Climate Action Manifesto
Discovery
We have got things back to front. The world's warming up so we buy outdoor heaters. Natural resources are running out so we go on a shopping spree. Billions of people have next to nothing, yet we chuck away mountains of rubbish. It's topsy-turvy, helter-skelter, certifiable silliness.
To be a properly inspiring troublemaker you need a manifesto. Martin Luther...Thomas Jefferson- they all had one. It nails your trousers to the mast and says to the world, "Things gotta change around here". And if ever there was a cause crying out for a bit of change, it's climate change.
To do something for us and this threatened planet, we need your feet, hands, hearts, and minds. Begin at the start. Start at the end and work backwards. Jump in the middle. Do it any way you like. But do it. Let's shake things up.
WAKE UP
The world is out of whack. Don't go back to sleep. Don't press the snooze button. Wake and own up to your lifestyle.
The alarm's gone off, the gong's been rung. Don't press the snooze button, don't roll over and go back to sleep. It's time to wake up and smell the carbon.
We are sleeping in a fool's paradise. Climate change is the real deal, but who's going to sacrifice their next iPod, foreign holiday, imported strawberries, SUV or 32 - inch LCD mounted in "sustainable bamboo" case?
Hello? Still asleep?
What a cosy world we have created, full of stuff and things. There is no problem that shopping can't solve- even, apparently, climate change.
But wake up; snoozy....we are sleepwalking into a huge global catastrophe. Time is up. Scientists say we have got around ten years to get this right- and we should have got going five years ago.
So let's leap out of bed into a world of decisive action....Throw ourselves into a bracing shower of honesty....Brush our teeth with minty resolve.....Use a sharp mouthwash to cleanse the guff of advertising.....Down an invigorating cup of fair-trade coffee....And burst out the door a new person, ready to save the world.
RETHINK
Think again. Review, remodel, rewind. The pass codes have been changed. We need a new way of thinking.
ü We have to be smarter about how we live and consume.
ü We have to be honest about the mess we are in.
ü We have to get real about the seriousness of the challenge.
ü We have to WAKE UP.
Hey, did I shake you up! No!
Well then take it that the climate crisis is very serious business. It is going to take ingenuity, creativity, universality and a whole new way of thinking. But, brothers and sisters, we got to rewrite the rules. Rethink, reappraise, reanimate, repair and rearrange.
You know the way we’ve been living the last 50 years or so? Well, it’s just got to change. All fundamentally change. From the industrial revolution to the Silicon revolution to the Climate revolution, this is the start of something new and exciting. Get your rethinking caps on.
GET BUSY
There's work to do. There are no holidays for climate change. Don't just stand by for instructions- help make them.
Market researchers have discovered something very interesting about our attitude to climate change. They call it "values/action gap", which is very clever term from them to describe that we claim to care, but don't do much about it. So stop waiting for the politicians and start ratifying your own protocols. Stop talking and Get walking.
As per research four out of five dentists, six out seven doctors, 9000 out of 9002 scientists know that climate change is real. So, let's get moving.
From the moment you wake up, see what you can do - in how you live, where you shop, set up your home, and cast your vote. Every choice you make, every day, has an impact on this crucial endeavour, and its success depends on your decision to speak out, to work and energise your friends and neighbours. Charity must begin at home!
The Old Testament tells the story of a seriously miffed god flooding the world, and Noah building a wooden ark to save each species. This time around it won't be an act of God but a pickle of our own making and the planet is the only ark we have. It's time to find that hammer, fetch those blueprints, and GET BUSY.
DECOMPLEXIFY
That is, simplify. Be aerodynamic (without flying), fast (without driving), beautiful (but not expensive), brilliant (without needing a degree).
Leonardo Da Vinci as said, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication". So, it is not always insufficient that one, in as much as it is not inconceivable to do so, produces a lingua franca that eschews obfuscation. But why employ a prolix currency of vocabulary when, well, a single word will do? That is, simplify!
We are good at complicating. Overwhelmed by overwork, overweight and overcome, we overdo everything. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “there is enough in this world for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed”. Really though, do we need all that gadgetry in our lives? How large do we need our car to be and why the double- size freezer?
With our lives filled with Stuff, it's hard to see what matters- and anyway, it's costing the earth. So take a moment to declutterize, uncomplify and decomplexicate.
Buy less, use more and slow down, tiger- you are looking a little tense.
As any Zen master will tell you, less is more. How liberating it is to power down, leave your phone at home and put your cash card away. Downgrade is the new upgrade- Vive la simple life! Bling with zing, without the sting. Let's be creative.
MAKE. LIFE. BETTER.
Improve everything. Sacrifice nothing. The Chinese symbol for "opportunity" is "solar-powered hemp-sock factory." Be creative.
“Build a better mousetrap,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “and the world will beat a path to your door.” Emerson had a major mouse problem, but he didn't, in fact, build a better trap. As a result his house was overrun by rodents, and he is known today only as a major 19th century essayist, philosopher and poet and not, as he hoped, for his pest control business.
We still need a better mousetrap, and we'd do well to recognize that there is economic opportunity- as well as common sense- in climate change. In Harlock Hill in Cumbria local residents set up a wind farm, generating electricity for 1800 homes. Like many small communities, the locals of Lyme Regis in Dorset have gone plastic bag free. Sweden's capital, Stockholm, has converted a former coal plant to run off bio fuel and 70% of the city's heating is made with the stuff, while the bus fleet in Graz, Austria, is 100% CO2 free.
Think of everything we could improve, build, create and redesign that will simply make life better. Take sustainable living- it's just smarter.
Waste less, save more, enjoy. Sounds good to us. The challenge of climate change is not simply to dig ourselves out of a hole but to make life better at the same time. As Emile Coue has said, "Everyday, in every way, I am getting better and better". We should apply the principle to our day to day lives and we will experience the change.
MOUTH OFF
Take it personally- it's your life, your neighbourhood, your globe. Let the world know how you feel.
Tired of carbon bullies kicking sand in your planet's face? Don't just stand there- Get mouthy.
If a restaurant is burning the heaters to warm the great outdoors, get them turned off and melted into bicycles. If your office happily jets its staff around the world with reckless abandon, persuade them to kick that nasty little habit.
Start a campaign, write letters, send emails, and make calls, contact business leaders and politicians.
You can do the maths- if more of us mouth off, our impact multiplies exponentially. Give a shout and before you know it you're a part of a civilian army.
THIS IS A REVOLUTION, NOT A TEA PARTY!
FEEL GOOD
Act out of affection for this planet. Feel good about what you do. This is a labour of love.
Let's face it: Earth is our favourite planet. It has got more water than Mars, it is warmer that Neptune and way cuter than Jupiter (though it doesn't have the sexy rings of Saturn). We have got a great-looking sphere here. Let's not take it for granted, or it might dump us.
But how glum we all get at the whole idea of caring for this magnificent orb. We all think, what a drag, what an inconvenience, what a bore. No more air travel, no big cars, no air conditioning- just these grumpy environmentalists telling us what to do. "Screw that- let's shop." We should bin these thoughts and think that all this is for our own good.
We shouldn't see sacrifices but solutions- big, bold and beautiful. So, feel the love, feel the buzz, feel the challenge and feel the difference. We should all feel good about this.
PASS IT ON
It's all about spreading the word and getting everyone involved. Help start a virus of climate action.
Spread the word. Each one of us is a public address system, and a siren all rolled into one. We are ambassadors for climate action, and as such as we should lead by example. We should be careful not to alienate our comrades by haranguing them. But history has shown that action begets action, and eventually- well, as soon as possible- people will accept carbon reduction as the social norm. This is a huge effort, the ultimate campaign, and the more people we mobilize, the more successful are efforts will be.
Every action we take should be a trigger that produces several additional effects.
All the waking up, getting busy rethinking, decomplexifying, making life better, feeling good and mouthing off will be for naught if we're not joined by the bulk of the carbon-producing world. This is real. This is life. This is it. And we have to do this now. We have to enlist the world in order to save it.
HUMAN PROBLEM HUMAN SOLUTION
From the famous Humming of the Hair dryers of Kuala Lumpur, to the celebrated Running of the Air conditioners in Pamplona, to the popular Burning Fossil Fuels Man Festival in the Nevada desert, humans are champions at producing carbon. It's a race to the finish, but what's the prize? A very hot, very wet planet incapable of sustaining life. Now where's the fun in that?
You know the expression, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? Well, it's broke. We've awarded ourselves an exploding cigar. Only we can douse the cigar, return it to its wrapper, and put it back on the shelf. Better yet, let's dump it in the compost heap and recycle the box. Global warming is a human-created problem.
WE CAN FIX IT.
It won’t be easy. But it will have to be communal effort, and it'll make us feel good (and alive!). It will even be fun.
Written by Deeptanshu