Earth’s atmosphere is essential for life as we know it to thrive. By trapping, releasing and circulating heat from the sun, in tandem with the ocean, this thin layer of gases surrounding the planet maintains a dynamic balance – our global climate.

Today that balance is seriously disrupted, and our climate and oceans are changing fast. The cause is human activity in just the past 200 years. We have extracted great quantities of fossil fuels like coal, gas, and oil, and burned them to supply energy to our communities and drive our industry and transportation. This pumps enormous amounts of carbon dioxide gas back into the atmosphere, trapping heat like a blanket around our planet. This greenhouse gas now measures more than 410 parts per million, up from 280 parts per million at the start of the Industrial Revolution. 

As a result, Earth is warming and the ocean is becoming more acidic, with danger for all life on our planet. Weather extremes such as stronger winds, floods and droughts, wildfire, melting ice caps and glaciers, sea level rise, unequal burdens on poor people and nations, and mass species extinctions: these are some of the effects of the climate crisis.

We can absolutely avoid the worst of these impacts if we act now. Climate experts have shown that by changing our lifestyles and economies over the next ten years we can help protect the people and places we care about from harm. New research and technologies are providing ways to greatly reduce carbon emissions. In a Climate Safe California carbon emission reductions will come from converting 100% of our electricity to renewables, as well as large carbon reductions from commercial, residential, industrial, and transportation sources. Carbon sequestration can contribute significantly by pulling excess carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it for the long term in plants and soils. 

Already, people everywhere can make a vital difference. We must start by finding solutions together where we live, as well as working for change regionally, nationally and globally. As human beings change course – building a mindful relationship with our natural world and turning away from runaway growth, consumption, and concentration of wealth and privilege – we gain vital benefits. We help our communities become more resilient, we heal economic injustices, we create a safer world for future generations, and we support the survival of biodiversity.

We can and we must act together now — in community — to reduce emissions and waste, to increase practices that actually remove carbon from the atmosphere, and to create solutions that help us adapt to coming changes.

Ways to make a meaningful difference are already here and ready to be enacted, at each of our homes and throughout our bioregion, with all of us working together. And more powerful methods are constantly becoming not only do-able but also affordable. 

Starting now, there is much we can do: Reduce automobile emissions; transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy; reduce the environmental costs of consumption; waste less; restore ecosystems and healthy soils; protect people and places from impacts of fire and flood; produce more of our food locally and ensure that everyone has enough; and support our younger activists. By learning and collaborating locally, we can also influence policy on many levels, helping achieve the changes needed not only regionally, but also nationally and globally.

Ready to take the next step? 

Learn more about how you can get involved by exploring our Climate Action page. We need your passion, experience and energy! Connect with us, ask questions, share your knowledge and hear about upcoming work parties and projects of interest to you. 

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