Climate Action Lists from the book Regeneration by Paul Hawken

The following text is extracted from the book by Paul Hawken titled Regeneration- Ending the Climate Crisis in one Generation- p 249

1. CLIMATE CHECK LIST

Where to Start

A climate checklist is informed by straightforward principles. They help you guide your endeavors, from farms to finance, cities to clothing, groceries to grasslands, and are applicable to every level of activity: people, homes, groups, companies, communities, cities -and countries too. The guidelines are yes or no questions. Every action either moves toward a desired outcome or heads away from it. The number one guideline is the fundamental principle of regeneration. The remaining are outcomes of that principle.

1. Does the action create more life or reduce it?

2. Does it heal the future or steal the future?

3. Does it enhance human well-being or diminish it?

4. Does it prevent disease or profit from it?

5. Does it create livelihoods or eliminate them?

6. Does it restore land or degrade it?

7. Does it increase global warming or decrease it?

8. Does it serve human needs or manufacture human wants?

9. Does it reduce poverty or expand it?

10. Does it promote fundamental human rights or deny them?

11. Does it provide workers with dignity or demean them?

12. In short, is the activity regenerative or extractive?

How you apply, score, or evaluate these principles is up to you. Most of what we do does not tick all the boxes. However, like a compass, it shows us the direction and where to go. By employing these guidelines, you pivot and begin, action by action, bit by bit, step by step to create regeneration in one’s life. What am I eating? Why? How am I feeling? What is happening in my community? What am I wearing? What am I buying? What am I making? Etc.

2. CLIMATE PUNCH LIST

A punch list is a personal, group, or institutional checklist. Because of the differences among people, cultures, incomes, and knowledge, there is no one common or correct checklist. The top “ten” solutions to reverse global warming are an abstraction. The true top solutions are what you can, want, and will do. The value of a punch list is that when you commit to something, things can happen. A punch list can be for an individual, family, community, company, or city. It is the list of actions you or your group will undertake and accomplish over a predetermined span of time -one month, one year, five years, or more. You can make different lists for different time periods -this week and this year, for example. If you go to www.regeneration.org/punchlist you will find a kit, a worksheet, and more sample punch lists.

A sample punch list from an individual:

1. Phase out single use plastics by use case, starting with food and beverage purchases outside the home and moving on to kitchen, bathroom, and lifestyle goods

2. Purchase renewable energy credits for the energy use in my apartment.

3. Set a clothing budget for the year of no more than ten new garments, at least 8 of which from vintage stores or smaller sustainable brands.

4. Engage with a citizen’s climate action group, such as the Citizen’s Climate Lobby, to pressure my state and federal representatives to support climate policy and set ambitious emissions reduction targets.

5. Support First Nations landback movements with recurring donations or by paying a land tax to the nations whose traditional lands I inhabit.

6. Engage with my city council and other community groups to advocate for urban green space as well as the protection of open space preserves and local wildlife sanctuaries and/or corridors.

7. Start or join a monthly climate and environmental justice reading group with friends and family to keep us all learning and in discussion about ways to joyfully hold one another accountable to Just Transition efforts.

If you need help creating your punch list, contact me. I’ll be glad to help.

Let Them Not Say by Jane Hirshfield

Let them not say:   we did not see it.
We saw.

Let them not say:   we did not hear it.
We heard.

Let them not say:   they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.

Let them not say:   it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.

Let them not say:  they did nothing.
We did not-enough.

Let them say, as they must say something: 

A kerosene beauty.
It burned.

Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.

Happy 51st Earth Day with Earthrise by Amanda Gorman

The following poem by Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of the United States Amanda Gorman was read from stage at the Los Angeles Climate Reality Leadership Corps Training on Tuesday, August 28, 2018. You can view Amanda reciting the poem with this YouTube video.

Our Purpose in Poetry:

Or, Earthrise

Dedicated to Al Gore and The Climate Reality Project 

On Christmas Eve, 1968, astronaut Bill Anders 

Snapped a photo of the earth

As Apollo 8 orbited the moon.

Those three guys 

Were surprised

To see from their eyes

Our planet looked like an earthrise

A blue orb hovering over the moon’s gray horizon, 

with deep oceans and silver skies. 

It was our world’s first glance at itself 

Our first chance to see a shared reality, 

A declared stance and a commonality; 

A glimpse into our planet’s mirror,

And as threats drew nearer,

Our own urgency became clearer,

As we realize that we hold nothing dearer 

than this floating body we all call home. 

We’ve known

That we’re caught in the throes

Of climactic changes some say

Will just go away,

While some simply pray

To survive another day;

For it is the obscure, the oppressed, the poor, 

Who when the disaster

Is declared done,

Still suffer more than anyone. 

Climate change is the single greatest challenge of our time, 

Of this, you’re certainly aware.

It’s saddening, but I cannot spare you

From knowing an inconvenient fact, because

It’s getting the facts straight that gets us to act and not to wait. 

So I tell you this not to scare you, 

But to prepare you, to dare you 

To dream a different reality, 

Where despite disparities

We all care to protect this world,

This riddled blue marble, this little true marvel 

To muster the verve and the nerve

To see how we can serve

Our planet. You don’t need to be a politician

To make it your mission to conserve, to protect, 

To preserve that one and only home

That is ours,

To use your unique power

To give next generations the planet they deserve. 

We are demonstrating, creating, advocating 

We heed this inconvenient truth, because we need to be anything but lenient

With the future of our youth. 

And while this is a training,

in sustaining the future of our planet, 

There is no rehearsal. The time is 

Now

Now

Now, 

Because the reversal of harm,

And protection of a future so universal 

Should be anything but controversial. 

So, earth, pale blue dot 

We will fail you not. 

Just as we chose to go to the moon 

We know it’s never too soon

To choose hope.

We choose to do more than cope 

With climate change 

We choose to end it—

We refuse to lose.

Together we do this and more

Not because it’s very easy or nice

But because it is necessary,

Because with every dawn we carry

the weight of the fate of this celestial body orbiting a star. 

And as heavy as that weight sounded, it doesn’t hold us down, 

But it keeps us grounded, steady, ready, 

Because an environmental movement of this size 

Is simply another form of an earthrise. 

To see it, close your eyes.

Visualize that all of us leaders in this room

and outside of these walls or in the halls, all

of us changemakers are in a spacecraft,

Floating like a silver raft

in space, and we see the face of our planet anew.

We relish the view;

We witness its round green and brilliant blue,

Which inspires us to ask deeply, wholly:

What can we do?

Open your eyes.

Know that the future of

this wise planet

Lies right in sight:

Right in all of us. Trust

this earth uprising.

All of us bring light to exciting solutions never tried before

For it is our hope that implores us, at our uncompromising core, 

To keep rising up for an earth more than worth fighting for.