Finding opportunities across generations
Recorded at Climate Con 2021 on November 10, 2021
Finding opportunities across generations
It’s easy to think generational differences are too big to bridge. But there are huge opportunities to collaborate with elders, youngers, and all ages in between. We don’t necessarily have to talk about TikTok or rehash stories about “walking 5 miles to school each day”—but we can still ignite change together. Let’s dig into how exactly we can initiate and participate in these kinds of relationships.
A conversation with:
Hannah Reynolds (Divest Princeton)
Bill McKibben (350.org and Third Act)
Mick Smyer (Growing Greener)
Catherine Kakolo Mongella (Earth Guardians)
Candice Ammori (OnDeck)
Resources:
The End of Nature Book by Bill McKibben
Transcript
Cody Simms: The young obviously will inherit the earth. And the I dunno, shall we call them the seasoned, have a lifetime of resources to bring, to bear. We have Candice director of the On-Deck Climate Tech Program. Who's going to steer an, a conversation with an illustrious set of panelists who will address intergenerational collaboration for climate.
So, welcome Candice, can't wait for this.
Candice Ammori: Excellent. Thank you. So thank you, Cody. I am super psyched about this. I will raise my hand with everyone in the audience. I'm just super thrilled to be up here with incredible people. This panel is about finding opportunities across generations and it can be easy to think that generational differences are too big to bridge. But as everyone here knows, we have to bridge all types of gaps and differences if we want to get through this crisis together. So there are huge opportunities to collaborate across all sorts of differences, including age, and that's what we'll focus on in this panel around how we can dig into initiating and participating in these kinds of relationships.
So it's 45 minutes 35 minutes with the panel, 10 minutes with the audience. Please drop your questions throughout. I'm very excited to introduce everyone. So the first guest is Hannah Reynolds. Co-coordinator at divest Princeton. Thank you. Hannah. Bill McKibben is author educator activist founder@threefifty.org.
And at third that's, Mick Smyer is the founder at Growing Greener and psychology at Bucknell university. Thank you, Mick. And last we have Catherine Mongella, executive director at Earth Guardians. So thank you all for being here. I am thrilled to be in conversation with you, and I'm also thrilled for the audience to be in conversation with you soon.
We have four of us up here. We have 35 minutes for us to jam. And the thing that I wanted to do first is ask each of you and we'll go in this order. Hannah , Bill, Mick, and Catherine. Each of you to share and about three minutes, three to five minutes the story of how you became active in climate work and embrace your ability to have an influence in this space. Even feel free to do a very short intro to tie in how that led you into the work that you do today. So Hannah, if you can get us started there.
Hannah Reynolds: Absolutely. Thank you, Candace. Hi, I'm Hannah. I'm a senior at Princeton university. I'm studying anthropology and environmental science. But I think my involvement in climate.
Been since way before then. I'm from a really rural town in the finger lakes in upstate New York. And I grew up on a lake that, as a kid, it maybe would be closed for swimming for a couple months Out of the summer, because of the blue, green algae, the harmful blooms there.
But then as the, by the time I got into high school the lake would be closed for all, but like maybe two weeks of the summer. And that transition was very interesting to me. And I took a class in high school on like public policy and we worked on this whole project looking at like how to solve that problem through policy. And it was really interesting to me. And, like at the time we didn't really connect it as much with climate. I think as much as runoff from fertilizers and local farms and things like that, but looking back on it now, it's like very clear that there's a close to PI to climate change in making the harmful algal blooms, like really grow and that's had impacts on our local economy it's had, because we were like a tourist town not so much anymore. It's had impacts on human health and animal health and It's just really dangerous.
And this small little town of 500 people now has this lake that used to be the center of the town is now like sick, and so that was something that really got me interested in the environment. I also just grew up like hiking and being outdoors a lot. So I really cared about it. And then I came to Princeton and I never really connected that it could be something that I could care about academically and also in the work that I'm doing And so I think it wasn't until my freshman year, I started getting involved with clubs and things like that, looking at the environment.
But then during COVID I got really involved with the divestment. At Princeton, I had a faculty advisor who really had suggested that I get involved because it was a really tangible way to do something. And I was frustrated with typical approaches to sustainability that we're focused on, like recycling or things like that.
They don't feel as good at targeting the systemic problems. And so I've been involved with devastate Princeton for all of COVID and that's been a great way, I think, to channel a lot of my frustration especially during this time. And yeah. That's all I have to say.
Candice Ammori: Excellent. I think that was perfect.
Thank you, Hannah. So from being in your rural town and seeing the algae growing up to getting involved in divestment and thinking about systemic change, I think that is a very clear storyline and something that I can relate to for sure. Bill would love to have you share how you became active in climate work and and embrace your ability to have an influence.
Bill McKibben: Sure. I got started later than Hannah, my friend, Hannah but in my defense that's because there really wasn't climate work to be done. I wrote the first book about climate change for a general audience back in 1989 when I was 27, I guess a book called The End of Nature. Which, ended up, in 24 languages and all of that, so helped kick off some of this conversation.
That's still going on 32 years later. So for a while, I just kept writing more books and things thinking that eventually, if we just kept piling up enough data, surely there powers that be, would do what they should do. Why wouldn't they. It took me longer than it should have to realize that though we'd won the argument.
We were losing the fight because the fight wasn't actually about data and reason, the fight was about money and power, which frankly is what fights usually are about. And we need to build some power. So in my forties, I've started Organizing and, formed with seven young people, seven college students three fifty.org, which was the first iteration of a kind of global grassroots climate campaign.
We've organized in every country around the world except North Korea. And we help kick off the big fighting about the Keystone pipeline, which turned into the sort of first big loss for the oil industry. And we helped kick off the divestment campaigning that Hannah is such a perfect example of all the work that's going on all over the world.
I think we're at about $40 trillion now, Hannah. Endowments and portfolios and things that have divested from fossil fuel. So it's the, probably the biggest anti-corporate campaign ever. And now that I'm in my sixties we're starting to figure out how to organize people my age in order to to back up the great work that young people are doing and to use the assets that older people have some longer sense of history.
For better or for worse, a great deal of the financial assets in the country, and a deep commitment to going to the polls all the time and voting. So we better figure it out how to leverage some of that energy of older people, because otherwise it's going to be a hard political and economic block for people to overcome. So I've gotten to do this at several different ages in my life and and it all feels the same to tell you the truth.
Candice Ammori: Excellent. Thank you, bill. Mick, you're up next.
Mick Smyer: Like Hannah and Bill, I came to it in a personal way. But I went in a different direction than each of them. I was born and raised in New Orleans. So my real climate awareness moment, although I was aware of the movement and concerned about climate issues, but I really got involved in 2005 when hurricane Katrina hit my hometown and devastated, and it really made me stop and think about extreme weather events and the larger issues of climate change.
My own journey accelerated about five years ago with the birth of a best looking twin grandsons in the world. And then their little cousin, Teddy was born three years ago and their a little brother Rowan two years ago. So now it's easy for me to picture what the world will be like when they're my age in 65 short years. And what kind of world I'm living. So a few years ago, I actually started not by thinking about systemic change, but by thinking about personal change, I'm a psychologist by training. I'm a gerontologist by training. I've spent 40 years studying aging. So I thought, what do I bring to the table? I can bring older people.
So I started by working at the design school at Stanford and spend time developing approaches, using psychology and design strategies to move older adults from anxiety to action on climate. So I started with a project that I call gray and green, and I realized that the design strategies we're based on communication theory developed for kids.
How do we talk to kids about climate change? Keep it social, short, and positive. Social, by focusing on people or places you care about. Short by a human scale timeframe, 40 to 50 years. And positive, make sure people leave with a clear next step of something that they can do just to get them moving on the climate issues.
Those three steps combined with the work that I did to design school. I developed a strategy for older adults and. Actually this works for any age group. So I've been working my way down the lifespan developed a set of strategies for working with college students that I can tell you about a little bit later. High school students and element elementary school students.
And along the way, I realized I had to change the name of the project because when I worked with college students green, didn't do it for the college students. They didn't want to talk about gray as a gerontologist. I know nobody wants to talk about aging until I get to be your age Bill. But the strategies that I'd worked out with older adults work at any age group, and that's really what got me into it.
It all started with hurricane Katrina, accelerated my grandkids, and then I added to it, bringing to the table, my psychology and design skills.
Candice Ammori: Excellent. Thank you. And I am taking notes because there's a lot that we get to, to dig into. So thank you for the meaty stories. Catherine Magilla, you're next.
Catherine Kakolo Mongella: Thank you. I think in my case, it's a bit of a mix of what everyone has been able to say. And I think I'll respond with two folds. One environmentally enters. I consider myself an environment activist, but also a youth activist. I was very fortunate to be thrown into the nonprofit sector since my early twenties. And I found myself in leadership roles since then. So I had someone. We saw something in me and just wants to train me up to really encompass the role.
So after that, I was like, I need to pay this forward somehow. I need to make sure that it's not just to me, what mark, can I leave to other youth who I see something in them as well. And in terms of the environmental meaning environmental activist, it would have down half to meet me, having kids.
Once you have kids, anyone who's, the mother knows that just changes your whole world and it's not just about you anymore. It's about these little humans who look up to you, what kind of world are you living for them? What kind of environment are they going to grow up to? What kind of mentors are they going to have to look up for?
So I was like no, if there's anything that I can do to make sure that my kids being where I am, or even when they grow up, when they go to college or whatever path they choose, they have a safe environment. They have someone who they can look up to. They have at least a support system that can support them to make sure that the environment is clean.
They know exactly what they need to do to make sure that their generation and the generation after them is good. So that really put the fuel in my fire to make sure that I do everything that I can to make sure that things are good for them and really made sure that I empowered the youth to use their voice, to make sure that things are good for the youth as well.
Candice Ammori: Fantastic. Thank you. So now that we have a bit of background and intros from each of you, I want to just open up the floor. And so these will be more general questions that I want, I would love to have everyone bounce off of each other's ideas and tell stories. And so the first thing that I want to ask is there they're two sides of the same point.
And the question is what do and Bill, you started talking about it. What do more seasoned folks, as Cody said have to offer the climate movement and how best can we work with older folks? And if you can add in stories of things that have worked well or moments that really stick out to you, then that would be fantastic.
But this question is for everyone. What do more seasoned folks have to add and how best can we work with that generation?
Mick Smyer: So you're pointing at, you're asking Bill about that, right?
Candice Ammori: No, and now it's open but whoever wants to answer first can go for it.
Bill McKibben: I'll just give an example. I'll just tell a quick story. Two weeks ago the futures coalition kind of part of the arm of the work that Friday's for the future, but in the U S asked was organizing them campaigns against banks at the end of October, the banks that are lending lots of money to the fossil fuel industry which is great.
This is work that some of us. Working a little while. In fact, my last trip out before the pandemic was to get arrested at the chase branch in DC, near the Capitol with Jane Fonda, wonderful activist at many different ages cheering us on from the other side of the glass. Anyway having launched this campaign, we then had the pandemic and things got a little derailed.
So I was really glad to see young people taking up this fight. And so they're going to be outside the banks on October 29th. And that was terrific. Banks have a lot to worry about with young people. They know that whoever, wherever you take out your first credit card, you're likely to keep it for 20 or 30 years.
So they don't really want young people. Ripping up chase credit cards on Instagram. They know that they need people like, Hannah's classmates coming out of Princeton and going to work at Chase. If, they want to keep doing what they're doing, whatever that is exactly. And so they don't want to give themselves too bad a name.
So having a young people outside is big deal. Having a bunch of 19 year olds out there is a very good start, but as the futures coalition reasoned when they asked us at third act to join in, it also would be a good idea to have a lot of 69 year olds out there too. Because when you look around our landscape, 70% of the financial assets in America belonged to baby boomers and the silent generation.
So if you're a bank manager, you have a pretty good idea whose money is in your vault, and so for different set, they're not worried about people, my age, going to work for them someday. But they are worried that people might begin to, start talking about whether or not they really want to have their money in a bank that's trying to profit off the end of the world. So that's to me that's just a kind of good practical example of how people can work together from a different vantage points.
Mick Smyer: Candice, let me just piggyback on that. When we think about older adults, I think they bring to the table time, talent and motivation. Most older adults don't have the day in day out pressures of raising a family or trying to establish themselves at work and those sorts of things. So they have some time they also have skills. They have experience. They know how to get things done, whether it's in their local community or state or national politics.
I'll give you an example. I've worked with elders for climate action, which is a national organization that has local chapters. The Boston chapter is the group I've worked most closely with. They've been involved with developing and lobbying the state legislature in Massachusetts to develop a state climate action plan.
It took them two and a half, three years of lobbying with other groups in the state to get the legislature to approve a climate action plan and get the governor to sign it after he turned it down the first time around, but they knew how to get to those state legislators because not only do they have economic assets, they have political assets, older adults vote disproportionately more than other age groups and office holders know that. But the third element is that older adults have motivation. That is we're at a stage of life when we're asking what's our legacy going to be. And it turns out asking that question moves you to act on climate change.
So time, talent and motivation are what older adults can bring to the table. If we look to them as partners and don't write them off as just the total source of the problem.
Hannah Reynolds: Yeah. I could add onto that too. From kind of the other perspective as a young person in the best Princeton, like you're a coalition of not only students, but also alumni and faculty and the alumni are probably the biggest source of guidance and mentorship and like support and just organizing in general that we have. And so for me, some of the people I work closest to on a daily basis, one is the class of 1987. So that's 35 years older than me. And then there's another one in the class of 1967. So that's 55 years older than me.
And those are people who have a lot of life experience, which is something I don't have. And they have a lot of connections and, when we're facing these like just like brick walls of the university refusing to speak to us because we're too young and don't know what we're talking about, or write us off as just like radical student activist type things.
They have to take seriously what their alumni are saying. They're the source of money for the endowment and for like financial aid and programs like that. Also they're a huge like source of but they have so many connections to other Princeton alumni. And so it's hard for me as a 21 year old to be reaching out to these people who have graduated from Princeton who are very, accomplished and maybe aren't gonna take seriously, like a senior in college, but if they're hearing it from their peers, that's how our movement has grown. Is this kind of support from like the older generations and also just their talents and wisdom is we're trying to organize this campaign. Like it wouldn't be the same campaign without all of the alumni.
Catherine Kakolo Mongella: Just to add off what had on safest. I just love the way you titled the accomplished a very diplomatic of you. In my regards, I'll just comment on two things. One the older generation, I believe they have a whole lot of history. And once you have that history that builds the foundation of any relationship or any sustainable project that you will do to the environment, because there's an issue of doing a project to the environment or being an environmental activist for a short period. But if you look at the bigger goal, you'd want something that's sustainable that can outlive your generation. And to do that, you have to know the history.
You have to know exactly what those ahead of us tried, where they failed, and then you can learn from their mistakes and do better. And secondly, as Hannah said, connections we have to be very realistic that we can't do this by ourselves. We need support and support is in terms of technical, but also financial and our older generation.
They have a majority of the financial support that can be used in the work that we do. So the connections that they have that they're really good. Support and pushing forward the agenda and pushing for the only environmental activist movement. Regardless whether we like it or not, whether you're not comfortable, whether you find it weird, if you want to progress, we need to work with the older generation, be accomplished.
Candice Ammori: Absolutely. And so now let's go to the other side of the coin and thank you for the stories that you shared. Thank you for adding on to other people's stories. I think that's what makes a panel fantastic. But what are younger folks have to add and how have you found in your work? It's best to work with younger folks, whether you are younger yourself or you're not.
Hannah Reynolds: Yeah, I can go ahead and start. Yeah. I think something that we have is just energy and our whole futures in front of us. I think we have the motivation to act because we have to, or it's like our entire future existence, is at stake. So you have a lot of stick in the game. And I think that is something that can.
Both paralyzed young people, but also can really energize us. And for me, I think that especially like during COVID and just seeing all of these different things happening in our world that are so horrible, it's really a way to stay sane, in a lot of senses. I think that young people have the energy, they have the creativity like with some of the Fridays for futures and different activist groups out there coming up with these incredible, like very creative ways of organizing.
I've seen like dance protests at like different like meetings and banks and stuff. And it's just incredible what people can think of. And I think, like the longer the people who are making the decisions are in charge of, or are not making decisions that are good for our planet. The more creative young people are going to get, because it's just something that matters so much to us. And our whole just like being.
Catherine Kakolo Mongella: Yeah, maybe just to piggyback off what has said youth are very energetic and something that I have had to learn the hard way is using social media firstly that is not one of my strengths, but you love social media. And speaking like on the side of earth guardians, one of the reasons we are well known and as successful as we are, is because of our social media, our website, our Twitter, our LinkedIn, our Youtube. It's just active our Facebook. So it's like making sure that it's up-to-date what exactly are we doing?
Making sure that our followers increase as to what we're doing. They're following us, they're posting us, they're giving us hashtags. So those are things which people of the older generation may not be that up-to-date with, but youth, fortunately they can fill that gap and make sure that things are posted in due time and that we get more followers and that they post things that actually draw people to our social media accounts, because you find things such as newsletters, not many youth have the time or energy to actually go through a newsletter, which most of your email, that's something that a majority of employed people in the end that you have to like specifically time at what time is best for people to actually read emails.
But something like social media is very short to the point you get the message out. So if you have use on board love, social media, that it's something that you can get that it does in a short period.
Candice Ammori: Bill, you have a newsletter. That was a great call out. I just got into my inbox the other day, Mick go ahead and then we'll go to Bill.
Mick Smyer: I was going to say, I think one of the important things that older adults can do with young people is listen. There was a recent study from the university of Bath that found that 60% of young adults said that they were either ignored or dismissed when they tried to raise climate change issues with an older generation.
So the first starting point is listen to the concern. And hear them because in the United States, we have what I call a climate silence habit. Majority of folks know climate change is happening, but only about a third, according to data from the Yale program on climate change, communication ever talk with family members or friends, when I work with college students and give them the assignment of talking to somebody from a different generation, using our tools, they'd start the conversation.
Many of them come back and say, that's the first time I've had a serious conversation about climate change with my parents or my grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors. Because we have this climate avoidance habit, but it really starts with the older generation listening to the real concerns that Hannah and her age mates have said, we're worried about it and anxious about what's going to do in our lives.
Bill McKibben: Yeah. I think they're really useful. Is that young people are a little less scared because they're not yet as as completely assimilated to the set of habits that you get after living a certain way for a few decades. And so it gets scarier for, I think people are at a certain point to imagine a big change.
And I think if you're, if you're younger, it's still exhilarating to imagine. That the world might turn out in very different ways than it looks like right now that you might change structures on you, and if you're older, more like a, you know what after I die, that's fine, but let's keep things more or less the same till I get there.
And I think that takes some overcoming sometimes for older people. And one of the interesting things about, we talk about all of this as if it's Just universal or not tied to particular moments in history, but it's one of the things that's interesting right now is that the people who are coming of older age right now in their sixties, in their seventies in the first part of their lives were actually around for periods of enormous social cultural political transformation, if they didn't participate in, they at least bore witness to the peace movement, the women's movement, the civil rights movement, the first earth day on and on. And some of the work I think in the moment is just reminding people about that and saying, you know what, you're not that different from the person you were when you were, 22.
And some of that backup. Have a little bit of that fearlessness that you see in kids around you.
Candice Ammori: Excellent. This has fantastic. So I'm going to read back some of the notes that I took and then I'm going to open it up to the audience, like five minutes early. So we have a couple of questions already, and I would love for more, I have more questions to ask, but I really want to get the audience involved.
So to speak back, some of the things that you all said more seasoned folks, more accomplished folks tend to have more connections, financial assets. Vote a lot have a context and a history and also can be reminded of the movements that they lived through. And the excitement that they had. And then younger folks have energy motivation given that they have, long life ahead of them and this really affects them creativity and maybe less scared to change structures and think outside of the box.
And so I think that was a really helpful and useful. The first question that we're going to go to for the audience is this one is specifically for Mick. So how do we approach the boomers in our life? Assuming this was asked by someone younger, how do we approach the boomers in our life who may be angry or resistant to the topic of climate change?
Mick Smyer: The way that I suggest doing it is to personalize the issue. And don't start about is climate change. Human caused is fossil fuels is the cause. But really the way I start a conversation like that is I ask people, picture a place, any place in the world that has special meaning to you, and then picture that place affected by climate change or extreme weather.
And then picture what you'd like that place to look like in 40 to 50 years. Not what you think it'll look like, but your aspirations. And then the fourth. And last question I ask is pictures, something you can do now to work towards that vision that you have for 40 to 50 years from now. And why do I go there?
Because for most of us, if we personalize it, that's just embodying the social short and positive design strategies that I talked about earlier. I've asked this question, picture a place, any place in the world that you care about. Thousands of people all over the country and in other countries, everybody, regardless of political Stripe, regardless of their belief stance on skepticism or about climate change has a place that they care about.
And they know what the threat is to that place. And they know what they'd like it to look like. I used to say, the older you get, the more it was what it looked like 10, 20 years ago. But over the last couple of three years, I've had college students say what it used to look like 10 years ago, which for me was chilling because that said that even in their relatively young lives, they've seen the impacts of climate change.
So I guess what I'm saying, Candice is I would start by personalizing the issue and then you get people to back into here's a place I'm concerned about. I know forest fires or drought or whatever it is. That's threatening the place I care about. That's the conversation we can start to have.
Candice Ammori: Excellent. Does anybody else have advice for that only talking to boomers, but anyone in your life who might be angry or resistance to the topic of climate?
Bill McKibben: My advice would be accepting that there are some people you're never going to change. Thanksgiving's a couple of weeks don't ruin Thanksgiving, trying to swipe your crazy uncle, to take climate change. Seriously. If you spent the last 30 years marinading in rush Limbaugh, you're probably not going to change your mind because somebody hands you the next new study from, journal of geophysical letters or something, but do spend some time at Thanksgiving, sitting with your, sweet aunt who probably is worried about her kids and grandkids.
Probably understands that there's a real threat, but probably isn't yet active in this work and help people, get some sense of how they might be active in it. Ask them to write a letter or, maybe to sign the new petition that Ruttenberg is circulating today. Trying to get people to declare a climate emergency at the UN or you just, things like that to begin to edge people into the.
But I do think that it's generally a waste of time to try and fight with people who are obstinately.
Candice Ammori: I think those were both great points. Make very tangible points of how to talk to people who might be resistant and build very tangible points on how to convert someone who's not resistant very open, but actually maybe doesn't take action.
So Hannah, this question is for you, what would you like to see? Actually don't know what that means but you probably do X, millennials and millennials do to help your generation improve and create a future.
Hannah Reynolds: Yeah, definitely. I'm not entirely sure either. I think that X millenials maybe gen X, I don't know. Anyways. Yeah. I would say, I think religious supporting the work that we're doing is really important because, even just having that like authority of a little bit more life experience is something that like is really important. Because with young people, it's the thing that's I think we see us just like facing all the time.
It's just not being taken seriously because of our age. And it's really frustrating. And actually just this week we had an update on the divestment process of Princeton and, there's a, currently a faculty panel that's reviewing our proposal. That's supposed to like, basically make a decision on divestment. But the thing that's really frustrating is that there's no students and no alumni included on this panel and it's a decision that's going to affect us. And we were told that it's because we don't have the expertise on divestment. That's needed. Which I would argue is a very frustrating point given that I've been working on this for two years and so have many of my classmates and colleagues.
And we've been very much in the, in the weeds of this for a very long time, much more than any of the faculty numbers on this panel have been.
Mick Smyer: And I've been working with a group at NC state a group of students they put together. About a three and a half minute YouTube video. That is a killer in terms of facts, in terms of the financial implications for the university of divestment, as well as the ethical and other environmental issues. And it's crammed full of just great information.
Hannah Reynolds: Yeah, absolutely. And so I think that's, what's very tough for us. It's just sometimes even just someone who's a little bit older and has a little more experience and can be maybe has a title that we don't have as students can be really helpful.
Candice Ammori: Absolutely. So the next question is this is my question that's gonna lead to it to an audience question. So what are some non-obvious ways? And I know after this awesome entire three-day event, they'll send out action items. And so we don't have to go through like every action item that everyone can do.
But in your view, what are some non-obvious ways that you can partner. Seven generations and get more people involved in this movement. And I know bill, you mentioned a couple around writing letters. We've all, we've mentioned a few here and there, but some non-obvious ways to partner and to get people to take action. Open floor for anyone.
Catherine Kakolo Mongella: I think in my take would be mainly two points. One to understand the need of the community at hand. So exactly the community where you're from, what is the need? Do they need trees? Do they need solar energy? Do they, what exactly what they need and a goal. It goes back to my initial point of sustainable services that we provide.
And number two, what is. The need might be to plant trees, but your strength might not necessarily be facilitating it. So exactly what is your strength? And once you identify what your strength is, and you'll be able to merge the two to know exactly what you can help and contribute and making sure that the goal that you have to serve the community is met. And just to be realistic, if you don't have what's needed, if you don't have that particular strength, you can partner with someone who does. And I think the main fear that comes with partnering is because we don't understand how big the issue is right now.
A lot of people think that just one organization or just one person can solve the whole environmental crisis. It's not possible. There are so many organizations, but the environmental crisis is still there. It's still going to be there. So I think once that dawns on everyone, that just one person can not fix it.
Just one group of people can't fix it. Just one organization can fix it. It's something that we need to come together. We need to identify that earth guardian. This is our strength. This is what we can handle. This is the group of people that we have the capacity to serve. We look for an organization that can serve the communities, or the group of people that we realistically can't reach.
We don't have that. We identified that there's the gap. We reach out. We make a partnership, we identify do our missions align. So as long as the mission that we have as guardian aligns with the mission as them with another organization, I think that's just going to open gates to more creating a bigger impact in our environment and our community.
And I'm always going back to the same point that we should aim, not just to make changes for short term vision, but really to look for something that is sustainable and can outlast our generation, the generation after us.
Mick Smyer: Catherine, when you talked about capacity to remind me of some comments that Katherine Wilkinson made about how do you decide what to do if you want to get active in climate issues. And she said, you need to answer three questions. The first is what, what gives me deep joy? What do I really enjoy doing second is what am I good at?
What do I have any skills? But the third is what's the context. And I translate that into who cares, who needs that set of skills? Or do you have the set of skills that just are fit for this particular situation? I've been doing some work with college students. And the first thing I needed to do was collaborate with college students to say, how do I take what I developed for older adults and make it relevant and make some tweaks so that it's more, it's going to reach the audience I want to reach the same design strategies that were in the video clip at the opening, talk to the folks you're working with and find out does this skillset really fit with the audience that I'm trying to reach? Like the capacity issue is really big issue.
Hannah Reynolds: I can say something a little more specific about intergenerational work that I think has been really useful. It's just that I think really writing has been something that's been really useful. I think Bill does a great job of this all the time, but I think that's something that is very accessible for both young people and for older people to both contribute to, but also to read and digest the information.
And I think that being able to communicate like effectively, like what we're trying to do and how people can get involved and things like that are very important. And and can really set as Nick was talking about earlier the video that the students made, like it's something that really helps to like solidify what your causes and like what you're doing. And what your case for whatever you're arguing for is, and I think that's been really important to our campaign in particular.
Bill McKibben: And let me, I'll just add one thing to that. One of the things I really love doing is writing. I write a lot of op-ed thesis and I try, I write a lot of them now with a young people, do it as a joint project.
And it's really fun because it is hard to get, editors to sometimes to take. If they don't know who've, haven't heard somebody's name or something. They may not print it, so it's good. It's like a good way to get more people into the game but it's also just fun and there's a lot of good writers out there.
I've done op-eds for the LA times with, 12 year old Haven Coleman in Colorado. Who's a great climate leader. And I just did one last week with a video Mahalo PI from Texas. Who's a fantastic, just graduated high school, but was terrific writer. And I do think that we should be aware that to some degree.
There's a great strategic value in being able to talk about people from different ages, coming out, all of this. And there are some things that are different in the ways we approach them. And we've talked about those in there. Good. I also think it's worth just remembering that there's not that much difference between 20 year olds and 60 year olds and 40 year olds and whatever else. We're not like we're, like separate species or something. And it shouldn't be extraordinarily difficult to work together. I've never had the slightest problem. And. I remember when people, two people before we started three 50, always college games, people.
I have people always telling me, oh, kids today they're so apathetic. I wish they were like, they were back in the, which I always thought was nonsense at the time. And I also think much of the kind of okay, boomer, stuff's kind of nonsense to when you get right down to it. So I think this is a great conversation and it's good to just remember too that age is just one of many things about any of us today, any given moment.
Mick Smyer: And this can I just piggyback on the op-ed idea? Yeah, just quickly. The op-ed project is sponsoring a program for helping people learn how to write op-eds. And with the Yale program on climate change communication, they have a new program on public voices for the climate crisis, trying to diversify and spread out the voices that we hear on climate, particularly in the op-eds. It's a really powerful program.
Candice Ammori: Excellent. Thank you so much. I think that's. Great way to end. A couple of takeaways that I have is thinking about power and that is, I think, a word that often feels gross, but actually if we can think about the power that we have as individuals and as a community and coming together and realizing that we're not that different actually we all have different strengths and we should come together and take action, right?
Stay positive and take actions. Thank you all for this. This has been really just encouraging for me and very fun to do really appreciate it. And thank you everyone for the questions. And that's
Bill McKibben: Very nice moderation. Thank you. Good work.
