Climate Action Teams or CATS — Introduction
Fields of Action Post #16.0 CATS are Crucial for Overcoming Climate Change
As we continue to explore how those of us in The Climate Movement can be together enough, our sixth characteristic/imperative/goal, this post introduces a new Subseries on Climate Action Teams or CATS.
Our vision, purpose, and Major Goal are big, much too big for an individual, or a civil society group, or a CAT, or an organization, or a coalition, or a climate-friendly business, or even a nation. That’s why we must grow the Climate Movement into the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world.
But our Movement can’t be made up of just individuals and environmental/conservation/climate organizations, even individuals connected to such organizations. Nor can we get the job done through existing civil society/volunteer organizations, associations, the organized units of faith communities, coalitions, or climate-friendly businesses.
In short, all of the ways we can be together enough that we have explored thus far will be insufficient for us to play our part in creating speed and scale, and to do so while establishing justice and enhancing wellbeing for everyone and everything.
To stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better, to make the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful and our future come faster, our Movement also must be made up of volunteer Teams.
With Climate Action Teams or CATS we can be all that we need to be: big and broad and active enough, passionate enough, deep enough, dynamic enough, organic and strategic enough, together enough, and long enough. Without Teams, we won’t. It’s that simple.
CATS meet regularly to support each other in our sustained commitment to collective action over time to achieve our Major Goal.
As such, CATS do three basic things:
1) We meet.
2) We support.
3) We act.
CATS are essential to having us come together regularly. And coming together regularly, being together enough, is key to having us be all that we need to be, both as individuals and as the Movement as a whole.
And boy do we need the support.
When we meet we do one simple thing to support one another right off the bat. We break what I call the Climate Talk Taboo.
In the US this Taboo may be the worst, given how opponents have successfully made talk of climate change controversial, falsely framing it as a “political” subject, as in “Let’s not talk politics at the dinner table.”
In a Yale/George Mason poll from Fall 2025 we find that only one in five (20%) say they discuss global warming with family and friends either “every day” (1%), “a few times a week” (5%), or “a few times a month” (15%).
But recently this taboo has become more toxic, as hope-stealing Climate Silencers have not simply made climate an uncomfortable topic of conversation. They have added public intimidation, legal action, and threats of persecution.
Friends, it’s simple. We won’t make it if we don’t break the Climate Talk Taboo and defy the hope-stealing Climate Silencers. We won’t make it if we aren’t together enough through CATS.
Just like Olympic athletes have family, coaches, trainers, backers, and teammates to support them, we need encouragement and help and cooperation from others we see regularly. Without support from other Climate Action Artist-Athletes, most of us simply won’t make it. We won’t be all we need to be for as long as we need to be without the support of others who are on the same journey. We must help one another to use all that we are in service of something greater than ourselves — because you will never be fully yourself until you do.
We must help one another to live in and live out our Ten Movement Values: love, justice, beauty, freedom, creativity, wisdom, pragmatism, non-violence, sustainability, and success.
We meet so we can support so we can act — act until the job is done. We meet so we can join our gifts and abilities with the gifts of others to do more than we could alone. And in the doing and becoming we need support to see it through.
For the Climate Movement to become what it needs to be — the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world — we need Climate Action Teams. We need CATS.
Before you become a part of a CAT you must first become a part of the Climate Movement. Join us!
If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in the Olympian Fields of Action Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.