Cool story of a professional sports team going 100% carbon neutral, Real Betis Balompie – a top team in Spain’s competitive soccer La Liga.
Here’s how they get the big win.
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Simply copy the best-in-class, that is, the growing number of ethical businesses and visionary cities who have made these three steps a core part of their business process:
1) Measure one’s carbon footprint,
2) Cut what you can, using the well-known list of tactics,
3) Then, buy “carbon offsets” for the rest that you can’t easily cut, like air travel. You are essentially donating cash that will be used to fund wind and solar farms, massive reforestation projects, sustainable agriculture transformations in developing countries who are already being hurt worst and hurt first by our pollution from the first world countries.
Net effect: Pollution from team activities and air travel is zeroed out by the carbon savings from direct action plus from the offsets.
For example, I recently took an air travel trip, and bought offsets from TerraPass for $22USD, roughly the cost of planting 60 trees in a developing country (which badly needs the trees, shade and groundwater retention given that climate change is hitting those countries much harder and faster).
Spread the word of how to follow these three steps, by Sharing this article in the social media platforms you use.
Or, even better, directly lobby your town or regional government and the businesses we patronize – to follow these three steps!
As the sayings go, “To save the planet, change yourself first,” and “To save the planet, use your voice.”
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Not sure how to start saving the planet (civilization, really)… Start by remembering the saying: “Hope is a renewable resource.” Keep your morale up.
Then, our immediate practical first step becomes “Deeply know our personal Superpowers,” those skills over which we all have 100% control:
1) To save the planet, CHANGE OURSELVES FIRST;
2) To save the planet, INVEST OUR WORKING LIVES;
3) To save the planet, USE OUR VOICES and take advocacy seriously in all its many flavors: Never miss a vote and never stop influencing your government. Influence the vast business world by voting with your buying power… business listens when you speak its language. Set a solid example in your personal life. Tell friends what we must do. Finally, have a carefully-chosen annual donor program. All of these are ways you can use your voice.
No one can take your personal power away. Stay focussed on the list of substantive global warming solutions.
And at all times, cast aside the “learned-helplessness” that infects so much of modern life… the time is now for action.
Never give up.
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Global Warming, You and I 