Introducing My Climate Influence Newsletter

Cities As Untapped Climate Action Narrative Frame

Cities are what’s been on my mind. 

More specifically, better using cities as a climate influence narrative frame is the opportunity. For me, that frame includes food, social justice, housing, transportation, urban planning, and, built environment. All of this also encompasses reducing air pollution, improving the lives of children, and giving every single one of us much, much more joy in our daily lives. 

Why wouldn’t we all want this, and be yelling that from the rooftops - no matter what political color our state or city is?

My city - Seattle. Photo credit: Timothy Eberly via UnSplash

Heading rapidly into Climate Week conversations and quickly followed by COP28, we better all be learning to get our heads out of our… siloes, and looking to help the world and climate media build story bridges that will have an impact.

One of those is basic: Why do we all think that so many in the U.S. have been so desperate to spend loads of money and endure flight headaches in order to travel internationally this summer? They want to return to the joy of walking, biking and merely existing in European cities, especially, that have somehow managed to stay livable! 

And yet, when all of those traveling consumers have spent all of their money elsewhere, they return to the U.S. and climb back up into their SUVs, go back to their driving the kids to school one mile away, and continue a pretty sad, sterile existence in their vehicles for many hours a day.

How can we not see this disconnect? PEOPLE: traveling away from this mess wouldn’t be the only way to endure life on this planet if we instead did what we could, including voting the right leaders in, to make our OWN communities livable!!

I could go on. So, suffice it to say that I’ll be doing a lot more writing, speaking, podcast-questioning and newsletter-informing on just how two of the biggest emissions sources - transportation and food systems - can be seen as fully part and parcel of livable, sustainable cities. 

This is the stuff I’ve been monitoring, building relationships around, watching media cover and having very exciting conversations with newer connections about recently. I intend to give you access to all the cool people and projects I discover, and to keep YOU energized too. I also intend to shape Season 2 of my Living Change podcast more around cities. 

Living change that happens in cities has a massive ROI!

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Thanks for your patience as I get used to Substack and get my template fine tuned, friends. I’m excited to be on this platform and to deliver my inside view on how to build leadership climate influence, how to be a solid climate media resource, and why to bother. As well - I’ll share more background on my Living Change podcast conversations, how I go about identifying great guests and so on. Thanks for joining me here!