Recycle. Eat less meat. Buy electric cars. Have fewer kids. Reduce consumption. Install solar panels on your home.
These are just a few of the (primarily middle-class oriented) ideas that the media have offered over the last year to help you figure out “what you can do now” to address climate change and to avoid its most devastating impacts.
Yet, in view of the 24th Annual Conference of the Parties (COP24) in Katowice, Poland–a fiasco that produced no binding commitments by nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so as to avoid catastrophic climate change–these actions are clearly not enough.
They never were enough.
So, that being said, here are a few more things you can do:
1) Join the Extinction Rebellion.
Started this year in the UK, the Extinction Rebellion–which has spread to at least 35 countries–is a movement dedicated to taking radical, nonviolent direct action in rebellion against government inaction on climate change.
If the Extinction Rebellion is not your cup of tea, however, then find or start a rebellion that is, because by now it should be incandescently clear that radical, massive, strategic nonviolent civil disobedience, disruption and noncooperation are precisely what are called for in the face of governmental elites’ intransigence regarding climate change. We must disrupt, disrupt, disrupt until they surrender their allegiances to fossil fuel interests and neoliberalism, go back to the negotiating table, and then in good faith hammer out a robust, binding, enforceable and equitable global climate agreement.
2) Organize where you are.
An existential crisis demands more than signing petitions and climate marches.
So, take responsibility for canvassing at least 25 homes and apartment complexes where you live. Recruit concerned neighbors to help with canvassing and to organize neighborhood events and climate resistance.
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