Contact your policymakers!

Take action and get involved in the fight against climate change! Convince your politicians to create a climate action plan for their state.

What is a climate action plan (CAP)? 

A climate action plan is a strategic plan for measuring, monitoring, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions within a specific town, city, county, state, or nation. A climate action plan typically includes detailed policies to ensure emissions are reduced and may also provide plans for ways in which a city can adapt to the impacts of climate change.

How you can get involved 

1. Check to see if your city has a climate action plan or CAP. You can check via the map below ↓. If your city does have one, see if it has been adopted by lawmakers and if the plan has been implemented.
2. Email your elected officials. If your city does not have a climate action plan, or it has not been adopted or implemented contact your local officials and ask them: Why no CAP? If you need help, download our handy email template. Modify the text inside the brackets to personalize your message and remove the brackets. Feel free to keep or remove our campaign hashtags at the end of your email.
3. Inspire others by sharing your engagement.
   • Take photo(s) of your letters to your officials or other climate actions, then:
     • Share it on your social media, tag us @whatsthepancampaign, and include our campaign hashtags #Whatstheplan #NoCap? #WhyNoCap
     • Share it with us via email at  whatstheplancampaign@gmail.com and we might feature it on our campaign’s social media platforms. 
4. If your city has a climate action plan and is meeting its goals, congrats! Your city is a leader in the fight against climate change, but many CAPs are lacking when it comes to climate justice. Check to see if your city is taking climate justice seriously.
5. Other ways to get involved: share with your own university, get your friends involved, and use our toolkit for starting your own What’s the Plan? Campaign.

Click on the marker to see additional details about your city.

Red = No CAP
Yellow = Has a plan, but it has not been adopted.
Green = Has a plan, and it has been adopted.
Blue = No CAP but taking action

The data collected for this map may be slightly out of date. If you have new information about climate action in your city that you would like us to add, contact us.

The evidence of climate change is all around us. Across the U.S. people are experiencing a variety of impacts from a changing climate, such as more extreme weather events, shifting seasons, heat waves, extreme cold, drought, wildfires, flooding, and more. In the past few decades, it has become apparent that cities and states are particularly poised to take action because they have greater control over regulations, buildings, and infrastructure, however, differing political views present a challenge to the adoption and implementation of climate action planning. Although USA TODAY found that 600 cities in the U.S. have adopted CAPs, they struggle with the implementation of these plans as they are simply “aspirational.”

More than just action, what about justice?

Background about the original idea

What’s the Plan? is a national marketing campaign currently being developed by MPA students enrolled in Marketing for Nonprofits and Public Policy, taught by Dr. Danielle Eiseman. The campaign’s focus is to increase civic engagement in climate action planning across the United States, with a focus on cities facing the highest risk that have not taken action toward climate mitigation and adaptation. 

The original idea for the campaign was developed by three MPA students in Dr. Eiseman’s Introduction to Program Evaluation course. The students were asked to tell a story with data to inspire change previously collected by Dr. Eiseman. The students suggested a national campaign to inspire the public to ask their elected officials what they are doing about the predicted risks associated with climate change, as research shows many highly populated cities are not prepared, as shown in this unpublished research by Dr. Eiseman and colleagues.