A new study from the University of Pennsylvania has identified effective ways to motivate people to take climate action. Top among them: Writing a letter to a child describing one’s aspirations and efforts to ensure that the child inherit a habitable planet.
Third Act SoCal liked this idea so much that we decided to try it out and invite our members to do the same.
Phil Glosserman, our working group leader, wrote and delivered a letter to his grown children, Zak and Julia. Phil already takes a lot of climate action, but he found the experience moving and gratifying.
“It gave me a chance to express how much I care about my kids and the world they’re inheriting,” he said. “I want them to know that all the climate activism I’m doing with Third Act is for them and I hope it will inspire them to step up into their own activism someday. I’m also glad I memorialized my thoughts and feelings in a letter that they, and possibly my future grandkids, will be able to look back on some day.”
We encourage you to write a letter to someone you love, which can be a child, grandchild, niece, nephew, siblings—even a beloved pet, as the study’s authors tell us. Your letter can be short or long. Deliver it now, as Phil did, or wait. It’s up to you.
If you’re already an active eco-warrior, like Phil, maybe it will provide an avenue for a new meaningful conversation with your beloved recipient or motivate them to take action. If you’re not so active, maybe it will inspire your own deeper engagement. Maybe it will simply deepen your understanding of your personal environmentalism.
This is a bit of an experiment for us, and certainly not rigorous academic research. But we’d love to see your letters and hope to publish some of them on our website. We can use first names only, or make it anonymous, if you like. We’re happy to hear your reflections on the exercise, too.
To recap:
- Choose someone you care about to write to.
- Describe your hopes for the world they’re inheriting.
- Tell them what you’ve been doing to help ensure they inherit a habitable planet.
- Send the letter to your loved one, if the time is right.
- Send your letter and reflections to us at socal@thirdact.org with permission to publish it. Tell us how you’d like to be identified. We prefer to use first names, only, or just an initial or two.
“We hope that writing a letter to a young person in one’s life can motivate action to protect future generations and spark conversations about climate change with family and friends.”
–Study lead author Allie Sinclair, Joan Bossert postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania,