Climate action

"If only 16% of students receive an adequate education about climate change, we could see a nearly 19 gigaton reduction of carbon dioxide by 2050."

"Financial incentives and social pressure worked better at changing behaviors than did education or feedback."

"People are coming to understand...that even the most imposing and seemingly immutable constraints can indeed be overcome when an enraged citizenry sets its mind to it."

"It requires only somewhere between 15%–18% of the target population before we see an exponential increase in adoption."

"[Sustainable design means] designing something that could have multiple iterations of its use over 100 years, rather than making something so specific that it becomes a white elephant."

"In New York, the unions won a far-reaching climate agreement to shift half of New York State’s total energy needs to wind power by 2035. They did it by moving billions of subsidies away from fossil fuels and into a union jobs guarantee known as a project labor agreement."

"Fair or not, boomers and the Silent Generation have about 70% of the country’s money, compared with about 5% for millennials. So if you want to push around Washington, or Wall Street, or your state capital, it helps to have some people with hairlines like mine."

"If you really think that the environment is less important than the economy, try holding your breath while you count your money."

"The rise in electric vehicle sales has created a rush for minerals such as lithium and copper, with devastating impacts on beautiful places."

"In a circular economy, waste is eliminated through better design, rather than developing novel ways to utilise waste that has already been created."

"In Cebu, we were able to close the road from the Provincial Capitol of Cebu all the way to Pier Uno to raise our demand for road sharing. Everybody came―cyclists and joggers of all ages, even children. That was an eye-opener."

"We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it."

"One of the most cost-effective and accessible tactics to combating the climate crisis is better insulation….If even half of existing buildings installed thicker insulation, 8.3 gigatons of emissions could be avoided—that’s more than overhauling efficiency for the entire international shipping industry."

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

"The whole concept of green building is to reduce the demand which enables you to use fewer resources to satisfy the demand."

"There can be this reverse causality that, actually, if you have a lot of cyclists, they will demand better infrastructure, and it’s not really the infrastructure that creates more cycling."

"Solar power appears to be contagious....If you install solar photovoltaic panels on your roof, that greatly increases the odds that your neighbors will, in turn, install their own panels."

"A third of the food raised or prepared does not make it from farm or factory to fork...The food we waste is responsible for roughly eight percent of global emissions."

"Individuals can make a difference, and some educators lean into that to combat this feeling of defeat in their students—whether it’s through school recycling and compost initiatives, cutting back on eating meat like doing meatless Mondays, etc."

"In communicating about climate change, we risk neglecting the most important aspects, which are not just how the climate is changing but how we want to act to mitigate its impacts: where to make wind farms? Do we want to go back to nuclear or not?"

"We can put solar panels on our schools and make money for the school system through the state’s first power purchase agreement [and ultimately] surpass our city’s climate goals and save millions of dollars in the process."

"These women are shattering the glass ceiling! They have installed solar systems to four indigenous communities impacting over 1000 residents...."

"The [mineral estate conservation easement] could restrict mineral extraction under property, which could help landowners concerned about horizontal drilling and other activities."

"At the end of February, thousands of cleaning workers in Minneapolis marched in what’s believed to have been the first union-authorized climate strike in the United States…. Their demands ranged from a guarantee of more environmentally friendly cleaning products to funding for a ‘green technician janitorial training program.’"

"Weaponize the outdoor community as a political movement."

"[Y]ou can vote and get involved in the political process, and you can not support companies that aren't at the very least transparent about their practices."

"Community-managed forests have fewer forest fires, and there is almost zero rate of deforestation."

"If there is an adage that informs life in co-housing, it’s treat thy neighbor as thy family....what do happy families do? For one thing, they share stuff."

"Many of us are absorbing the enormity of climate change in isolation, not realizing that others are also concerned and taking action."

"Intergenerational collaboration around climate issues, particularly in this election season, starts at home, and then goes to the polling booth."

"Do you really need this thing? Can you get it secondhand and reuse it? Can you reimagine how to use it when you’re done with it?"

"The true benefit to changing consumption habits is that you’re also changing your mindset about your relationship with stuff."

"Pollution and climate change by excessive burning of fossil fuels are real threats, not the people who warn that we must take these threats seriously."

"The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it."

"You cannot mass produce fashion or consume ‘sustainably’ as the world is shaped today. That is one of the many reasons why we will need a system change."

"I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is."

"As more systems become complex, the more you have to decentralize – because people can then manage in a much more agile way as they adapt to those complex situations."

"The beautiful thing about healthy soil is that it does not matter if you care about climate change, or if you care about the drought, or if you just care about healthy food, or if you want to see more biodiversity, restoring soil hits all of those targets. Almost everyone has some self-interest or desire for soil to be restored."

"Voting is the single most important action Americans can take to address climate change...."

"In 2014, after repeated calls to government went unheeded, indigenous Guajajara and Ka’apor communities organized their own patrols to rid their land of illegal loggers. They have captured loggers cutting timber or setting fire in their lands, confiscated their chainsaws and seized their trucks."

"If we want people to actually invest in things like decarbonising their home heating, we need them to ‘get’ climate change, and we need them to trust in the actions that they can take."

"What we mean by social connectedness is allowing people to get to know each other that might not have known each other, and also fostering that spirit of collaboration....So when the storms come, and the heat waves happen, and the rain descends, people are looking out for each other."

"It makes sense to help build social infrastructure in a community [to] increase the likelihood of people surviving during these extreme weather events."

"The most direct impacts are seen in community gardens, where the natural setting helps break down social boundaries and unite the neighborhoods under a common goal to improve their environment."

"An Arkansas High School was able to install solar panels on their open field and within three years their budget surplus grew so large they rewarded all teachers with raises between $3,000 – $15,000."