6 ways to live a sustainable lifestyle to slow climate change
There must be more to life than having everything! — Maurice Sendak
Do you believe in climate change? I do! Can you and I as individuals affect climate change? Yes, we can! Is it too late? Never! How can we do it? The only way for each of us to affect climate change is to change how we live. Develop a new lifestyle built around sustainability rather than conspicuous consumption.
We’re in the climate change mess for no other reason than we have been a consumer of easy to acquire natural resources. Coal, natural gas, and oil are in abundant supply and have driven our society into a life of consumption rather than sustainability. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the marketing and advertising community that has played on our emotions to blur the line between needs and wants. But we’re at a fork in the road. If we continue down the path, we have been on climate disaster awaits. If we take the path to a sustainable lifestyle then there’s hope ahead.
Living Sustainably
Living sustainably involves a change in our lifestyle — how we live each day and each. It involves an awareness of the effects we have on our world as we live in it. Let’s take a “typical teenager” getting ready for his Saturday night date. The first thing he does is wash the car whether it was dirty or not. It has to shine to be impressive. Then if it’s a special person, he buys new clothes to impress…
You see where this is going. This isn’t a sustainable lifestyle.
Here are six changes we need to make to live sustainably.
- Reduce wasteful Practices
- You only have to look at our landfills to realize that we throw away more than we should. If it can be recycled for another use, do it. I’d it can’t be recycled make sure you use it up.
- Reduce your carbon footprint
- We have to reduce our reliance on cars to reduce emissions. For short distances, we can learn to walk again or bicycle. Remember as children we could ride our bikes anywhere; now we have to drive our car to go to the mailbox a quarter of a mile away.
- Use water wisely
- We have to learn to use our precious water resources more wisely. Freshwater, usable for human consumption will become a rare commodity as climate change continues. We will have to learn to move it around the country to ensure everyone has what they need not necessarily what they want.
- Reduce your use of plastics.
- Plastics have become the blight of our twentieth-century living. They’re the major polluter of our oceans and lakes. We buy single-use plastic bottles of water — the epitome of waste.
- Reduce your use of energy in your home.
- We need to construct zero-energy homes with triple glass panes in windows and solar panels on the roof to reduce our need for carbon-based electricity generation.
- Become a smart shopper: buy to last not replace.
- Shop smarter. Not necessarily to be stylish, but to find something that will last. And reduce the number of similar items you need. How many pairs of shoes, shirts, dresses, or jeans does one person need.
You can make a difference. In our everyday decisions, we can decide to live sustainably and all our incremental changes will add up.
We have to cultivate contentment with what we have. We really don’t need much. When you know this, the mind settles down. Cultivate generosity. Delight in giving. Learn to live lightly. In this way, we can begin to transform what is negative into what is positive. This is how we start to grow up. — Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
