4 Easy Ways to Make Fighting Climate Change a Part of Your Holiday Traditions
Most of us aren't interested in that option, so how do we balance all the positivity of the holidays against the shocking environmental impact they bring? There's a number of methods you can add to your holiday traditions to help minimize your carbon footprint. Hopefully some of these options will fit into your holiday plans and reduce any stress about your carbon footprint.
Travel Less or Travel Better
Whether you're celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, or Hanukkah, travel is likely the biggest factor contributing to your carbon footprint, but there are a lot of ways you can minimize your impact. Obviously the best way to cut down is to stay local for some or all of the holidays. Many young people prefer to celebrate "Friendsgiving" in their transplant cities and set aside time for video calls with family, rather than trekking back to their hometowns. And if you just don't like your family, pointing to environmental concerns is a perfectly legitimate excuse.
If that's not an option for you—or if you really love your family for whatever reason—choosing buses and trains over cars and planes is always a plus, and selecting a location that is convenient to the greatest number of attendees can make a huge difference. And if you're thinking of traveling to New York City for the Christmas tree lighting or the New Year's Eve ball drop, don't. They're awful.
Get Cozy
Winter heating is hugely wasteful. Any time you see icicles hanging off the side of a house or building, that's a clear sign of heat seeping out into the world. Insulation can go a long way to cutting down on both waste and costs, and signing up with an alternative energy provider like Green Mountain Energy can do a lot to minimize your impact, but there are other strategies that can help you do more while getting you into the holiday spirit, all of which can be summed up with two beautiful words: Get cozy.
Bundle up in your warmest sweater and a pair of thick socks. Share a blanket and some cocoa on the couch with your loved ones. Keep each other warm in one cozy room, rather than heating the whole house. A space heater can be a great way to cut down on your emissions and encourage your whole family to get a little closer.
Get Creative with Your Gifts
Green and eco-friendly gifts are a nice idea and can be really great if they're taking the place of a more wasteful purchase, but there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and the waste that goes into the manufacture, shipping, and packaging of green-branded goods generally outweighs their benefits.
The greenest option is probably the one you haven't gotten away with since you were ten. A book of coupons for chores and favors doesn't cost you or the environment anything. But if you lack the courage to try pulling off a scam like that, there are some pricier experience-gifts that are a lot more eco-friendly—and a lot more memorable—than an solar-powered phone charger or a pair of pants made from bamboo. A gift card to a farm-to-table restaurant, a voucher for a massage, or just a donation to the Human Fund (or, you know, a real charity) are all great options that don't require wasteful wrapping. Alternatively, if you can make a gift yourself, you'll be a real hero.
Cut Down on Your Meat and Dairy
Okay, this is a big one. After travel, the food that we eat—and the food we throw away—are responsible for the largest portion of our carbon output. Meat is generally the biggest contributor, but red meat is particularly bad. So if you usually have a ham or a roast beside your turkey, cutting that out is a good move. And if you can cut out the turkey itself—or even just choose a smaller turkey—that's even better.
There are obviously other factors to consider, like the distance your food has to travel, and the amount of water that goes into its production, but you may not want to get your PhD before your next meal, in which case, cutting out meat is a simple and effective way to drastically reduce your carbon footprint. Meatless Mondays are an easy step that more people are taking these days, but if you're really concerned about your impact this holiday season, you can offset the added emissions from travel by cutting out meat for a few days, a week, or a month at a time.
If we made that kind of practice a part of our holiday traditions—cutting out meats for some portion of December—we could go a long way toward pairing back holiday emissions. With recent advances in meat alternatives from Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, you might find the change easier than you would think. And if enough of us pick up the habit, the agricultural industry will have no choice but to shift toward more sustainable foods.
Gucci Is Going Carbon Neutral, and Fossil Fuel Corporations Should Follow Suit
The company's CEO, Marco Bizzarri, just confirmed that the company will be purchasing carbon credits that cancel out the emissions of all the people who attend its upcoming Milan fashion show.
The high fashion brand has been working on their eco-friendliness for a while, launching a ten-year sustainability plan in 2018 and swearing off fur products the year prior.
Next up, the 100 fossil fuel companies that are responsible for 71% of the world's global emissions should go carbon neutral, shutting down or changing their product from fossil fuels to reusable energy.
Particularly, the 25 companies that are responsible for half of global emissions in the past three decades should consider offsetting their toxic effects (from selling a deadly substance that will kill us all, slowly and painfully) by paying a few trillion dollars in carbon credits and reparations to the communities they have destroyed.
It's great that eco-friendliness is fashionable now. It's awesome that high fashion companies are trying to go carbon neutral by buying carbon credits, even though carbon offsets are definitely not going to be enough to stop the climate crisis.
It would be even greater if ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Suncor, Saudi Aramco—and all the other companies bankrolling politicians that deny climate change, obfuscating decades of scientific research, and making it virtually impossible to stop climate change no matter how many models strut around in faux fur—would do the same.
I Never Thought Sustainable Energy Was Affordable Until I Tried Arcadia Power
I'll admit it, I should do more to save the planet. Although I recycle and refuse to use plastic straws anymore, I'm constantly looking for new ways to be more environmentally conscious.
I always wanted to switch to a sustainable energy alternative but was afraid that it would be expensive or time-consuming to sign up. Like, I want to go green, but I can't afford higher utility bills. Recently, I was talking to a co-worker about the amount of plastic waste our office produces, and she told me that she feels guilt-free since she'd signed up forArcadia Power. It's a free service that partners with your current utility provider to connect you with sustainable energy options.
She went on to tell me that signing up for an Arcadia Power account is a breeze and can be done entirely online. Best of all, it's lowered her utility bills. I politely nodded, assuming she'd gotten it wrong. But after checking out their site, I was shocked to see that it's not too good to be true! Here are 5 things I was surprised to learn…..
Same provider! Arcadia Power switches out where the power is being sourced, not your energy provider. You have the security of staying with the company you've been with for years.
Easy signup process! Sign up online in only a few minutes.
Green energy is cheaper than fossil fuels! Major energy providers have no financial incentive to source renewable energy. So Arcadia Power does the work for them.
It's free!Arcadia Power charges you nothing to source up to 50% of your energy from renewable alternatives.
You save money! Because green energy is cheap and plentiful, you'll save money on your utility bills. Everybody wins!
I never imagined that green energy could be so easily attainable, let alone affordable. But Arcadia Power's process is simple. I logged into my online utility account, provided basic information about my location, and they identified green providers in my area. They'll implement changes to your monthly bill only if they find clean energy that costs less. Arcadia Power is a convenient and effective way to make a real difference. Save yourself some money, while saving the world.
Sign up today to save on your utility bills and save the planet at the same time!
I Never Thought Sustainable Energy Was Affordable Until I Tried Arcadia Power
I'll admit it, I should do more to save the planet. Although I recycle and refuse to use plastic straws anymore, I'm constantly looking for new ways to be more environmentally conscious.
I always wanted to switch to a sustainable energy alternative but was afraid that it would be expensive or time-consuming to sign up. Like, I want to go green, but I can't afford higher utility bills. Recently, I was talking to a co-worker about the amount of plastic waste our office produces, and she told me that she feels guilt-free since she'd signed up for Arcadia Power. It's a free service that partners with your current utility provider to connect you with sustainable energy options.
She went on to tell me that signing up for an Arcadia Power account is a breeze and can be done entirely online. Best of all, it's lowered her utility bills. I politely nodded, assuming she'd gotten it wrong. But after checking out their site, I was shocked to see that it's not too good to be true! Here are 5 things I was surprised to learn…..
Same provider! Arcadia Power switches out where the power is being sourced, not your energy provider. You have the security of staying with the company you've been with for years.
Easy signup process! Sign up online in only a few minutes.
Green energy is cheaper than fossil fuels! Major energy providers have no financial incentive to source renewable energy. So Arcadia Power does the work for them.
It's free!Arcadia Power charges you nothing to source up to 50% of your energy from renewable alternatives.
You save money! Because green energy is cheap and plentiful, you'll save money on your utility bills. Everybody wins!
I never imagined that green energy could be so easily attainable, let alone affordable. But Arcadia Power's process is simple. I logged into my online utility account, provided basic information about my location, and they identified green providers in my area. They'll implement changes to your monthly bill only if they find clean energy that costs less. Arcadia Power is a convenient and effective way to make a real difference. Save yourself some money, while saving the world.
Update: The folks at Arcadia Power are extending a special offer to our readers! Sign up now and get a $25 Amazon Gift Card!!
There's a Green New Deal on the Horizon, and It Just Might Be Our Only Hope
Over the past several decades, most of us have heard these diatribes repeated over and over, and have perhaps become numbed to these mantras, which promise that tiny droplets of collective action could potentially save the planet from environmental ruination.
It's true that small changes are important, and that each person contributes to the growing levels of waste and pollution that are killing our ecosystems and raising the planet's temperatures so dramatically that Manhattan-size gaps are forming in Antarctic ice. But it's also true that 71% of carbon emissions come from just 100 companies. It's also true that the scale of the crisis has grown unmanageable, and poses an unprecedented threat to human life.
That's where the Green New Deal comes in.
"It's the only plan that matches the scale of the crisis," said Naomi Klein of the proposal, speaking on livestream yesterday night to thousands of activists tuning in across America. The livestream was hosted by the Sunrise Movement, a millennial-founded organization dedicated to supporting and fortifying the Green New Deal, especially as it's proposed in Congress in the coming week. Klein is the author of This Changes Everything, a book that argues that impending climate catastrophe presents an extraordinary opportunity to revamp the world's economic systems for the better. "I believe we were born for this moment," she told viewers.
Named after FDR's New Deal—which revolutionized the entire country on a tremendous scale, planting three billion trees and establishing hundreds of national forests in addition to catalyzing widespread economic, agricultural, and social reforms—the Green New Deal seeks to implant reforms on an equivalent scale in a time when it seems like there is no other option.
The plan has gone through several phases, but the one that's being proposed in Congress this week focuses on several fundamental points. First: achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, and transition to renewable energy on a huge scale through initiatives like the creation of a nationwide electrical grid. Second: institute a living wage for all, in tandem with the creation of unlimited numbers of green jobs. These are the plan's main tenets, but its ideological aspirations stretch much further. It hopes to generate thousands of jobs in the form of start-ups and maintenance, and to start a wave of international trade in the renewable energy sector.
The original plan focused on a switch to 100% renewable energy by 2030, but a recent five-page draft obtained today by Bloomberg didn't mention this point, perhaps as a nod to moderates, though the omission is still subject to change. The draft proposes large-scale investment in green technology, the restoration of threatened lands, waste removal, and "massive growth in clean U.S. manufacturing, removing pollution byproducts and greenhouse gas emissions from that sector as much as technologically feasible."
The term "Green New Deal" is not a new one, though it has been going through different iterations since its inception. It was coined in a 2007 column by Thomas Friedman, and Barack Obama included it in his 2008 platform. Britain also took note, but a surge of Republican/Tory victories stymied its momentum.
Image via theintercept.com
The GND has found new life in Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Bronx electorate whose rise to political success has been accompanied by widespread social media fame. Ocasio-Cortez showed up in person to support a Sunrise Movement sit-in in Nancy Pelosi's office, demanding the creation of a committee dedicated to developing and pushing the GND, and since then she has become one of its biggest proponents. Now she will be proposing it in Congress this week, alongside Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey. The plan has also garnered support from Rep. Ayanna Pressley, as well as 2020 presidential candidates Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Bernie Sanders.
The Sunrise Movement began in 2015, when it was founded by climate activists Sara Blazevic and Varsini Prakash, and quickly gained momentum, taking notes from the heady drive of the 1963 civil rights protests of Birmingham, Alabama. Its founders gathered activists, reached out to politicians, and pulled together the finer points of the Sanders campaign and other recent social movements; the successful Pelosi sit-in was the product of months of organizing.
The movement is appealing in a narrative sense: the vision of young people fighting against bloated fossil fuel behemoths has a definite draw to it. There's also the fact that science says the fate of the entire world requires unprecedented global change over the next few years, otherwise catastrophes like Hurricane Sandy and the California wildfires will become the stuff of the everyday.
Image via theinsurgent.com
But the GND is still just an idea, and it could remain that way. Its lack of specific policy has been subject to criticism, though an official draft has yet to be unveiled, and conservative news sources have labeled it as a hoax, an amorphous idea without policy to back it.
While the GND might seem like an impossibly ambitious proposition, humans have revamped and reshaped the world before a hundred times over, and we are nothing if not creative and adaptive. We've created technologies that connect the globe and turned empty landscapes to highway-lined cities in a matter of years. Now—unless you like the idea of joining Elon Musk's exclusive Mars colony—it's time to turn all of our collective energies towards the future of the home we share.
70 leading Democrats have signed on in support so far, and momentum is building for its official proposition. The Sunrise Movement is planning on facilitating office visits to congress people across the country this week, as well as a rally in Washington on February 26th.
In an age of doomsday threats and constant headlines about plastic oceans and refugee crises facilitated by environmental droughts, the idea of a Green New Deal—something that could actually, genuinely make a difference that touches every aspect of life—seems like a light at the end of the tunnel. Now it's just a matter of getting there.
Image via radioopensource.org
Environmental crisis affects the poor and vulnerable at disproportionate levels; it catalyzes mental and physical illness, economic decline, and overall devastation. Irreparable damage has already been done—but the fight is not quite over yet, though time is running out.
Eden Arielle Gordon is a writer and musician from New York City. Follow her on Twitter at @edenarielmusic.