It is easy to get bogged down when you fight global warming — be it from new bad news about the Greenland Ice Sheet melting faster than expected or from the staggeringly slow pace at which many of our local, state, and federal governments are working to achieve real global warming solutions. There are days when it would be easy to say that, “we can’t do it,” “i think we have waited to long,” and “the opposition is too strong.”

The feeling of disempowerment, like you can’t ever make a difference no matter how hard you try, over your effect on global warming is our movements biggest enemy because disempowered people are inactive and complicit to the ‘business as usual’ mentality.

Last Wednesday, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network held its first in a series of five activist trainings designed to empower and educate citizens so they can not only be effective in their efforts to fight global warming, but also be leaders for others in the movement. The Climate Organizing Leadership Development (COLD) training series first session attracted about 15 activists to the Friends of the Earth Office in downtown DC to learn about the history of social movements and how our fight to stop global warming is part of a long line of successful and powerful social movements.

Attendees of the first COLD training were very impressed with quality of the presentation and the straightforward and well-informed training. The training featured a lecture and interactive breakout sessions.

There are four more COLD training sessions left that anyone can sign up for. Get Active. Get Organized. Get COLD!