“In 2006, I saw a film called ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and leaving the theater I remember thinking we don’t have 100 years to solve this climate change problem, maybe just 30-40. My kids were only six and nine years old and I thought it’s going to be too late for them to solve this problem. Whether I liked it or not, I had to be part of the solution.
At the time I was head of my own advertising agency. I had 35 employees. We had great clients, but every day, I asked myself, ‘what did you do today to be part of the solution?’ And every day I had the same answer, absolutely nothing. I was busy with my clients, I was busy with my employees, I was stuck in traffic, I was busy with my kids.
One day at a meeting we spent 30 minutes discussing whether the buttons on our client’s website should have round corners or square corners. After that meeting, I thought, I frigging can’t believe I spent 30 minutes discussing round corners. The planet is burning. I gotta quit.
Many people recognize the problem, but it’s hard for them to act because they have so many other things in their lives and they have to just work and put food on the table — life gets in the way. And many think that’s not a problem I can solve, like, the President should solve that right?
For me, I’ve been lucky that a past coach taught me a life lesson that most of the barriers we have in our life are mental. Don’t limit yourself, don’t limit your children, don’t limit your employees to think they can only achieve in some narrow area. So I’ve always thought, if I put enough effort into it, I can get into the 90th percentile with just hard work. And that’s a secret for anybody, anybody can get into the 90th percentile with hard work. My attitude is ‘I’m not better than anybody, but nobody’s better than me.’
In 2013, I got an email from the Climate Reality project inviting me to go get trained as a Climate Reality leader. Part of the training means requires you to give 10 public presentations. I did 20 presentations that year. And I enjoyed them so much that now I’m up to about 110 presentations. I’ve come to realize that, you don’t have to be President to contribute, you can be, you know, a leader on your own street.
We’re definitely seeing the negative consequences of climate and we will continue to see some, but hopefully we can avert the worst consequences if we continue the momentum that we have. I do feel more hopeful. The threats keep rising, but the solutions are rising as well”
