By Rachael Orr, CEO, Climate Outreach
I’m a campaigner at heart. I have had the privilege of working for some brilliant campaigning organisations in my career. And I have found so much inspiration from the activism of the environmental movement. From the boldness and dedication of Greenpeace activists to the joyful mobilisations of XR to the immense bravery of people protesting around the world on the front lines of the climate crisis.
But it wasn’t activism that showed me just how challenging the day to day realities of tackling climate change and creating a greener economy would be.
My last job was running the wonderful PlaceShapers network for CEOs of place-based housing organisations. A few years ago I ran a roundtable for around 25 CEOs. These are people running complex social purpose organisations in some of the poorest parts of the country.
“What’s the one thing that keeps you awake at night?” I asked them. The most popular answer? It wasn’t the entrenched poverty they saw daily. The crisis in the care sector. The massive cuts to funding social housing. It was: “How on earth do we get our housing stock to net zero?”
Then the challenges flowed. Where would the funding come from? How could they prioritise something that wasn’t a ‘today’ crisis when there are so many ‘today’ crises? Would the tech be good enough? What if they bought it now, wanting to do the right thing, then it halved in price in two years time?
But the thing that they were really stumped on was: how do we bring our residents and communities with us? As one CEO put it, “How can I sit down with a single mum who I know can’t afford to buy her kids shoes for school, and tell her that we’re going to spend 10k on her property, and that she isn’t getting a new room so her kids don’t have to share a bed, but a heat pump?’
This, I felt, was a wicked challenge I really, really wanted to try and see if I could help crack.
Because, actually, if that single mum can have her home insulated and a heat pump installed she will have a healthier home and far lower bills. The benefits of transitioning to a green economy are enormous – for her, for her neighbours, for us all.
But how do you even begin to start talking to her about that? Both literally, how do you do it, and how do you prioritise doing it amongst everything else you have to do?
I was trying to find an organisation who tried to help solve these problems when I came across Climate Outreach, the organisation I now lead. Set up 20 years ago, they were the first charity in Europe with the explicit goal of ‘educating and informing’ people about climate change.
As awareness of climate change grew, Climate Outreach’s offer evolved. But the guiding force has always been that we have to make addressing climate change about people.
Because far too often climate is still told as a science story. It’s about degrees of warming – and degrees of failure. It isn’t. It’s a people story. It’s about protecting what we love – from our rivers to our woodlands to our kids futures.
So what would I say to those Housing Association CEOs now? What would I say to any overworked, overstretched charity CEO feeling guilty that they aren’t doing ‘enough’ on climate.
I would start where Climate Outreach always starts. By listening. What do your staff, your beneficiaries, your communities think and feel about climate change? Do you know? Would you like to?
What do they hope will change – in their lives, their communities, their workplaces, in the coming years? Who can help do that? And how does this cut across the other work you’re doing, rather than feel like something new you have to worry about? I bet you have many members of staff who would love to help you ask and answer these questions – you just need to find them.
Best of all, can you help build a new climate story for your organisation? Can you show how you can take some measures in your workplaces, in your services, in your engagement to start making more of a difference? You can’t fix it all today, or even this strategy cycle. But every action helps. Every conversation matters. And if Climate Outreach can help, please drop me a line.
Photo by Breno Assis on Unsplash
