A WOW! e-Brief

Work of Women program @ World Neighbors

April 2007

Overview

World Neighbors and Climate Change

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Get Involved

Happily, a wealth of information is now available on ways to reduce your impact on the environment. The challenge now is to sift through the recommendations and actually make some changes. Rather than try to tackle everything at once, try to make one, fairly easy change, and as that becomes habit, slowly strengthen your eco-conscious lifestyle. Below are some ideas to consider, from individual decisions to organizing others.

Donate to World Neighbors work to support the sustainable development work that will help hundreds of thousands of the poorest people in ecologically fragile communities around the world avoid the worst of the expected challenges of climate change.

For other ideas and local resources, check online, visit your public library or go to an independent bookstore! One fun resource is Joanna Yarrow’s fun, skim-able book entitled 1,001 Ways to Save the Earth (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2007). Some of the ideas suggested in this section are taken from this source.

Raise Your Awareness and Make Personal Changes

In American culture, just about everything around us is designed to increase our personal consumption—supermarket layouts, advertising on television and radio, cheap manufacturing for disposable or non-lasting goods… Resist! Try to think about each item you purchase and/or use. Do you really need it? Will you really use it? If you do need it, is it reusable? Can you avoid supporting the use of toxins or poor manufacturing processes with the purchase? As Yarrow says, “Be a BUDDy . . . buy only what you need, use up everything you buy, or donate leftovers to a neighbor or community group, and dispose of waste responsibly.”

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Buy fair trade items when possible. In general, fair trade aims to provide a more equitable trade and marketing environment for producers in developing countries than a regular free market model. Items identified as fair trade are generally produced respecting basic human rights and environmental standards, and pricing and payment result in a fair price to the producers. For example, buy fair trade coffee via World Neighbors (http://www.wn.org/store/) and support coffee producers in countries where we work, while at the same time ensuring a portion of the proceeds benefit World Neighbors work. If you live in Oklahoma, visit World Neighbors WorldFest in Oklahoma City, this year on October 12-14.

“All manner of activities—from breathing to driving cars—produce CO2. The average American generates around 20 tons of CO2 per year, from all activities. If we’re to limit climate change, scientists estimate that we will each need to reduce our so-called ‘carbon footprint’ to less than 2 ½ tons per year. Visit an online carbon-footprint calculator to find out how much CO2 you’re producing per year and follow the suggestions in this book to curb your carbon habit. Resubmit your details every few months and watch the pounds drop off your annual emissions.” www.safeclimate.net (Yarrow)

In many places, there are a range of options that can help you avoid unnecessary personal consumption of energy. Improve your fitness level and burn calories by bicycling to work. Can you use the commuter train, subway or bus, or carpool? These may take a little longer, but you can interact with your fellow travelers or catch up on the newspaper (or an exciting mystery) rather than fret about traffic jams and delays. Mass transportation is also safer than pulling out of the driveway in your car.

If you must fly, offset your flight’s carbon dioxide emission. “Aviation may soon account for 15 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Specialist companies allow you to calculate online your seat’s proportion of the flight’s emissions and negate it by buying ‘offsets’—a contribution they invest in CO2 reduction measures, such as planting trees. On a [round trip] flight between New York and London your 1 ½ tons of CO2 incurs a $15 offset.” (Yarrow)

Have you become a “weather wimp”? Make friends with the seasons and try to experience them! Turn your thermostat down a few degrees in the winter and up a few degrees in the summer. Dress warmly in the winter, and cooly in the summer. If you have an apartment or house where you can open windows, do that when the weather outside is pleasant (and insulate well with curtains and good windows when it’s not). Our bodies get less resistant to heat and cold when we never allow ourselves to experience the ups and downs.

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Recycle and Reuse

Reusing products is a wonderful way to reduce waste. With plastic, many times you can re-use containers or bags multiple times, and then recycle. You can take a plastic bottle from a private water company, fill it up with tap water and stick it in the refrigerator. You’ll avoid adding to the plethora of plastic bottles the designer waters are provoking, and you won’t need to waste water from the tap waiting for it to get cold. Wash plastic bags and reuse them to package sandwiches or other lunch items.

Recycling options are much more readily available now than they used to be. Check your town or city’s recycling policy and recycle as much as you possibly can. What they don’t recycle, sometimes schools, churches, or even businesses sometimes do. Offer to recycle for friends or office colleagues. If they or your office is reluctant to make the effort, make it easy for them. Don’t just recycle your waste—buy products that are recycled or contain high percentages of recycled material. Make the commitment to afford the little extra those products cost.

Raise Awareness with Others

Churches and cities sometimes have sustainable living or ecology groups. Or start your own. Make some new friends and have a good time while you’re greening your life and your community!

Think intergenerational! “Learn secrets from the older generation. Take time to talk to your grandparents or great-grandparents about how they used to live. Experts on doing more with less, they lived without many of the features of modern life that are causing environmental problems today, and may have excellent suggestions for how you could reduce your environmental impact while maintaining a good quality of life.” (Yarrow)

Proactively involve your children in ecologically sound activities as an educational effort and time to share your values around taking care of the planet and other people. Rather than scolding, make it fun and talk with them about why what each of us do matters.

“Put your children in charge of some green tasks around the home—such as checking that lights and appliances are switched off, looking after the composting, or feeding the birds—and reward them for doing well.” (Yarrow)

“Teach a child to ride a bicycle and set them up with a healthy, eco-friend, economical habit for life. Every four-mile trip by bike rather than car prevents around 15 pounds of air pollution and builds a strong heart—frequent cyclists are as fit as people ten years younger who don’t do regular exercise.” (Yarrow)

Read books with your young child, and have conversations about the earth, coexistence and balance. Talk about why you’ve made the changes you have made. A recommended book: Green, Jen (writer), and Mike Gordon (illustrator). (2005). Why Should I Save Energy? New York: Barron’s Educational Series.

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Promote Wider Action

Get involved in policy work by following legislation and taking action. The Pew Center on Global Climate Change is one source of information on pending legislation, and the League of Conservation Voters (www.lcv.org) is another for both national and state level updates.

Pew Center on Global Climate Change. (2007, February 5). Senate Greenhouse Gas Cap-And-Trade Proposals in the 110th Congress.

http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/Cap%2Dand%2Dtrade%20bills%20110th%5FFeb5%2Epdf

Frustrated that the U.S. has backed out of even the tepid consideration it was giving the Kyoto Protocol and other federal measures to be a more responsible environmental citizen of the world? A number of U.S. cities and towns have “ratified” the protocol and committed to other important environmental actions—organized by individual citizens who decided to act in their own communities. The April 16, 2007, issue of Newsweek profiles a number of these green cities. Take these ideas and spread them!

Wage Peace. Almost everything about war is an environmental disaster. Specifically around climate change, the U.S. Department of Defense is the largest single consumer of fuel in the country. In every country, militaries consume disproportionate amount of energy supplies, and emit large quantities of greenhouse gases. Just think what could happen if most of the world’s war and defense budgets were invested in health, education and responsible environmental stewardship. Some developing countries, like Costa Rica, are living examples of the difference this re-prioritizing can make.

Photos in this issue brief by Natalie Elwell.

 

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