I am assuming that if you are reading this then you at least have an interest in saving ourselves, and hopefully the global ecosystem that supports us; after all, you cannot save us without saving what we depend on. So let's do this together. It may take a while, but stay with me and hopefully we will find the answers together.


What Should We Do?

There is a simple way of breaking this down, which you can also find on my other blog, called Reduce3 :

The more natural resources we use, the less are available to other species, and future generations of humans. We must reduce our consumption of non-renewable resources.

The more greenhouse gases we release, the more the climate will change and the less chance of survival we, and many other species, will have in the future. We must reduce the greenhouse gases we release.

The more we alter the natural environment, sea, earth and atmosphere, the less the earth and ourselves are able to recover from change in the future. We must reduce the damage we do to the natural environment.

All 3 of these are closely linked together, in fact you can hardly do one without doing at least a bit of one or more of the others. The message is simple, but it goes against everything that the current market-led, money-led, greed-led system that the western economies promote, a system that is leading us to our demise. That makes doing enough of the three "reduces" very, very difficult.


How Are We Going To Do It?

Many people assume that there must just be one magic bullet to solving the environmental crisis. There are some excellent ideas around, but I don't believe that there is one magic bullet. However, if we gather all of the good and workable ideas into one great solution that we could call a magic bullet then we could end up with something so large and so unwieldy that it will be impossible to manage; people will give up trying and the great idea may not have made any progress. Then again, if we all work on the hundreds of good and workable ideas as separate tasks then, like a badly managed project, the end may never be reached; we will have lost too much time and what eventually comes out may be nothing like the result that was intended.

The way to approach this is to think of the solution like a table - let's call this solution "Giving The Earth A Future".

The natural environment is the surface of the table, but a table needs legs in order to support itself. If we put all the good and workable ideas into four manageable groups, or legs, that each have a similar theme then we have something that is more manageable than one great solution, but more ordered than a whole jumble of ideas that may be working against each other. The legs of the table, can each work towards the single goal, but in their own particular way. Critically the solution cannot be achieved without having all four legs of the table.


So what are these legs?

1 : Research
Without research we have no basis for action. We need to know the critical priorities so that we can focus on these first, and also continue to strengthen the case for taking action. What resources should we most reduce our use of? How much should we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions? What types of damage should we reduce first?

2 : Political Action
Political Action works at all levels. Ultimately we need global agreements to ensure that the action taken is coordinated, equitable and effective; but we also need national and local political action to manage the application of this work at all levels, right down the smallest local authorities.

3 : Legal Action
Legal safeguards are required at all levels to ensure that the parties involved in taking action at all levels, right down to the individual in some cases, comply with what is necessary. This does not have to be the state compelling an individual to do the right thing, it can also work the other way round - ever thought of suing an entire nation for failing in its obligations to the environment? Why not?

4 : Personal and Community Action
People created the problem and only people can solve it. Whether we are convinced to do so by research based evidence, encouragement from the political bodies that run our lives, legal action, or just the force of our own conscience, in the end it is up to all of us, working individually or in communities, to reverse the damage we have done.


Each of the following parts of this series will cover one of the four legs of the solution. It's not going to be easy, but in the end we may have found the way to give the Earth a future.