Do You Really Care About Climate Change, Though? Really?

13 Things You Would Be Doing Right Now, If You Actually Cared About The Environment.

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Do you think climate change is important? Do you push for awareness? Demand leaders take action? Bolster legislation? Troll shitty corporations? Keep others accountable for their bad choices?

What are you doing, though, to help? Activism is awesome! But activism is not action. Our current ecosystem appreciates your zeal, but honestly, it can’t really do much with it. Zeal doesn’t clean the ocean. Social shares don’t reduce our carbon emissions. Pains me to say it, but this blog post won’t reduce the earth’s tempurature.

If we want aggressive change, we need as many hands as possible. This issue doesn’t actually live in the hands of the powerful, though. That is the lazy cop out. The not-it of all not-its. Change lives in the hands of the masses. In fact, our current predicament has come to pass at the hands of the masses, in the first place. Yeah, you. No, not Washington. You.

Me. Us. We.

Everyone has bought into awful habits and trends, helped build short sighted norms. And everyone continues to stay oblivious to how much needs to change in our day to day lives. Every one of us has to dramatically shift personal daily behavior, aggressively and permanently. This means monetary sacrifices. Trade-offs on convenience. Sacrificing of options. It means shutting the fuck up about they. It means taking a moment every time we want to tell someone else what they should be doing, to ask ourselves, what haven’t I started doing, yet?

If we really think this important in that now or never kinda way, we have to be doing most, if not all of the following, before we can give anyone else shit on what they aren’t doing:

1. Shop local. local farms, local merch, local shelfstable goods. If it isn’t made within an hour or two of your home, it’s out. If you get Avocados from Mexico when in NYC, if you shop in any big box stores, if anything you exchange money for is from China, you are a part of the problem. Stoppitnow! Cheezits are a part of the problem. Trident, Crest, Converse, Charmin!

2. Speaking of Charmin — all paper goods you buy should be Bamboo — if that is not possible (or the bamboo is coming from Asia or something), then 100% post consumer recycled. Stop killing trees to wipe your ass and clean up spills! Stoppitnow!

3.Physical transportation (walking or biking) or Shared Transit even if it triples your commute — if you get in a car alone, you are a part of the problem. This is a yuge problem. Bigger than people who have 8 meat eating, farting kids.

4. Elimination of all plastic waste from your lyfeee — Buy only biodegradab products — biobag ziploc bags, saran wrap, etc., carry a reusable water bottle, buy only goods packaged without plastics, avoiding single use gadgets in your home, limit the number of bs toys in your house, keep old tech, rather than getting new.

5. Reduce Waste by 75–90% — this includes recyclables! Recycling burns tons of petrol, it requires a lot of shipping (global scale) to sort, distribute, process, repackage, redistribute, and repurpose) Fuck recycling. One way to dramatically reduce waste is to avoid snack sized shit. Stop w all the tiny packaging. Another way is to give each other one goddamn Christmas present. Excess is the problem here folks! Stoppitnow!

7. Shop resale. Resale furniture, clothes, toys, cars. Resale IDGAF what! Stop getting new, disposable, imported garbage! By used shit, and only used shit!

8. Avoid the myth of electric. Making lithium batteries is toxic. Disposing of lithium batteries is toxic. Not to mention most electricity is still powered by coal. Instead of demanding electric cars, use less cars! Demand wind and solar power. Invest in solar companies. But, again, use less power

9. Also, stop trading-in non-powered things for electric things. Electric scooter, electric bike, electric razor, electric can opener… whatever the fuck can be done without electricity should be done without electricity.

9. Avoid the myth of bs news articles that put the blame on one thing. Do your homework. One thing is never going to be the root of a global problem (unless thag one thing is our mindset.) The earth is over populated. Targeting one thing like “eating meat” is stupid. The same number of people will need to eat something else. Some sort of resource will need to be mass produced to replace it. A local raised, butchered and sold steak is FAR better for the planet than boca burgers. Eliminating meat will mean more soy and corn farming. More processing plants. More packaging. That shit is awful. Yes, avoid massive cattle farms, avoid discount meat, avoid packaged processed fake foods, avoid driscoll or other corporate farming entities; avoid shit that is made in a toxic, wasteful manner. Period. Know the processes shit comes from, and put your money into the better process, not the cheaper product.

10. live in condensed urban spaces surrounded by long stretches of wilderness. More wilderness = more trees. Urban spaces get bad reps, but urban sprawl is by far the worst thing you can do for the environment. The amount of land cleared of trees, the amount of materials wasted on excessive homes, the amount of asphalt laid, cars traversing long distances, energy put into powering homes with multiple rooms, heating/cooling vaulted ceilicngs, heating 100+ gallon water tanks… yuck.

12. Can’t just up and move? Fine. Help change the narrative away from “cities, bad” and, also, support your local downtown. Stay close to home whenever you can. Heat your home less. Grow shit in your oversized back yard

13. Support only businesses, brands and products that take these types of actions too, even if “more expensive” or “too expensive.” Pay more, have less, dammit. This Pay less, get more mentality is what got us here in the first place! Protecting the planet has a cost, if we ourselves aren’t willing to pay for it, we aren’t really interested in protecting the planet, are we?

You may say all of this is near impossible to sustain, unfair or unrealistic. Sure. You’re not wrong. But, also, WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING?

If you want to change the course of our clinate crisis, stop making excuses and act.

What do we think legislators will be able to accomplish if we as climate change believers can’t even do that much?

How will they change anything if not one of us thinks we should have to make extreme sacrifices?

How will we make any headway if we don’t see this as serious enough to do whatever we can, right now, this minute, to change course?

This whole saving the environment thing is on all of us, and until we take that ownership, no leader or government will move fast enough. And even if they did, our refusal to look at our own part in it would lead to our viewing those actions as an invasion of our rights.

What do you mean I get a waste and energy allowance?! I can’t dedicate 90 minutes to walk to work! If I buy the sustainable shoe, I can only afford one shoe! Wah, wah, wah.

Let’s face it, views and beliefs aside, every single one of us act like it’s our right to treat this planet like shit. And until we change our expectations on what we deserve in life, we ain’t fixin’ shit.