Taking the Win: Embracing the Passive Ways We Can Combat the Climate Crisis
Warbler’s Wisdom, a weekly column by Jocelyn Hartley, our Creation and Justice Fellow from Disciples Home Mission and Green Chalice
Sometimes a sustainable lifestyle can sound like an endless list of don’ts: don’t drive your gas car, don’t eat meat, don’t get your coffee in a plastic cup, don’t have a backyard pool in the desert. When sustainability is framed this way, it’s no wonder people are resistant to facing the climate crisis head on. After all, who wants to overhaul their lifestyle, knowing full well their actions won’t mean much unless a significant portion of the world population joins them?
But what if I told you there are ways to combat the climate crisis just by living your life exactly the way you do? I wouldn’t be lying entirely. Today I want to highlight two passive ways (one of which you are almost certainly already doing!) you can combat the climate crisis.
I recently learned about a search engine called Ecosia. Ecosia is a free to use search engine that works much like Google or Bing. What makes Ecosia different is that the revenue the company generates from advertisements is used to plant trees and take other climate-mitigating actions. Ecosia publishes their monthly financial reports, tracks the number of trees financed, and publishes information on the tree-planting projects it supports. You can use Ecosia on Google Chrome by visiting ecosia.org and clicking “switch to Ecosia.”
You may or may not know that the City of Tucson has a Climate Action Plan. As part of the Plan, Tucson is currently writing an Energy Cooperation Agreement (ECA) with Tucson Electric Power. The ECA draft is based on input received during town halls with Tucson residents. Among many other exciting provisions, the current draft includes a commitment to 100% clean energy by 2045. Read the rest of the current draft provisions here. So where do you come in? By paying your city taxes! Why not celebrate that your tax dollars are going to something good, something that came out of an unusually democratic process?
The beauty of Ecosia and the Climate Action Plan to me is that they are both initiatives that seek to reshape society in a way that makes a sustainable lifestyle possible–without every individual adhering to a long list of “don’ts”. And ultimately, societal reshaping is what we need to fight the climate crisis. This reshaping harnesses our creativity to develop elegant solutions to our processes. So if you’re feeling frustrated by the impossibility of living sustainably in our society, take a moment to embrace and celebrate these two ways society is supporting sustainability.