Periodically I try to be up beat. With the Pandemic and all the doom coming out of the environmental community I thought I would say, “We can do things together”! The place to start is small. Ride your bike. Recycle and reduce your garbage. Compost. Walk places when you can. Take the steps not the elevator. I do all of those things and everyday I try to think of more things I can do. Anyway, here are some thoughts on the things we can achieve. Stay safe out there.
What lifestyle changes will shrink your carbon footprint the most?
Three years ago, Kim Cobb was feeling “completely overwhelmed” by the problem of climate change. Cobb spends her days studying climate change as director of the Global Change Program at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, but she felt paralyzed over how to be part of the solution in her personal life. The barriers felt immense.
She decided to start small. On January 1, 2017, she made a personal climate resolution: She would walk her kids to school and bicycle to work two days a week. That change didn’t represent a lot in terms of carbon emissions, she says, “but it was a huge lesson in daily engagement.”
In the beginning, her modest goal seemed daunting, but she quickly discovered that the two simple activities nourished her physical and mental well-being. She wanted to do them every day. “It’s no longer for the carbon — it’s for the fact that I genuinely love riding my bike and walking my kids to school,” she says. And that made her wonder: What other steps was she thinking of as sacrifices that might actually enrich her life?
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Go there and read. More next week.
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