Climate Change Solutions 2
So what can one person do about climate change, in a way that both protects your mental health and sets boundaries, but that is effective, motivating and consistent?
1. The first area worth allocating regular time on is climate change adaptation.
Climate change adaptation is the process of searching for potential climate change risks that your location might have, and researching, thinking about and problem solving potential solutions to both prevent and reduce risks.
If you allocate some weekly time towards this, you can memorize and rehearse your safety plans, you can add %s to problem solving unsolved or partially solved risks, you can do further research and analysis for solution stimulators, and you can set boundaries and choose to not think about it for the rest of the week, unless you choose to.
Please have a look at the article for climate change adaptation at: economyandproductthoughts.com/articles-main/adaptation
So what are specific ways to do climate change adaptation? Some options for this include moving location to somewhere else once climate problems reach a certain amount (or sooner), researching climate change adaptation methods, scouting for potential risks regularly, joining climate change adaptation best practice online mailing lists and in-person groups, finding ways to protect things more effectively, finding ways to adapt more effectively emotionally as well as practically, finding ways to help other people in your region who might need it, and any other adaptation activities that you can think of. This also means setting boundaries for your climate change mental health each week and going slowly in adaptations that are intense.
2. The 7+7 small efforts method
If you want to help with climate change and are not yet motivated, or are new to this, uncertain where to start or overwhelmed, a good place to help with climate change is the 7+7 method.
This method can be as short or as long as you like and can be fully completed literally within 5 minutes on weeks that you don’t feel motivated, and up to an hour or so if you feel really motivated- it really depends on what you choose for yourself that week.
You can also include things like climate change actions that you practice, government incentives (e.g. on solar panels) that you research, advocacy and social media %s that you do, and anything else you would like.
The way that you apply the 7+7 method is
To do 7+7 small efforts per week,
where an effort is at least 2 seconds (and up to 10 minutes- whatever you choose for yourself) on something hard, and to do 7+7 small efforts each week.
For example, you could start with 5-30 second small efforts on reading difficult material to do with climate change, then on making the information easier for the 8 billion to understand and apply, practicing making some of these hobbies, and then advocating (e.g. via social media, via word of mouth, or via other methods) for that specific method or for ripples for the whole 8 billion to help problem solve climate change every week.
You also don’t need to do the efforts in one go- you can break these up however you would like.
This is a surprisingly motivating and easy method to both help with climate change and to set boundaries each week.
If you finish quickly and would like to do more, you could either do an additional +7 on the environment, or you could add efforts to work your way backwards from the last week of 2100.
You will find an incredibly flexible way to get motivated easily with climate change efforts, and you can both legitimately help and also set limits without guilt.
Some of the best places to focus some of these small efforts are for understanding and advocacy for Project Drawdown’s 100 best solutions for climate change and for UNEPs Six Sector Solution:
3. If you are more advanced, or would like to do larger, more effective solutions, it would be really helpful to attempt between 2 to 15 development %s per week (but only if they’re long-term safe, ethical, and careful). There are three areas that could literally use some or all of your development %s, and they are climate change solutions, ethical, careful safety methods, and help with worldwide and local economic priorities, (even if they’re 0.01%s).
Climate change, safety methods, and help with economic priorities could easily take up any number of development %s you do and are some of the most urgent topics. However, please be careful with ethics, long-term safety and carefulness, and if you can’t reach these, then 0 is fair enough (or 2 or 4).
So how do you do a %?
You could search for % solutions, even if they’re 0.1% of solutions (although to be mindful of interactions with the rest)
You could search for the 10, 40, 80 or 500 solutions that could solve small parts, large parts or all of it
Or you could search for the 100,000 puzzle pieces to help reach the most important solutions
4. What could you focus some of these %s on?
You could start by summarizing (e.g. in 2 paragraphs), implementing or deleting if not relevant, categorizing/ simplifying, and doing advocacy for the whole world, to implement these best practice requirements for the 2025 requirements:
Project Drawdown
https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions
How can you create 2 high value paragraphs summarising these and then categorise them for specific groups of people?
How can you get the whole world (who can afford them enough) to implement some of all of the largest ones as soon as achievable? How can we help every country and entity become a net zero entity?
UNEP’s Six Sector Solution
https://www.unep.org/interactive/six-sector-solution-climate-change/
How can you create two lists- one for yourself to do (deleting ones that aren’t relevant or that you have already turned into habits) and one for the world to do (e.g. re-categorised, with priority ones to advocate for)?
Rebates in your country
Researching rebates, incentives and discounts created by your federal, state, and local government, and by non-profit organizations at all levels.
Researching the benefits of the above (for example, a lot of climate change solutions create large cost savings within a few years, pay off what you paid quickly and even become income generating sources for you within a few years- this is real. It’s energy efficiency and buy-back schemes like feed-in tariffs).
Development %s For Important Tech, Especially Storage Technology
The world’s poorest 4 billion are expected to increase their spending and consumption of products as they become wealthier- and to become wealthier is their moral and ethical right.
However, this needs extremely fast tracked climate change science and tech to make up for this.
It’s nothing to worry about- just every opportunity you find to encourage the world of tech people to regularly add development %s to climate change technology, please regularly encourage them, because of the above.
This will also make all climate change solutions cheaper for you too, and you’re probably not in the poorest 4 billion.
Please also remember that most current climate change emissions are from the wealthiest 2 billion (because of higher spending), so the first 50% of reductions will need to be coming more from the wealthier people. Therefore, even though it might take ages for this tech, it’s for the poorest 4 billion. But the sooner it is sped up, the sooner prices can reduce for the wealthiest 2 billion (who need to reduce climate change emissions as quickly as achievable either way).
Tipping Points
All %s you can add to hold back tipping points would be highly appreciated. Remember to protect your mental health though. But if 100 billion %s are needed (12 per person), every % you can add helps greatly.
When you look at the above, it can seem overwhelming. But if you remember the %s per week or the 7+7, +7 small efforts method per week (which could literally total to 5 minutes per week if you choose), this is a genuinely easier way to approach these and to increase your motivation a lot within 2 weeks. If you would like to create development %s for larger solutions, please feel free to do these too- these will help a lot too.
5. Project Drawdown’s 100 Best Solutions
The best place to focus some or all of these small efforts (or some of your development %s, if you want to), is Project Drawdown’s 100 best solutions for climate change.
https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions
For example, you could:
Go to the table of solutions and sort the 100 solutions from largest to smallest using the Scenario 2 column
Copy and paste the 25 largest solutions plus the 5 solutions at the bottom (these have no data, but are equally important, if not more important, especially energy storage) into a Word document
Delete the second column (Scenario 1)
Choose between 4 and 20 of these to focus your 7+7 small efforts on this week. You don’t have to choose the largest ones, but can choose whichever ones you think you can understand better and most importantly, advocate for somehow
It’s a good idea to simultaneously think of ways to help make new energy sources cheaper for the more vulnerable or help those in the way of these changes to find alternative equal incomes, adapt to changing locations if needed, and emotionally and practically help them throughout the processes.
This can definitely be done within the 7+7 small efforts of %s per week.
If there are ways to get the world of development people to add %s of solutions to renewable tech (especially renewable battery tech), and ways to (safely and privately) use some of your own weekly development %s on larger %s for climate solutions, this would be really appreciated.
6. Finally, be careful with the specific paragraphs that you read and learn about. We are all highly unique, and some areas are within your mental health and some are risky for going beyond it. So treat it like exercise and don’t overdo it, especially around vulnerabilities.
It’s a good idea to set emotional boundaries. If you would like to spend part of your weekly development %s on climate change %, then it’s a good idea to allocate certain times with certain recovery and emotional boundaries around them per week for climate change prevention activities and choose to not think about it outside these times. For example, when you reach your time limit, you allocate recovery times, set a limit and just refuse to worry about it.
But can you try, most weeks and preferably all weeks, to do 7+7 small efforts per week towards helping to prevent climate change.
What is a small effort? So, stretching yourself around climate change solutions for at least 2 seconds.
This might mean one paragraph has 4 hardish small efforts in it, then several paragraphs are easy. Or it takes 3 hardish small efforts to research something. Or it takes 4 hardish efforts to create a part in a Word document. Or it takes 10 hardish efforts to really carefully draw where solar panels should be placed for your house’s selling value later on.
The idea here is that you get to choose how large each small effort is, depending on your effort week. You could do all 7+7 within 5 minutes. Or they could be 1.5 hours. Or literally anything you choose in between. You get to choose.
Because of how urgent the 2025 goals are, the 7+7 small efforts should be around climate change. However, if you choose to, you can also do an additional 7 for sustainability/environment, remembering that a small effort is your choice of at least 2 seconds on something hardish.
