For example, you could…
• Change your job. Quit working in industries that rely on extraction and pollution, such as finance, aerospace, fashion, tech, transportation or the military, to name only a few. Start working for smaller businesses that are more directly helpful to your community’s needs, in fields like local agriculture, composting, sustainable building and renovation, teaching, nursing, mental health, art and ecological restoration.
• Organize. It’d be great if we didn’t have to work to make this transition happen, but we do. Join local groups that are changing the way we live, and get used to working together with your neighbors for political causes. Whether it’s changing your city’s zoning laws to allow for off-grid tiny houses or serving free food to the hungry, organize to help your community. Those networks will be critical when — not if — things get a lot worse than they are now.
• Simplify. Slow down. Get back in touch with your basic needs. Give more time and attention the things you do to meet your needs and spend less of your attention on the rest of your wants. Do less, buy less, produce less, consume less. Just exhale.
• Change what you buy. Shop local, recycle what use use (not just your refuse), and make more for yourself and your neighbors. Make and upcycle more of your own stuff, like clothes, furniture or food products. Stop buying fast fashion, stop buying new gadgets, stop buying most things you don’t need. You really don’t need them. You won’t miss them when they’re gone.
• Share more. Chances are, not everyone on your block needs a lawnmower. Not everyone needs a table saw. Not even everyone needs a care. Sharing tools, vehicles and other items can lead to huge dents in what we consume without impacting our access to what we need. There are countless resources out there to help you start tool libraries and similar local projects.
• Change how you vote. Most politicians are not serious about climate change. Even Democrats keep voting to increase the military budget. I’m not going to tell you who to vote for, but if we want real action on climate change, we cannot keep settling for leaders who don’t take the issue seriously. “More eco-friendly than the other guy” is not eco-friendly enough.
• Try different hobbies. Spend more time in nature and less time traveling by car or plane. Quit environmentally damaging hobbies like golf, motor-boating or flaunting your wealth. Get into hobbies that bond you more with your ecosystem like nature walks, gardening, watershed restoration, bushcrafting and birdwatching.
• Don’t be rich. Just don’t do it. You don’t need all that money, and you don’t need all the stuff that money buys.
• Restore your local ecosystem. All over the world, our ecosystems are degrading and damaged. It’s crucial to conserve healthy wild lands, but for lands that are already damaged, we can do a great deal to help them heal. Learn to tend to the environment around you and help bring it back to health. Turn your backyard into a haven for native pollinators — Doug Tallamy can show you how! Get involved in ecosystem restoration and rewilding projects in your area. Especially if you live in a region with wildfires (I’m looking at you, Californians): healthy, tended forests burn less come fire season, and smaller wildfires means less CO2 in the atmosphere for everyone else.
• I repeat, restore your local ecosystem. It is not our fault our ecosystems are so degraded, but it is all of our responsibility to heal them.
