She noted,

“While we recognize and celebrate our successes, we must remain firmly rooted in reality. The (Inflation Reduction Act) is wildly insufficient. Because our political system has been captured by big money, this bill didn’t do anything to directly stop or penalize the fossil fuel industry, which is still, suicidally, expanding. It does little for biodiversity or land protection. The bottom line? The IRA won’t be enough on its own to stop the Earth from hitting catastrophic climate tipping points.

We must escalate our resistance. If we don’t, we will soon be living in the Inflation Reduction Act future, where cleaner, cheaper energy, electric cars, and trucks offer a temporarily tolerable lifestyle for the privileged, while electric tanks at the border stop desperate migrants from coming in; where solar- powered air-conditioned indoor farms grow fresh greens and berries for the wealthy, while others choke in dust storms, suffer in heat waves, and starve; and the fossil fuel industry hangs on to wealth and power with increasingly desperate and violent measures. This eco-apartheid has already begun, and we are racing toward total collapse, in which everyone, even the privileged, loses everything.”

Like many climate activists, I hoped for more with the IRA. However, I was happy with what we got since the Democrats needed the votes of moderate Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Simena to pass this bill. The Democratic Senators and the Biden Administration had to do dedicate negotiations with them to pass this bill.

The good news is that the IRA is the single largest investment in climate and energy in American history. Even Margaret acknowledged that the IRA “will alone get the United States 40 percent below 2005 emissions by 2030. It is likely to kickstart a clean energy, agriculture, and transport revolution, and the importance of that momentum-building can’t be overstated.”

I agree with Margaret on the bad news that the IRA does not go far enough, and we must do more policies to fully address the climate emergency. This is where we need the solution of voting that I did not notice in her book.

Elections matter and elections have consequences. We would not have passed the IRA with the election of Joe Biden as President and a Democratic majority in Congress in 2020. It really is that simple that we need climate advocates to vote and vote in strong numbers to elect strong majorities of Democrats in Congress in the November 5, 2024 election if we want to defend and build upon the IRA to solve the climate emergency.

Besides voting, we need climate activists to be speaking out, phone banking, door-to-door canvassing, encouraging friend and family to go to the polls in November to vote, voting, and supporting Democratic candidates so we will elect enough candidates to pass even more effective policies to address the climate emergency.

Donald Trump and the Republican Party would love to repeal the IRA and the clean energy actions of the Biden Administration. Even worse, Trump and his supporters would like to destroy American democracy. As historian Heather Cox Richardson warns, ‘If Donald Trump or a Trump like candidate wins, we will lose American democracy for a generation.’

Too much is at stake for climate advocates to not be fully active in the November 5, 2024 Presidential election. I wish Margaret had mentioned voting, supporting Democratic candidates, and electing Democratic candidates who will uphold our democracy in the November 5th election.

I am skeptical we always need to feel our fear, grief and pain to act on climate

I enjoyed reading Step Two about Welcoming Fear, Grief, and Other Painful Feelings. This chapter motivated me to seek professional therapy in 2024, which has been very helpful for me.

At the same time, I am not totally convinced that we need to always get in touch to feel our fears, grief and pain to take climate action. This chapter reminded me of the scene in the film Star Trek 5: The final Frontier.

The antagonist in the film, Sybok, and his followers try to capture the Starship Enterprise. However, Sybok, runs into resistance from Captain Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy. Sybok undertakes a process with Spock and Dr. McCoy to help them “face their (psychological) pain and drawing strength from it” that has troubled them for much of their lives. Their healing sways them to be less resistant of Sybok. However, Captain Kirk refuses to play along with Sybok’s healing techniques, saying, “I don’t want my pain taken away! I need my pain!”

Sometimes in my life, I felt I did not always need to dwell on my feelings, grief, and pain. I just needed to take the necessary action in the moment. For over 20 years, I was a park ranger in the national parks. Sometimes I was the first ranger on scene respond to medical emergencies, such as heart attacks, visitors falling off trails, visitors slipping on ice receiving concussions, possible spinal injuries, etc.

I had no time to think about my own feelings in those moments. As a first responder, I had to set my feelings aside to focus on the emergency at hand. My job required me to accurately assess the patient and the situation to then use my radio to call the park dispatch for the law enforcement/Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) rangers to respond quickly.

I feel the same way about the climate emergency. I lost a lot of sleep worrying about it in 2008. However, once I decided that I would dedicate my life to reducing the threat of climate change, I slept much better. I did not need to take time to go to professional therapy to act on climate, I just needed to fully focus myself on taking climate action.

Since Margaret is a professional psychologist, I would love to get her impression of that scene from Star Trek 5.

Over the last decade, I paid a heavy price for treating climate as an emergency

In Step Four, Margaret invites us to Enter Emergency Mode. Well, that’s what I have done over the past 14 years, fully dedicate my life to treating climate change as an emergency. Yet, I have scars to show for all my climate organizing.

In 2013, I was a plaintiff for a Missouri Sierra Club lawsuit against the local power utility corporation for the pollution of their nearby coal plant. In January 2016. I sat down with a lawyer from the Sierra Club and a lawyer representing the utility for my sworn deposition. This was the time I testified in a court case. All I can say was: Oh my! It felt like one of the most grueling experiences of my life to be cross examined for two and a half hours by the defense attorney.

By the end of the deposition, I emotionally felt like I had gotten my ass kicked in a bar fight. I never felt so depleted and exhausted. I had no energy for two days and basically spent the weekend in bed. Fortunately, the Sierra Club and the utility company settled the case out of court in terms that were somewhat favorable for the Sierra Club. I was proud to participate in this lawsuit. I helped the Sierra Club win. For the climate, I would do that again in a heartbeat. However, the emotional toll it took on my body to testify in a deposition was brutal.

I volunteered heavily in Oregon in 2019 and 2020 to try to get cap and invest bills passed to make a concerted policy effort to reduce greenhouse pollution in this state. Sadly, Republican legislative walkouts prevented passage of these bills.

I felt depleted and depressed when these climate bills died. I did not want to get out of bed or off the couch for weeks after those bitter defeats.

In 2021, I led the efforts to try to pass an Oregon Legislative resolution urging Congress to pass bipartisan climate legislation, especially the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. The resolution, known as SJM 5, sailed through the Oregon Senate by a vote of 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. We ended up getting 30 Oregon House co-sponsors for this resolution.

Sadly, the Democratic House Speaker and Majority Leader did not want to pass SJM 5. The worse part was my Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) friends who organized with on this resolution wrote a scathing opinion editorial (op-ed) in the Oregonian about the House Democratic leadership. Specifically, they wrote, “No excuses remain for the Oregon House leadership to delay SJM 5′s prompt hearing and vote.”

A former Oregon Legislator advised us not to publish that op-ed since she thought it attacked the Democratic leadership and would burn bridges in the future. My CCL friends did not want to listen to me. It left me feeling disenchanted with CCL.

From June 2019 to February 2020, I was the interim Chapter Chair of the Portland Chapter of the Climate Reality Project. The high point was organizing three large climate events in the Portland area with around 100 people attending each event. The low point was that our chapter leadership team could not get along. It was a sharp contrast of personalities. As the interim leader of the group, some of the Leadership Team Leader members wanted to endlessly criticize me. It felt like I could not do anything correct in their eyes and I felt very demoralized. Even more, I tried to bend over backwards to incorporate their ideas, but it was never enough.

After the climate event I organized on January 21, 2020, I felt burned out as the interim Chapter Chair. After all that infighting with some of the members of the leadership team, I felt spent. I had no energy left. I resigned in March 2020, just after the COVID lockdowns began.

Between the horrid defeats of Oregon’s cap and invest bills and the bitter infighting with the Portland Climate Reality Leadership Team, I had no desire for climate organizing. On top of that, the COVID lockdown created a deep depression for me in the spring of 2020.

Organizing for climate action, especially treating it like an emergency, took a heavy toll on me.

I want to ask Margaret as a professional psychologist and climate organizer: how does one prevent burnout while taking actions over the years to treat climate change like an emergency?

Even more, my savings have gone down focusing my life for years on the climate emergency.

Job prospects were disheartening. Over the years, I told myself that if I organized a climate event, led a speaking tour, or took other climate actions, it would lead to a job in the climate movement. It never did. I applied for various positions, but I rarely got an interview or a job.

I felt especially demoralized by Climate Reality Project. It took hundreds of actions as a volunteer with Climate Reality. I logged all my actions on their website for Climate Reality Leaders, known within the Climate Reality world as “The Hub.” The organization selected me as a breakout speaker for three of their trainings from 2017 to 2019.

Then, in the summer of 2019, Climate Reality stopped selecting me as a mentor and a breakout speaker for their trainings. They told me that they wanted to select other Climate Reality Leaders to be mentors. I understood the first time it happened to me. Then it kept happening where they did not select me for their trainings. They never explained why. I felt like I had been ghosted by them or given the cold shoulder. For their March 2017 Training in Denver, Colorado, they acknowledged me as a good example of a Climate Reality Leader. Then, it felt like radio silence from the summer of 2019 and beyond. I did not feel valued anymore and it stung badly.

For years, various climate groups and fellow organizers me as a “super volunteer.” While it is flattering to be thought of that way, it makes me lousy. I feel like I am stuck in an endless purgatory where I tell myself if I help with just one more volunteer climate project, it will lead to a job. However, I seem to be stuck and endlessly running in place. I don’t know how to breakout from this quagmire. I just wonder if Margaret would advise me on this.

I sort of feel like when I was single and most women valued me as a male friend, but they did not see me as attractive or dating material. Believe it or not, I was mostly stuck in the “friend zone” when I was a seasonal park ranger. It was when I started veering away from being a seasonal park ranger and becoming a climate organizer that I met my wife, Tanya. We started dating over 11 years ago and have been married for over 8 years. I wonder if I am going to need leave the climate organizing world to get a steady job that pays well.

That would be a shame if I had to leave the climate movement to look for work because I do believe, like Margaret, that we are in a climate emergency.

Yes, we have a ‘Climate Emergency’ AND a ‘Democracy Emergency’

Margaret’s book was initially written in 2019, second edition in 2023. However, the 2023 edition does not mention the threat to our democracy. In 2019, we had hope that Trump might be voted out of office in the November 2020 election. The good news is that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by seven million votes and by a comfortable margin in the Electoral College. The bad news was that Donald Trump never conceded that he lost.

I watched the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol live on TV and it really frightened me. I especially felt sick to my stomach because I traveled to Washington D.C. eight times from 2015 to 2019 to lobby Congressional offices for climate action. I absolutely love lobbying for climate action. It is a sacred experience for me. It crushed me to see live on TV the protestors violently storm the U.S. Capitol Building to prevent a peaceful transfer of power.

The January 6th Insurrection happened for one reason only: Donald Trump desperately wanted to remain President even if it ended American democracy as we know it. Sadly, the threat of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement to squelch American democracy continues to this day. As I write this blog in March 2024, Donald Trump is now the presumptive Republican nominee for President. If elected President, he promised to be a dictator ‘on day one.’

Donald Trump expresses openly hostility to any policies related to climate change. Most likely, he would try to gut the Inflation Reduction Act. Just like his first term, he would task the Environmental Protection Agency to protect fossil fuel polluters. Trump would push the EPA to not holding polluters accountable and enacting regulations to ratchet down their pollution that harms the environment and causes climate change.

A second Donald Trump Presidency would be a nightmare for the climate. It would be horrific, setbacking American climate policy for decades. It would be such a catastrophic disaster that he would prevent the U.S. from reaching the IPCC goal of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030 and by net zero by 2050. Those are the goals that scientist warn we must reach to prevent more dangerous climate change impacts. For the climate, protecting our democracy and stopping Donald Trump from becoming President is a big frigging deal.

Yet, I did not notice a peep about this threat in Margaret’s book, especially in the 2023 edition. Since January 6th, we are now aware of the daunting threat Trump poses to our democracy and climate. However, I did not see her write at all about this in her book. Furthermore, I have not seen her post anything about the threat to our democracy in her social media.

Al Gore has said for years, “To fix the climate crisis we need to fix democracy.”

Present and future generations will judge us if we acted effectively to solve the climate emergency. Even more, they will judge us if we lived up to the times in 2024 to stop Donald Trump and the MAGA Republican movement from destroying American democracy. Without a democracy, it will be impossible to tackle the climate emergency.

Although I prefer lobbying and supporting Democratic candidates committed to prioritize climate action rather than Margaret’s approach of direct disruptive actions and protests, I admire her theory of change. I think her emphasis on strategic, nonviolent, heroic disruptions is part of the spectrum of climate actions needed to face the climate emergency.

I urge Margaret and anyone else to read the January/February 2024 issue of The Atlantic where various experts weighed in on the dangers of a second Donald Trump Presidency, “If Trump wins.” Many of the articles pointed to their understanding that Trump would use the U.S. Military and the Insurrection Act to crush protests and throw dissenters in jail. Yes, one can organize disruptive protests in a Joe Biden Presidency to try to shape his policies on climate. We should be very clear that second term Donald Trump would have no qualms about attacking protesters and taking every action necessary to silence their voices.

If we are serious about facing the climate emergency, we must speak out, organize, march, support Democratic candidates who will uphold our democracy, encourage people we know to vote, and vote to ensure Donald Trump is NOT elected President on November 5, 2024. Full stop. Period.

As a fellow climate organizer, I really do need Margaret to address the democracy emergency in 2024 so we can then face the climate emergency

Final Thoughts

I really did enjoy reading Dr. Margaret Klein’s Salamon’s book, Facing the Climate Emergency. Yes, Margaret and I have different ideas, tactics, and theories of change how to solve the climate crisis. However, I admire all that Margaret does. I have been a big fan ever since I saw her speak at our Climate Reality St. Louis Meet Up in November 2014.

This blog review is extremely long because the book did trigger a lot of thoughts for me, mostly positive. I hope that Margaret is not offended by my criticisms and skepticism. In fact, I would be honored to have a conversation with her. As a climate organizer, I trust science. I believe in the scientific method to make a judgement based upon the weight of the evidence. Even more, I am always open to change my mind when presented with new robust evidence that is stronger or disproves my strongly held beliefs.

I fully understand that not a single word I wrote may change Margaret’s mind or sway her to think differently. I am good with that. I think her advocacy and work is vital. I never considered climate organizing to be a competition between me or any other climate organizer. If someone is a more effective climate advocate than me, I always want to be the first to congratulate them.

I always felt that if this is a competition to be the best climate activist, then the planet and our fellow human beings win as we each strive to have the most efficacy. If anything, I want Margaret to keep doing what she is doing as I share my perspective.

I agree with Citizens’ Climate Lobby core value of building relationships. To support that value, they state, “We know that there is a place for protest, but our approach is to build consensus, which we believe will bring enduring change.”

Yes, I have different views than Margaret on the use of fear to educate and inspire people to take climate action, Dr. Michael Mann, Al Gore, carbon pricing, the Inflation Reduction Act, deeply getting in touch with our feelings through therapy, and understanding our emotions before we act on climate. I acknowledge her book inspired me to seek counseling for my letdowns and depression I felt as a climate organizer. Yet, I am not sure everyone needs to seek therapy or get deeply in touch with their feelings to be effective in the climate movement.

Yes, I agree with Margaret that we want more people advocating for climate and treating it as an emergency. At the same time, I dedicated my life for years to climate action. I feel like I have many scars and heartbreaks from interactions with other climate advocates and organizations.

As far as my life’s journey, I have said for years that ‘Being a park ranger was easy. Being a climate organizer is very hard, but very rewarding.’

This is a very long blog review. I don’t care if no one reads it all the way to the end. Maybe not even Margaret. Ultimately, my writing audience is me. In addition, I hope to write a book someday. I want to take writings from my blogs to complete my life’s story or memoir soon.

Thus, at the very least, Margaret Klein Salamon’s book inspired me to write this blog and discover more about myself. For that, I will always be grateful to her.

Thank you, Margaret!

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways.” – 1 Corinthians 13:11, the Bible.

Discovering my love of pool as a child

I will never forget our family Labor Day weekend vacation to the Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri in 1981. I was 13 years old at the time and my younger sister, Mary Frances was ten years old. The weather seemed to be overcast and a bit chilly, too cold to go swimming and kind of a blah day to go exploring anywhere. My dad said to my younger sister and me, “I am going to teach you how to play pool (billiards) today.” 

I grew up with my parents having a 1909 A.E. Schmidt antique pool table in the basement. My dad loved shooting pool with his male friends in the basement when my parents would have company over at their parties. My mom and the ladies would be upstairs chatting about life and preparing food while the men enjoyed their game of pool. Up until that Labor Day vacation trip, the pool table was taboo for my younger sister and I to touch. It was “not a toy” as my dad would frequently say to us kids to anything in the house that was not a toy. 

He seemed deathly afraid that us rambunctious kids would rip the fine shopworn green felt on the table, making the table useless to play and expensive to repair. Up until that point, we dared not to receive his wrath by even touching the family pool table. 

My dad had a mercurial and unpredictable temper growing up from working 68 hours a week among two jobs and not seeming to know how to act around children. To be honest, I did not like being around him as a child. Frankly, I liked him better when he was not home and working. However, on this Sunday morning at this pool room at Lake of the Ozarks lodge, my dad was very loving, kind, and dream to be around introducing us to pool. He was very patient teaching us how to hold our pool sticks, put chalk on our pool cues, explaining the rules of the various pool games, and giving us tips on the more difficult shots. 

I recall my mom was not there. She was off doing something else with my older sister and her mom, my maternal grandmother, that morning. However, my mom was full of happiness and pride that my dad was teaching my younger sister and I pool. My parents obtained the family pool table when they moved to their first home in St. Louis in 1964. The previous owners did not know how they were going to move the table, so they offered my parents a deal to throw in the pool table with the house. Over the years, the pool table became part of the family used at every family and social gathering in the home. 

My mom had sweet memories of her dad, my maternal grandfather, shooting pool with my dad, as well as my mom and dad’s uncles. My mom loved how the men would bond shooting pool in the basement. Both my mom and dad wanted their kids to learn pool to keep this tradition going in the family. My mom wanted her kids using the pool table. 

When my parents moved to a bigger home in the suburbs of south St. Louis County in 1973, they were in total agreement that the pool table was coming with us to our new home, no matter the cost or logistics, hell or high water.

My dad contacted A.E. Schmidt Company to move disassemble the pool table move to the new home. My dad frequently told the story how the table was moved. Before moving into the new home, it rained heavy for weeks and the grass sod had not sprouted yet. When the truck moved to the side of the house to unload the table, my dad thought that moving truck would never get unstuck from the mud. He marveled at the two huge burly guys moving the slate makes the solid surface of the table down the basement steps. Between the size of the men and the heaviness of the slate, my dad could see the new basement steps buckling a bit and creaking with discomfort as they very slowly and carefully hauled the table slate down the steps. 

A.E. Schmidt appraised the pool table for my dad as being worth several thousand dollars, worth more than a new fancy car at that time. The previous owners had way undervalued the value of the table when they included it in the purchase of my parents’ previous home. It was a beautiful pool table that my parents hoped would stay in the family for generations. My dad was not going to have sloppy knuckleheaded kids mess up this family treasure. 

As my dad taught my sister and I how to play pool at that table in the Lake of the Ozarks, I was hooked for life. I loved pool. It was as if I had found the game that I had always meant to play. After we played for several hours on this table, I asked my dad if I could start playing pool on our table at home. He gave an enthusiastic yes and my mom was very pleased to hear this. 

Playing pool in the basement became the center of my life during my teenage years. I admired the look of that emerald green felt that was worn in spots and had a few nicks from my dad and his friends playing pool. I was enthralled by the sharp sound of the cracking of the balls against each other and the rumble of the balls rolling across the table like very tiny bowling balls. I relished teaching myself the trick shots and practicing for hours. My dad built a stereo when he was in high school, and I would play rock music or put on records while shooting pool. Certain songs would put me in a good rhythm to successfully make several shots in a row. 

That pool table saved my parents money because I never developed an interest in video games. They did not agonize about buying an expensive Atari or other video games for me for Christmas or birthdays. My neighborhood and school friends liked to come over to shoot pool. Thus, my parents did not worry much about where I was hanging out. On the flip side, I took mastering pool very intensely and I would frequently curse loudly in the basement when missing shots. My parents would often admonish me for my loud foul language in the basement. 

Sometimes I was bullied in school or felt awkward trying to fit in with my school peers. Thus, the basement pool table was always a comforting friend that accepted me the way I was. On ABC TV’s Wide World of Sports or the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, I would see the top pool players in the world such as Minnesota Fats or Willie Mosconi. I wanted to be them when I grew up and dreamed of being them each time I played pool. As a kid, I was 100% determined I would be the best pool player in the world. No one was going to stop me. 

Receiving my own pool stick as a gift and then destroying it

After my dad taught me to play pool on a family vacation at a hotel recreation room pool table in the Lake of the Ozarks in September 1981, the pool table became a central part of my teenage years. I was probably a B student in high school instead of an A student because of all the hours I spent playing pool. 

My mom’s brother, Uncle Art, would pass through St. Louis periodically to visit our family. He traveled on the road in his RV as a magician with his wife, my Aunt Immy. They liked playing pool, especially Aunt Immy. My dad blissfully told the story how she beat him at pool in the early 1970s. Apparently, not that many women played pool in the early 1970s so my dad proclaimed that Immy was the first woman to beat him at pool. I made it one of my life’s missions to keep practicing so I could beat my aunt and uncle at pool during one of their visits. 

In the mid 1980s, I invited Uncle Art and Aunt Immy to play me in pool on the family table during one of their visits. They were both hesitant because they often heard how much I practiced at pool. They had not played in years and were scared I would win. They half heartily played a few games with me, and I beat them. They gave up playing saying that I was ‘too good at playing them in pool.’ They then walked back upstairs to visit with my mom and grandmother. 

Uncle Art seemed to regret he was reluctant to play pool with me. One year in late December a package came from him instructing me not to open it until Christmas. He gave me my own fancy pool cue for with its own case for me to carry to pool halls. It unscrewed in the middle, just like you see professional pool players use, so it could fit in its black canvass case. It was one of the best Christmas gifts in my life and I cherished it. It had fancy artistic engravings in the wood towards the bottom or thicker end of the pool cue. Someone had crafted this pool cue with care. I treated it with respect. No one could touch my pool cue without asking me very politely. 

I graduated from high school in 1987, but I was unsure what to do with my life. I was stuck in this dream of wanting to be a professional pool player. I never entered a pool tournament and I felt like I was only a moderate player. I feared leaving home and the basement to attend college because I loved shooting pool on the family pool table so much. 

I even took a gap year before starting college trying to figure out what to do with my life. I was so uncertain. One day, I was shooting pool with my older sister’s boyfriend, Ben. He kept trouncing me at pool game after game. I became more frustrated and seething inside that I could not beat him. Years early, I watched a concert film, The Kids Are Alright by the rock band The Who where they destroyed all their musical instruments after they finished their performance. I didn’t agree with smashing their instruments, but it intrigued me. 

On the summer day in 1988 after losing in pool all day by Ben, I quietly went to another part of the basement. Without saying a word, I took my fancy pool cue and smashed it against the concrete floor. Ben was speechless and did not know what to say. I never said a word to my parents, but they were very surprised to learn that I smashed my fancy pool cue. They were a bit sad what I did with my uncle’s gift. 

However, I had to do it. Smashing that pool cue helped me move on from my dream of just hiding in my parents’ basement playing pool and fantasizing about being a professional pool player. I decided not to play pool after that. I focused on starting William Jewell College in Kansas City, Missouri in September 1988. I chose to major in Business Administration so I could try to make a living after I graduated college. I played pool a few times in college. One of the women’s dorms at my college had a pool table that I got to try once or twice. 

Looking back, if I had brought my pool cue to college, it would have been a distraction. I would have scoured the area for pool halls and places to shoot pool because I had an addiction to playing pool. Not having that pool cue in college helped me concentrate on my studies. I was not distracted at playing pool than when I was in high school. 

While attending college, I discovered I had a dream to work in the national parks. Upon my college graduation in May 1992, I took a train to Oregon to work at Crater Lake National Park for the summer. I fell in love with Crater Lake. I worked there 25 years in the summers. 

The concession dorm where I lived for my first three summers at Crater Lake had a pool table. I made some friends at the dorm, and we spent hours playing pool on that table. I really loved the hiking and the scenery at Crater Lake. Even more, the pool table at the concession dorm helped my not miss my parents’ wonderful pool table one bit. 

Crater Lake was only a summer job, so I spent my winters working in Everglades National Park, Florida for 16 years. The concessionaire at Flamingo had a recreational pub to hang out, buy alcoholic drinks and a decent pool table. However, I never went inside because I did not like the cigarette smoke, excessive drinking by some of the employees, and very loud music. I became more interested in canoeing, hiking, and birdwatching to see the color birds in the Everglades. 

Crater Lake National Park had a Community Center in the middle of the housing for the permanent ranger staff. Inside the community center was a pool table with a cobalt blue felt, the same color enchanting color as Crater Lake. During the summer of 2005, my housemates and I enjoyed shooting pool on that table. My housemate David Grimes took some of the best natural photos of me shooting pool. Playing pool became a way for me to bond with park friends. However, overriding joy was living, working, and hiking in the national parks. 

While working in the national parks, I found my true passion to organize for climate action in 2010. Over the years I gave around 300 climate change talks in 12 U.S. states, Washington D.C, and Ottawa Canada. I wrote numerous newspaper editorial opinions and letter to the editor for climate action. I have appeared in several radio interviews, podcasts, and even was a guest on Comedy Central’s Tosh.o TV show twice as the Climate Change Comedian. 

I traveled to Washington D.C. 9 times to lobby with Congressional offices to pass strong climate legislation. I even persuaded a member of Congress to co-sponsor a climate bill. 

Since moving to Portland, Oregon in 2017, I made countless trips to the Oregon state Capitol in Salem to give oral testimony and lobby state legislators to pass effective climate bills. I led the efforts to get a bipartisan climate resolution passed in the Oregon Senate in 2021. It had 30 co-sponsors, in the Oregon House, including 7 Republicans, before it died in June 2021. 

I traveled across Missouri twice to give climate change presentations in 2017 and 2018. I led a tour across Oregon in October 2017 giving climate change talks in the eastern, central and southern parts of Oregon. 

I feel like it was really my true purpose in life in advocate for climate action. There was no looking back for me. 

In 2009, my parents moved to a new house in St. Louis County. They moved the pool table and refinished it with a green felt. It was pure joy to shoot pool with my dad on that table that Christmas. My niece Rachel was almost years old. My dad and I taught her to shoot pool on this table. Sadly, my dad’s struggle with cancer no longer allowed him to play pool in 2013. In 2021, my dad had to move into an assisted living facility due to declining health. 

My mom sold the house in 2022. It was painful for her to have to give up the 1909 A.E. Schmidt pool table that was in the family for almost 50 years. My parents and I always intended for me to inherit the pool table. 

My mom did not know how to break the news to me that she would include the pool table with the sale. However, my wife and I live in a small apartment in Portland, Oregon. I traveled a lot with my climate organizing. It was simply not possible for me to inherit and own this pool table. It was sad that our family would have to let go of this pool table. 

I told my mom to look on the bright side that our family got to borrow that pool table for almost 50 years. The table came with the first home that they owned and it left the family with the last home that they owned. The new owner of the home was a single mom with two teenage sons, who were probably going to love that pool table. Who knows, maybe one of them will practice for hours on that table to become the best pool player in the world that I was never able to be.  

I will always cherish my dad teaching me how to play pool and have wonderful memories shooting pool in my parents’ pool table growing up. I never regretted smashing my pool cue in the summer of 1988 to help me become the climate and democracy advocate that I am today. Sometimes we really do need to make a clean break from our past find our life’s true purpose. 

In 2006, I accepted a summer job as an interpretative ranger at Crater Lake National Park. After many years of working other jobs at Crater Lake, I felt triumphant leading a lodge talk about the park founder William Gladstone Steel, giving a geology talk, and narrating the boat tours that summer. In late August, I debuted a junior ranger program and an evening campfire program when other rangers left for the season to return to their teaching jobs.

This summer job was in addition to my winter job in Everglades National Park, Florida where I worked as an interpretative park ranger narrating the boat tours, led guided canoe trips into the Ten Thousand Islands, provided ranger guided bike tours of Everglades City, and gave evening programs on the birds of Everglades National Park. I was really enjoying my work as a ranger at this time, but I wanted to challenge myself in a new way at this time.

Skydiving in south Florida in April 2007 for the first time

In 2007, I decided to stretch my boundaries by going tandem skydiving twice. The first time was in south Florida in April 2007, at a small airport near Everglades National Park. This was a life goal I have been itching to do for a few years. The Everglades is extremely flat with no hills or mountains. This would be my opportunity to finally get a bird’s eye view of south Florida.

My friend and fellow Everglades ranger, Jackie Dostourian, joined me for moral support that day. She decided that day that she was not going to skydive, and I was fine with that. I was determined to do it. It was great having her at the facility as I was very nervous before this experience, and she immediately saw me after I completed my jump.

I would be completing a tandem skydive, attached to a professional who does this for a living. After I paid the hefty fee, the other customers and I were shown a 20-minute video to prepare for our tandem sky dive. The narrator on the video explained how he designed the tandem skydiving equipment for maximum safety. Oddly, he had a very long hair and beard, and piercing eyes that spoke right into the camera and right into you. He was wearing a suit and tie. His hair and beard were so long that they covered up his shirt and suit collars and his tie knot. The narrator looked like a cult leader, not a businessman selling people on skydiving. I was very nervous to complete this life goal. My mind was committed, but my body thought it was a terrible idea to want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Thus, I was scared this narrator was going to say towards the end of this video, ‘And if you find that you enjoyed your skydive, I hope you will join us to live in our community forever.’

My body was waiting for a message like this on this video so we could go screaming out of there. After watching the video with the others committing themselves to skydiving that day, I met the person I would be attached to for this tandem skydive. He was a friendly guy in a profession where everyone needs to be super chill to relax nervous folks like me. Yet, he was confident and very detail oriented to also help relax and calm down nervous folks like me.

For me, getting ready to go skydiving felt the same feeling as going to the dentist. My mind was totally set to do this, but my body wanted no part of it!

The weather was a typical Florida partly cloudy day. There were enough clouds rolling in that the professional skydivers had to wait until the last minute to decide if it was safe to jump out of the plane. They made this decision after the plane took off and we were 10,000 feet above the ground. The person making the decision was the lead skydiver, who was attached to me. The door was open on the side of the plane to make the decision. Each time he leaned of the plane to make the final call, I was leaning out of the plane with him. It was freaky looking out 10,000 feet below me with nothing between me and the ground. It’s not natural to be looking down on clouds thousands of feet below me. This was one scariest parts was when he leaned over the side several times before he made his final call.

To the joy of my mind and the horror of my body, he determined it was safe for all of us to jump out of the airplane. Before we knew it, I was outside of a perfectly good airplane falling 110 miles per hour. It sounded so damn loud. It sounded like if you choose to drive your car at 110 mph with the windows down. The Everglades looked huge and flat from high up in the sky, not much different than the ground. We just needed to aim for the landing zone, which was right next to Everglades National Park. I did not want to end up in the Everglades with all the alligators, venomous snakes, etc.

The experience was over in just a few minutes. I was thrilled that I accomplished it. It was great that Jackie was there to greet me when it was over to share this experience with her. I called up my parents and sisters that evening to let them know I skydived that day. None of them seemed impressed. My dad remarked, “Don’t ever do that again!”

I always had a rebellious streak in me. After my dad said that I was determined to do it again. I decided to do it again in Oregon when I returned to work at Crater Lake for the summer. I found co-workers at Crater Lake who were interested in joining me. We made our reservation to skydive in early August.

My second skydive in Oregon while losing my mentor Steve Robinson

For this second time, I wanted to skydive to see the mountains of Oregon from 10,000 feet. This time, I decided to pay extra to have a video made of this skydive and pictures taken to remember this experience. My skydiving video is posted on YouTube.

My friends and I skydived in Creswell, Oregon, just south of Eugene. It was odd to be looking down directly on Interstate 5 as I skydived, which looked like a small ribbon of a highway. The cars and full-sized trucks looked like tiny ants as they moved down the highway in either direction. The landing zone was right next to a field of corn. My friends and I enjoyed purchasing some corn from that field immediately after our skydive.

In 2007, along with the skydiving experience, I had a terrific summer as an interpretative ranger at Crater Lake. Yes, this was a peak life experience to go skydiving twice in 2007. I reached a life goal and felt like I was on top of the world.

Sadly, the thrill of this occasion ended when tragedy struck within days of my second skydive. I received the news that my mentor, friend, and fellow park ranger at Crater Lake and Everglades National Park, Steve Robinson, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Steve lived his life to the fullest and enjoyed every day of his life. He inspired me to life my life the same way. Days later, when I visited Steve in the hospital, he was completely emersed in his battle with this deadly and aggressive cancer. My sky dive seemed so frivolous compared to his fight with cancer.

It felt like that skydive was the last fun thing I did before Steve passed away on October 1, 2007. For the next year, I was in a fog mourning the death of my friend. To help me recover, friends who were also close to Steve invited me to visit them on the Big Island of Hawaii in October 2008. During my visit, my friends shared that Native Hawaiians consider the Big Island as a place of healing. With their words and spending time in this tropical paradise, I found permission to enjoy life again. I achieved new life goals of surfing, parasailing, snorkeling, and seeing native Hawaiian birds, Even more, with this trip, I reached my goal of seeing all 50 U.S. states.

My body and probably Steve were relieved that I moved onto new adventures to enjoy life, besides jumping out of perfectly good airplanes.

Skydiving twice and the loss of my mentor pushed me to be a climate organizer

My mentor Steve worked as a seasonal park ranger in Everglades National Park and Crater Lake National Park for 25 years. I never met anyone who loved the outdoors and the natural environment as much as Steve. With his salt and pepper long hair tied back into a single Indian braid and his long his bushy grayish beard that flowed down to almost his shirt collar, Steve looked like a cross between Moses from the Bible and Dr. Suess’ The Lorax.

Steve cared deeply about protecting the Everglades and restoring this precious ecosystem to its full glory. Park visitors, his fellow rangers and me would hang onto every word he said. I wanted to be like Steve and spend the rest of my life working the national parks educating park visitor to care for the Everglades and our planet. I wanted to tell entertaining and inspiring stories like Steve did to inspire visitors to be good stewards of the Everglades and our planet.

In his ranger talks and his conversations, Steve liked to use a quote that was originated with Joe Podger but he attributed it to his iconic hero and mother of Everglades National Park, Marjory Stoneman Douglas. The quote was,

“The Everglades is a test. If we pass the test, we get to keep the planet.”

When I arrived in Shark Valley in Everglades National Park in November 2007, I could not sleep at night, and I fell into a very bad depression. My Supervisor in Everglades City from 2004 to 2007, Sue Reece, offered me a new challenge to work in Shark Valley for the winter. However, after I arrived in Shark Valley, I felt very isolated and lonely. I missed my friends in Everglades City. I wanted to leave the Everglades, but I did not know where I wanted to go.

In my sleeplessness, depression, and restlessness, I found my life’s purpose. I wanted to carry forth my mentor Steve’s message of protecting our Earth and environment since he could no longer share that vision with others.

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

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

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

By the winter of 2007-08, I read several books on climate change. Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth and his companion book, as well as the HBO documentary Too Hot Not to Handle, dominated my thoughts. I wanted to do something on climate change, but I did not know what. It very clear I would not find the answer by continuing to work winters in the Everglades. It was time for me to move on with my life. By the winter of 2007-08, I was burned out of the south Florida climate, the very flat terrain, and the long cross-country drive to spend the winter in the Everglades. Even worse, as a single man, it seemed like I would not find a wife there.

I said goodbye to the Everglades at the end of April 2008. I decided I would spend my winters in my hometown of St. Louis Missouri to organize for climate action. I had no idea how I was going to do that, but I was excited I found my life’s purpose.

I was comfortable spending my winters in the Everglades. Thus, it was scary for me to step outside of this comfort zone to try something different, especially climate change organizing. The mantra I kept telling myself was: “If I could skydive twice to overcome the daunting fear of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, then I could achieve anything that I gave full intention.”

My skydiving adventure led me to achievements in climate action

In November 2009, I argued with my friend Naomi in Ashland, Oregon about what I should with my life with this climate change life mission. She kept pushing me harder. Finally, I snapped, “Fine! If I could do anything, I would like to be ‘The Climate Change Comedian!” 

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

In December 2009, I returned to my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri to spend the winter. During that winter, Naomi advised me to fully develop my website and create my own climate change PowerPoint that I would use for my presentations. Early in 2010, I developed my first climate change PowerPoint, “Let’s Have Fun Getting Serious about Climate Change.” I showed that PowerPoint to friends and family in the St. Louis. A family friend helped me launch my climatechangecomedian.com website that is still active to this day.

In the back of my mind when I took these leaps to take on the title of “The Climate Change Comedian,” create my own website, and develop my own PowerPoint to show family and friends, I kept saying to myself, “Because I had the courage to skydive twice, I can do this new action!” 

As I climate change organizer and wannabe comedian, I kept taking new actions outside of my comfort zone. I joined South County Toastmasters in January 2011 because I decided that becoming a Toastmaster would enable me to be a better climate change communicator. In March 2011, I applied and was offered a job at the St. Louis Science Center at their temporary Climate Change exhibit. I wanted this job to immerse myself in this exhibit to learn about climate change and chat about climate change with the museum visitors daily.

While working at this exhibit, I met a local businessman Larry Lazar. We decided to co-found the St. Louis Climate Reality Meet Up in December 2011 (now known as Climate Meetup-St. Louis).

This Meet Up group is where I met Tanya Couture. She attended our events beginning in January 2012. We started dating in February 2013. We got married on November 1, 2015. As I joke in my climate talks, ‘Join the climate movement, you might meet the person of your dreams!’

In August 2011, I gave my first climate change ranger evening program at Crater Lake National Park, called The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. I performed this ranger talk at Crater Lake for the next five summers, up until 2017. Over the past 13 years, I ended up giving over 200 climate change talks in 12 U.S. states, Washington D.C, and Ottawa, Canada.

One of those speeches was at the Shrine of the Ages Auditorium at Grand Canyon National Park to an audience of over 200 park visitors and park staff in May 2013. Due to my ranger connections of working in the national parks for 25 years, my friend Pete invited me to give this talk.

Because of the courage I gained sky diving twice and wanting to emulate my mentor Steve Robinson, I pursued every opportunity to get out the message about taking climate action. This included writing a blog since 2011, writing opinion editorials in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Oregonian starting in 2013, doing local radio interviews, and in 2014, making funny short videos with my wife (then girlfriend) Tanya, my mom Fran Ettling, and my dad LeRoy Ettling. 

These short YouTube videos that I did with my parents and Tanya caught the attention of Comedy Central’s Tosh.o TV show. A year later, a producer of the show called me to invite my Mom and I to fly to Los Angeles to do a comedy segment with the show’s host, Daniel Tosh. Our comedy segment first aired Comedy Central on August 2, 2016. It’s called “The Climate Change Comedian – Web Redemption.”

My audacity I obtained from skydiving twice sparked me to travel to Washington D.C. 9 times from 2015 to 2023 to attend Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) conferences and lobby days. I lobbied numerous Congressional Offices, and briefly chatted with U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill from Missouri. While participating the June 2019 CCL Lobby Day on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C, I helped lead the efforts to persuade Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson to sign on as a co-sponsor on CCL’s Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. 

The thrill of adventure I received from skydiving coupled with my passion to take climate action, led me to attend a Climate Reality Training led by Al Gore in San Francisco, CA in August 2012. At that training, I proudly became a Climate Reality Leader. Since then, the Climate Reality Project invited me to be a mentor for 8 Climate Reality Trainings from 2013 to 2020. At four of those trainings, Climate Reality selected me to be a breakout speaker on how to give Climate Reality Presentations and how to find an audience to give climate change talks.

The fearlessness I got from skydiving in 2007 motivated me to lead 3 CCL state speaking tours:

1. Missouri: March 27-31, 2017. 

2. Oregon: October 24-November 4, 2017.

3. Missouri: October 8-17, 2018

The confidence I absorbed from skydiving in 2007 and wanting to follow my mentor Steve Robinson’s example of speaking out to protect our planet led me to be a breakout speaker for 4 national CCL conferences in 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2021. 

As a breakout speaker for the national conferences, I spoke on topics such as Protecting and Conserving Endangered Species in the Face of Climate Change, Mastering Town Halls, Engaging Colleges on Climate Change, and Securing Local Elected Officials’ Endorsements. 

The boldness I recalled jumping out of a perfectly good airplane on a tandem skydive in 2007 influenced me in 2021 to be the lead organizer for the efforts of Oregon CCL to convince the Oregon Senate to pass a state resolution known as Senate Joint Resolution 5 or SJM 5. This Oregon resolution urged Congress to pass the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. SJM 5 passed the Oregon Senate on April 7, 2021 by a vote of 23 to 5, with 6 Republican Senators voting in favor of it. SJM 5 fell short of getting passed in the Oregon House. However, it did attract 30 House co-sponsors, which is half of the chamber, and included 7 Republican co-sponsors. 

The effort for SJM 5 grew out of my 2020 efforts to successfully persuade 30 Oregon legislators, including the then House Speaker and now current Governor, to endorse the EICDA.

I could go on to talk about the sense of accomplishment I felt from skydiving in 2007 and wanting to share about my love for the earth like my mentor Steve Robinson impacted me to  

– Write numerous published letters to the editor about CCL published over the years, including my most recent one in the Oregonian on December 1, 2023. 

– Give oral testimony 9 times to Oregon Legislative committees since 2019 to urge Oregon Legislators to support climate legislation. 

Final Thoughts 

Could I have achieved all this without skydiving? Maybe. Possibility. Nearly everyone I met in the climate movement probably has not gone skydiving. They have taken very effective actions without ever jumping out of a perfectly good airplane and then having faith that a parachute and a tandem skydive professional would guide them safely to the ground. I just know for me that skydiving twice gave me a big boost in self-esteem to go more boldly into the world. 

I hope if you read to the end of this blog that you don’t feel like you must skydive to live your best life or to make a difference to act on climate. However, I still hope I can inspire you to find a way to find your own adventure and path to live your life to the fullest and to try to make a difference while you are alive, especially to reduce the threat of climate change. 

While he was alive, my mentor Steve Robinson treated everyday as a gift, and he strived to live his life to the fullest. He was fully present in every interaction in nature and conversation with another person. He taught me so much about making the most of each day and life experience. 

Writer, professor Joseph Campbell, who was an expert in comparative mythology and comparative religion, had this to say from his 1987 interview and book, Joseph Campbell and Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. 

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

Whether or not you skydive or find that ultimate experience of being alive, my wish is that it will somehow lead you to want to take greater care of our environment and planet.

 

On February 22, 2002, I felt full of nervous anxiety. I was working as naturalist guide narrating the boat tours at the Flamingo Outpost in Everglades National Park, Florida. It was fun to point out the alligators, crocodiles, dolphins, manatees, and variety of wading birds to park visitors on the boat tours. However, I was restless to do something different with my life. Flamingo was in a remote location an hour and a half drive south of Miami, Florida. The scenery was lovely there as this national park outpost looked out into the shallow sea of Florida Bay and the Florida Keys.

Traveling by car was the only way in and out of Flamingo. However, I didn’t have a car. I was almost 32 years old, and I had never owned a car in my life. I dated my previous girlfriend Sheila up until the summer of 2000. We were together when she picked out her brand-new silver Ford Ranger extend cab pickup truck. It was nice vehicle. After we broke up, Sheila let me borrow her truck on weekends so I could do grocery shopping, attend meetings, and meet up with friends. She was very patient and generous allowing me to use her truck over a year and a half, but we both knew I needed my own car.

I knew nothing about buying a car, but I knew I did not want a pickup truck. It was way too much car for me. Many of my park ranger friends had pickup trucks for hauling their gear to seasonal jobs in the national parks. However, I wanted a brand new green small compact manual transmission car that would be fun to drive and give me excellent gas mileage. I looked at Toyota Corollas, Mazda Proteges and even a used green Honda station wagon caught my eye. My parents also offered to chip in $2000 to help me purchase my own car. After many months of looking, a brand-new green stick shift Honda Civic LX caught my eye in early February 2002.

I saw the car at the tiny Key Largo Honda dealership and they let me take it for a test drive. It was a fun zippy car to drive and it fit my personality perfectly. This was the biggest purchase of my life. The weight of the decision stressed me out. I figured out the payment costs and got the car insurance through State Farm. I was ready to make the purchase on February 22nd.

Sheila and her new boyfriend Dave dropped me off at the Honda dealership that morning in Sheila’s silver Ford Ranger truck. I was officially saying goodbye to my grey dependable Ford Pick Up Truck friend that had transported me around for almost 5 years. At the dealership, I made the arrangements and signed the paperwork for me to purchase the vehicle. My stomach was churning because I had not eaten all day. As it became dark, something was wrong. The monthly financing was way too high. The numbers were not adding up like I had calculated in advance. Then, it dawned on me: the dealership sneaked in the extended warranty. I told them twice during the day that I did not want it, but they selectively chose not to listen to me.

I lost my temper and started yelling at the salespeople in the dealership. Fortunately, they were closing the store for the day, so no other customers heard my outbursts. The salespeople kept trying to sell me with their sales tactics why I would want the extended warranty. I was not having it. They let me to go to a back room to compose myself and think it over. I called an expert from Consumer Reports that I just happened to have the phone number. He told me, ‘I am not your dad, but don’t let them twist your arm for the extended warranty.’

I came out of the back room and was emphatic that I did not want the extended warranty. They very meekly took it off my sales contract and did not say another word. It was dark, but everything was set for me to drive the new car back to Flamingo.

It was exciting and scary to have my own car for the first time in my life. The road driving through the Everglades was always very pitch black on a moonless night with no streetlights. However, I felt as free as a bird to not be dependent for others for transportation. I bought a car cover to keep the sun from prematurely fading the shiny green paint job. Green is my favorite color and my dream color for a car. I felt intoxicated every time I went inside breathing in that new car smell. I would take the cover off briefly to show my friends in Flamingo.

At the end of April, I stopped working my job in Flamingo, Florida to spend my summer working as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon. I would be returning to work at Crater Lake for the first time in five years. I worked at Crater Lake from 1992 to 1997. However, I never had my own car before when I worked there so this would be a new experience for me. My new car was helping me break free from Flamingo to explore new and old familiar places.

This would be my first of many cross-country drives from Florida to Crater Lake, Oregon and back. Even though I would never work in Flamingo again, I would end up working in other parts of Everglades National Park from 2003 to 2008. In May 2002, during my first cross country drive, I visited my parents in St. Louis, Missouri.

My dad asked me in advance if he could join me on my cross-country drive from St. Louis to Crater Lake, Oregon. I thought it would be fun to have my dad along for this long drive. He loved driving my car and said it was a very sweet driving car. He admonished me for driving too slow on the interstate highways. I still only drive about 60 to 65 mph to this day to try to save on gas mileage. I always thought it was funny that my dad disapproved of my driving, warning me, ‘If you drive this slow, other cars and trucks are going to push you off the highway!’

My car brought both of us safely to Crater Lake. My green Honda Civic continues to be my friend to this day. It had less than 100 miles on the car when I bought it. Now it has over 316,000 miles. I traveled to see 36 U.S. states in this car, plus Vancouver, British Columbia and Vancouver Island, Canada. This car took me from the Florida Keys to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. From Lancaster, Pennsylvania to see the old, covered bridges and Amish settlements to see the majestic Hearst Castle near San Simeon in southern California.

My car has traveled has high as the Eisenhower Tunnel Pass on I-70, which is about 11,158 feet above sea level in the middle of Colorado to Badwater Basin in Death Valley, California, which is 282 feet below sea level. My car has seen the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico. My car has been up to see Lake Superior in the upper peninsula of Michigan and the brilliant fall colors in Door County, Wisconsin. It has seen the huge Sequoia Trees, Redwood Trees, the meek Joshua Trees in southern California and lots of palm trees in Florida.

My car met all the women I dated in my life: Sheila, Marie, Lesley, Jill and Tanya. It likes Tanya the best! It was my companion in my single years, a place to cry when my heart was broken, and a cramped place to make out in the back seat. It was the vehicle I took Tanya on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2014 to Castlewood State Park, Missouri to propose marriage to her on the bluffs overlooking the Meramec River. It was our limo that we drove to and from our wedding on November 1, 2015 in St. Louis.

It was the car that took Tanya and I cross country from St. Louis to Portland, Oregon when we moved permanently here in February 2017, seven years ago. It is now the car Tanya uses 5 days a week to go to and from work. Thus, the best part of my day now is when Tanya pulls up in front of our home at the end of her workday in my green Honda Civic.

The car was in 3 major fender benders in 2004, 2010, and 2021. However, it was fully restored each time and I am now on my 4th front fenders. Except for one time that it broke down because of an overheated thermostat in the middle of Utah in September 2011, my car has always been there for me. I have now owned this car for about 40% of my life and hope to continue to have for months if not years to come.

My Green Honda Civic was there for me when I decided during the winter of 2007-08 while working in Everglades National Park that I wanted to be a climate organizer. One year later, this car was with me when I took the title of The Climate Change Comedian as a dare from a friend in Ashland, Oregon in November 2009.

This was my vehicle when I started spending the winters in my hometown of St. Louis to organize for climate action. It was my mode of transportation in February 2011 when I joined South County Toastmasters to become a better climate change communicator. It was the car I drove when I started working at the temporary Climate Change Exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center in March 2011. This my set of wheels when I co-founded the Climate Reality St. Louis Meet Up group, now known as Climate Meet Up-St. Louis in November 2011.

It was my car when I became a Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) volunteer in May 2012 and organized to co-found the Southern Oregon Chapter of CCL in January 2013. It was my companion to travel across country to network and organize for climate action while giving climate change talks in 12 U.S. states, including speaking at the Grand Canyon in May 2013.. My car was my trusted friend when I traveled over 1,600 miles to 11 cities in 12 days across eastern, central, and southern Oregon to give climate change talks and lead the CCL Oregon Stewardship Tour.

Since my wife and I moved to Portland, Oregon in February 2017, I have frequently used the TriMet public transportation of buses and MAX commuter trains to organize to act on climate and give public presentations. I really tried to lower my carbon emissions and ‘spare the air’ by using TriMet, while lessening the wear and tear on my car with urban car trips. My car seems to have really appreciated that.

My car was a dependable vehicle to transport me when I organized 3 large climate events, one in St. Louis in January 2017, another event in Milwaukie, Oregon in September 2019 and a third event in Portland, Oregon in January 2020. My Civic enabled me to attend town halls to engage with Oregon members of Congress to urge them to pass strong climate legislation.

When I celebrate the anniversary of my car every year on February 22nd on Facebook, friends like to advise me, “When are you going to get an electric vehicle (EV)?”

My wife and I would love to get an EV. Tanya made an appointment so we could test drive a Tesla on December 26, 2015. We get excited whenever we see one when we are driving my car or out on a neighborhood walk. We hope to eventually purchase an EV. Right now, EVs are very expensive. In addition, we live in an apartment, so we don’t know how we would charge an EV from our apartment complex. Hopefully, the problem of charging EVs for those who live in apartments will soon be overcome.

Right now, the cheapest and most cost-effective thing we can do is to maintain my 22-year-old Honda Civic until the prices of EVs decreases and it is more convenient to charge the EV’s battery for apartment renters. We hope to transition straight from my Honda Civic to an EV someday and skip the step of a hybrid vehicle if we help it. However, we might have to get a hybrid vehicle if my car eventually dies sooner rather than later.

Until then, we will keep using this car for Tanya’s commute to work and my political and climate organizing. I have heard for many years that keeping old cars longer can help the environment and more than buying new electric cars. Tanya and I love to use our Civic to travel to our favorite hiking trails in the nearby Columbia River Gorge, to hike up nearby Portland buttes, travel to Mt. Rainier once or twice a year to go hiking, and to occasionally travel to the Oregon Coast to hike and walk along the beach.

My wife is using it for work today, but I hope one of these days you can say hello to my little green friend.

(Note: This is an updated version of two of my previous writings. First, my guest blog from my friend Harriet Shugarman‘s website climatemama.com. My 2015 guest blog for that website was Talking to Your Parents about Climate Change: A Personal Story. Second, a blog I wrote for my website on January 28, 2022, Talking to Your Dad about Climate Change: My Personal Story)

24 years ago, journalist Bill Moyers interviewed movie director George Lucas about how Lucas came up with the Star Wars movies. In this interview, George Lucas explained how it was actually his father’s dream for George to work in and eventually inherit the family office equipment store in Modesto, California.

However, George had no interest in taking over his father’s business. He decided in college that he wanted to be a filmmaker. When George decided to go to the University of Southern California film school and pursue his dream, his dad felt crushed that George was not going to take over the family business.

George Sr. felt young George was making a huge mistake because he had built up this successful business for his son to eventually take over. It was a big source of friction between them until George Sr. saw son George’s huge success with the Star Wars films.

George said his dad was very proud of his achievements as a filmmaker. George told Bill Moyers “the only thing you have to do, in the end, if you have to accomplishment one thing in life, is to make your parents proud of you. If you are healthy and you can take care of yourself, and you are a good person…one who contributes to society and does not take away….that’s all your parents really want in the end.”

I loved this story because my Dad and I are both big fans of the original Star Wars movies. When I was a kid, almost 12 years old, let me share one of my best memories of my Dad. He went out of his way to buy tickets to surprise us so our entire family could see the much-anticipated Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, on opening day on May 21, 1980. This film is still one of my favorite movies of all time. (Spoiler Alert) It became a cultural icon when Darth Vader announced to Luke Skywalker: “I am your father!”

I will never forget this gift from my Dad because there was an audible gasp from the movie audience when Darth Vader said that. At that moment, no one wanted to believe that plot twist. It took years for me to accept it. The actor James Earl Jones, who played the voice of Darth Vader, thought the character was lying, when he first read the script for the film.

On the car ride home from the movie theater, I felt sick to my stomach. I could not comprehend that the good guys in the Star Wars film had been defeated. I will never forget my Dad lovingly explain the theatrical concept of a cliffhanger. He gleefully recognized it from the 1950s serial B films that he enjoyed as a boy. He assured me that the Star Wars characters would be alright. George Lucas was just setting us up to see the next Star Wars film in three years. That was one of my favorite childhood conversations with my Dad that these characters and I would be ok.

Since Darth Vader was the villain in those Star Wars films until Luke redeems him, George Lucas said that the original Star Wars trilogy films is ultimately a space soap opera about a father and son relationship. As mentioned above, George Lucas struggled with the relationship with his father. I certainly struggled in the relationship with my Dad.

When I graduated from college in 1992, I decided to become a seasonal park ranger bouncing around national parks. This disappointed my dad for years. He asked me several times, “When are you going to get a real job?”

To compound my Dad’s disappointment, I made it my life’s mission to write, teach and give public presentations about the impacts of climate change, which I witnessed first-hand and up close, through my work as a park ranger in the Florida Everglades and Crater Lake National Park, Oregon. For my dad, it was initially beyond his comprehension that humans could damage our planet. As I became more aware of climate change and began my work as a climate change activist, my Dad displayed open hostility at my life choice. He tried telling me that: ‘climate change was not real, that humans cannot change the climate’, and this is a bunch of nonsense.’

However, like George Lucas, I found my passion in life, and nothing was going to stop me. There was no looking back. In the spring of 2010, I put together this website and my first climate change PowerPoint presentation to share with friends. In August 2011, I delivered my first climate change evening program as a seasonal park ranger at Crater Lake.

In August 2012, I attended a training in San Francisco along with nearly 1,000 other people led by Al Gore to become a Climate Reality Leader to give presentations on climate change. Since that training, I have given over 270 climate change presentations in 12 U.S. states, Washington D.C. and Ottawa, Canada. Some personal highlights are when I was a guest presenter for NASA in Hampton, Virginia in 2012, a guest speaker at Grand Canyon National Park in 2013, and a presenter for the Oregon Wild Conference in Portland, Oregon in 2014.

I attempted every avenue I know to get out the message about taking action on climate change, including writing a blog since 2011, writing opinion editorials in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Oregonian starting in 2013, doing local radio interviews, and in 2014, making funny short videos with my wife (then girlfriend) Tanya and my mom Fran Ettling.

My dad also played a role in our videos, as my cameraperson. After filming our third video in January 2015, my dad seemed to get antsy behind the camera and he told me he wanted to be in front of the camera with me. I decided to take him up on his suggestion, and to see where this would lead.

In February 2015, my dad and I filmed our first climate video together. I interviewed him about how he had changed his mind about climate change. He explained to me that it was me, his son, who had changed his mind. I had helped him understand and see the weight of the evidence before us. Over the years, I watched a shift in my dad’s thinking, and I gained a new respect and admiration for him. He evolved from being hostile about my climate activism to being my biggest cheerleader. Yet, as I was making this video with my dad, I kept thinking how crazy this idea would have been 10 years before.

These short YouTube videos that I did with my parents and Tanya caught the attention of Comedy Central’s Tosh.o TV show. A year later, a producer of the show called me to invite my Mom and I to fly to Los Angeles to do a comedy segment with the show’s host, Daniel Tosh. Our comedy segment first aired Comedy Central on August 2, 2016. It’s called “The Climate Change Comedian – Web Redemption.” The cool thing about this segment is that a very short clip of my Dad was included, so my Dad had a brief moment on TV using comedy to promote climate change awareness.

My parents’ support of my climate change communication efforts did not stop there. Around that same time in 2016, my Mom came home to tell me a story. They attended a party at the home of one of their friends. The host of the party remarked, ‘I think that climate change is a bunch of nonsense.’

My Mom responded, “That’s interesting. Can I show you a video?”

My Mom then showed the YouTube video of my Dad and I talking about how I changed his thinking on climate change. My Mom said that the host of the party was silent and did not say another word about climate change for the rest of the party.

In December 2023, Tanya and I flew to St. Louis to be with our families for the holidays. During this visit, my Dad went out of his way to tell me how proud he is of me and what I have accomplished with my life. I am so happy I made him proud because he used to be my worst critic.

I think George Lucas is correct. Our parents may seem like Darth Vader, but deep down, they really are proud of us.