The 'WTF can I do?' Project
Oli SB
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This is an idea for a collective experiment: Could we crowdsource an action list of simple things which anyone can do to help avert the climate crisis?
OK, I think you see where I'm going with this now... ;) we need to DO MORE to make an impact... but what can each one of us actually do that will make a difference? There are plenty of 'top 10' lists which try to highlight the small changes every one of us can make (like 'turning the lights off' and 'turning the tap off when you're brushing your teeth') but no clear consensus (that I know of) on which actions are most impactful.
So what if we tried to crowd-source the answers, right here, or on a web page, or open survey, or Reddit thread or somewhere...?
What is the worse that could happen?
Would you find it useful - to have a peer-reviewed list of the most impactful actions all citizens of planet earth can take to help avert the climate crisis?
Josef Davies-Coates Tue 26 Jul 2022 4:42PM
Bill McKibben is often asked what individuals can do and his go-to answer is: stop being such an individual! i.e. the best thing people can do is to join together with others to take collective actions (e.g. force changes in local council policies, join XR/ Just Stop Oil etc etc).
Saying that, Ethical Consumer covered what people can do recently here:
https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/sites/default/files/flipbook/Issue194/44/
(download here https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/media/2539/download )
Key figures in my tweet here:
https://twitter.com/jdaviescoates/status/1479177102045990912
(although they have "switch car to EV" as a good one, but methinks "stop driving" is probably the best thing anyone who drives could/should do to directly reduce emissions given transport is the biggest chunk of UK emissions)
But, yeah, I reckon a good well referenced and widely shared list (incorporating all the above) would be great and potentially very useful (climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe points out that you don't have to be a particular kind of human to care about climate change, you just have to be human: even in the US over 80% of people are already worried about Climate Change, they just don't know what to do).
Basically an update to the good 'ol 12 steps I put together back in the day (although they were broader than just climate change stuff as that wasn't the focus at the time):
http://web.archive.org/web/20040605151400/http://www.uniteddiversity.com:80/12steps
(PS I'm ever so mildly ashamed that back in 2004 I still thought offsetting was something worth doing, so see also https://uniteddiversity.coop/2006/11/01/carbon-con/ and https://uniteddiversity.coop/2007/03/05/carbon-con-update/ - a couple of years later I'd realised the madness of it all)
Matthew Slater · Tue 26 Jul 2022 5:46PM
Sorry I don't have any answers but I want to challenge the question.
Have an impact on what? There's a danger of focusing too much on trying to mitigate climate change when catastophic change is already baked in. We should be thinking as much if not more about adaptation. How can we, individually and collectively reduce the damage and suffering, and not only in our own medium term future, but if we want to think wider, has been going on in the form of colonialism for centuries.
That can mean political action, community organising, or more on a more personal and familial level, getting out of debt and working to build more resilience into our supplies of food / energy / medicine etc.