What can you do? A lot.
Feeling powerless on climate? Think the problem’s too big for individuals to make a difference?
Think again, because you have a lot of power. Around the world, millions of people are digging in and fighting the climate crisis in creative, effective ways. Here’s how to unleash your inner climate superhero and join them.
Activate
Activate yourself. Challenge yourself to be as activist as you can, however much you feel capable of doing. There’s opportunities to take action on climate everywhere, and every hand on deck counts.
Find and radiate positivity. Find some aspect of the climate battle you can get excited about and radiate that positivity. Positivity is key to engaging people around you to be part of the solution.
Go deep and experiment. Do a personal climate project. Build a garden. Become an electrician. Help your city design better bike lanes. Invent a new type of battery. Listen to podcasts, read, watch videos. You never know what big contribution you can make if you go deep. The ‘experts’ don’t have it all figured out.
Communicate
Get in front of people. Talk about climate everywhere, tell people what you know and ask them what they think. This may be uncomfortable… no one wants to hear bad news, change their lifestyle, stick their neck out, or ask others to do so. But talking about climate solutions is cathartic.
Simplify the message. ‘Stop burning stuff’ is the simplest message, that’s what we’ve all got to do. You’ll hear lots of talk about transitions and sustainability, but the reality is that if we’re burning it (oil, gas, coal, etc.), we’ve got to quickly stop burning it.
Communicate urgency calmly. We need urgency – this isn’t about 2040 or 2050. This is about the next decade, and avoiding collapse of the systems that support human life in our own lifetimes. Find a way to communicate this in a way that doesn’t overwhelm yourself or others.
Decarbonize
Be an early electrification adopter. Electrify your life as quickly as you can, get firsthand experience you can share while helping drive down technology cost curves. Maybe start small with e-bikes, e-garden tools and induction cooking, then go bigger with an EV and heat pumps, solar and battery storage.
Reduce your recurring emissions. 1) Drive less and walk more; 2) fly less; 3) eat less beef; 4) buy less fast fashion; 5) buy less plastic; 6) buy local. One flight burns more carbon than a year of driving. Beef is the highest emission food. Buying anything plastic from Asia is incredibly emissions intensive.
Never buy another fossil-fueled car or appliance. Keep driving your current car or truck until you’re ready to buy an EV. Don’t replace a gas car or furnace or stove with a new gas one for any reason. And try not to let friends either – it’s not ‘more efficient,’ it’s just another locked-in decade of burning up the planet.
Hold power accountable
Call out and debunk greenwashing. Learn how to spot and debunk fossil fuel greenwashing FUD and buzzwords: clean fuels, transition fuels, biofuels, carbon offsets, carbon neutral, green, sustainable, etc. There’s a new greenwashing concept every day, created by companies and governments to pretend they’re doing something while continuing to burn up the planet.
Hold people accountable and show them solutions. Hold people and organizations around you accountable for perpetuating our fossil fuel addiction. And focus on what they can do right now. Show them ways to get involved, whether that’s behavior change, political pressure, activism, philanthropy, investing, volunteering or simply committing more mindshare and money to climate.
Shift the dollars. Money is power, and it keeps getting reinvested in fossil fuels by the trillions. If you can help redirect money flows (investment, banking and spending decisions), perhaps by influencing institutions or people you know with money and financial power, you can multiply your impact with those dollars.
Breathe
Breathe and stay in the game. You need staying power, because you can’t do your best work constantly anxious and exhausted. Walk in the woods. Marvel at nature and children. Make bad jokes. Put down that podcast for a minute and breathe. Sustain yourself so you can have a sustained impact.