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KEEP PLUGGING AWAY THE MESSAGE TO BE GREEN

Big disappointment and setback happened yesterday: I was not able to present my speech at the Toastmasters meeting last night.  It was a huge letdown because I had been preparing for that moment for weeks last night.  It was not for lack of preparation either.  I could not give the speech last night simply because I could not get plugged in.
 
My speech preparation started immediately the day after the St. Louis Cardinals (my favorite team) won the World Series, on Saturday evening, October 29th.  With baseball no longer pre-occupying me, I sat down that Saturday evening to compose my next speech and accompanying power point for Toastmasters.  It took all evening and real late into Sunday morning to finish the speech.   Inspiration hit and I did not want to stop it, even if it meant missing out on attending the Cardinals victory parade in downtown St. Louis.  
The St. Louis Cardinals winning the World Series may never happen again in my lifetime, but it still was an easy decision for me.  No matter how much I love baseball and the St. Louis Cardinals.  It came down to my biggest priority: my life’s mission to educate and inspire people to take action to resolve climate change.  I passed by this possible once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to celebrate St. Louis Cardinal red so I can promote living green for our planet.
On Sunday evening, October 30th, I presented my speech for the first time to my mentor in Toastmasters.  He seemed very pleased with the speech and had very helpful suggestions.  A week later, I spent a day practicing it with my godmother who is always a tough task master with me.  The next day, I practiced the speech with a former Toastmaster.  I drove this past Monday night to see a family friend to present it to him as he was working late hours as principal of his school.  Yesterday, I practiced it again for my parents and two of their close friends before they were literally walking out the door for a short vacation in Branson, Missouri.  I practiced the speech three times before the meeting last night.  After all this preparation, I was pumped up, locked-in, PLUGGED AWAY and fully prepared to inspire my audience that IT IS EASY AND FUN TO BE GREEN.
There was one glitch to my well prepared speech that I found out immediately when I arrived at the Toastmasters meeting: the landlord of the building where Toastmasters meets would not allow us to plug in our electronic devices.  I arrived at the meeting in plenty of time around 6:43 pm for the 7:00 pm starting time.  However no matter how early I arrived, the news was going to be the same: I could not give my speech with the power point.  The leaders of Toastmasters politely gave me a choice, I could give my speech without power point or I could delay until the next meeting to present my speech.  I felt I had no choice but to delay until a future meeting.  I have a great message IT IS EASY AND FUN TO BE GREEN.  The message was not going to connect as meaningful and as inspirational with without the power point images, accompanying humor, and the suggested tips I provide how you can be easily be green in your own home.
My speech would not have the same punch, not the same impact, without being plugged into electricity.  Pictures are worth a thousand words.  I had beautiful images of nature, funny pictures of the Toastmasters members, and solid statistics to project on a big screen.  This was all to persuade my audience that being green saves you cash.  Experts on public speaking say that you have got to know your audience to be present a successful speech.  This speech was designed specifically for this St. Louis South County Toastmaster audience.  I know I would have wowed them with this speech, but I needed electricity to do so.
It was very ironic that I needed electricity to present a message to be green.  Would it not have made more sense to skip the electricity, the power point, the laptop and the projector to just present the speech to be green?  The answer is no.   I could not see how the speech would not have made the same meaningful impact with my audience.  Last night reminded me of the old expression of fighting forest wildfires: sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.  Or, in my case, I had to stick to my guns of being less green (using electricity) to promote a message for all of us to be more green (live more sustainably by using less electricity).
 
The world’s leading voices for reducing the impact of climate change, such as the late Dr. Stephen Schneider, have had to struggle with this green dilemma.  The big question all the climate change reduction advocates: How do you convince people to be green when it takes a lot of electricity and carbon to get out this message.  Traveling in airplanes is one of the biggest carbon footprints one can have.  In a very large picture, jet setting across the world does beg to ask the question if these folks are energy hogs.  On a very small picture, ironically, I insisted last night that I needed electricity to give a presentation on living green to persuade people to use less electricity.   What is the answer?
In the book Science as a Contact Sport by Dr. Stephen Schneider on page 162 addresses this question directly.  He professor at Stanford University one of the world’s leading climatologists until his death in 2010.  He would directly ask his students, “Is your professor a hypocrite for having over 90 percent of his carbon footprint in the skies and thus far above the U.S. average?”  Great Question to ask.  His students then defended him by responding, “No, you may use more CO2 than average, but your work can save many millions of tons.” 

Unfortunately, American and humans collectively across the globe have not agreed yet that it is in our best interest to reduce our carbon emissions and the threat of climate change.  Until then, communicators of climate change, like me, will have to use carbon and electricity to provide the most effective message to inspire people take action to reduce the threat of climate change.  Ironically, I will have to use electricity with my presentations and even travel by car and plane to persuade people to be green.  The big message of being green is ultimately to live more sustainably with the earth, reduce your carbon footprint, and use less electricity.
 
Since I use the electricity of power point to convey this message that it is easy and fun for us to be green, my Toastmaster speech had to be delayed the next meeting on Wednesday, November 30th.  For the health of the planet and future generations, the message that cannot wait.  However, to have the most effective and inspiring message to my audience, the speech had to wait.  Just a temporary delay as I keep plugging away with my message:  IT IS EASY AND FUN TO BE GREEN.  Finally, no matter how much I love baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the sweetness of the recent 2011 World Series victory, inspiring people to be green and reduce the threat of climate change is my greatest passion.

It is Easy and Fun to Be Green, Part I

Tomorrow, I give my a speech for St. Louis South County Toastmasters.  It will be my fourth speech since joining Toastmasters last January.  I love public speaking.  I miss it when I am not working in the national parks. Plus, I have really enjoyed getting to know the members of South County Toastmasters.  They have all been incredibly warm and kind to me.  Even more, they have provided many helpful suggestions to improve as a public speaker.  Their tips have really helped me improve as I give presentations to the public as a seasonal  ranger at Crater Lake National Park.  My dream is to be a full time green speaker/climate change communicator.  Toastmasters is really helping me gain the skills to be a professional speaker.

Thus, I do recommend Toastmasters or a public speaking group to people who are passionate about climate change, environmental issues, and promoting living green lifestyle.  It will make you a more polished speaker.  Furthermore, you get to speak to a cross-section of society.  You are not just “preaching to the choir” like if you spoke at a conservation club meeting.  A Toastmasters’ audience ranges across the political spectrum from hard core conservative Tea Party supporters, moderate and undecided voters, to very progressive liberal voters who sympathize with the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Toastmaster members do a great job to evaluate your speech based upon your delivery, organization, and effective speaking techniques.  They are not suppose to be critical of your speech if they disagree with you politically.

Toastmasters has been a fabulous forum for me to present speeches on climate change and green issues.  I know for a fact that there are some hard core deniers of climate change in the audience.  They bristle as soon as I mention the word “climate change.”  There are a couple of members who question the evidence after my speeches, such as “What is the evidence that climate change real?”  “Isn’t climate change just natural and normal?”  “Don’t you drive a car and use carbon to heat & cool your home?”  “How do we know that the measurements that carbon dioxide is increasing are accurate?”  These are all great questions that challenged me to really learn more in depth about climate change so I can speak more fluently about it.  I appreciate the members of the club who are deniers of climate change because they have been very tough taskmasters to me.  At the same time they have been respectful and kind to my passion on climate change.  I appreciate their openness to allow me to use Toastmasters to create speeches on the problem and solution to climate change.

This past April, I presented a speech for Toastmasters, with the title: I am Drop a Stink bomb on You!  The speech was about the key evidence that scientists point as the key indicator of climate change, carbon isotopes.  My key point was that scientists know humans are pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, not volcanoes or the ocean, because they can measure the carbon 12 versus the Carbon 13 or Carbon amount in the atmosphere.  It was very tricky, technical speech.  I definitely felt like I was performing a high wire balancing act with heavy scientific information to a non-scientist audience.  For the most part, I felt like I succeeded with the speech.  However, I had technical difficulties with the power point remote and I kept turning around to point at the large screen.  Both of these speaking glitches my audience found distracting.  However, I did scare them pretty intensely with the information about climate change.  A few weeks after the speech, a good friend in the Toastmasters club, Nilsa, informed me that my next speech had to be “more uplifting with solutions to climate change.   You scared the hell out of us that WE ARE STINKING UP THE PLANET with your last speech.”

Therefore, the speech I am giving tomorrow night is a sequel or flip side to the previous speech.  It is much more upbeat and light.  It is called It is Easy and Fun to Be Green.  I am aiming for the undecided and deniers of climate change in my audience.  I am speaking to them in a language they understand: CASH! and not even mentioning the sensitive word of climate change.  I am getting excited because I will be giving the speech in less 24 hours from now.  Wish me luck!

Tomorrow night, I will post the speech and the response I received from my fellow Toastmasters.  In a future blog posting, I will also post the I am Going to Drop a Stinkbomb on You! speech.

       

Taking that first step forward

Who am I?  I am an enthusiastic outdoor naturalist with a sense of adventure who wants to change the world and make a difference to those around me.  I wrote out that sentence about a month and a half ago on a three by five index card.  I was preparing myself for a phone interview for a job for an outdoor education naturalist for an environmental education camp for kids in California.  I was prepping myself for the standard interview question: ‘Tell me about yourself…”  I felt like I aced the interview, but I found out a month later that I did not get the job.  The positive thing about job interviews are two things: First, your resume had the right qualities that it caught the attention of a prospective employer.  They are then taking the next step to interview you.  Second, as you plan ahead for the job interview and the possible questions the interviewer will ask you, I think it forces you to ask yourself ‘Who exactly are you?’

I am still working on that question to my life: Who am I?  At my bedrock essential level, I am a passionate and an enthusiastic communicator who cares about others and the planet where I am blessed to live.  Does that sound incredibly vague?  Yes, but everyone has got to start somewhere when attempting to answer the question of who they are.  I always knew throughout my life that I wanted to make a difference in the lives of others.  But how?  For many years, I did not have a clue.  In college, I followed the practical advice to get a degree in business administration to find a good paying job to make money.  By my senior year in college, I knew I did not want to work in an sterile office cubical and fight rush hour traffic everyday to commute to work.  Thus, I luckily found a job working in seasonally Crater Lake National Park almost nineteen years ago.

I plan on working at Crater Lake again this summer.  I quickly found how much I loved hiking and exploring in the outdoors.  I loved living close to nature and I could not stop talking about it.  However, I had to find a winter job since Crater Lake only really offers jobs in the summer.  Thus, for many years I worked at Everglades National Park in the winter.  There was even a stretch where I worked there four years straight.  I got my first naturalist guide job there about thirteen years ago.  I really loved the job to talk all day about nature while narrating the boat tours there.  While I was learning about the Everglades and the natural world, park visitors started asking me how global warming was affecting the Everglades.  Over eleven years ago, I started reading books about global warming.  I started with Laboratory Earth: The Planetary Gamble We Can’t Afford to Lose by Dr. Stephen H Schneider at Stanford University.  Over the years, I found that I could not read enough popular science books about climate change.  I wanted to learn all I could about this very complicated subject.  As I read, I became more alarmed about the possible consequences climate change could have on future generations and even current life on earth.

Over the years, it became crystal clear to me that I wanted to dedicate the rest of my life to educate people about the problems and solutions to climate change.  In November 2007, I decided I wanted to go to grad school to study climate change.  However, I had worked in the national parks so long that I did not have a clue how to network and research to find a good grad school program for me.  Also, climate change is such a huge subject that I did not know what I wanted to study.  Glaciers?  Sustainability?  Greenhouse gases?  Sea level rise?  Changes in weather patterns?  Effects on wildlife?  fossil fuels?  It all interested me and overwhelmed me that I did not know what to do.  Also, I saw friends from the national parks who went to grad school who graduated with a massive amount of student loans.  The thought of the burden of financial debt troubled me also, even though I firmly believe that education is an investment for one’s future.  My under grad background in business administration also left me academically weak when looking into studying the science of climate change in a university graduate program.

The answer of where I should go to grad school and what program should I study never emerged for me.  In November 2007, I gave myself the goal to attend grad school by the fall of 2010.  Sadly, with my indecision and dead ends when I approached some university professors for advice, my dream and goal of attending grad school by the fall of 2010 did not materialize.  My passion is still climate change, but I did not know how to pursue my life’s dream and passion.   I felt like the chorus of the 1971 song ‘I’d Love to Change the World’ by the music group, Ten Years After.  The chorus goes:

I’d Love to Change the World,
But I don’t know what to do,
So I will leave it up to you.

Beautiful song, but I knew I could not make it a theme for my life.  I am still trying to figure out how to effectively channel my passion for resolving climate change with utilizing my many years of public speaking experience as a ranger in the national parks.  As a I lead some environmental education programs at Crater Lake, I started thinking.  I also talked to friends who were leading environmental education programs in the national parks.  This lead me to the conclustion that kids can be more open to the message of climate change and saving the planet that adults .  This winter, I started applying to environmental education programs in California.  This lead to the interview I had in December that I mentioned at the beginning of this blog posting.  I also have an interview today for a guest naturalist position for another environmental education camp in California.  Ultimately, in five years, I hope to be a green educational speaker talking to children, high school students, college students, seniors, church groups, business groups, and who ever would have me speak about resolving climate change.

I do not know the exact steps yet for following my passion to inspire and educate people to resolve climate change, but I am taking that first step forward.  Again, I love that song ‘I’d love to Change the World’ by Ten Years after, but I know I cannot leave saving the natural world just up to other people.  I strongly believe in the expession, If it is to be, it is up to me.  Also, during my college years, another beautiful song is still stuck in my head, ‘Man in the Mirror’ by Michael Jackson.  The chorus has such an inspiring message of starting within yourself to change the world:

I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change

I have another job interview today for an environmental educational camp in California.  It is almost guaranteed they will ask the standard interview question: ‘Tell me about yourself…”  In that interview today, I will be taking that first step forward to make a positive impact for the world, especially for the chilren and future generations.  If they ask that question today, I will respond that I am an enthusiastic experienced naturalist who loves to work with kids.  I have a deep passion for the natural world.  I hope to educate them in a way that enables them to connect to the natural world.  I then hope to inspire them in some way that they will want to protect it and pass along this knowledge to others.     

Wish me success as I take that first step…   

My First Blog Ever


My name is Brian Ettling.  This is my first blog posting.  I am jumping into an unknown realm.  I do not even follow other blogs as of this point.  However, I will have to start following them to see how my blog compares.  Furthermore, I will have to seek out the information to make this blog most effective for my life’s mission.  My mission is to be part of the conversation to somehow shift American society past the tipping point to be fully engaged in resolving climate change.  Will I be successful?  It does not matter.  As my hero Marjory Stoneman Douglas once said about restoring the Everglades, “When it comes to saving the Everglades (or the environment), it is not a matter of being optimistic or pessimistic.  It is something that just has to be done.”

Sadly, I do not feel like I have lived up to my inter potential in my life so far of making a difference for the planet.  I graduated from William Jewell College in Kansas City, Missouri with a degree in Business Administration in 1992.  Since then, I have made a career of working in the national parks, primarily Crater Lake National Park in Oregon and Everglades National Park in Florida.  For the past 13 years, I have worked as naturalist guide/interpretation ranger in those national parks.  I lead various ranger programs, such as narrating boat tours, leading guided sunset walks, leading bird identification walks, providing geology and history talks in both national parks, performing evening campfire programs using power point on the birds that utilize both national parks, and so many other programs.  I love nature, the outdoors, and our precious natural environment.  In my ranger programs, I aimed to instill an appreciation of the natural world and hopefully inspire my audience to take actions to protect it.  During my time leading leading ranger programs, I came up with my two of own mantras that I believe are uniquely my own.

1) Think Globally
Act Daily

2) Each and everyone of us can change the world. We do this by
    a) The way we vote
    b) The products we buy
c) The attitudes we share with each other.

I hope these ideas continue long after I have lived my life on Earth.  Please feel free to share these quotes, but I hope you would attribute them to me.  In future blogs, I hope to get more specific on how I hope to contribute and facilitate this conversation to make the planet and my life greener.  I have lots of thoughts that I want to share.  I also want to learn from others who are making the world a greener place and pass along those ideas here.

It has been a blessing to stick my toe in the water in the blogging world.  May this blog be a blessing to you.  Furthermore, may it somehow contribute to the massive effort and conversation of other people to inspire American society to fully resolve the issue of climate change.

Namaste!
Brian Ettling