About
The One World One Vote campaign is a simple initiative intended to give politicians a groundswell of support for bold action on the climate.
Specifically, it is a pledge that the climate will be our number one priority when voting in the next election—that no matter what our traditional political affiliation or pet issue, this one comes first.
The OWOV campaign does not come from any political party or climate organization. Indeed, it has no formal organization behind it. (If I could have kept it anonymous, I would have.) And it proposes no specific solutions—it simply says that we want this issue to be #1 on the agenda.
To learn more about the principles behind OWOV, read this.
Origins
When the idea for OWOV came to me, back in 2014, I dismissed it as being too simple or too obvious. I assumed that someone else would do it. But, for years, this idea kept knocking at my door.
It seemed to solve a lot of problems.
Wildfires, floods, and heatwaves focus attention on the climate crisis momentarily—then we get distracted by the next shiny thing. Angry protests make headlines but alienate many. Pleas for us to act, such as “39 Ways to Save the Planet,” give us so much choice that we do nothing.
More dangerously, predictions about a cataclysmic future are too scary to contemplate. And yet growing anxiety about the crisis, often unconscious, if not addressed or channeled positively, can become toxic.
But what if we had a simple way to show that finding solutions is important to us?
What if we could do something positive and unifying, choosing hope over fear and action over denial?
What if we could raise this issue—which will affect everything we hold dear—to be number one in our attention?
And what if we could force leaders to take bold action—simply because they can’t avoid the sound of our collective voice?
Getting Started
This past summer, I took some time for reflection, and in that time, began to feel as if OWOV had a will of its own, and my job was just to stop stopping it.
I began to ask for help from people involved in climate issues from the ‘left’ and the ‘right,’ from business leaders and from agitators, from marketing experts, and from a lot of people who care about this issue but, like me, had been doing almost nothing about it. Their advice has helped to make the campaign simpler and sharper, and political but not partisan.
As the campaign took shape, a curious thing began to happen: I started evaluating how I spent my time based on this one issue. In other words, the process of saying to others that the climate is my number one priority began to make it my number one priority. I began to say ‘no’ to other things, in order to say ‘yes’ to this.
OWOV is not asking you to do that.
It is simply asking you to make one simple pledge: that the climate will be your number one priority in the next election (or, if you can’t vote, that climate is your number one priority, period).
If taking the pledge also inspires you to become more involved, great. But that’s not the point. Just take the pledge. Display the logo. And see what conversations happen.
What comes next?
The UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) begins on Oct 31, 2021 and is considered our last chance to avert catastrophe.
Let’s make sure that from right now until the end of the conference on November 12, 2021, at least, political leaders have no doubt how important this is to us.
And then let’s remind them of that in every election cycle—whatever kind of election, whenever that is for you.
There will, of course, be big debates about the how, i.e., which specific policies, rules, incentives, investments, and lifestyle changes are needed, and who should commit to doing what by when. We certainly won’t find all the right solutions right away.
But let’s make sure that everyone is talking about this, rather than just worrying about it (or trying not to think about it).
Let’s make sure leaders know how many of us believe this really is the most serious and urgent issue facing humanity, and that we will vote accordingly.
And let’s make sure that leaders are jumping over each other to demonstrate the boldness of their vision and will maintain a commitment to protect life on earth.
Why?
Because everything else comes second.
Martin Boroson
October 1, 2021
THANK YOU to the many people who advised me on the creation of this initiative, or agreed, in advance of launch, to share it with their communities; these wonderful people include Chris Duncan, Andrew Dood, Mike Zeidler, Emily Gould, Barbara Boroson, Mark Piatelli, Taiso Byran Bartow, Carmel Moore, Jennifer Garvey Berger, Nienke Merbis, and Doug Paxton.