Tag: Climate Action

Commentary: How a quiz helps people find their preferred role in climate action

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Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash
Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

Part personality quiz, part decision tree, part choose-your-own-adventure, a new tool aims to help people find the climate action best suited for them.

By Kathleen Dean Moore, Yale Climate Connections (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5)

The new “Climate Action Quiz,” rolled out through Yale Climate Connections in October 2022, is being used by climate-concerned individuals to help them find the climate action engagement strategy best suited to their lives and passions. 

After taking the quiz in a workshop zoomed to Alaska, a group of social-work students decided to link their work to climate justice. A high school teacher decided to teach her accounting students to include the full social, environmental, and climate costs of “business-as-usual” on their balance sheets. A young mother, with her newborn daughter on her shoulder, decided to focus on the rights of future generations. People from across the country have begun to register their climate-action decisions.

These early results are just what the quiz developers had hoped would happen when we created the Climate Action Quiz. Between us, co-author SueEllen Campbell and I estimated we had given or organized at least 250 climate-action events in the past 10 years. Practically without exception, the first audience response often was some variation of: “OK, I’m in! I want to help in the climate struggle. But I simply don’t know what to do.”

We get it. It’s hard. People have lives to live and work to do, and the climate challenges seem infinite and ferocious. It’s not immediately clear how to do anything that will make a real difference. But in an all-hands-on-deck emergency like the climate crisis, there’s no place for bystanders. So we decided to develop a tool to help people get started.

From one set of options to another, the quiz leads individuals to their particular place in planet-healing work.

  • Are you ready to act, or do you need a little encouragement?
  • Are you happiest when you are working for something or against something?
  • Do you like to act alone, or are you ready to join with other people?
  • Does climate injustice concern you most, or environmental devastation?  

Once they land on their unique calling — Get involved in land use politics in your area. Raise your kids with climate change in mind. Join local stream restoration efforts. Ratchet up your steps to shrink your own climate footprint — the tool offers people resources and gentle, maybe jolly, suggestions for getting started.

Early responses to the quiz have been heartening. “I did it twice.” “I loved the idea of googling my job + climate. I had never considered that.” “This was informative and inspiring.”

We are beginning to hear also from educators who are sending their students to the quiz. Teachers recognize that informing students about the dangers they face is necessary, but often disempowering and sometimes cruel. But they say that leading them to meaningful, effective actions – actions they are comfortable taking, on issues they deeply care about – lifts their spirits and gives them reason to engage.

It is too early to draw any conclusions about what actions people are most likely to choose, and that isn’t really our goal. But what is remarkable is the variety of actions people are choosing to take. We are encouraged by this early result. The problems that the world faces are complex and desperately entangled. So action in any area can send healing effects in many different directions. Work to create social justice will have spinoff effects on environmental thriving, for example, and the reverse is true. It doesn’t matter where people choose to start, as long as they start somewhere.

Many quiz takers’ choices have led them to No. 5: Shrink your own carbon footprint. Once here, the quiz encourages them to go beyond simply making different choices as consumers. We are aware that too close a focus on a personal footprint invites people to blame themselves for causing the climate crisis; that take in effect distracts their attention from those polluters who for crucial decades have used deceit, political payoffs, and economic uncertainty to trap them in a fossil-fuel dependent economy.

Just as the problems are innumerable, the expertise and experience of concerned people come in beautiful and infinite variety. Musicians, aunts and uncles, morticians, beauticians, teachers, fieldworkers, grocers, children, and more all have important contributions to make to the climate struggle. It’s a mistake to think that the only option is to march in a parade (although that can be fun) or change out your lightbulbs (less fun) when the real healing requires transformations in every aspect of our lives. The quiz is a kind of matchmaking, we tell people. And like matchmaking, it is an expression of the universal desire of people to find meaningful connection to the things they care most about in the world.

Kathleen Dean Moore, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emerita at Oregon State University. She is the author or co-editor of five books about climate ethics, including Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril and Great Tide Rising: Toward Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change.

Pockets of collaboration offer hope for tackling global challenges

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United Nations Headquarters. Flags of member nations flying at United Nations Headquarters. Dec. 30, 2005. Joao Araujo Pinto.
United Nations Headquarters. Flags of member nations flying at United Nations Headquarters. Dec. 30, 2005. Joao Araujo Pinto.

By Børge Brende, President, World Economic Forum (Public License).

World leaders are gathering in New York for the opening of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly and to discuss the major issues of the day. The list of agenda items is long.

The war in Ukraine continues to rage, energy markets are unstable, global temperatures are rising, and the COVID-19 pandemic lingers as other public health concerns emerge. Meanwhile, inflation has proved to be ubiquitous, burdening consumers, businesses, and governments worldwide.

To address these challenges, global leaders will likely stress the need for strengthening cooperation within, what the UN Secretary-General has called, today’s “fractured world”. The question is: at a time when fragmentation appears to be increasing, what can global cooperation, practically, look like?

Thankfully, we have examples. Because despite challenging headwinds, there are instances—pockets—of collaboration that are not only promising but offer insight into what makes cooperation possible, and even durable.

Fruitful collaboration tends to be characterised by three factors: the need is urgent, the area for collaboration is specific, and the benefits are clear.

Climate action is perhaps the most salient example of each of these.

The urgency of addressing global warming is undeniable. Climate change is increasingly wreaking havoc worldwide, causing immense economic and human suffering. The devastating flooding in Pakistan is the latest example of lives being lost due to more intense weather patterns. This is why the UN raised the alarm earlier this year, stating in its latest climate report that the time for action to avoid catastrophic global warming is “now or never.”

As a result of the urgency, there are specific actions needed. World leaders have developed benchmarks that, if achieved in time, could mitigate the negative effects of climate change. This includes efforts to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030 and hit net-zero emissions by 2050. Such a reduction, experts hope, could limit global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. So far, over 70 countries, which account for 76% of global emissions, have created timelines for reaching net-zero.

And the benefits of collaborating on climate change are clear. We know the effects of a warming planet respect no border, so reaching our climate objectives can only happen when parties work together. Moreover, the transition to green energy systems—key to combatting climate change—is expected to generate over 10 million global jobs this decade.

All this is why 196 parties came together in 2015 to adopt the Paris Agreement and agreed last year at the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow (COP26) to increase carbon-cutting commitments.

Climate action also offers evidence that countries can compartmentalise and prioritise collaboration on a specific issue, despite disagreements elsewhere.

The United States and China, for instance, have shown a willingness to coordinate. Last year at COP26, the two countries issued a joint declaration that articulated the “seriousness and urgency of the climate crisis” and outlined areas in which both sides would take cooperative action.

More recently, at the World Economic Forum’s May 2022 Annual Meeting in Davos, US and Chinese climate envoys reaffirmed climate cooperation between their two countries. To be sure, this collaboration has hit road bumps, with talks recently suspended. But US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry has expressed hope they would resume because climate action “is the one area that should not be subject to interruption because of other issues that do affect us.”

It is also worth remembering that even during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union coordinated environmental protection policies, specifically on guidelines around air and water pollution, environmental preservation and general mechanisms for tracking the changing climate.

Importantly, we do not need to wait on the side-lines for these three elements—urgency, specificity, and beneficial outcomes—to appear on their own. Instead, from tackling the COVID-19 pandemic to bolstering the global economy to unlocking the benefits of new technology, leaders can build momentum toward cooperation by identifying and advancing each of these elements.

There is one other factor that makes cooperation promising when it takes place. That is, inclusivity.

Partnerships between businesses, governments, and civic organizations are helping advance important efforts in battling climate change. Over 7,000 companies, 1,000 educational institutions and 1,000 cities have joined the UN-backed Race to Zero campaign to cut global emissions by 50% by 2030, which the World Economic Forum is helping advance. This type of widespread collaboration not only makes positive outcomes more likely but serves as a binding force among parties that improves durability.

Tackling the world’s challenges is no easy task. This is why we must remain on the lookout for early signs of where collaboration is possible—and shape the context so that it then becomes likely. The stakes are simply too high to allow disagreements elsewhere to hamstring progress around crucial issues.

Building something better: How community organizing helps people thrive in challenging times

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Photo by Matheus Bertelli
Photo by Matheus Bertelli

By Stephanie Malin and Meghan Elizabeth Kallman, The Conversation (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Americans don’t agree on much these days, but many feel that the U.S. is on the wrong track and the future is bleak. In a time of unprecedented division, rising inequality and intensifying climate change, it’s easy to feel that progress is impossible.

In fact, models exist all around us for building safer and more equitable spaces where people can thrive.

We are sociologists who study organizational systems, political and economic institutions and environmental justice. In our new book, “Building Something Better: Environmental Crises and the Promise of Community Change,” we explore how people adapt to crises and thrive in challenging times by working together.

The organizations that we profile are small, but they make big impacts by crafting alternatives to neoliberal capitalism – an approach to governing that uses austere economic ideas to organize society. Neoliberalism aims to put government in service of corporations through measures such as deregulating markets, privatizing industries and reducing public services.

Here are three groups we see building something better.

Humans being, not humans buying

Some groups build better systems by rejecting neoliberalism’s hyperindividualism. Individualistic logic tells people that they can make the biggest changes by voting with their dollars.

But when people instead see how they can create real political changes as part of communities and collective systems, amazing things can happen. One example is the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, one of the poorest areas in the U.S.

This organization is led by and serves Lakota people who, like other Native nations, contend with devastating structural inequalities such as racism and poverty. These challenges are rooted in settler colonialism, especially the Lakotas’ loss of their tribal lands and displacement into less secure locations.

Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation leaders describe how they are drawing on their people’s history and legacy to build a strong and healthy community.

Thunder Valley focuses on healing from daily traumas, such as poverty and high suicide rates. Its goals include teaching the Lakota language across generations, empowering young people to become community leaders and promoting food sovereignty by raising food for the community in greenhouses and gardens.

Thunder Valley’s other programs are designed to create community and security in ways that lift up Lakota approaches. For example, its housing initiative works to increase access to affordable housing and provides financial coaching. Homes are built and neighborhoods are designed according to Lakota traditions. The organization views home ownership as a way to strengthen community connections rather than simply building individual wealth.

Thunder Valley’s programs also include a demonstration farm and a Lakota immersion Montessori school. In 2015, President Barack Obama recognized the organization’s work to heal and build a multigenerational community as a Promise Zone – a place building innovative collaborative spaces for community development.

Claiming space by making music

Brass and percussion street bands play for free in many U.S. communities. They form mainly in cities and are deeply linked to contemporary urban justice issues.

Acoustic and mobile, these bands play without stages to elevate them or sound systems separating musicians from audience. They invite crowds to join the fun. They may play alongside unions and grassroots groups at political protests, or in parades or community events.

The common factor is that they always perform in public spaces, where everyone can participate. Street bands create bridges across social divides and democratize spaces, while inviting play and camaraderie amid huge social challenges.

Band leader and composer Jon Batiste leads a peaceful protest music march through the streets of New York on June 12, 2020, following the death of George Floyd while being detained by police in Minneapolis.

In the 19th century, brass bands flourished all over the U.S. and Europe. In the U.S. South, street bands emerged from benevolent societies – social organizations that helped free and enslaved Black Americans cope with financial hardships. These groups eventually morphed into “social aid and pleasure clubs,” the forces behind New Orleans’ famous parades.

Today, the brass band movement convenes yearly through the HONK! Festival in cities across the country such as Boston; Providence, Rhode Island; and Austin, Texas. Drawing on a tradition of protest, HONK! events are designed to assert that performers and ordinary people have a right to occupy public space, as well as to disrupt state or corporate events.

Affordable community-based energy

Other groups find ways to build economic systems that serve communities rather than private companies or industries.

That’s the goal of the Indigenized Energy Initiative, a community-owned, nonprofit solar cooperative in Cannon Ball, North Dakota. The organization was founded following protests on the Standing Rock Reservation against the Dakota Access Pipeline, which carries oil from the Bakken formation in North Dakota to a terminal in Illinois.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and its supporters opposed the pipeline, which crossed its ancestral lands and vital waterways, arguing that it violated treaties and tribal sovereignty. The project was built, but opponents hope to shut it down through a pending environmental review.

Indigenized Energy’s executive director, Cody Two Bears, emerged from Standing Rock protests aiming to build the first solar farm in oil-dependent North Dakota. The organization aims to provide low-cost solar energy for all community members, promoting energy independence.

Today, the Cannon Ball Community Solar Farm has 1,100 solar panels and a 300-kilowatt generating capacity – enough to power all of Cannon Ball’s homes. The farm sells its power into the state grid, earning enough to offset the electricity bills of the community’s veteran and youth centers.

Longer-term goals include building tribally owned transmission lines, installing solar panels on tribal homes and community buildings and expanding support for solar power in North Dakota.

Building better systems

We see similarities among these organizations and others in our book. Initiatives like commmunity-owned solar cooperatives and collective models for home ownership and neighborhood planning aim to build economic systems that meet community needs and treat people equitably. Instead of finding answers in individual consumption or lifestyle changes, they build collective solutions.

At the same time, communities across the U.S. have different views of what constitutes a good life. In our view, acknowledging different experiences, goals and values is part of the work of building a shared future.

In recent years, many scholars have pointed out ways in which neoliberalism has failed to produce effective solutions to economic, health, environmental and other challenges. These critiques invite a deeper question: Are people capable of remaking the world to prioritize relationships with one another and with the planet, instead of relationships to wealth? We believe the cases in our book show clearly that the answer is yes.

Authors:

Stephanie Malin
Associate Professor of Sociology; Co-Founder, Center for Environmental Justice at CSU, Colorado State University

Meghan Elizabeth Kallman
Assistant Professor of International Development, UMass Boston

Disclosure statement
Stephanie Malin has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Colorado Water Center, the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (a branch of NIH), the Rural Sociological Society, and CSU School of Global Environmental Sustainability.

Meghan Elizabeth Kallman is a Democrat representing District 15 (Pawtucket, North Providence) in the Rhode Island Senate. She is a co-founder of Conceivable Future, a women-led network of Americans bringing awareness to the threat climate change poses to reproductive justice and demanding an end to US fossil fuel subsidies.