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Rapid Response Action Team Activates

Mentone, CA, United States Dramatic Nighttime Forest Fire in California Photo by Soly Moses via pexels.com

Fires, floods, droughts, storms… it seems like every day there is a new, extreme, and unnatural disaster barreling into people’s lives. Yet the media and those in power avoid linking these events to climate change and the burning of fossil fuels. That needs to stop now!

flooded street

Scientist Rebellion Turtle Island’s answer is RRAT, the Rapid Response Action Team. RRAT was created to fight the silence and the mis & disinformation that divert attention from the truth: this is climate change! To do this we need to be making the connections between catastrophe, climate and cause whenever bad things happen. RRAT is creating the library of videos, press releases, facts and talking points we can use in this fight for truth and we have decades of science predicting these exact events to back us up.

Rapid Response Action Team: A CALL TO ACTION

We call on all our members especially those with knowledge and experience in the climactic, social and economic drivers of these catastrophes, we need your help in building this repository of information and media assets. It’s critical that we have pre-prepared material so we can respond immediately, as and when these events happen. Later is too late in the news cycle controlled by big money algorithms.

RRAT actions can include video, photo and written assets that the SRTI Comms Team can use to bring attention to the particular crisis. These can

  • offer meaningful responses (evacuation or health warnings for example)
  • point a finger at those responsible for the situation (broadly – fossil fuel & extractive industries, government policies)
  • promote our work as activists (calls for protests and direct action at villains).

Our calls to action could include asking that people sign the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to make the threat to life on Earth, and one of its most critical solutions, absolutely clear.

These RRAT actions can be serious or amusing, theatrical or documentarian, scientific or emotional, visual or written – you can absolutely be creative!

Rapid Response Action Team logo for Scientist Rebellion Turtle Island

This button will take you to a page with more info, and a secure survey to let us know the ways you want to be involved.

WHAT WOULD RRATs DO?

You are preparing these materials in advance of events. We all know from experience what the fires, floods, storms and droughts look like and how they impact us and our planet. Write your content in the present tense as the materials will be used in the first hours/days of the cataclysm. Our Comms team will use the material for press releases to mainstream media and also widely on social media and our newsletter, emails and website.

Narrative: tell us the story (What happened? Who is affected? Who has/needs ot respond? Who is responsible? What can people do to help? What is the cause? What is the science?)

Here’s a simple outline to help you get started:

  • The problem – just a few sentences summarizing the problem your action is responding to.
  • The villain – who is the primary responsible party for the crisis you’re responding to?
  • The solution – (big picture! #EndFossilFuels!, #TheScienceIsClear, #ClimateJusticeNow! Etc…)

Please provide references for any factual information you include in your narrative (the whole point is that we are scientists, so academic credibility matters). For videos please use portrait format, and don’t worry about editing if you’re not a pro; we can do that for you.

  • For fires we could look at causes like drought, deforestation, water scarcity, or the air pollution and health impacts of the smoke. Post fires, the biggest danger is rain and the mud and landslides that are triggered on denuded ground.
  • For floods we could point to changes in rainfall, weather whiplash, poor infrastructure planning, and the difficulty of remediation. Flood prone areas are also expanding not decreasing, not all will be able to adapt or mitigate.
  • In coastal areas we have sea-level rise and massive storms wiping out whole communities, talking points include rises in water temperature, melting ice and glaciers.
  • With drought we can look at water scarcity caused by agriculture or the profligate use of water for lawns, swimming pools and massive data centers in arid regions like the south-west USA.
  • For heat waves, we can look at the death tolls and disproportionate impact on the poor and elderly.
  • Non-humans are also massively impacted and the impact on animals, plants, birds and fish often go unmentioned. They need us to be their voice too.
Flooded street with cars. Image from Action Network Pexels library.
hurricane - Helene STS-115 90 kt - 17 September 2006 - Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-115 crew member - Public Domain

RRAT Responds to Los Angeles Fires, January 2025

In the past 2 weeks SRTI members have made awesome responses with significant impact. Our social media posts are going viral, with well over 100K views.

We pulled these together quickly, to respond in real time. For future (sadly predictable) events, we’d love to have more prepared content ready-to-go, so we need only add in the details of the specific climate-crisis amplified disaster.

We’ve also seen how differently the media is responding to the LA fires than they did to the back-to-back hurricanes in October. While the storms affected many thousands more people, the misinformation negating climate impact was huge. With the LA fires we see, perhaps truly for the first time, the media connecting with scientists and making the climate link to the massive, ongoing damage. SR member Peter Kalmus wrote RRAT pieces for the NY Times and The Guardian. He was widely interviewed by both progressive outlets like Democracy Now! and traditional ones like CBS news.

What’s next for LA Fires RRAT?

We need immediate videos and science talking points on the likelihood of mud and landslides following the LA fires. Join RRAT to share your expertise!


Ready to be part of RRAT?

You joined Scientist Rebellion Turtle Island for a reason: you have the privilege and education to understand the cause of the climate crisis and that means you also have a duty to ACT. SRTI RRAT offers all our members the perfect opportunity to step up and speak out. As the media, especially in North America, is more and more controlled by fewer voices, and as facts are openly debated, we face another critical moment in the fight for a livable future. Please follow the lead shown by Peter Kalmus, Greg Spooner, Trish Price, Jeff Beeman, Michelle Merrill and the other SRTI members preparing documents, videos and assets for the Rapid Response Action team today.

Rapid Response Action Team logo for Scientist Rebellion Turtle Island

This button will take you to a page with more info, and a secure survey to let us know the ways you want to be involved.

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. Troy Horton

    Beautifully done. Not sure who is responsible for this, but great work!

    1. srtiadmin

      Suzanne wrote most of the text. Destiny created the clever RRAT image. Michelle assembled the blog post (headers, formatting and images). Like everything in SRTI, it’s best when it’s a team effort!

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