Coming out as an environmentalist

Climate change and me, and how it can help you

I care about climate change.

Climate change is a particularly depressing issue to care about because it’s invisible. If you care about animal rights, you can point to some animals and say they shouldn’t suffer. If you care about homelessness, you can point to a homeless person and say this person should not have to sleep on the street. If you care about marriage equality, you can point to a gay couple and say they should have the same rights as any other couple.

If you care about climate change, you can… point to the sky, which looks exactly the same as it has looked since humans have been around to look at it.

Alright, so here we are. We have fossil fuels. Our entire civilization is based on burning them, which releases carbon dioxide. This is causing our planet to warm (but not in a way that we can feel). It’s changing our air (but again, not in a way that we can see). This is affecting our entire planet (which is much too large for us to comprehend). We have a big issue, but for these reasons, it’s not one that many people can relate to. Somehow, I can relate to it. It feels real to me. I wish it felt real to more people.

About a year ago, I asked myself how I was going to help. If it matters so much to me, I should be doing something about it! At first, I didn’t find many ways to make a difference:

Ballots often have some climate-related issues on them but no proposals that will really make the difference we need.

Volunteering isn’t an option until someone invents a way for me to spend a few hours on a weekend scooping CO2 out of the air and into a trash bin.

Protesting just isn’t my scene. I’d rather stand up for something than against something.

In David MacKay’s excellent book Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air (which you can buy or download as a free pdf), he wrote:

Don’t be distracted by the myth that “every little helps.” If everyone does a little, we’ll achieve only a little. We must do a lot. What’s required are big changes in demand and in supply.

I wanted to share the biggest little things I am doing now. Maybe they can help you too. (I assume that you’re already recycling, turning lights off, and keeping your thermostat low.) If you have different things, please share them with me.

1. Reading and learning. Climate change is complicated. To get what is going on, you need a deep understanding of global politics, economics, and science. I don’t pretend that I know it all but I am trying to learn as much as I can. There are many books to read and documentaries to watch; if you’re just wondering where to begin, I made a short list to get you started.
2. Investing in Mosaic. The cost of solar energy is now competitive with dirty energy sources, and forecasted to keep dropping. Even still, building panels requires upfront capital, capital that is difficult to come by from traditional sources. Large investors generally aren’t aware of the advances and fossil fuel lobbies are great at spreading misinformation. Enter Mosaic, which provides a platform to connect individual investors with organizations looking for capital to install panels, while delivering a return on investment of (usually) between 4.5% and 6.5%. You earn interest; they green the grid; everyone wins!
3. Investing in responsible mutual funds. Look for normal, diversified funds that just don’t have the icky fossil fuel stuff in them. There are many; personally, I use the Green Century Balanced fund and the Portfolio 21 Global Equity fund. Google around and find the funds that are right for you. If you have a money person, tell him or her that this matters to you. Bonus points: if your own portfolio is already green (or if you don’t have enough money to invest), you can petition universities or other organizations with endowments to divest from fossil fuels.
4. Donating to Terrapass. Many people love to hate on carbon offsets and I get why. We don’t have good ways to get carbon out of the atmosphere. We may never have good ways to sequester carbon. It feels silly to pump lots of carbon into the air and then pay an annual fee to settle my conscience, like modern day hail marys to knock years off my time in purgatory. Still, I fly across the USA four times a year for work. My parents live in Mexico; my extended family is spread between Utah, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. If I’m going to visit them anyway, I will at least pay around $200 per year to “offset” the footprint of those trips. I see Terrapass as a voluntary carbon tax, since those who fly as often as I do can usually afford to chip in, and we are also a disproportionately large part of the problem. It’s a way for me to fund climate research rather than a way to “cancel out” my impact.

We’re all on this planet together for a few short decades. (Well, except 6 of us, but they still need us here to come home to when they’re done up there.) Let’s do as much as we can to help in the time we all have here.