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If people want to get involved, I urge them to join Citizens Climate Lobby. We're non-partisan, building relationships with whoever is in office, asking questions to seek common ground on climate change, advocating a federal price on carbon with all net revenue returned to the people in equal monthly shares. We build and demonstrate political will with public outreach events, publications and interviews in the media, and endorsements from business and thought leaders, and we go to Congress and lobby our representatives and their staff.
Jun 8, 2023·edited Jun 8, 2023Liked by Robert B. Hubbell
I've been reading your daily newsletter for several years, (THANK YOU ROBERT) and have not commented before now. Your call for comments on the climate emergency made me realize I had something pragmatic to offer on this topic. My husband and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. We own a small home and generally don't use a whole lot of fossil fuels. We don't have kids of our own, although do have a large family in the area. As we near retirement age we had to decide if we wanted to stay in the Bay Area, which as most people know is expensive and has lots of big city problems. Still, we grew up here and so we decided to stay. We also decided that it was time to put our money where our beliefs are so we invested in rooftop solar. Several of our neighbors had added leased solar panels to their roofs in the past decade but because we use so little power it seemed overly expensive for us to do it. After multiple power outages, and terrible wildfires in the past several years, we decided to go ahead and invest anyway. We had to take out a new mortgage, (making sure we could pay the low monthly rate while in retirement) and a line of credit, and invested it all into 20 solar panels, a 13kWh battery, and an upgraded subpanel. We were lucky to get in before the California Public Utilities Commission lowered the amount of money a home like ours gets for producing clean power and selling it to the grid (Net Metering or NEM.) Although my spouse lost his job the very day we got the bill for this expensive system, we haven't regretted it for a minute! When tax time came we received back 30% of the money we spent. Every month we now pay only $12 for all our electrical, (instead of the $80-$150 we used to pay.) Each year we get about $400 cash back for the clean energy we sell back to the power company, and every evening, when the sun goes down, we use our own power saved in our battery. We own our system outright so have no loan payments on it. This project is something that cost us money from our retirement funds but it also helps ensure there will be a future for us to retire in. Each day our system reports to us on the company app how much energy we have generated, how much carbon we have offset, and how many trees we have saved. Since our system went online in July 2022 we have generated the following: 9,550 kWh, the estimated cost savings is $609 USD, We've avoided creating 7 tons of C02, We have saved the equivalent of 113 trees, We have "not driven" almost 17,000 miles, and have not used 760 gallons of fuel. Aside from all this good stuff, the very best is how wonderful it makes us feel to have done something tangible to make our own weight on the planet much lighter. I hope our experience inspires others to invest personally in direct action to reverse pollution and environmental degradation. Wherever you live, there are ways to clean up your own trail. There truly is no more urgent investment for all of us!
In addition to joining groups to address climate change, my husband and I take individual steps--small those these are--and hope to encourage our friends and family to do the same: take fewer, shorter showers; buy local and organic fruit and veggies; use the appliances--washer, dryer, dishwasher--as infrequently as possible; got rid of our lawn and planted native, drought tolerant plants; compost food waste and use it on the plants; wear sweaters when we're cold and keep the thermostat at 67 degrees in the daytime, 60 at night; use cloth, reusable bags when shopping; recycle as much as possible, including clothes--and I'm sure many of you can add some other steps to this list. Barbara
Thanks for opening up your comments. I’ve been very concerned about the climate crisis for 20 years. When my kids hit high school, I realized I needed a new focus so I went back to college. My goal was to learn as much about the Earth as possible in order to advocate for Her. Working for the student newspaper, I was able to meet Al Gore and he inspired a commitment to DO SOMETHING.
Nature restoration projects, personal habit alterations, and advocacy later, I’m dismayed at the lack of progress on national policy to mitigate this impending apocalypse. As with gun control legislation, climate friendly legislation gets shafted.
Finding Third Act, an org started by Bill McKibben and others, was a game changer for me. Knowing that I can make a difference in my golden years helps weather the anxiety around climate chaos.
One of the tasks many of us have taken on is to recycle as much of our throwaway stuff as possible, especially plastics. I have been involved in the plastics issue since seeing the film “Bag It” at the Mountain Film Festival in Telluride, CO at least 10 years ago.
Over the years, in addition to reducing my use of plastic bags and especially avoiding single use plastic bags which often end up in the oceans harming sea life, I have tried hard to recycle as many unavoidable plastic products as possible…food containers, product containers, etc.
Unfortunately, the plastics industry has tried to portray itself as environmentally conscious by assigning numbers to many plastic products that are not really recyclable, or will never end up getting recycled, fooling people into thinking they are not harming the environment by consuming the products inside and then discarding the containers.
I recently heard a good piece on NPR about recycling that revealed the sad truth that even the process of recycling itself releases dangerous toxins into the environment. So what is an environmentally conscious person to do, the interviewer asked the scientist on the program. Essentially, products that have a number 1 or number 2 on them can be recycled relatively safely and frequently are actually recycled. However, products with higher numbers are not really safe to recycle, and the process of recycling them itself creates more toxins than it is worth.
So our only alternative is to put pressure on companies to use less plastic!!! And to use less plastic ourselves whenever possible. I recently bought some storage bags and some wrappers for food made out of beeswax…they’re a bit awkward to use, but in some situations they can work.
The plastics conundrum is extremely difficult and challenging. Other than writing to companies about how the wrap their products or how they waste plastic in packaging their products, and looking for products in other kinds of containers, it’s tough to find a workable solution!
I’m open to new ideas, but I do recommend NOT putting anything in your recycling container that has a number higher than a 1 or a 2 on it!
The major way to deal with climate change is to Vote ALL climate deniers OUT of office and not let any new ones in. That translates into don't vote for any Republicans and make sure every race is contested so a climate deniers doesn't win the election by default. When people say we can't afford climate change measures one should point out that the cost of not dealing with climate change now is orders of magnitude more expensive.
As I watched the Big Apple glow orange and listened to (favorite) MSNBC commentators complain about lack of breath, weepy eyes and closed airports, I thought of the old adage: “As goes California so goes the Nation.”
If you want to help, put solar panels on your roof and buy an electric car. Both may not make the most financial sense for you personally but shifting away from fossil fuels has a cost which it is our responsibility to bear since our profligate use of cheap energy has gotten us into this situation. Some will point out that most electricity comes from coal and methane fired power plants but greater demand is encouraging development of green generation and, yes, it’s more expensive but, again, we made this mess. We need to pay to fix it.
I believe that other parts of the world are ahead of much of American regarding steps that can be taken. Where we live, there are neighborhood bins for paper/cardboard, glass, metal plastic, compost. Also, there are many small shops that offer local fruits and vegetables which are within walking distance of the home. We chose not buy a car and to walk everywhere because it is possible - unlike most of CA (although I walked everywhere near my home in Santa Monica) and large metropolises.
I often think about how much better it would be if people could work close to home rather than the hour or longer drive to and from work in many cities, and think that one thing the pandemic did for many was the opportunity to work remotely from home. It would be wonderful if this could continue.
Something everyone could do if they truly wanted to would be to boycott the products sold by the major corporations. Sadly, there are American products sold here (Scott brand, Johnson & Johnson, etc.) We buy products made here in Spain even though the quality might not be as good because we want to support Spain's economy as well as local. Buying bread from the bakery and bringing it home with no wrapper is something else we do rather than buying the super market choices like Orowheat or other companies that have bulldozed their way into markets outside of the U.S.. To get corporations to change, it takes being committed to being uncomfortable with 'the American lifestyle'. One corporation now owns all of the grocery store chains in the U.S.. This means that one corporation can determine what you will pay for your food. Buy local and fresh as much as possible.
Carpool. When we would need to drive down to San Diego, the carpool lanes were mostly only two people in the car.
The only way to truly make a difference is to take measures that squeeze the pocket books of the corporate kings. The final episode of Succession spells this out.
I also recommend The Climate Action Handbook, A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions for Everyone, from Sasquatch Books. Lots of stuff you can do right now to personally help.
And VOTE for the most climate-forward candidate you can.
Every choice we make, every action we take is woven with shiny ribbons and threads made from fossil fuels. The corporations who make those threads are fat and smug and determined to clutch their riches in their fists at any cost, even if it means the death of life as we know it on this planet.
They don't want you to consider that every flight we take to Paris, outsized home we build, steak we eat, dress from Target we buy, outsized lawn we mow with a gas mower contributes to the ruin of our home, this planet. Nor is it easy for us to rewire our brains to consider the cost to the planet of all of our daily activities and make different choices. It's gobsmacking! But it's possible and once we start unraveling those fossil fuel threads on a daily basis (in my experience) by eating more plants, installing heat pumps, buying repurposed clothes, reducing the size of the lawn, biking more, buying less stuff, even giving up a second home if one is fortunate enough to have one-it is possible to begin to have a sense of agency over this crisis. This sense of agency is not accompanied by feelings of deprivation, but rather by a deep sense of living in harmony with the needs of our planet and of living a "right life." Whenever did a new pair of shoes really bring happiness?
We are in a fight for our lives and we can't do this alone: find neighbors and family to join in this unravelling of the old way of life and reweaving of a new one. Here in Freeport, Maine, last week, we held a plant-based community supper in an old barn with twinkly lights hung from the ceiling and Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill" playing in the background. Fifty or so neighbors came together to share plant-based recipes and show our love for this place and at the same time support our behavior change choices. We had a wonderful time. Nobody missed a blood-red steak.
Then join Third Act, Bill McKibben's organization for folks over 60 like me. Third Act is hitting the BIG BAD BANKS in their pockets and organizing all over the country. Or join the Sierra Club or form your own local community grass roots organization. Life will be richer and more joyful if you start pulling apart all those fossil fuel weavings and tossing them into the fire.
Please Note: If you post a comment and it seems to "disappear," it can be found at the bottom of the Comment thread. The newest comments appear at the bottom of the thread and are moved up in the Comments section as they are "liked" by other readers.
It just so happens I spent the afternoon putting together a resource doc of ways we can help. https://www.notion.so/I-want-to-do-more-on-CLIMATE-72a3416371ff426392512a69874adff8
If people want to get involved, I urge them to join Citizens Climate Lobby. We're non-partisan, building relationships with whoever is in office, asking questions to seek common ground on climate change, advocating a federal price on carbon with all net revenue returned to the people in equal monthly shares. We build and demonstrate political will with public outreach events, publications and interviews in the media, and endorsements from business and thought leaders, and we go to Congress and lobby our representatives and their staff.
Hear, hear, for addressing the climate crisis! Here are 4 favorite organizations:
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/ (See comment herein by Steven Ghan, who's in the thick of it.)
https://ballotpedia.org/Sierra_Club
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/
https://350.org/bill/ (Bill McKibben)
I've been reading your daily newsletter for several years, (THANK YOU ROBERT) and have not commented before now. Your call for comments on the climate emergency made me realize I had something pragmatic to offer on this topic. My husband and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. We own a small home and generally don't use a whole lot of fossil fuels. We don't have kids of our own, although do have a large family in the area. As we near retirement age we had to decide if we wanted to stay in the Bay Area, which as most people know is expensive and has lots of big city problems. Still, we grew up here and so we decided to stay. We also decided that it was time to put our money where our beliefs are so we invested in rooftop solar. Several of our neighbors had added leased solar panels to their roofs in the past decade but because we use so little power it seemed overly expensive for us to do it. After multiple power outages, and terrible wildfires in the past several years, we decided to go ahead and invest anyway. We had to take out a new mortgage, (making sure we could pay the low monthly rate while in retirement) and a line of credit, and invested it all into 20 solar panels, a 13kWh battery, and an upgraded subpanel. We were lucky to get in before the California Public Utilities Commission lowered the amount of money a home like ours gets for producing clean power and selling it to the grid (Net Metering or NEM.) Although my spouse lost his job the very day we got the bill for this expensive system, we haven't regretted it for a minute! When tax time came we received back 30% of the money we spent. Every month we now pay only $12 for all our electrical, (instead of the $80-$150 we used to pay.) Each year we get about $400 cash back for the clean energy we sell back to the power company, and every evening, when the sun goes down, we use our own power saved in our battery. We own our system outright so have no loan payments on it. This project is something that cost us money from our retirement funds but it also helps ensure there will be a future for us to retire in. Each day our system reports to us on the company app how much energy we have generated, how much carbon we have offset, and how many trees we have saved. Since our system went online in July 2022 we have generated the following: 9,550 kWh, the estimated cost savings is $609 USD, We've avoided creating 7 tons of C02, We have saved the equivalent of 113 trees, We have "not driven" almost 17,000 miles, and have not used 760 gallons of fuel. Aside from all this good stuff, the very best is how wonderful it makes us feel to have done something tangible to make our own weight on the planet much lighter. I hope our experience inspires others to invest personally in direct action to reverse pollution and environmental degradation. Wherever you live, there are ways to clean up your own trail. There truly is no more urgent investment for all of us!
In addition to joining groups to address climate change, my husband and I take individual steps--small those these are--and hope to encourage our friends and family to do the same: take fewer, shorter showers; buy local and organic fruit and veggies; use the appliances--washer, dryer, dishwasher--as infrequently as possible; got rid of our lawn and planted native, drought tolerant plants; compost food waste and use it on the plants; wear sweaters when we're cold and keep the thermostat at 67 degrees in the daytime, 60 at night; use cloth, reusable bags when shopping; recycle as much as possible, including clothes--and I'm sure many of you can add some other steps to this list. Barbara
Thanks for opening up your comments. I’ve been very concerned about the climate crisis for 20 years. When my kids hit high school, I realized I needed a new focus so I went back to college. My goal was to learn as much about the Earth as possible in order to advocate for Her. Working for the student newspaper, I was able to meet Al Gore and he inspired a commitment to DO SOMETHING.
Nature restoration projects, personal habit alterations, and advocacy later, I’m dismayed at the lack of progress on national policy to mitigate this impending apocalypse. As with gun control legislation, climate friendly legislation gets shafted.
Finding Third Act, an org started by Bill McKibben and others, was a game changer for me. Knowing that I can make a difference in my golden years helps weather the anxiety around climate chaos.
https://thirdact.org/about/who-we-are/
I highly recommend reading this book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-field-guide-to-climate-anxiety-how-to-keep-your-cool-on-a-warming-planet-sarah-jaquette-ray/13155799. It focuses on the emotional and interpersonal skills we can build to help us face the climate crisis together. It left me feeling hopeful and focused.
One of the tasks many of us have taken on is to recycle as much of our throwaway stuff as possible, especially plastics. I have been involved in the plastics issue since seeing the film “Bag It” at the Mountain Film Festival in Telluride, CO at least 10 years ago.
Over the years, in addition to reducing my use of plastic bags and especially avoiding single use plastic bags which often end up in the oceans harming sea life, I have tried hard to recycle as many unavoidable plastic products as possible…food containers, product containers, etc.
Unfortunately, the plastics industry has tried to portray itself as environmentally conscious by assigning numbers to many plastic products that are not really recyclable, or will never end up getting recycled, fooling people into thinking they are not harming the environment by consuming the products inside and then discarding the containers.
I recently heard a good piece on NPR about recycling that revealed the sad truth that even the process of recycling itself releases dangerous toxins into the environment. So what is an environmentally conscious person to do, the interviewer asked the scientist on the program. Essentially, products that have a number 1 or number 2 on them can be recycled relatively safely and frequently are actually recycled. However, products with higher numbers are not really safe to recycle, and the process of recycling them itself creates more toxins than it is worth.
So our only alternative is to put pressure on companies to use less plastic!!! And to use less plastic ourselves whenever possible. I recently bought some storage bags and some wrappers for food made out of beeswax…they’re a bit awkward to use, but in some situations they can work.
The plastics conundrum is extremely difficult and challenging. Other than writing to companies about how the wrap their products or how they waste plastic in packaging their products, and looking for products in other kinds of containers, it’s tough to find a workable solution!
I’m open to new ideas, but I do recommend NOT putting anything in your recycling container that has a number higher than a 1 or a 2 on it!
The major way to deal with climate change is to Vote ALL climate deniers OUT of office and not let any new ones in. That translates into don't vote for any Republicans and make sure every race is contested so a climate deniers doesn't win the election by default. When people say we can't afford climate change measures one should point out that the cost of not dealing with climate change now is orders of magnitude more expensive.
I can’t help but think of how different life would be now if Al Gore had been president.
As I watched the Big Apple glow orange and listened to (favorite) MSNBC commentators complain about lack of breath, weepy eyes and closed airports, I thought of the old adage: “As goes California so goes the Nation.”
If you want to help, put solar panels on your roof and buy an electric car. Both may not make the most financial sense for you personally but shifting away from fossil fuels has a cost which it is our responsibility to bear since our profligate use of cheap energy has gotten us into this situation. Some will point out that most electricity comes from coal and methane fired power plants but greater demand is encouraging development of green generation and, yes, it’s more expensive but, again, we made this mess. We need to pay to fix it.
I believe that other parts of the world are ahead of much of American regarding steps that can be taken. Where we live, there are neighborhood bins for paper/cardboard, glass, metal plastic, compost. Also, there are many small shops that offer local fruits and vegetables which are within walking distance of the home. We chose not buy a car and to walk everywhere because it is possible - unlike most of CA (although I walked everywhere near my home in Santa Monica) and large metropolises.
I often think about how much better it would be if people could work close to home rather than the hour or longer drive to and from work in many cities, and think that one thing the pandemic did for many was the opportunity to work remotely from home. It would be wonderful if this could continue.
Something everyone could do if they truly wanted to would be to boycott the products sold by the major corporations. Sadly, there are American products sold here (Scott brand, Johnson & Johnson, etc.) We buy products made here in Spain even though the quality might not be as good because we want to support Spain's economy as well as local. Buying bread from the bakery and bringing it home with no wrapper is something else we do rather than buying the super market choices like Orowheat or other companies that have bulldozed their way into markets outside of the U.S.. To get corporations to change, it takes being committed to being uncomfortable with 'the American lifestyle'. One corporation now owns all of the grocery store chains in the U.S.. This means that one corporation can determine what you will pay for your food. Buy local and fresh as much as possible.
Carpool. When we would need to drive down to San Diego, the carpool lanes were mostly only two people in the car.
The only way to truly make a difference is to take measures that squeeze the pocket books of the corporate kings. The final episode of Succession spells this out.
Great Thunberg advised us to do "everything." I say, when a job seems daunting, "Just start, anything first."
Robert says, "There are so many things we can or should do, it is overwhelming to pick one and say, “This is my cause or contribution to the fight.”
So, OK, select something you ALREADY really care about - there is no doubt a climate connection. Google it and find an organization working on that.
Join and contribute. You will be welcomed, and the personal connections will grow.
Don't worry, you will soon be interacting with numerous other aspects of climate change, since there is so much overlap.
My group is Citizens' Climate Lobby (CCL), which would be a great start for anyone.
The website is citizensclimatelobby.org
I also recommend The Climate Action Handbook, A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions for Everyone, from Sasquatch Books. Lots of stuff you can do right now to personally help.
And VOTE for the most climate-forward candidate you can.
Every choice we make, every action we take is woven with shiny ribbons and threads made from fossil fuels. The corporations who make those threads are fat and smug and determined to clutch their riches in their fists at any cost, even if it means the death of life as we know it on this planet.
They don't want you to consider that every flight we take to Paris, outsized home we build, steak we eat, dress from Target we buy, outsized lawn we mow with a gas mower contributes to the ruin of our home, this planet. Nor is it easy for us to rewire our brains to consider the cost to the planet of all of our daily activities and make different choices. It's gobsmacking! But it's possible and once we start unraveling those fossil fuel threads on a daily basis (in my experience) by eating more plants, installing heat pumps, buying repurposed clothes, reducing the size of the lawn, biking more, buying less stuff, even giving up a second home if one is fortunate enough to have one-it is possible to begin to have a sense of agency over this crisis. This sense of agency is not accompanied by feelings of deprivation, but rather by a deep sense of living in harmony with the needs of our planet and of living a "right life." Whenever did a new pair of shoes really bring happiness?
We are in a fight for our lives and we can't do this alone: find neighbors and family to join in this unravelling of the old way of life and reweaving of a new one. Here in Freeport, Maine, last week, we held a plant-based community supper in an old barn with twinkly lights hung from the ceiling and Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill" playing in the background. Fifty or so neighbors came together to share plant-based recipes and show our love for this place and at the same time support our behavior change choices. We had a wonderful time. Nobody missed a blood-red steak.
Then join Third Act, Bill McKibben's organization for folks over 60 like me. Third Act is hitting the BIG BAD BANKS in their pockets and organizing all over the country. Or join the Sierra Club or form your own local community grass roots organization. Life will be richer and more joyful if you start pulling apart all those fossil fuel weavings and tossing them into the fire.