The Most Effective Ways Of Reversing Climate Breakdown

“The trouble is, you think you have time” … 

Many of you probably saw the (eco)anxiety-inducing headline brought on by the resurfacing of a 2018 report by Australia’s Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration. The independent think-tank, whose work aims to inform the conversation around our climate’s emergency, was welded around the web yesterday as mainstream news agencies worked ‘World Environment Day‘ into their rhetoric. The lead information pulled from the study offered a startling warning, that global heating of 4°C or more could reduce the global human population by 80% to 90% within the next 31 years.  

Right now, our world’s climate is sitting at 1.1°C, and even if we’re choosing to ignore it, we’re already experiencing the effects of this heating. Currently, the Red Cross estimates there are as many as 50 million climate refugees (15 million more people than the entire population of Canada).

With each increase, our collective reality is predicted to worsen, and it is important to understand just how much at each interval in order to be driven to prevent it from becoming our shared reality.


At 2°C degrees of warming, 153 million people will die from air pollution alone (more than the entire population of Russia, the 9th most populated country in the world).


At 3°C rise in temperatures, the changes we’ve created in the climate will become irreversible, creating room for record-breaking heatwaves and wildfires, more intense flooding, sea-level rise and intense hurricanes, killing many and making much of the world unlivable, increasing the climate refugee numbers.

When we reach 4°C or more, the global human population is expected to reduce by 80% or 90%”, and there is no certainty amongst scientists that we, nor any other living thing, will be able to adapt to this.

SO WHAT CAN WE DO?
We can stop it while we have the chance. Currently,  there are more than 100 solutions to reverse global heating with technology we already have available, to put it all in effect, each of us, and our governments, need to get off our butts (NOW) and do all that we can to ensure every single solution available is put into practice through revolutionary action.  

“We need such dramatic interventions in every sector of our world, from our energy to our transportation, to our infrastructure, our agriculture,” David Wallace-Wells said in a recent interview, “absolutely every aspect of modern life has a carbon footprint, and we need to not just reduce those carbon footprints, we need to eliminate them entirely.”

FACING YOUR ECO-ANXIETY
I know this information creates eco-anxiety, as I type this I’m quaking in my boots out of a combination of fear and too much coffee. But we have a choice; fear the future and be fueled to change it, or ignore it, and allow our civilization to perish at the hands of collective inaction.

This is the story of our lifetime, what we do with it will write history in a way that human existence never has before. Our actions today, tomorrow, this month, this year, and this decade will decide on whether there is a future, ou si c’est la fin.  

That’s the choice. It’s as black and white as decisions come, and it’s time we stop pretending there’s any grey area to swim in.

If we can adopt drastic new politics, put people in positions of power that will take radical action in response to climate breakdown, if we can transform our communities to reflect future living, then a livable future for all of us is still an option. But no one is going to do the work for us, each member of our species has to explode into action both individually and collectively.

I’m as guilty as the next person in falling for the falsely that we can buy our way out of this mess. Capsule wardrobes, plastic-packaged vegan food, and zero waste lifestyles are not going save the planet, nor halt global heating, no help reverse it. These ideas and ideals help, every little bit helps. I’m not trying to minimize the efforts anyone is making, but we have to be honest with ourselves and know that we don’t have time for baby steps, we need leaps and bounds.  

THE FIRST STEPS 

Each step towards a brighter future starts with us. Through the wee pearls of wisdom I’ve gathered over my years of writing on this subject, I’m going to share the most effective ways (as far as I understand) to invest in fixing this situation as quickly and concisely as we can.  

First, you need to understand CARBON IS NOT THE ENEMY, the problem we have right now is too much carbon has been extracted from the bedrock of our planet and pumped out into the atmosphere. This overpopulation of carbon has caused global heating and climate breakdown. But carbon plays an important role on this planet, and when drawn down into the soil and sequestered, it feeds life and all living things. Carbon isn’t evil, we’ve just put it in the wrong element.

Once this is understood, we can look at our lives and explore how we can reduce our carbon footprint, prevent further global heating, and even, reverse global warming. Not just as individuals but as a society:

1. STOP FLYING

The aviation industry is the most polluting form of transport per kilometre (mile) travelled and the 6th largest polluter in the world. Cheap flights have encouraged a rapid increase in plane travel, and undercut greener forms due to low or non-existent taxes on aviation fuel. Just this Thursday, France proposed a new tax on flights in Europe to encourage travellers to switch to less polluting forms of transport. A few of my blogger buddies, as well as 10,000 others, have taken a pledge to stop flying completely, and many more who have family who live far away, have committed to only taking one flight a year (including me).

2. JOIN IN THE UPRISING
Join the actual uprising against the 1% who are responsible for the climate crisis we are in. Force governments to declare a climate emergency and meet Extinction Rebellion‘s demands, join the Sunrise Movement, join Idle No More, align yourself with Decolonize This Place … it’s all connected and all-important, invest in branches of these movements going on in your community to help make drastic and powerful change.

3. VOTE FOR CLIMATE CONSCIOUS POLITICIANS
If they don’t have the climate emergency at the top of their list, they’re probably not the best people to deal with this.

4. MOVE YOUR MONEY TO AN ETHICAL BANK
Divest from banks funding climate breakdown, click here for the how-to.

5. DECLARE YOURSELF AN EARTH PROTECTOR
Ecocide Law is simple, powerful, and possible, and together we can make it happen. All you need to do is click this link, declare yourself an ‘earth protector‘ and donate 5€. You can read more about what Ecocide Law is, here.

6. DISPOSE OF YOUR REFRIGERATORS & COOLING SYSTEMS RESPONSIBLY
I know it’s nuts and completely random, but it is one of the most effective ways of preventing climate breakdown. Read more here.

In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, there are five sections of human motivations which work in sequential order: physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

For any of us to pursue the next step, the one before must be met.

Right now, the majority of Western culture is focused on ‘esteem’ and ‘self-actualization’. For most of us, the first three tiers we enjoy were gifted by our ‘forefathers’ actions. But this gift was only made possible by preventing others from having their ‘basic human needs’ met, which is a shit gift to give to anyone.

If climate breakdown and global heating continues, the false foundations we’ve built our ‘freedom’ on will be ripped out from under every one of us. So while the tip of the triangle might feel like a beautiful thing to bask in, the truth is that these pools of privilege we swim in are directly responsible for the web of problems our world is wrapped in.

We with apparent ‘self-actualization’ met, were/are accountable for continuing to drive change; However, we stopped paying attention to anything but ourselves, making space for the disturbed members of our society to dash around doing the dirty deeds that propped the hoax of our hierarchy, perpetuated pain, and polluted our air, soil, and seas.

In reality, as a society, until EVERYONE has their basic ‘physiological’, ‘safety’, and ‘belonging’ needs to be met and secured, there is no real authenticity nor substance in the top tiers.

Those of us sitting in that spurious space, need to adjust our attention away from the mirror and do what we can to repair the future we wrecked and the past we darkened.

Climate resilience and social justice walk hand-in-hand, they’re inseparable. That’s the way mama nature intended things, and that’s possibly why acts which address climate breakdown are so magical. Each solution to filling and securing the triangle of another also happens to be amongst the most effective options we have for reversing global warming/heating. Powering the possibility for regenerative equality that our species has never seen.

The first step is the physical requirements for our survival: food, water, sleep, shelter. Investing in securing all of these for EVERYONE in your local community, and abroad, WILL REVERSE GLOBAL HEATING and PREVENT CLIMATE BREAKDOWN. If we can achieve just this first tier for all in the next 5-10 years, we’ll have legs to stand on.

FOOD
The most effective way to ensure we have food while also reversing global heating is through eating a PLANT-RICH DIET (does not need to be vegan) produced through REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE (AGRO-ECOLOGY) and REDUCING FOOD WASTE while we’re at it, these acts combined can reverse global heating by over 200 gigatons by 2050.

Regenerative food is produced through no-till, pesticide/fertilizer/herbicide-free farming, which keeps carbon in the ground sequestering it to build more soil, feeding life above and below ground. It creates healthy soil aggregates, increases the nutrition value of the plant,  conserves groundwater, and aids in the resilience of drought and flooding. This type of food production is a gift from the world’s indigenous people, offering a way of producing food that leaves the planet better off for the fact that it has occurred.


We must also stop eating foods which are out of season and/or shipped thousands of miles to get to us. Investing in the future of food means investing in regenerating local lands and supporting your local economy. Learn how you can invest in your local community, eat well, build soil, and regenerate the planet by making conscious purchasing decisions with this free guide: CLICK HERE Kiss The Ground. 

** There are various types of REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE (AGRO-ECOLOGY), combined, they would be the second or third most effective way of reversing global heating. The wisdom behind this type of agriculture has multiple benefits and is the intellectual property of Indigenous Ecological Knowledge. 

WATER