What can you do?

What can you do?

Once a week, I am showing environmental documentaries to students and community members that are followed by a discussion. I always hear the question: “What can I do to make this problem or issue less severe?” The following is like a check list of things that each of us can and should do to safeguard this planet and all her inhabitants. Do not think that you must achieve all at once but rather begin somewhere and strive to add another ASAP. On the other hand, do not pet yourself too easy on the shoulder and think that you have done enough if you achieved one or a few of the goals - life should be an everlasting striving to do better.  On the other hand, be also patient with yourself – if you push too hard you might get frustrated and give up totally. Motivate your friends and family but focus on what you can do before preaching – always walk the talk!

Personal Life:

• Eat only “happy” meat (humanely kept, free-ranging, grass-fed) and reduce how often, e.g. once a week.
• Avoid meat, eggs, and dairy from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), also called megafarms or factory farms. Use the scorecards from The Cornucopia Institute (https://www.cornucopia.org) for help.
• Buy your food at a local farmer's market or a local store selling local produce. Details on farmer's markets, local farms and stores in / near Adrian can be found here.
• Buy organic and locally grown food. Even better is starting to grow some of your food yourself - make a garden. Even a porch, patio or balcony allows to grow quite a variety of vegetables. Avoid chemicals and fertilizer and rather use old-fashioned weeding and composting.
• Only use reusable bags (NEVER ever use plastic bags again).
• Only use re-usable drinking bottles, preferably stainless steel (NEVER ever use plastic bottles again).
• Use only LED light bulbs.
• Offset your energy bill by routing it through a provider like Arcadia Power (http://www.arcadiapower.com). These companies are buying Green-e Energy certified renewable energy certificates (RECs) from wind farms to match your exact monthly usage. This certifies that energy that you consume at home is matched with RECs, you are using clean, wind energy.
• Drive a hybrid – or even better – an electric car – or even better but hard in the US, no car at all. In any case try carpooling with other family members or colleagues at your work.
• Minimize commuting by choosing to live where you work.
• Ride your bicycle for short distance commute or shopping.
• Fly and drive the least possible. Consider other vacation destinations – and ask yourself if jetting or cruising thousands of miles for a few days in the sun is really necessary and does it really recreate you?
• Buy organic and locally grown food. Even better is starting to grow some of your food yourself - make a garden. Even a porch, patio or balcony allows to grow quite a variety of vegetables. Avoid chemicals and fertilizer and rather use old-fashioned weeding and composting.
• Reduce or better avoid chemicals in your house and garden.
• Boycott products that have a heavy environmental footprint.
• Go abroad and live in another country for a while to expand your horizon.
• Once a week, spend time alone in nature to engage in a dialog with places, animals, and plants. They do listen and they have a lot to tell and teach us.
• At your house and in your backyard, identify and then connect with individual animals and plants. – Do you know how they are doing? - Would you realize if they are not there anymore.
• Occasionally, allow yourself to do nothing - do not seek distractions to empty your mind and - allow your mind to weave your personal biography.
• Reduce, reuse and recycle - and compost – almost nothing will go into the landfill anymore.
• Keep your electronics going as long as possible, especially computers, laptops, tablets, and phones. If you must upgrade, recycle them properly. A list of certified e-recyclers can be found at: http://e-stewards.org/find-a-recycler/
• Upgrade your appliances to use minimal energy (e.g. Energy Star with best rating).
• Install (WiFi) switches to completely switch off electric appliances and avoid vampire-currents in standby-mode. They can often also monitor your energy usage.
• Insulate your house, especially the basement, attic and siding contracting with an environmentally concerned and well trained professional recommended by somebody you know with knowledge about “Green Building”. Cellulose from recycled paper is better than fiberglass.
• Install solar panels and wind turbines to become independent from fossil fuels. Now is the time - solar panels were never cheaper. There are low-interest loans in most states. In some states, you can even rent-to-own your installation.​

Communal Life / Politics

Most issues are too big to be countered by personal choices alone. They are caused by powerful interest groups and not the general public and need to be addressed in a communal, social and political way. See the very eye-opening 10-minute Youtube video illustrating a short essay by Derrick Jensen titled "Forget Shorter Showers". The essay can be found here: https://orionmagazine.org/article/forget-shorter-showers/  and a video adaption on Youtube:​ Forget Shorter Showers.

• Attend administrative meetings at your city, county or state and speak up on environmental issues. Visit, phone or email your representatives and tell them that environmental issues are very important to you.
• Sign petitions on paper or on the internet. There is power in numbers.
• Work or volunteer in an organization (non-governmental organizations, NGOs) fighting for the reduction of the human impact on one of the pressing environmental issues.
• Work/volunteer in / for a political party or a representative who honestly work on environmental issues such as The Green Party or Progressive Democrats.
• Consider running for office, preferably municipal or state to make a difference. No vacancy is too small to change things from within!

What can we do?

In no way conclusive, complete or even ordered – open ended list of things to be done to get humanity out of the “hole” – meaning out of the devastating and eventually fatal – terminating situation…
The interactive/cooperative document can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/waysoutofthehole
Feel free to annotate and expand (using Google docs comment functions) but do NOT delete anybody else's text)

• Reduce population growth humanely – not totalitarian – meaning explain, argue, maybe provide incentives – but not force, sterilize etc.
• Empower women to be self-determined about how many children they want to give birth to – and care. This will also generate a lot of small businesses especially in the developing world – using and paying back microloans (google Muhammad Yunus).
• Establish the Verursacherprinzip (polluter pays principle, causative principle, costs-by-cause principle) as a general and mandatory business principle. In the definition of corporations as legal persons the rights of a person come with responsibilities – just the same as people are held responsible for their deeds. This simple principle will change world economy fundamentally.
• Precautionary principle: Do not touch a system until you fully understand it. In more practically terms – Wikipedia: If an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action. Products and processes are considered potentially harmful unless substantial scientific evidence shows that there is no harm. As long products and processes are considered harmful they may not be used and violations are prosecuted with enough severity to ensure that people and the environment are kept safe.
• In the European Union, the precautionary principle was implemented in several areas of law. In the US the Precautionary Principle is generally not accepted stressing its anti-innovative effect on the economy. One notable exception is the Precautionary Principle Purchasing ordinance of the City of San Francisco which requires the city to weigh the environmental and health costs in annual purchases.
• Precautionary principle: products and processes are considered potentially harmful unless substantial scientific evidence shows that there is no harm. As long products and processes are considered harmful they may not be used and violations are prosecuted with enough severity to ensure that people and the environment are kept safe. In the European Union, the precautionary principle was implemented in several areas of law. In the US the Precautionary Principle is generally not accepted stressing its anti-innovative effect on the economy. One notable exception is the Precautionary Principle Purchasing ordinance of the City of San Francisco which requires the city to weigh the environmental and health costs in annual purchases.
• Bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen (Basic Income Guarantee, e.g. usbig.net, Wikipedia, livableincome.org, basic-income.net): Every citizen of a country receives a basic income that is unconditional of them working. Its amount should cover all basic (essential) needs like, housing and food. As a positive outlook on the human being is that humans want to be helpful and valuable for their kin, village, neighborhood, country, world, they will like to do something they can do well to help the community. This may be rewarded with some extra income to allow for more comfort.
• Develop positive Utopias: Think about and picture how/what  the world should be alike, brainstorm a (nearly) perfect world helps to come up with solutions and counters resignation and pessimism leading into depression, which can further lead towards a life style in which people just don’t want to think about and know what’s wrong and drug themselves constantly with work, alcohol, adrenaline, other drugs, sex,…
• Reinstate personal responsibility in business as exemplary shown by Aaron Feuerstein (Google) – the “The Mensch Of Malden Mills”. In short: “When the Malden Mills factory burnt down on December 11, 1995, Feuerstein decided not only to use his insurance money to rebuild it, but to also pay the salaries of all the now-unemployed workers while it was being rebuilt. Feuerstein spent millions keeping all 3,000 employees on the payroll with full benefits for 6 months.” (Wikipedia).
• Organic and biodynamic Permaculture as the principle way to locally produce good and healthy food, and at the same time have the least detrimental impact on nature. In short, Permaculture seeks sustainable thus non-erosive and non-soil-exploitative techniques to produce a great variety of foods on a small scale mosaic of fields, building walls, roofs etc. Organic agriculture does not use chemicals and GMOs, and biodynamic agriculture adds the knowledge that our world is not only material but consist also – or is even formed by energies or spirits. By re-introducing these energies into the soil, soil fertility can be increased and sustained, and the quality of food can be increased. (Biodynamic agriculture in Wikipedia, www.biodynamics.in)
• Reconnect people to each other and nature. Our increase in virtual connectedness goes along a loss of physical and spiritual connectedness to each other and the world. This tendency will even get worse as we program our children to avoid the outdoors:  ”I like to play indoors better ‘cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are. “ (Book: Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children From Nature Deficit Disorder)
• The citizen limnologist goes global: Citizen watch of big business and corporations. This is increasingly important as big money gets more and more concentrated. Follow the way of the money reveals which companies own stocks in which other companies. Increasingly difficult as we deal with hedge funds and international financial investment companies that evade taxes globally and damage the world economy, humanity and nature. Examples: corpwatch.org, http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org.
• Establish the consensus model as the general decision-making process. In short, instead of majority rules it is the process of discussion until all objections are overcome and a solution is found that incorporates everybody’s wisdom. (Wikipedia: Consensus democracy).
• Connected to 12. All decisions are made by the entire community. All age groups have a say including children and the elderly.  Every age group of human beings has their own wisdom that is lost if only the middle age group of a society participates in decision making.
• Kids participate in the upbringing (socialization) and education of their own (younger) peers. Also, every member in a village, neighborhood takes part in the education of all children.
• Speaking to animals and plants will re-develop our ability to listen to the wisdom of our fellow species on this planet and help us save us and the world from our shortcomings.
• Every house and apartment should have an easy accessible main switch to shut off all energy use, when no energy is needed, e.g. when we sleep, on vacation, or when we are out of the house (up to 30% of energy is wasted in the so called vampire currents).
• Houses should be smaller, and well insulated, and no more gas-guzzling cars. Our heating and cooling as well as transportation are the major energy consumers. Electricity, heat and cooling should be produced as closest from consumption as possible so no energy is wasted for transport. Heating and cooling trough solar warm-water, supplemented with regenerative wood chips, smart building (e.g. South-N facing, wall thickness, etc.). Electricity via solar panels and small wind turbine. Industrial electricity through wind and solar parks. Eventually global partnership: Agricultural production in fertile temperate climates, energy production in subtropical areas: year-round lots of sun!).
• No more subventions for flight gasoline (kerosene). I am from Europe and miss my family, friends and my home – but the way it is just not sustainable and good for the planet! In general, we should face the real cost of energy for heating and transportation, and foods (such as corn and meat). Subsidizing things is not allowing people to decide.
• Everybody should pay as much taxes as they can afford. The rich in the US can afford a hell of a lot more than they do. Even with one of the lowest income tax in the world, they cry poor. Shame on you!: Rich people in Denmark pay more than 90% of their income in taxes and are proud to support less fortunate citizens. The worst thing is that many corporations that achieved being (almost) tax exempt to allow them to invest into jobs and sustainability are not even doing this. They should be seriously penalized.
• Every human on the planet receives a certain amount of carbon units (energy units), which can be used for anything like: heating, travelling, using a computer, buying and consuming local food vs. food produced far away, etc. Units cannot be traded or expanded. People in public offices who need to travel are not exempt. Their serving is a privilege that they need to offset by cutting back elsewhere. Again, this should not be enforced in a totalitarian way.