A barbecue may not be the first place you imagine making a difference on climate change,

but according to Caroline Spears, that's exactly where you want to be.

So if you show up and you request a meeting with your state senator or your city council member,

they'll usually take it.

And you have that opportunity to ask them about recent votes that they've taken,

ask them about their plans to self climate change, and that type of pressure is incredibly impactful. They'll be thinking about that conversation

next time they take a vote on public transit spending, and next time they take a vote on walkable

cities. So even after someone's elected, don't let them off the hook. Go hang out. Go to their

barbecue, their fundraiser barbecue,

go to their office hours, go to their town halls, and continue asking them how they're improving

on their plans to solve climate change. That has a really big impact. That's Caroline, and she

runs an organization called Climate Cabinet. At first, Caroline was working at a solar job, but she started volunteering

for candidates for office, and before long, that side hustle became her full-time career.

It's easy to forget that politics is made up of people, people who we elect, that have office

hours and town halls and events you can attend. Yeah, that's right. And what

Caroline realized is that those people play such a big role and that we have an opportunity

and a responsibility to influence them and the kinds of decisions they make. In politics, too,

it comes back to that ever-present question. What can I do to address the climate crisis?

And today in our third and final episode of our mini-series, we ask, what can I do politically

on climate change? The question we tend to ask about politics is the simplest, which is,

who should I vote for? But there's a whole lot more to our political engagement than casting a ballot a few times

a year.

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