The Climate Letter Project has entered its fourth year.
Every damn day, I write a Letter to the Editor on climate change. I'm now up to somewhere over 1,140 letters. Yay, me. A considerable number get printed. All these letters can be found at Running Gamak, with various useful key words, should you wish to use one as a model for one of your own LTEs —hint, hint, hint.
Writing these letters has trained me to form ideas in 150-word bursts. It's twitter at the word level. One idea only, no more. Analogies are good. I sometimes think of it as a bumper sticker, simply explained.
My post-election hit rate has gone up; since the new year I've had seven hits, which is a heck of a lot better than I was doing in November, let me tell you.
Today's diary follows the usual pattern: the letters I've written that have seen paper or electronic exposure over the past few weeks, arranged in a standardized format, with occasional asides or interjections from me.
The subject material is grim. Who enjoys writing about the destruction of the planet? I'd rather be writing about music or education...but this is more important.
For the most part, it's more a chore than a joy, but the work of these letters was succinctly described in this comment by my friend gmoke:
"What you are doing is a daily practice of conscience. You are practicing Gandhian non-violence."I'm wearing my feelings closer to the surface in my middle age, I swear. The notion of myself as practicing Gandhian non-violence brought (and brings) me to the edge of tears.
But I digress. While for the most part my routine includes the climate letter as a function of the daily drudgery, every so often there comes an article which demands a letter, which seizes me by the eyeballs and commands me to write.
Today's compilation begins with one such.
I first saw Megan Kimble's piece, "Date With A Climate-Change Denier" in a Western magazine called High Country News, and it struck me that she had barely scratched the surface of why a relationship with such a person is an exceptionally bad idea. After a few peregrinations, my letter did find print, and stirred up a bit of a kerfuffle, too.
Follow me below the squigglies...