Tips For Making Your Climate Week Presence Worth the Flight Emissions

Being on several climate-focused slack channels means I’m following along as a lot of people talk about Climate Week NYC. Those new to the event may not really understand how to leverage the moment, even as they rush to spend money on flights and lodging. 

Perhaps a list of things to consider would be helpful for weighing whether to attend or not? Your organization may not have the capacity to be strategic enough with the moment, and the air travel emissions alone would give any climate-aware human pause. 

In no particular order:

• NGOs have been involved with Climate Week for years, so most understand the general lay of the land. If you are already collaborating with one or more in a particular sector, ride their coattails. Don’t plan your own events - it’ll just be too hard to get folks to pay attention.
• Broadly, study up on how to strategically use a moment like this. Is it really worth the budget and human capacity? It often isn’t. I’d suggest it’s not worth attending just to say you went or to have one big publicity blip that you then do nothing with. (See my item about content, below.)
• Start preparing now to be a media resource for the many journalists who’ll be covering it and are looking for fresh takes, new leaders and unique case studies as well as the latest tech. Journalists are developing their story ideas and making lists of potential interviewees as I type this. Get on their radars.  
• In the same way that your NGO friends may help you navigate because they’ve been doing it for years, NGOs also need to look for ways to freshen up their own been-there, done-that sessions, panels and happy hours. Maybe their private sector collaborators can help them out? Either way: don’t just check the event-strategy boxes. Think (way) outside of them. 
• Content-wise, don’t consider this a one-off event. See it as a sort of forced audio, video and blog post, graduate-level school assignment. You are paying for this experience, so bring your most bold creative thinking and take some bigger risks. What you create should endure, so don’t brand it too heavily as “climate week” content. Instead, create a sector leadership asset bank that you, and your collaborators, might be able to share at COP28, too. Get more sophisticated with how you re-use and re-package it all!

I wrote more about how leaders can get 10% bolder with their approach to things like Climate Week here.

News to Use

RE: food, via Vegconomist -

For one week, German discounter PENNY is charging the ‘true cost’ of nine of its products to illustrate their impact on the environment.

The campaign has led to a huge rise in the cost of some animal products,…

Note: a transition away from animal agriculture is a key focus in my climate influence work (#food4climate ) , so this “true cost” idea is extra intriguing. When you read the headlines these days about food prices, the most mentioned items with stunningly high prices are always meat and dairy. If you don’t eat those products,… you are taking climate action and can be a lot more resilient to food price changes.

RE: political will and climate optimism, via Rebecca Solnit/The Guardian -

I don’t know why so many people seem to think it’s their job to spread discouragement, but it seems to be a muddle about the relationship between facts and feelings. I keep saying I respect despair as an emotion, but not as an analysis. You can feel absolutely devastated about the situation and not assume this predicts outcome; you can have your feelings and can still chase down facts from reliable sources, and the facts tell us that the general public is not the problem; the fossil fuel industry and other vested interests are; that we have the solutions, that we know what to do, and that the obstacles are political; that when we fight we sometimes win; and that we are deciding the future now.

RE: the housing/climate connection, via Osha Davidson/ Yale Climate Communications -

The risk of a heat-related death is two to three hundred times higher for people living unsheltered than for the population at large,…

Note: this is why local political leaders like Alex Fisch (Culver City Council at the time, now Special Assistant AG in California for Housing) and John Bauters (Mayor of Emeryville who himself has experienced periods of being unhoused) are so important to find, learn from and amplify. I talked with both of them for Season 1 of my Living Change podcast.

Thanks so much for reading/sharing/subscribing. Please comment or message me with questions on building climate influence. I may cover your suggested topics in a future issue. In the meantime, feel free to follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram and T2 in the meantime (I also linger on “X”, for now.)