Every election cycle, our televisions, computers, and phones contain a steady stream of ads for candidates running up and down the ballot. Yet, every cycle, a few ads cut through the clutter and stand out from the others. One that caught my eye was Katie Hill’s “Climb” ad, where she literally climbs a cliff while talking about how running for Congress can be a tall task. I thought it was a great metaphor and a fantastic introduction to who Katie is as a person, so I was especially excited to find out I’d be working on Katie’s campaign as part of the Sierra Club’s Victory Corps program.
In my usual role with the Sierra Club, I work to fight fracked gas’ effect on climate change and our communities, and that can feel like a tough climb, too. But what Katie knows, and what her ad was all about, is that you overcome these obstacles by finding one toehold at a time.
My role from now until election day will be to get Sierra Club members to help contact voters and educate them about why we need to replace Steve Knight with a climate action champion like Katie Hill. To get those volunteers and to earn those votes, there is no one magic solution; we have to do it one call, one email, and one door knock at a time.
Fixing the climate crisis will be like that, too.
No matter who is in power, there is no one action they can take to stop climate change once and for all. Reversing climate change will come about by getting one climate action champion elected—district by district—from Congress, to state legislatures, to municipal governments. Once elected, those champions can do things like changing their city’s vehicle fleet to electric cars, tightening their state’s clean water standards, or getting our country to recommit to the clean power plan.So when I work with Sierra Club members to help get Katie Hill elected, I don't look at how many members of Congress it takes to win back control of the House from the fossil fools, I look at the next door I knock as being the next chance I have to win one more vote for a climate action champion like Katie Hill.
And that's how we will stop climate change - one Sierra Club member at a time talking to one voter at a time multiplied by millions of doors across the country.
If you’d like to be one of the people who joins those millions of conversations, please sign up here and we can put you to work helping elect climate action champions across the country.