By Dr. Michael Shank

In my work this year with cities and counties that are focused on climate action and sustainability, there’s been one slide that resonates the most, one that’s the most photographed, and one they keep coming back to and requesting. It has to do with keeping it real – or R.E.A.L. – in this movement and momentum-building work.

R.E.A.L., as the image above illustrates, suggests that we should be focused on, and storytelling with, real people who have everyday needs, while outlining actualizable visions and scaling their leverageable actions. I’ll explain what I mean by this below; it’s a pretty simple formula.

First, focus on real people.

There’s so much opportunity to work with real people in our community. That can include us, of course, as practitioners or policymakers in climate and sustainability spaces. We are real people, too. But often, climate and sustainability communication platforms for local governments are missing the real people in the community who are either doing the work already or being asked to do the work.

That’s a missed opportunity to hold up the mirror to nature, amplify and celebrate the people who are taking the actions we want them to take, and tap into social norming and community-building potential. People want to be a part of something bigger, especially in this work. Observe how much traction this LinkedIn post is getting regarding knowing your neighbors as a climate solution. People are hungry for this. Let’s provide the space for this larger neighborhood. With real people we can build a real movement.

Second, focus on everyday needs.

This is a must. We’re not tracking often enough with our community’s everyday needs, like high energy bills, unaffordable housing and healthcare, inflation and cost of living increases, complicated or costly commuting, and more. But let’s start here and then go from there – versus the reverse, which is what we often do, leading with climate and sustainability first.

This is how we build trust and how we build relationships, by starting with what people care about. Climate and sustainability naturally fit into all of these categories, of course, and impact every single one of these everyday issues. But we can get to the climate connection after we’ve offered a legitimate and authentic way of addressing everyday needs. At a time when trust in government is low, this is an essential step in building trust with our communities.

Third, focus on actualizable visions.

What can be done in the next few months, or year, should be our focus. That’s the visioning that’s needed in our work: efforts that can be actualized within the mental planning horizon which most people are using. Not 2030, 2040 or 2050.

The good news is that much of the work we’re doing in local government – encouraging weatherization, composting, solar power, heat pumps, building and transport electrification, plant-forward diets and more – can materialize within this year or next. So, let’s focus on holding up the vision for real people on how this year’s work can help address this year’s everyday needs. Not in ten years, but this year or next year. That’s an actualizable vision that motivates people to act.

Fourth, focus on leverageable actions.

Once an individual action happens in one community by a real person, we can leverage that action to inspire more people within the same community to take a similar action. One action is leverageable to scale other actions, which is how we build momentum and a movement within our cities and counties.

Never let a good action go to waste and always think about how to leverage one action by a real person to inspire others to do the same. And a local government platform – virtual or place-based – can help by mirroring back all the actions taken across the community. Illustrating how one step forward is inspiring a domino effect across the neighborhood.

Now, some examples of real people with everyday needs, actualizable visions, and leverageable actions.

First, a recent example is my trip to Ukraine last month. My posts on social media were all about real people across the country – hospital owners and doctors, housing managers and school administrators – who were dealing with everyday needs like energy security given Russia’s continued assaults on energy grids. With decentralized solar power on their roofs, battery storage in their basements, or heat pumps in their yards – all actualizable visions that came to fruition this year or in recent years – they were resilient amid frequent blackouts and shocks to the grid. Now, each one of these actions is being leveraged to build a movement of energy security and independence across Ukraine.

Second, an example more common in America. A community leader is weatherizing their house and wanting to story-tell the process to inspire friends and family to do the same. Here’s a real person with everyday needs – a high energy burden and bill, based on a drafty house that can’t keep the warm or cool air well contained within the housing envelope – that is pursuing a vision actualizable this year and then leveraging that action to motivate others in the neighborhood to make a similar move. While this example is generalized above, my colleagues and I are working right now with communities across America to tell exactly these kinds of stories.

There are plenty of additional examples that could fill these pages and hopefully they’ll get posted in the comment sections below and inspire others to do the same.

Keeping it R.E.A.L. is a simple formula. No one is suggesting that this is rocket science; rather, it’s a convenient and memorable packaging of things that can and should be scaled. In my workshops with cities and counties this year, there was a strong consensus that we can and must do a better job working with real people and their everyday needs, by focusing on actualizable visions, and then leveraging those actions to build momentum and a movement. It's time we kept it real.

Michael Shank is an adjunct professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.