What can you do if someone you know – or an entire town – isn’t on board with renewable energy? This was the dilemma facing The West Kootenay Eco Society in Trail, a small city in British Columbia. The Eco Society wanted to gain support for an energy pledge, but couldn’t gain traction within the community. Until the Eco Society’s Executive Director got the idea (from a podcast) to send volunteers door-to-door, to have personal conversations about climate solutions. To date, they’ve had over a thousand conversations and they’ve proven that a simple discussion can yield a lot of action.

Guests: Montana Burgess, Rebecca Richards, Kade Moroney

Calls to Action

If you want to give deep canvassing a try, check out the West Kootenay Eco Society, the Deep Canvass Institute, and the People’s Action Campaign
If there isn’t a deep canvassing campaign near you, but there’s a local organization you think could use the technique, reach out to them and the New Conversation Initiative, who helped the West Kootenay Eco Society develop their script

Check out our Calls to Action archive for all of the actions we've recommended on the show. Send us your ideas or feedback with our Listener Mail Form. Sign up for our newsletter here. And follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

This episode of How to Save a Planet was produced by Anna Ladd. The rest of our reporting and producing team includes Kendra Pierre-Louis, Rachel Waldholz, Hannah Chinn, Daniel Ackerman, and Meg Driscoll. Our supervising producer is Katelyn Bogucki. Our editor is Caitlin Kenney. Sound design and mixing by Peter Leonard with original music from Peter Leonard and Emma Munger. Our fact checker for this episode was Nick DelRose.

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Canvassing for Climate Action: Here's How to Make it Work