It has been a week since my hometown was ransacked by the remnants of Hurricane Ida and the need for immediate climate action has never been so clear. While you may feel hopeless after a climate disaster, it’s also an important time to call on your elected officials to take action. In this post you will find tips for identifying your elected officials at all levels, best practices for communicating with them, and sample scripts for emails or phone calls.

Finding Your Elected Officials And Their Contact Information

• Find out who your elected officials are here on Ballotpedia. You can click through to find each of their websites and contact information.
• Find your Representative’s contact information here (office phone number & link to website)
• Find your Senators’ contact information here (address, office phone number, & link to website)

Pro tip: Don’t forget about your hyper-local elected officials! Your mayor, city council, or even members of the school board should be on your list as well. Climate action at the local level is important!

Best Practices For Calls & Emails

The three most important things to include in an email, letter, or phone call to your elected officials are:

1. your name and/or where you’re calling from
2. the issue you are discussing [climate change]
3. and an action you would like the recipient to take

If you follow this simple formula it will be fairly easy to contact your elected officials and urge them to take action! Here are some other tips:

• Introduce yourself. Start by introducing yourself and saying where you are from (your zip code, city, or neighborhood).
• Be clear. Make your call to action early on and keep your message clear and brief.
• Be specific (when you can). Is there a certain bill you want your Congresspeople to pass? Is there a law you want your Governor to sign into action? Do you want your elected officials to talk about the climate crisis when discussing the impacts of climate disasters in your area? If there is a specific action that your elected official can take, call on them to do so.
• Don’t worry about saying the right thing. An email to your elected official doesn’t have to be a research paper about the impacts of climate change! Even just saying “the climate crisis is getting worse and you need to do something about it” gets your point across.

Sample Templates & Scripts

My name is [your name] and I am one of your constituents in [your zip code or city]. My community has been directly impacted by [the latest extreme weather event: fire, flood, hurricane, drought, snowstorm, etc.] and I am asking that you take urgent climate action and support [this bill]. This [event] was devastating and the climate crisis will only make disasters like this more common.

My name is [your name], I am one of your constituents in [zip code or city], and I am asking that you take urgent climate action. My community has been directly impacted by [the latest extreme weather event: flood, fire, drought, hurricane, storm, etc.]. This [event] was devastating and the climate crisis will only make disasters like this more common. I see that you are not supportive of the Infrastructure Bill or Budget Reconciliation effort – both of which allocate much needed funding to climate issues. What are you doing to protect the communities you serve from devastation like this in the future?

My name is [your name] and I am calling from [your zip code or city]. Though [the latest extreme weather event: fire, flood, hurricane, drought, snowstorm, etc.] did not affect my [town, city, state], it made the realities of the climate crisis very clear to me and many others. We need climate action now and I am asking you to vote yes on [the Infrastructure bill, the Budget Reconciliation, etc.].

Additional Resources

• Call4Climate is another great resource with call scripts and information
• Want to get companies to be more sustainable? Check out this blog post about writing to companies.