Letter Campaigns on Climate Change: Change the World Today!

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From Climate Mamas and Papas on both coasts, here are two wonderful ways through letters that you and the kids in your lives – WHEREVER you live in the world – can be part of a campaign that will make a difference on climate change. Both campaigns are time sensitive and need your and your children’s involvement now!

Love Letters 4 our Planet: Grab the kids in your life and watch this short video with them.

Remind the kids in your life that EACH of us can be “powerful,” even if you are a child. As the reality of climate change impacts us all, many of our children who are currently too young to vote will bear the worst climate consequences as a result of our inaction today.

Here is a unique opportunity for children from all over the world to ask for help from other kids who are going to school in Washington State. These students, who may be just a few years older then the kids in your life, have the power to make a difference on an issue that will potentially impact us all. As our kids get ready to experience, or have just experienced their first days of school, here is a civic “assignment” that they can enjoy and KNOW will make a difference in our world. It could even be a project for them to take to their teachers and get their whole class involved.

What’s needed: Children from around the world to write LOVE letters to new students at Western Washington University (which is in Bellingham, WA) urging them to register to vote and then VOTE in an upcoming local election for the Whatcom County Council. The Council has the power to issue or deny permits for a new coal export facility. This is a decision that will have national and international implications and determine the future of American coal (and CO2 emissions exported to other countries due to the coal). WWU has over 4000 incoming freshman that are eligible to register to vote in that election. Letters need to reach the organizers of this campaign by September 20 so that they can be hand delivered on campus before the voter registration deadline.

Why: Just north of the city of Bellingham in Whatcom County, Washington there is proposal to build a $600 million port – the Gateway Pacific Terminal – which, if constructed would ship 48 million tons of coal mined annually in Wyoming and Montana to Asia—enough to power 15 to 20 new coal-fired power plants a year. Coal is one of the worst fossil fuels when it comes to emitting human created greenhouse gases and exacerbating and accelerating climate change. In addition to the climate impacts, the burning of coal creates soot pollution that puts small particles, a mixture of chemicals, metals and acid droplets, into the air. These particles create and intensify serious health problems such as asthma and other breathing issues, impacting our children’s health and future.

How: Like the Love Letters 4 our Planet facebook page and share it with your friends. Have your children write a letter today and send it to:

Love Letters 4 Our Planet
PO BOX 1091
Bellingham, WA 98227

Let your children feel empowered by asking other kids, not much older then them, to be their voices for change. At ClimateMama we strongly support this campaign and see it as a great way for kids to learn not only how local issues can become global issues, but how each one of us can be powerful and make a difference on the climate crisis.

2. The Open Letter Campaign: Consider supporting this creative and important idea – we did! One Climate Mama and one Climate Papa from the Boston, MA area launched this campaign to raise enough money by the end of September to put a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal targeting POWERFUL PARENTS to be change agents on climate change.

The ad will specifically call out to parents and grandparents who ARE world leaders, heads of energy companies, members of the media, and the world’s wealthiest individuals to put climate change on their “front burners” and use all their POWER and moral responsibility to protect their children (and ours) from a future that is dictated by runaway climate change. These people, in particular have a direct and powerful opportunity to make a difference now. Learn more about the campaign here.

As Margaret Meade once said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people can change the world, in fact that is the only thing that ever has…!”

Yours,

Climate Mama