Credit: Tee Public
Climate anxiety got you down? You probably already know that there is no better cure for anxiety than action—but it’s hard to know where to begin when you’re confronting a problem as enormous and complex as climate change. Deciding which climate actions to take has become even more fraught, given the recent debate over whether individual lifestyle changes make any meaningful impact at all—or whether we should focus all our energies on pushing governments and companies to transform practices.
The Rainforest Alliance firmly believes that to move the needle on the climate crisis, we must do both. Given that just 100 fossil fuel companies are responsible for generating 71 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Carbon Majors Report, applying relentless citizen pressure on governments to enact bold policy—as well as vigorous enforcement—is essential. Simultaneously, we must use our collective power as consumers to demand sustainable choices from companies, whose sourcing decisions impact how hundreds of millions of hectares of land are managed.
So don’t rule out everyday actions, but do pair […]
Thank you!
When at the gym the other day I heard an R.E.M. song that I can’t get out of my head, “Its the End of the World As We Know It”. The time is unfortunately past for any action that will prevent the end of life as we have known it.
Heat waves all over Europe, Greenland and the Arctic with fires and yet still denial. If we turned off the entire industrial system today it would not stop what is occurring in the natural world and we would starve. If we could stop putting carbon in the atmosphere now it still will take hundreds of years for levels to return to desirable levels and few seem to be taking into account methane emissions that are a far more potentate greenhouse gas. The capitalist-technological systems are chewing up our only home all for greed, profit, comfort and security that no amount of fake meat, veganism or recycling of waste can overcome.
It seems we humans will have to ride this out as our Earth Mother rebalances herself. Future generations will have to work with nature to rejuvenate and build anew in a likely much warmer world with little to no polar ice and much higher sea levels. This is a project or rather life that will be lived over hundreds of years. I think we need to face the scientific based data and do what we can now encouraging the best in each other and the world.