WEEK 34: KANSAS

A Kansan Inspired by the Arctic

US Arctic
Our Arctic Nation
Published in
8 min readOct 11, 2016

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By Dr. Trisha Shrum, Co-Founder of DearTomorrow, environmental economics and behavioral economics researcher, and native of Inman, Kansas

Image Credit: Trisha Shrum

We had just set up camp. Before I went to my tent for the night, I went into my bag to fish out my headlamp. It was 10pm and there was a gorgeous sunset. I opened my book to read and realized that the sun wasn’t actually going to set. I sat with the superfluous flashlight in my hand and stared at the Lapland river which ran by my tent, letting the golden magic of the midnight sun sink in for a few moments.

Image Credit: Trisha Shrum

This was my first trip to the Arctic Circle. I traveled alongside a fellow Kansan, Dustin Swepston, a college roommate, and his partner/wife Eva Troell, a Swede who — to Dustin’s good fortune — had been sent to Inman, Kansas, where Dustin grew up, as a high school exchange student. I can only imagine how she felt going from Stockholm to a small town on the western edge of the Kansas Flint Hills. I first met Dustin and Eva in Lawrence, where Dustin and I went to college at the University of Kansas. Before I moved to the relatively liberal and cosmopolitan college town of Lawrence, I grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City.

In the winter, the vast plains of Kansas covered with snow are quite reminiscent of the Arctic tundra. In the summer, they both come alive with wildflowers and grasses. And while I found the warmest, loveliest people in both Kansas and Sweden, the culture is quite different. The conservative “pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps” mentality of Kansas is quite different from the impressive social safety net and incredibly family-friendly policies of Sweden. I sat at a dinner party of Swedes asking me how we Americans could survive on just two weeks of vacation each year as if we were subsisting on breadcrumbs. I think they had a point.

When I arrived in Uppsala and told Dustin and Eva I wanted to go hiking in the Arctic, they took my request very seriously. Dustin is an avid outdoorsman and Eva is always up for an adventure. And they wanted to show me the very best of the Swedish Arctic.

Image Credit: Trisha Shrum

Traveling to the remote corners of the Arctic is not quick or easy. Before we arrived in Lapland, we endured a fourteen-hour train ride, a four-hour bus ride, and a half-an-hour helicopter ride later. Only then were we able to begin our trek through the Laplands. It was one of the most incredible treks of my life. I drank frigid glacier meltwater straight from a stream, met a lovely native Sami woman who sold delicious homemade bread to trekkers and learned a bit about their culture, and killed fourteen mosquitoes with a single swat of my hand. The Sami woman laughed as we hunkered down with bug nets and swatted away the hoards of mosquitoes and joked, “Those are our pets.” Reaching the summit of a hill, we would overlook valleys dotted with Sami huts and framed with winding streams.

Image Credit: Trisha Shrum

Six years later, I was invited to give a plenary talk on climate change and renewable energy at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland. They wanted to bring in young ‘rising stars’ in climate and energy to speak at the plenary session. They recognized that to make progress on climate change, energy, and Arctic policy, we have to engage and develop leaders in every generation at every stage of our careers. Remembering the beauty I had experienced that first trip, I desperately wanted to return to the Arctic. But this time the decision to travel the distance was more difficult. No longer the lone traveler meeting up with old friends, I was the mother to a 10-month year old daughter. I hesitated, as this would be the first time I was away from her. Yet, the opportunity to present at an important conference and the memories of the beauty of the place beckoned me.

Little did I know that these three days would change my life.

With the President of Iceland in the front row, and behind him an audience of nearly 1500 participants from around the world, I delivered a talk about how behavioral science and cutting edge research on climate communication has brought new insights on how to reach people and drive support for renewable energy and climate change policy. Instead of using traditional environmentalist messages about polar bears and melting icecaps, we must instead understand how to connect climate change with people’s most deeply held priorities. Information that is deemed irrelevant never enters into our decisions. It is only when you use the language and frames that are relevant to people’s lives that you are able to truly communicate in a way that will be heard.

Image Credit: Trisha Shrum

Speaking in front of the largest audience in my life was incredible, but it was listening to a talk from Christiana Figueres that will forever be remembered. At that time, Ms. Figueres was the head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. She told the audience that she was haunted by a dream where the faces of children from the future looked at her and asked, wide-eyed, “You knew about climate change. What did you do?” In her position, Ms. Figueres has done more than just about anyone to address global climate change. To hear that she is driven by her understanding that the citizens of the future will look back and hold us responsible for our action and inaction sparked a very powerful idea.

On the flight back to Boston, I stared out the window and watched Iceland slip behind the plane and thought of my own daughter, who I missed so much after three days away. The words from Christiana Figueres echoed through my mind. What would I say to my own child? What would I want her to know about my own battle on climate change both within myself and with the world? It is hard to take on a problem that is so big when we are each so small. It is hard to grapple with the sad realities of the future without losing hope. Right there on the plane, I pulled out my laptop and wrote her a letter that I would give to her in the year 2050 when she would be grown, maybe with her own children. As I wrote I realized that all the work I do to fight climate change was for her. And for that reason, I knew that I could never give up. Writing that letter shifted my perspective on climate change. I saw that it was not about me or polar bears or “future” generations. It was about the next generation. It was about my daughter. She relies on me to protect her and I would do everything in my power to give her the best chance for a beautiful future.

I wrote that letter nearly two years ago, and much has happened since then — both in my own life, in the Arctic, and in the global fight against climate change.

Image Credit: DearTomorrow.org

This idea of writing letters to those who will inherit the climate we shape is a powerful and inspiring act, and it inspired me to co-found an organization called DearTomorrow.

DearTomorrow invites people to send open letters, photos and videos about climate change to loved ones living in the future. They submit these online, where we are building an archive of messages in to preserve this important moment — a pivotal one in our history — for future generations.

This idea that was born on a plane just leaving the Arctic Circle by a Kansan far from home is now growing into an innovative, diverse community that is changing the conversation about climate change. Instead of talking about climate change as a partisan issue that divides, we are talking about it as parents who are doing the best we can for our kids. Republican, Democrat, Arctic, or Kansan — every parent loves their kids. The drive to protect our own children is one of the most universal values in the world.

Image Credit: Trisha Shrum

To date, nearly fifteen thousand people have visited our website to read these letters and we’ve reached millions more through social media. And this is just the beginning. We hope that the work that we are doing, alongside the millions fighting for a safer climate future, will give our children the chance to look out upon the incredible glaciers and winding rivers of the Arctic under the midnight sun and be inspired to build their own legacy for the generation that will follow.

Image Credit: Trisha Shrum

About the Author: Trisha Shrum is co-founder and co-director of DearTomorrow and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Colorado Earth Lab. She recently earned her Ph.D. in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School specializing in behavioral science and environmental economics. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Science and a B.S. in Biology from the University of Kansas and a Masters in Environmental Science at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Trisha has been studying and analyzing climate change policy for nearly a decade. She was born and raised in Olathe, Kansas. You can email her at trisha@deartomorrow.org email and follow her on Twitter via @DearTmrw and @HarshTruism.

#OurArcticNation

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US Arctic
Our Arctic Nation

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