September 2025
LEGO Memes and Postcards for Climate Action
LEGO Memes and Postcards for Climate Action
Written by Jaymie Heilman, a For Our Kids member living and writing in Edmonton, Alberta.
As a historian and novelist, I’m used to writing books to inform and entertain. But my ten-year-old son Theo taught me a quick and powerful way to make a point: LEGO memes.
Everything got started one hot June afternoon when I was grumbling about Alberta Premier Danielle Smith spending huge sums to remodel her office while my son’s school doesn’t have a modern cooling system. Theo responded by handing me a smirking LEGO minifigure with long brown hair and we quickly produced our first meme.
The enthusiastic response on Bluesky, and from the For Our Kids community, was heartening, so Theo and I kept going. Next up, we turned our attention to the UCP government’s plan to allow coal mining on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains.
Theo gathered up forest creatures, a horse, and fish, along with a cowboy hat and a mountain from one of his old toy sets. He found a pick-axe for Premier Smith and I drew an Australian flag. Once again, our post received a lot of attention on Bluesky and was shared widely by For Our Kids friends. It felt great to work on this kind of protest art with my son, and it was decidedly more energizing than just complaining about our province’s destructive environmental policies.
When For Our Kids Alberta team leader Claire Kraatz mentioned she’d be speaking against taxpayer-funded carbon capture projects at the August 20th “No More Public Dollars For Pipelines” rally in Calgary, Theo and I got to work again. This time, instead of featuring Danielle Smith, we wanted to show Mark Carney. As we dug through Theo’s minifigure bin, I started to worry that he didn’t have any gray-haired figures. Theo solved that problem by snapping off the top of a robot, and we made yet another climate meme.
Claire saw our post on Bluesky and encouraged us to turn the meme into a postcard, which she could distribute at the rally. She also suggested we create a second meme postcard, this one featuring Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Tim Hodgson. I really didn’t think we’d be able to create a Minister Hodgson, but Theo came through with the flowing white hair of a Dumbledore minifigure! Theo built a wind turbine, a solar panel, and a giant battery for the postcard photos. With some help from the For Our Kids communication team, we created two really terrific postcards.
At the ‘No More Public Dollars For Pipelines’ rally, Claire gave a powerful speech that explained “we’re also here to call out the solutions we don’t want our public dollars funding: not more pipelines for so-called ‘decarbonized oil.’ Not more subsidies for oil and gas infrastructure. And not another costly distraction—Carbon Capture Technology. We’re told it’s the answer. But let’s be clear—carbon capture faces barriers to scalability. It’s designed to let oil and gas companies keep polluting while the public pays the bill. And…it’s astronomically expensive.”
Claire went on to say, “Every dollar wasted on carbon capture is a dollar that could go toward real solutions: wind, water, solar, and battery storage. Let’s invest public dollars in safe bets that can do the heavy lifting and get us most of the way to real zero.” She then called on rally attendees to sign and send our postcards, and to “keep showing up. Join a climate network. Write a letter to your MP. Talk to your neighbours. Remind people that even in this province and in this city, where some identities are tied to the oil and gas industry, there are many of us demanding something better—for our health, for our children, and for the land, air, and water we all depend on.”
You can watch her full speech here.
The rally received media coverage in both the Calgary Herald and CTV news, and attendees took about ninety of the hundred postcards we’d prepared. Fabulous work, Claire!
As for me, I’m still writing books and Theo’s still playing with LEGO. And we both remain determined – along with our For Our Kids friends – to demand climate action to protect the people and places we love.
Download the postcards in PDF
Download and send in your own postcards and tell Prime Minister Carney and Minister Tim Hodgson to invest in climate solutions!
