Through six dynamic edutainment videos (approximately 20-minutes each), the #LaterNoMore project will showcase innovative solutions for each of the six main challenge areas contributing to climate change. These videos will be delivered through a series of platforms to reach a broad spectrum of the general population.

Each video will have three features:

:: What’s Up?
It will snapshot the current state of affairs regarding total emissions from its topic source (current level and trajectory), examine the commitments made by governments and business, and name the important blocks. Corporate Knights’ Earth Index will benchmark progress year over year. 

:: Solutions!
People are best inspired when they see viable solutions clearly presented. They cannot be expected to buy into what they cannot envision. The solutions will inspire audiences by focussing on 4 or 5 of the most intriguing and promising technical innovations designed to dramatically reduce emissions. This part isn’t intended to be comprehensive but only to cherry pick exciting innovations that give a compelling picture of a way forward.

:: A Call to Action
Each episode builds to its apex, imploring viewers to become part of the solution with their own commitments and actions, showing citizens how to become agents of change in meaningful ways. Direct connections to action will be offered and every resource will be committed to making the calls to action powerful, one-of-a-kind media events. They will lace together proven communications techniques, moving rapidly back and forth amongst different types of media spots, animation, expert information, cartoons, celebrity spots, humour, etc.

Multiple Audiences
Multiple Delivery Platforms

The videos will be powerful and engaging, but what’s truly important is to reach large numbers, and for those people to be moved to actually do something. The videos will be designed enhance any communications environment that they are a part of… to be an effective focus for any learning program on any platform. The potential audiences are numerous, but #LaterNoMore will have its best impact on four specific audiences. These are strategically targeted because they have the capacity to reach large numbers and, more importantly, they align with the specific expertise and experience of our campaign partners. A significant emissions reduction by these groups will most definitely have an impact, while at the same time, encouraging engagement in their communities and support for positive changes by government and industry can push things over the top on all fronts!

Marketing plans are being developed to assure delivery to these four audiences:

:: Lesson Plans for Students will be created for students aged 13 to 17. These will build on the amazing 8-year collaboration with Learning for a Sustainable Future (LSF) which has already engaged 6,500 students in a dynamic annual 8-month program called Water Docs at School Action Projects. These #LaterNoMore episodes will form the backbone of lesson plans to foster hands-on action and filmmaking projects by students at the secondary level and will be marketed online to LSF’s 5000-teacher database across Canada.

:: #LaterNoMore Online Campaign
Online networks will be courted through an interactive website and an aggressively marketed social media campaign. Creativity in programming and design will serve the essential purposes of the whole project. An online archive of supporting information will evolve through ongoing participation by users, similar to Wikipedia.

:: Film Festival and Film Screening Events
Film Festivals represent a huge market worldwide, with most attendees representing the group we are after – knowledgeable, concerned, but not doing very much. Ecologos/Water Docs knows from 10 years of producing the Water Docs Film Festival in Toronto that this market can be successfully tapped. Festival programmers are always interested in great, free programming. One of the evenings of any festival could showcase an episode video and then have a post-screening discussion with the audience, whether in-person or online.

:: Community Town Hall Meetings
Another strategic vehicle for reaching large numbers, the aim is to inspire at least 12 volunteer groups and organizations across Canada to produce #LaterNoMore Town Hall Meetings on their own and in their own communities in 2022-2023. A typical evening event in a local venue and/or online works its way through a themed documentary film, a #LaterNoMore episode, a facilitated discussion, connections to real local action and a social occasion. Town Hall Meetings will be marketed through national networks that reach into the community level – such as the Canadian Library Association, the Canadian Association of Community Foundations, and the CAN-Rac network of 160 environmental NGOs.

Why?

Communications and outreach techniques of the past 50 years have failed because most people are intimidated by the enormity of the climate challenge. They often don’t feel connected to the doom and gloom images and messaging or understand the practical implications of dry lists of facts and figures.  The endless repetition of this narrative leaves people feeling disengaged.

Research shows that the two-thirds of society who believe global warming is real and dangerous are doing very little about it in their daily lives. They don’t feel empowered to act.

We are in the most critical race humanity has ever faced – to protect and restore the earth’s atmosphere sufficiently to maintain and support a reasonable future for all living beings.

We know there are ways to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. Today we already have solutions to reduce the emissions of carbon, methane, and refrigerants, but we are not employing these conditions at scale. Some of the best ways are nature’s carbon sinks, like bodies of water, forests, living soil, and wetlands. Unfortunately, these are all severely under attack by the three PS – pollution, poisoning, and pavement.

In order to stop, and indeed reverse global warming, we must work in three connected areas: supporting nature’s carbon sinks, reducing sources of emissions, and improving society for all.

We are in the make-or-break decade where we can scale up actions to make a significant difference. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change put in their Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C: Every bit of warming matters. Every year matters. Every choice matters.

A Strategy That Makes Sense

Research says that the six top emission sources are energy production, food and agriculture, the destruction of natural carbon sinks, carbon-driven transportation, the heating and cooling of buildings, and our manufacturing techniques. These areas are all locked in dangerous practices that were designed for a previous era.

Many promising developments are emerging in all six problem areas to stabilize and then begin to lower emissions. Ultimately, these need broad-based public buy-in as well as policy support if we are to realize their critically important potential. The #LaterNoMore campaign, therefore, aims to win over large numbers of people – especially from the two-thirds who know climate change is real but do little about it. The #LaterNoMore strategy is to convert as many as possible from that group of concerned onlookers into active reformers.

This #LaterNoMore strategy is fresh and promising. It is an innovative and powerful form of communication to contribute to and grow the climate protection movement.

COORDINATING PARTNERS: