For many of our petitions and letters, we have provided sample templates. However, it is more effective to write a personal letter using bits and pieces of the sample letters and petitions we have provided.

These letters are the starting points for selling all of the reasons for the target recipient to follow their highest and most enlightened self-interests in ending escalating global warming. These letters also should contain some specifics on what you want to happen to resolve global warming.

Much like a job applicant who does a cover letter to a potential employer, you should show you’ve taken the time to learn something about them and their business. (This target recipient detail can be fairly basic and is easily found via the Internet.)

Here are our suggestions for essential personalization to get your letters read:

• Spend the first part of the letter connecting with the recipient before requesting desired actions. In your introduction, answer the reader’s question: Why should you care about this? If the reader feels that sense of risk and responsibility your message conveys, there is a much better chance they’ll continue to read with more interest. If you put these the other way around, you would lose the reader in most cases because they may think they have heard it all before.

• Offer some positive strokes to the recipient where possible. Who doesn't like hearing a compliment?

• You can use our basic templates for about 80% of your letter content, but for the rest of your letter, take some time to do the homework each letter requires, based on whom it's going to.

• Always request that the target recipient publicly expresses what they are doing or will do to help enact the essential new global warming reduction laws, and that you will interpret no public statement on the issue to be inaction.

• At the end of the letter, be sure to include a unique personal closing, your name, and your contact information. You may be surprised by who responds to your personal appeal.

• If your target recipient responds, don't forget to send them a thank you note and let us know as well.

Keep in mind that if you're going to go to the trouble of writing to any target recipient, give it the best possible shot you can. Remember that personal letters are far more effective than emails. If you are emailing, always use unique, non-trite subject titles so that “gatekeeper” support staff do not use automatic email filters to delete your expression of deep concern.

Once the target recipient you’ve contacted takes a public stand against escalating global warming and/or uses their influence on the world’s politicians to help enact the new global warming reduction laws, you can move on to contacting other target recipients.

Do not worry if they try to act like they're doing something and are really doing nothing. Once it becomes known that they are publicly saying they are doing something for global warming, it is highly probable the media and other watchdog individuals will verify that this is not just another greenwashing public relations tactic. If the recipients you are targeting do not act sufficiently to use their power and effective influence to help resolve this immediate extreme threat to our common well-being, move to our Action Step 2 in Level Four of the Job One Plan.

And finally, please share your best sample letters and any successful responses you get with us. We will post them on our website in our sample letters area so other people can use them as well. To send us your most successful letters, email them to [email protected].