Join millions of people taking action on climate change. Are you ready to be part of the solution?
Using his expertise in emergency management, the author provides practical
solutions to climate change that you can apply in your daily life.
What you will gain from this book:
⢠Find out how to promote system change and influence corporations to reduce their emissions now.
⢠Discover enjoyable ways to communicate and connect with others, while creating community and increasing momentum for change.
⢠Download a free Climate Action Guide to help you take action, reduce emissions, and achieve a sustainable lifestyle.
⢠Transform frustration into a feeling of self-empowerment and restore your confidence in our shared future.
Imagine a day where you don't just witness the climate crisisâbut participate in shaping a better world. This guide can help you take steps to create meaningful action in just five minutes a day.
Join millions of people taking action on climate change. Are you ready to be part of the solution?
Using his expertise in emergency management, the author provides practical
solutions to climate change that you can apply in your daily life.
What you will gain from this book:
⢠Find out how to promote system change and influence corporations to reduce their emissions now.
⢠Discover enjoyable ways to communicate and connect with others, while creating community and increasing momentum for change.
⢠Download a free Climate Action Guide to help you take action, reduce emissions, and achieve a sustainable lifestyle.
⢠Transform frustration into a feeling of self-empowerment and restore your confidence in our shared future.
Imagine a day where you don't just witness the climate crisisâbut participate in shaping a better world. This guide can help you take steps to create meaningful action in just five minutes a day.
WE CAN CREATE A BETTER CLIMATE FUTURE!
Are you concerned about the effects of climate change? Year after year, leaders go to climate conferences, and promise to act, yet carbon emissions continue to rise. Does this give you the feeling that there is something wrong with the way things are? Would you like to be empowered to join millions of people already changing the system?
With growing concern, I have witnessed reports of worsening forest fires, heat waves, floods, hurricanes, and other climate catastrophes from around the world. For many years, I went to climate protests and signed petitions, trying to promote change. Then in 2019, there was debate in the media about declaring a âclimate emergencyâ. As an advisor in emergency management, I was inspired to start writing. At first, it was important to identify the main obstacles preventing climate action and how to help people create system change.
Then I used emergency response principles to develop step-by- step solutions. With simple procedures, even a daunting task can be completed. Life is busy, so Iâve organized the areas of the response into manageable sections, such as food, transport, energy, production, and consumption.
Everyone has their own situation; some have financial constraints, while other people have different challenges. Iâve provided a wide range of options to be inclusive. Choose the actions that work best for you, tackling the easy ones, then moving to others that are more involved. Many actions take only a few minutes and can be included into a daily routine.
What is the real problem?
Climate change isnât the problem; instead, itâs the consequence of ignoring the science. Or as UN Secretary-General AntĂłnio Guterres noted, âClimate change is the defining issue of our timeâ and âScientists have been telling us for decades. Repeatedly. Far too many leaders have refused to listen.â Like crime scene detectives, to find the source of a problem we need to review the facts. The international community agreed to act on climate change in 1990, but instead of falling, emissions grew even more rapidly than before.
The 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference failed as well. Thirty years of failure cannot be an accident. Why isnât change occurring more rapidly?
The real problem is not emissions. The real problem is there are obstacles to positive change.
As an emergency management advisor, Iâve helped large organizations prepare for incidents that may threaten peopleâs lives. Even after writing a new plan and training their team, sometimes there were problems preventing these organizations from responding effectively to an organizations from responding effectively to an incident. However, I found that if we ask the right questions, we can find out who or what is responsible for the obstacles. Then we can deal with them, and even prevent other problems from happening in the future. To solve the climate crisis, the essential first step is to correctly identify the obstacles which are preventing meaningful change.The main purpose of this book is to identify these obstacles and provide solutions to overcome them.
What are the obstacles?
Investigators found that oil and gas corporations spread misinformation about climate change that their own scientists knew to be untrue.3 They also worked in secret to defeat the United Nationsâ attempts to reduce emissions.4 Other investigations found that oil and gas corporations spent more than $1 billion on climate-related lobbying of politicians and political parties soon after the 2015 Paris conference. Itâs no wonder traditional methods of creating positive change have failed when opposed by this vast wall of money that corrupts and undermines democracy.
Even considering these revelations, it would be naive to blame the oil and gas industry for everything, because most other industries have done little or nothing to reduce emissions. Science has shown that all sectors have options to halve emissions by 2030, so why arenât the solutions being implemented?
Nicholas Stern, Professor at the London School of Economics, wrote a report on climate change for the UK government. He explained, âClimate change is the greatest market failure the world has seen,â because âthose who damage others by emitting greenhouse gases generally do not pay.â
Why has the free-market economy failed so badly? One of the main objectives of the free market is profit. Annual profits can decide executive bonuses, dividends to shareholders, and influence the share price. Because of this, many companies often focus on making quick profits instead of investing money and other resources into reducing emissions. This focus on annual profits can also lead to corporate leaders doing nothing about their emissions and passing the consequences on to the next generation.
Some people say that we have a choice between looking after the economy and jobs or the environment. However, this is a false choiceâ because we can have both. Researchers found that companies that include environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) into their growth strategy can outperform their competitors. When we abandon false ideas about the free market economy, then we can solve climate change.
We can have a healthy economy, jobs, and emissions reductions and still create a better world for present and future generations. Nicholas Stern said of the response to climate change, âIf we get this right, it will be more powerful than the industrial revolution.â
How can we overcome the obstacles?
Most corporations, industries, and governments are doing too little, too late to reduce emissions. It is up to us to act now, and we should not ask for permission or wait anymore. We can guide a new direction for corporations, industry, and even entire economies by creating system change. We can keep the benefits of the free market, such as freedom of choice, competition, and innovation, while creating sensible objectives for the economy other than just profit and growth.
History shows us that when large numbers of people have stood up for an important issue, then change has followed. There have been many important social movements that achieved success, such as voting rights for women, civil rights in the US, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, ousting dictators, and marriage equality, to name just a few. Through people power and unified actions, we can change the direction of corporations and create system change that will lead to a better world.
Some people have said we need a revolution to tear the free market down. But what if there was a way of solving climate change by using the rules of the economy to change itself?
How do we create system change?
Corporations have used advertising to tell us what products and services to buy. Some politicians have fueled culture wars to distract us and make us afraid. This is, in part, so we wonât hold them accountable for failing to do their jobs, to serve the people instead of the corporations that give them money. Itâs time we turned the tables on both corporations and the politicians. We have been told what to do and think for too long, itâs time to reclaim our power. Itâs time we tell them what to do to serve our needs. We the people, can step up to provide the leadership that has been missing. We can reverse âbusiness as usualâ.
How can we use the economic system to change itself?
So far, some of the main ways to take climate action have been:
⢠Protest and lobby politicians to make regulations.
⢠Take direct action to physically stop fossil fuel corporations.
⢠Use the legal system, to impose rulings to stop oil and gas expansion.
These remain essential tactics to push for positive change, and people should support them as much as possible. But thereâs also another way we can make a better future and change the system; itâs quite simple and accessible to many people.
There are two main features of the free- market economy that can be used as opportunities to make positive climate action:
⢠The profit motive and self-interest: Corporate profits can affect dividends, share price, and executive bonuses.
⢠The freedom of choice: The producer has the freedom to choose what to make, and the consumer can choose what to buy.
Corporations spend a lot of money on advertising promoting products or services to boost sales so they can make profits. In some cases, some have spent years building a popular corporate identity and attractive brand awareness. But what if all of this were at risk? Corporations and entire industries have polluted the atmosphere on a massive scale. Now, we the people can actively use our freedom to choose not to buy from these organizations. We need to recognize our power as a group and take unified actions. If customers decide not to buy products or services from corporations that refuse to change, then this will make their profits go downâand that will get their attention.
Now, what if I said that itâs happening already, and that all we need to do is join in? Researchers in the US found that 20% of people said they have punished companies that are opposing steps to reduce global warming by not buying their products. They also found that 35% of those asked intended to punish companies in the following year. People also rewarded companies that were reducing their emissions by buying their products; in 2022, this group included 26% of research participants, and this was expected to rise to 34% the next year.13 Ethical shopping can be an active expression of your beliefs and a way of living a lifestyle with a clear conscience.
Imagine what could happen if we coordinated our efforts and took unified actions together. The figures for people punishing unethical corporations and rewarding good ones could easily increase to more than 50% or even 60%. We can reduce corporate profits with our purchase decisions until they reduce their emissions. When profits fall, then our voices will be heard in boardrooms across the globe. The risk for corporations is that unless they change, they may lose customers and never get them back.
Amplifying self-system change
To super-charge consumer campaigns, we can use additional strategies. Research has shown that corporations are much more likely to agree to the demands of social movements if they also suffer bad publicity.14 This can include viral posts on social media, unhappy and complaining customers, protests outside stores, and other forms of negative media attention. Bad publicity can create a crisis for corporations by compromising their reputation and challenging their social license to operate. We can name and shame them into making positive change to reduce emissions.
Some of the corporate policy changes driven by consumer campaigns include:
⢠Nike improving working conditions of the people making their brands.
⢠SeaWorld ending its captive orca breeding program.
⢠Nestle committing to reduce deforestation by not purchasing palm oil.
⢠Kimberly-Clark creating new paper-buying policies to reduce deforestation.
⢠Zara clothing stores eliminating items made with fur from 1,000 stores.
Social media platforms provide an unprecedented level of intensity and visibility for potential new campaigns on climate change. A campaign started by a small group of people could quickly cascade and be supported by thousands or millions of people in hours or just a few days.
Consider this scenario: a group decides to take unified action and create an online petition demanding a corporate retailer reduce their emissions. This is signed by 100,000 people and then delivered to the corporate headquarters. If they donât respond, then another unified action could create a campaign on social media and rally people to protest at dozens or hundreds of their retail outlets. People could be asked to reconsider their ethical purchasing decisions for this high-emissions polluter. This type of unified action could get significant national media attention. The opportunities to take unified actions with other people will be further explained throughout the book.
We must do this
If Earth had a main control room, its emergency lights would be flashing, and sirens would be wailing. Immediate action is more important now than ever before because burning fossil fuels is increasing the impacts on people and ecosystems all over the world.
Global government policies currently in place are projected to result in a temperature rise of 2.7°C and possibly as high as 3.4°C in this century.16 It is possible that with the pledges and targets made by governments, it might not become so warm. But I donât believe in relying on the promises of political leaders because they have failed to take action for decades.
We can do this
Now is not the time to be a spectator and watch the world burn.
Imagine the people you care most about. Now consider: what positive action are you willing to take to protect yourself and give them a healthy future? Although itâs easy to become discouraged about how bad things are now, positive change never comes from submission, resignation, or despair. The promise of this book is to show how we can be empowered to join in and influence urgent action on climate change.
In fact, people all over the world are already making choices to protect our future. Each time someone stops supporting an unethical corporation and chooses one that actively reduces emissions, they have âvotedâ in favor of a new system, one that cares for people and nature. The choices we make, as part of a wider campaign for system change will be the breakthrough we need.
World-renowned anthropologist Jane Goodall describes the effect we can have: âEvery single day, each of us makes some impact on the planet and we can choose what sort of impact we make. It is the cumulative effect of millions or billions of ethical choices regarding what we buy that will move us toward a better world.â
We already have many of the solutions, but to make this happen, we need as many people and organizations as possible to be involved to accelerate change. We can create community and rediscover our power to decide how the system should work for us all.
The past teaches us that those who show up and take action decide the future. When the history books tell the story of our time, I believe that because of what we do now, they will say that millions of people around the world united together. And that every day more and more people took action, until there was an overwhelming tide of change, reducing emissions and protecting our beautiful home.
You can be part of this defining moment that changes the course of history. Together, we can create a more positive future for all life on Earth.
Climate change is undeniably reshaping our lives, and the task of combating it can feel insurmountable. Philip Kent-Hughes' Creating a Better Climate Future provides a compelling starting point for those willing to make the effort. This book will ignite in you the goal of establishing a personal anti-climate change movement and promoting a more sustainable lifestyle.
The book is divided into four parts. It begins with an overview of how we can solve the climate crisis, then moves through setting up your plan, implementing it, and then reviewing and updating the plan. Generally, the book seems geared toward the average citizen living in a first-world country.Â
The chapters, full of engaging graphs, cover the obstacles to climate change in the food, transportation, energy, production, and consumption sectors. The author's personal resolutions and their outcomes in several chapters demonstrate his commitment. Statistics, percentages, and other scientific information are backed up with a properly cited appendix, ensuring readers know that the author is well-informed.
While this book serves as an introduction to the concept of becoming a climate hero, it also acts as a stepping stone. The author provides additional resources on his website and gives copious other non-profit and government sites that can help you find your sustainable purpose, encouraging readers to take the next steps in their journey.Â
Unfortunately, it seemed that most of the detailed rationale for addressing climate change now was hidden away in the appendix. Perhaps the author wanted the reader to develop their own action plan rather than draw from the more defined âshouldsâ found in the appendix. I would have liked to see that appendix information interspersed throughout the book as each topic was addressed rather than lost at the end.
As I mentioned, this book is only the beginning of developing a plan. As a case in point, the author discusses the pros and cons of renewable energy at the residential level, even sharing some of his own experiences. However, converting a home to solar is a significant undertaking that should involve the support of energy specialists. Having done this myself, I would know!Â
Creating a Better Climate Future by Philip Kent-Hughes is an inspiring and practical guide for anyone looking to make a difference in the fight against climate change. By providing a clear roadmap for developing and implementing a sustainable lifestyle, the book empowers readers to take meaningful action. The resources and personal insights contained in this book make it a valuable starting point for the average individual on their way to becoming a climate hero by taking steps to protect our planet for future generations.