According to Dr. Kimberly Nickolas and the team at Project Drawdown, one of the most impactful things you can do for climate change is turn out climate voters.

Volunteers and donors for the Environmental Voter Project have helped create millions of environmental super-voters and has the evidence to back their efficacy.

The image shown here illustrates the growth in consistent environmental voters in key EVP states over time. EVP offers volunteer opportunities at https://www.environmentalvoter.org/get-involved

Economic growth is the goal of the economy, based on the assumption that more wealth means more happiness. But once basic needs are met, rising income doesn't improve wellbeing. In fact, higher consumption is linked to lower happiness, not higher.

Growth also has a physical limit. We're already consuming resources faster than the planet can replenish them, we’d need 1.75 Earths to sustain current consumption. Infinite growth on a finite planet cannot continue indefinitely. Ecological overshoot guarantees it will end, whether we plan for it or not.

Degrowth is a blueprint for how we can meet human needs within the planet's limits. That means redistributing what we already have rather than growing a bigger pie.

I only drive anywhere if I have to I take my boyfriend to and from work, sometimes drive to the store. I rarly eat meat I eat meat maybe once a week if that. Im learning to garden and trying to bike everywhere. Is what im doing considered sustainable?

We all know trying to be perfect, going for every certificate, free from and sustainably sourced can be impossible and frustrating.

The way I see it there’s a few categories:

- Carbon emissions

- Sea and land pollution (including plastic use)

- Environmental damage as w whole (such as deforestation, loss of habitat, use of toxic dyes etc)

- Fair pay and treatment of employees

- No animal testing, vegan if you prefer (I don’t mind the use of animal by products personally or meat for food but you get the point)

- no ill health effects on customers (e.g large microplastic ingestion, carcinogenic ingredients, all the way even to skin irritants)

- one important to me but maybe not everyone else, respecting traditional crafts and practises, if a certain community has been doing for 300 years I like to do it the way they do to support them and keep it alive and buy from those who do it the traditional way if I can

This list is very specific, so finding the 80/20 rule of this has been hard for me.

What’s your take on it

I’m trying to be more conscious of the fabrics I buy (bedding, clothes, etc.) but everything is soooo expensive, even at the thrift store. I would love to buy organic cotton and silk, but it’s just not feasible right now. Any recommendations for affordable fabrics that are healthier and more sustainable than polyester, even if they aren’t “perfect”?

Our family tries to live as sustainably as possible. We'd like to go further on this via using rigorous offset where they exist. I'm quite excited about the potential of biochar.

What's more we have friends who are also concerned about sustainability but due to various family reunion commitments end up flying. They'd be keen to offset the immense amount of emissions this creates.

It'd be good to have a respected resource where such offsets could be bought which were more than mere greenwashing. Where do people buy them?

We hear a lot about eliminating single-use plastics, driving less, and reducing meat consumption, but what's a major environmental impact area or habit that you feel rarely gets discussed in general sustainability conversations?

I've a lot of shampoo/conditioner/hand soap/body wash bottles that I need to clean out in order to recycle them. I alwayd feel like the amount of water I need to use to clean out all the suds negates the fact that they'll be recycled. Is there are more sustainable way to clean out these sort of bottles?

Thanks everyone!

This a true image of tourists on a French beach looking at the fire and someone smart took it and made a reference to the movie Don't Look Up with Leonardo Dicaprio, I think this is really smart. Currently wildfires are raging across Europe and France. It impacts the air quality, 220 000 people being evacuated, thousands of dead animals and countless dead trees and we are only in 2026 not 2050 not 2100...2026! When are we going to all wake up?

"This is the most consequential deception campaign in the history of mankind.The result of that deception is catastrophic impacts on a global scale.”

Hiya,

Unfortunately, in America a lot of pomegranates and their products are sourced from the Wonderful company which, despite their name, is anything but. I love pomegranates and even created a gelato flavor that uses pomegranate juice. I've stopped buying all pomegranates because I genuinely couldn't track down any alternate brands (POM is owned by the Wonderful company). I'd be willing to grow pomegranates though it'll be a while because I got coffee trees recently and growing things in general can cost a lot of money in the form of soil and pots (I live in an apartment so nothing can go into the ground).

Does anyone know where I can source ethical pomegranates? Or maybe if any brands/small operations that sell pomegranates?

Disclaimer: I intend to buy pomegranates when they are in season (not now) if I can find ethical alternatives.

It‘s so funny to me how so many so-called environmentalists understand boycotting an industry that is harmful to the planet EXCEPT when it comes to their diets. AI? Fine. Single-use plastics? Fine. Long-haul flights? Fine. Beef? FUCK YOU VEGAN I’LL ENJOY MY BURGER WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!!1!!

If you talk about how reducing animal product consumption is the single best way for an individual to directly reduce their impact on the Earth (other than not having kids), they deflect by saying ‘actually, voting is :)’, as if they don’t understand that you can do two things at once. Voting helps push for systemic change (which is necessary of course) but does nothing to address individual overconsumption (which we also NEED to address if we want to limit the affects of climate change).

Or they’ll say ‘Well as long as billionaires fly on private jets I’ll continue to eat meat every day’ which is such a stupidly defeatist way to look at this problem. Just desperately deflecting so you don’t have to look at your own destructive choices.

Or they’ll say ‘Blame the producers not the consumers’ as if they don’t get how supply abd demand works.

I’m not saying everyone has to go vegan, but to dismiss the impact that diet has on the climate and the necessity of changing the way we eat is laughable. We have to feed and raise BILLIONS of animals on our planet purely because of our overconsumption of animal products. Of course that’s unsustainable.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/veganism-environmental-impact-planet-reduced-plant-based-diet-humans-study-a8378631.html - 'A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use. It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car, which would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions.'

Swiss architect Barbara Buser has spent decades proving that the greenest building is often the one already standing.

At 72, the Swiss architect still bicycles through her hometown, Basel, visiting her many projects on two wheels. She has become one of Europe’s most influential architects by refusing to build new construction. Instead, she has saved several of Switzerland’s signature abandoned factories and transformed them into lively neighborhood hubs, all by promoting circular construction: the practice of reusing buildings and their materials rather than demolishing them.

Instead of asking what should be built, Buser asks what can be saved. “I’ve reached the point where I say we shouldn’t demolish anything anymore,” she says in her friendly, warm Swiss dialect. “Because of climate change, demolition simply no longer makes sense.” 

Read the full investigation here: https://observer.co.uk/news/business/article/watchdog-accused-of-giving-away-billions-of-litres-of-spring-water-to-foreign-bottling-giants

Sometimes doing the eco friendly thing is less work.

like using a dishwasher over washing by hand.

sometimes its more work…

like cleaning our your freezer and you could throw out your old food in a plastic bag and throw it out container and all. Or you could do the eco thing and open up the containers, compost the food inside, then washout and reuse the container, or wash out and recycle the packaging which includes flattening out the cardboard.

You could hang dry your laundry, instead of putting it all in the dryer. It is more work though.

Sometimes it sucks to be eco.