Climate Awakening

Facing the Climate Emergency

An existential crisis is unfolding around us and humanity must change course or perish. Yet we have been living in a trance of collective denial. It’s up to us to help society wake up.

Here is what it takes

Yes, we’re facing catastrophic breakdown of our climate. Yes, it’s terrifying. But you don’t have to be paralyzed by your fear, grief, and other painful feelings.

You can use your pain to transform yourself, your friends, and the world. 

Our goal is to help you maximize your potential to meet the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced.

Climate Awakening is a fiscally sponsored project of Climate Mobilization Project

Climate Awakening

Unleashing the power of climate emotions

Climate Awakening is convening thousands of small group Climate Emotion Conversations. Participants share their emotional experiences, and listen to others. Many have never spoken about their climate pain before, and report feeling connected, relieved, and energized for action.

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A new genre:

A radical self-help guide for reckoning with the climate emergency

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“Margaret Klein Salamon is an invaluable guide to this new moment.”
-Bill McKibben

Co-Founder, 350.org
“A movement has been born, and Margaret’s voice played an early role in helping to bring it into existence.”
-Varshini Prakash

Executive Director & Co-Founder, Sunrise Movement
“Margaret’s prescient writing and unflinching honesty helped to inform much of the psychological groundwork that underpins the work and philosophies of XR and the entire climate emergency movement.”
-Gail Bradbrook

Co-Founder, Extinction Rebellion
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5 Steps of the journey

Step 1

Face Climate Truth

Inside all of us, a battle rages. It’s the battle between knowing and not knowing, between fully facing the truth — emotionally, as well as intellectually — and shrinking from it. Ask yourself, “What is my priority?” Would you rather protect yourself from painful knowledge or protect yourself, your family, and the entire human family from the actual climate emergency? A truth, even a painful truth, is powerful.

Step 2

Welcome Fear, Grief, and Other Painful Feelings

Facing the climate emergency is hard. But your pain is a signal — it’s telling you something critically important. You must work through your fear, grief, anger, guilt, and all the feelings you’ve repressed. Only then will you escape the control these feelings have over you. Only then will you shake off their numbing and paralytic effect and be able to use their power to transform yourself and our society.

Step 3

Reimagine Your Life Story

Who are you? Why are you here? What is your purpose? The climate emergency challenges the answers we thought we had and invites us to revisit them anew. Right now, humanity needs as many heroes as it can get. This designation might feel over the top. It might make you uncomfortable. But everything in your life, including your most painful challenges, has prepared you for this role. Will you join the team?

Step 4

Understand and Enter Emergency Mode

Humans are social animals. The way we respond to threats is highly contagious. The goal of the climate emergency movement must be to collectively and immediately lead the public out of “normal mode” and into emergency mode. Emergency mode describes how individuals and groups function optimally during an existential crisis and especially how they are able achieve incredible feats through intensely focused motivation and collaboration toward a clear, top priority of tackling the emergency.

Step 5

Join the Climate Emergency Movement

Once you’ve mourned your loses and built emotional muscle, you will be ready to join the team rising to save humanity and the natural world. We are a movement transforming fear and grief into real and meaningful action. By joining the climate emergency movement, you are choosing the heroic road over the easy road; you are choosing mission over self.

Live as a Climate Warrior

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Vote Like Your Life Depends Upon It

Placeholder … Do we want to live or die? In 2020 we decide.

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Inside all of us, a battle rages. It’s the battle between knowing and not knowing, between fully facing the truth — emotionally, as well as intellectually — and shrinking from it.

Climate Mobilization Project is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. If you would like to contact us please send a message to help@climatemobilization.org

James Streit

Board Member

James has retired after working in banking and finance for over 30 years, most recently as a senior portfolio manager in Bank of America’s corporate treasury department. Prior to that role, James worked as a portfolio manager for a variety of entities, including Salomon Brothers and Credit Suisse, as well as smaller start-up firms. He has a longstanding interest in issues related to the climate crisis and its intersection with the financial industry.  He has supported organizations such as The Climate Mobilization and The Sierra Club in their efforts to bring about an appropriate response based on the best available science. James holds an MA in physics and a BA in physics and mathematics from Columbia University, and is a CFA charterholder.

Shuo Peskoe-Yang

Board Member
Shuo is a non-profit strategy and research specialist whose areas of specialty include diversity, equity, and inclusion; movement and coalition building; organizational planning and development; campaign strategy and tactics; fundraising; and quantitative and qualitative research. He is a current member of Resource Generation and is a former Senior Researcher at Corporate Accountability and Teaching Assistant at George Mason University. Shuo received his BS in neuroscience from the University of Delaware.
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Michél Legendre

Board Member
Michél (he/him) is an immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago of Afro and Indo-Caribbean ancestry. Currently he is a non-profit consultant and board member for Power Shift Network.
 
Michél believes deeply in the transformative importance of abolition, a transition of justice and equity from the harmful extractive economies of today, and the need to ensure support for the marginalized communities that are leading the movements for justice. He has supported movements for local food and housing justice in Boston. Michél also served on the steering committee from 2016 to 2019 for the Boston People’s Climate Mobilization which helped shape the 2017 Boston PCM rally and the community-building that followed.  In 2019, he helped organize a gathering of men’s work groups in Boston unlearning patriarchy and building a feminist community among men. Since 2019 Michél participated in the participatory budgeting processes for New Economy Coalition’s Black Solidarity Economy Fund and as a seed grant reader for the New England Grassroots Environmental Fund. He previously served as Campaign Director for Corporate Accountability and Worth Rises. Michél currently lives in Bushwick (unceded lands of the Lenape people), New York. 
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Margaret Klein Salamon, PhD

President

Margaret is the founder of The Climate Mobilization (TCM) and Climate Mobilization Project (CMP) and helped catalyze a worldwide climate emergency movement through her work with both organizations. Margaret now serves as Board President and Climate Awakening Program Director. She is the author of Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth (New Society Publishers, April 2020) and several influential essays. She is also a member of the Climate Emergency Fund’s Advisory Board. Margaret earned her PhD in clinical psychology from Adelphi University and a BA in social anthropology from Harvard. Though she loved being a therapist, Margaret felt called to apply her psychological and anthropological knowledge to solving the Climate Emergency.

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Matt Renner

Board Member

Matt Renner was born and raised in Berkeley and now lives in Richmond, California and is a father to an awesome three-year-old. 

He serves as Vice President of Seneca Solar, a new tribally owned renewable energy and Earth-healing solutions company. The company is owned and controlled by the Seneca Nation of Indians, who have tasked it with profitably and equitably delivering innovative renewable energy solutions that heal the Earth.

In his spare time, he pulls his son around in a trailer behind his ebike, works in the garden, and tries to bring media attention to the rolling disaster that is the Chevron oil refinery in Richmond. 

Matt has worked as a nonprofit executive in clean energy, climate policy, and journalism for over a decade, focusing on the near-term social and economic impacts of climate change. Matt earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from UC Berkeley.

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