Hi there. My name is Tom and I'm one of the co-founders here at Sunski. As part of our election year partnership with Protect Our Winters Action Fund, I’m sharing some of the reasons why we do campaigns like this one here at Sunski. According to our marketing team, the result was way too long for the campaign landing page, an email newsletter or a social post. I couldn’t really argue with that, so I’ve opted for this long-form blog post. Sit back, relax, and enjoy my story about how we’re either really screwed or we’re about to save the planet.
TLDR
Sunski is donating $5 to POW AF for every pair of sunglasses sold between now and Election Day. Our goal is to generate $25,000 in support of POW’s efforts to get outdoor enthusiasts to the ballot box and elect climate champions in five crucial Senate and House races.
On Stage after the 2016 Election
Back in our early days, Sunski hosted an annual charity event in San Francisco called Outdoor SF. We came together with other like-minded brands to throw a huge party and raise money for environmental non-profits. We hosted eight great evenings before the pandemic.
The fourth edition of Outdoor SF fell on Wednesday, November 16th, 2016, just one week after the Election. I remember walking on stage to welcome 500 avid outdoor enthusiasts who were still in a state of semi shock from the results. It was hard to meet that moment with any sense of optimism. I tried to speak from the heart. There was gratitude for the community we’d fostered. There was a deep sense of fear and despair for what was to come. We didn’t know exactly what that would be but we knew that it wasn’t going to be good for the planet.
Then on January 21, 2017, all mention of the words “Climate Change” were removed from the White House website. By the time our community came together again for the 5th Annual Outdoor SF that fall, the United States had pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord. The following year in places like Bears Ears, the Trump administration began reducing national monuments by millions of acres in favor of fossil fuel mining projects.
A Reckoning for the Climate Movement
2016 was a painful reminder that the future of the planet is inextricably linked to the results of American elections. Climate may not have been on the minds of many voters in 2016, but the planet suffered nonetheless.
Like much of the wider climate movement, Sunski faced a reckoning with our own approach to our climate activism in the years that followed. By the time the 2020 Election came around, we were well on our way to donating over $500,000 to environmental non-profits through our 1% for the Planet commitment, a milestone we’ve now passed. We’d developed our own proprietary recycled frame material, removed all single-use plastic from our packaging, and joined Climate Neutral in a pledge to offset our company’s carbon footprint.
We’re proud of our sustainability work that continues to this day. But it all felt like the “old way” in the face of the consequences of our elections, equal parts safe and insufficient. We’d reached the end of planting more trees, using fewer plastic bags and tip-toeing around the obvious: if we want to have a positive impact on the future of the planet, we have to elect candidates that believe climate change is real and pledge to do something about it.
The 2020 Election felt like a reset opportunity for the climate movement, especially in our outdoor brand community. We went to the team at 1% for the Planet with a plea to provide participating brands like Sunski with more flexibility to use their charitable donations towards supporting climate policy directly rather than just the science that is getting ignored. This meant welcoming quality 501(c)4 charities into the 1% for the Planet network and allowing brands to support their initiatives to elect climate champions across the country.
We were thrilled to be granted that request. Our first campaign with a 501(c)4 was a collaboration with the Sunshine Movement in the lead up to the 2020 election. We raised over $10,000 to support their youth-driven climate lobbying efforts in Washington.
Progress is Possible when we Participate
Thanks to inspiring new voices like those of the Sunrise Movement, the issue of climate featured heavily in the 2020 Democratic primary. The topic was raised at every debate and garnered attention in the national conversation like never before. In the end, the candidate that won the Democratic nomination did so in part because of his pledge to be a climate president. Joe Biden went on to win the general election and pass the largest federal investment in carbon pollution reduction in U.S. history.
I believe it’s important to draw a line between moments of despair like the one I experienced on stage at Outdoor SF, the reckoning in the climate movement that followed, the rise of climate as a priority in the 2020 Election, and the resulting landmark climate legislation that passed in 2022. That story unfolded over a six year period that included a lot of soul searching and effort.
Progress happens in a long arc, and Sunski has somehow been around long enough to actually see a small section of that arc materialize. Thanks to the support of our incredible community of outdoor enthusiasts, we all played a tiny part for the planet in drawing the arc from 2016 to 2022.
Bad news: Now we get to it all over again.
Good news: Now we get to do it all over again.
Sunski’s handy crash course in American politics
- We get to vote for two branches of the federal government: legislative (Congress) and executive (President). Congress passes bills and the President signs them into law.
- Because of the extreme polarization in modern American politics, there is basically no bipartisan collaboration on landmark legislation. As an example, The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 that included the largest climate investment in history was supported only by Democrats. All Republicans in both the House and Senate voted against it. Not great.
- These days, if a party wants to make big progress on its legislative priorities, it has to win the trifecta: President, House and Senate.
- The winner of the Presidency is determined by the Electoral College rather than the national Popular Vote. Also not great. Long story short: a handful of swing states tend to determine the winner of the Presidency.
- Elections are excruciatingly close in the modern era. There are 333 million people in America. Joe Biden won the Presidency in 2020 by a total of 40,000 votes across three states. If all of America was a sold out soccer stadium with 100,000 seats, the 2020 election would have been decided by 11 people in the stadium. Two thoughts:
- This is scary. 11 People in the America soccer stadium analogy decided the fate of the republic and the most groundbreaking climate legislation in history.
- This is empowering. Wow, the slightest nudge can make all of the difference. We can be part of that difference.
OK so now what?
A trademark of the 2016 Election was the idea that businesses should stay out of politics. At the time, Sunski participated in the culture of making oblique references to the election via careful marketing lingo rather than saying the quiet part out loud.
Well, it’s 2024 and we’re sure not doing that again. One major party takes climate change seriously and the other still thinks it's a hoax. America has to elect a Democratic president and majorities in the House and Senate if we want to protect the Inflation Reduction Act and continue to make progress on climate. It’s frustrating that the choice is so black and white with no room for compromise, but there you have it.
OK so how do we do that?
We get creative. If you’re like much of Team Sunski, you don’t live in a swing state. Again, not great. In addition to voting, we have to go the extra mile by finding ways to support specific Senate and House candidates in must-win states and districts often far away from where we live. This can be frustrating because it feels like our vote doesn’t “count” (don’t worry, it really does), but at least we can do something about it. Imagine living in Belgium and realizing that the future of the planet lies in the hands of approximately 10,000 people in some place in America called Pennsylvania.
Sunski x Protect Our Winters Action Fund
So let’s do something about it. This Fall at Sunski, we’re partnering with another 501(c)4 charitable organization, the Protect Our Winters Action Fund. Our goal: elect climate champions exclamation point (!).
We picked Protect Our Winters because they are doing something really different and inspiring with their approach to this election. The outdoor industry and its community of nature enthusiasts represent an over 1 trillion dollar industry in the United States. If mobilized, this community can make a huge difference where it matters. Protect Our Winters overlaid its following of outdoor enthusiasts atop the electoral map for 2024 and picked the swing races with the tightest margins where it has the highest concentration of support. Some House races in districts with plenty of nature enthusiasts were won in 2022 by <300 votes. Those races determined the Republican majority in the house. To that, Protect Our Winters says: let’s get an extra 301 runners and hikers to turn out this year in that district.
That’s where we come in. Sunski is donating $5 to POW AF for every pair of sunglasses sold between now and Election Day. Our goal is to generate $25,000 in support of POW’s efforts to get outdoor enthusiasts to the ballot box and elect climate champions in five crucial Senate and House races.
Let’s bring it full circle
For the seven people that have made it this far, you already know how much Sunski cares about the environment. We’re proud to have fostered a community that understands that we’re not running this campaign with Protect Our Winters to sell a few more pairs of sunglasses. We’re in it to stand by our deeply held values, do our part in the arc of progress on climate, and hopefully bring a few of you along with us.
Almost eight years ago shortly after the 2016 Election, I got up on stage at Outdoor SF to welcome 500 devastated climate advocates to our environmental charity event. Another election is upon us. Together, we get to determine what happens next in America. I believe the phrase is: “We’re not going back.”
Thanks for reading,
Tom
Sunski Co-Founder
