Depends on where you live and your situation. You either limit your personal CO2 or the society’s CO2 or even both. Most of my suggestions will make or save you money over time.
For personal you could do these, most of these will pay themselves back within 10 years in savings.
- Swap gas stove for induction stove
- Swap a gas boiler to heat pump + electric boiler
- Buy solar panels for the roof and/or battery
- Heat pump for domestic heating for colder regions.
- Home insulation such as triple glass windows
- For hot regions getting an awning for the windows facing the sun goes a long way.
- Selling car to buy EV (CO2 neutral at 1 year, less CO2 after that)
- Buying an E-bike if you have short trips and would like to bike more (CO2 negative almost instantly if you prevent car trips)
Otherwise if you don’t feel like any of those investing in solar companies or battery production companies will make it easier for them to finance expansions to their operations and maybe even make you some money along the way.
If you live in the UK or applicable countries getting in on Octopus energy co-op energy production is a good way to invest the money and reduce CO2 at the same time.
Don’t forget that an easy way to limit your carbon footprint is free. Notably plastics, aluminum, steel, other metals, concrete and beef.
To limit society’s footprint you can show up to city Council meetings and advocate for bike paths and public transport which really goes a long way. Showing up with a couple of buddies, making them talk and buying beer for them after in one of the most cost effective ways to stop climate change. Often city council members just need some people to back them up when proposing the CO2 negative urban planning improvements.
Stopping climate change is all about taking small steps towards the solution, asking this question on lemmy is a great start.
Climate change is tied to capitalism. Use it to run for office.
No amount of money can stop climate change, it’s a naturally occurring pattern. We’re coming out of a small cooling period.
You’d have to stop the earth from rotating to stop climate change, which of course, would drastically change the climate all at once, and then never again.
You’ll need 100 Musks and way more than 10k for that.
You’ll need 100 Musks
To reach a catastrophic level on all kinds of scales - including climate change…
If you mean the net-worth, you might be right, that amount of money might even have a measurable effect on human-made climate change.
Use it to free your own time to plant trees or contribute in another way. Spending 10k isn’t gonna reduce climate change, but being able to work on the problem yourself will.
Pay to have someone shoot EM.
I doubt that kill is that cheap…
Considering we live in a conflicted world where capitalism has ruined everything, I’d say donate a few thousand of it around, but also save it and just make the right choices on what you buy:
- buy zero waste, local and bio
- buy fair and repairable phones
- buy fair and ecological clothing
- etc…
So many people don’t realize that every time they buy something in a store, they are casting a little capitalistic vote. We have to speak the language of what these evil sons of bitches speak, money. So I think for individuals, it mostly starts with us.
Look at the bright side, with rampant inflation and wage stagnation; soon no one will be able to buy anything anymore!
Most stupid header I ever read, climate change is fear mongering of the elite
Care to elaborate your reasons please?
What more is there to elaborate? What needs further explaining on my post?!
Talk is cheap. Fear mogering of the elite is not a single thing nor explains how catastrophic insurance claims are on the rise for climate reasons directly related to climate change.
Should do your own research.
That’s a hilarious take seeing as most of “the elite” want us to completely ignore it and act like it doesn’t exist.
Climate Change is a provable existential problem that needs to be tackled as soon as possible.
Buy the cheapest viable land you can and build an Earthship home out of tires, cans, bottles, and compressed Earth. Take yourself off the grid as much as possible.
So buy land, dump trash on it. Got it.
*Repurpose trash…
No. Build an Earthship home by using inexpensive, rejected materials that don’t break down easily to make an off-grid structure that will gather and generate electricity, water, and food for potentially centuries.
Also Earthship.com
How long would it take for the environmental cost (including CO2 emissions, and the inefficient use of resources associated with trying to live away from others) of the new building to be overcome by the savings in energy (and thus CO2 and associated environmental degradation involved in gathering those resources) when compared to just living in an already built house?
I’d wager that just maintaining an old house is better. Of course if you ignore everything else other than energy use and diverting something from a landfill, earth ships are very cool. Maybe not $10,000 either.
Its unclear whether one person building an earth ship instead of buying and maintaining an older house would make any positive environmental change.
Instead, if you took your $10,000 and partnered with others who have similar investments, you could build a small mixed use building which includes a couple shops on the ground floor, and dwellings on the next few floors (likely you would have enough combined to get a mortgage/loan to build). Why? Living in an apartment style building is going to be more efficient than any kind of single person dwelling (and you could use some of the earth ship ideas as well), having shops near homes would also help eliminate occasional car trips by having amenities right where you live. As a bonus, if this building was built for the investors to live in, you all now have equity and relatively low cost housing that is much easier to sell than an Earth ship in the middle of nowhere, should you ever need to move.
10k will not do much good on the grand scale of things. Once you start involving other people directly, the costs start skyrocketing. Be it if you want to bribe politicians, fund a revolution, invest into sustainable tech or just creating a bottle cap recycling programme, 10k just isnt gonna get you far enough. So focus on your own climate impact. I think the absolute best you could do for the most positive net good is to take inventory of your own carbon emissions and replace or upgrade whatever you need to lower them. Lower your heating usage by getting a heat pump instead of burning coal for example. This will depend on how low your carbon output currently is though.
As I havent seen a single actually effective answer:
Donate it to organisations fighting climate change. For example FCA (researching climate friendly ways of producing cement, steel, fuels), gfi (researching food alternatives), CATF (tries to influence political changes)
Fund journalism and media against fossil fuel
You’re not funding anything important for 10k
You would be so very surprised how far a little money gets public opinion.
Especially when you cut out the middlemen and fund independent creators you find impactful, instead of big megacorp news with CEO salaries in the millions.
I’ve heard a statistic that goes something like: If you were to just not exist, you would only save about 1 second worth of emissions globally. Whatever individual action you do to reduce emissions from your lifestyle only go so far.
And like others have mentioned, there are the other, less legal forms of direct action.
“Whatever individual action” indeed comrade
Invest it into a mutual fund fighting climate change. My bank has one. I guess many banks do. Some relevant terms in their fund names: fossil-free, climate, forest, sustainable agriculture.
Several funds in my bank have ESG in the name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social,_and_governanceUnfortunately investing money does veeeeeeeery little against climate change. Think like 0.1% of your invested sum. The money you invest still goes to shareholders, just those of companies that meet certain criteria.
Of course it is better (i.e. has bigger impact) than investing elsewhere, dont get me wrong. But investing doesnt promote actual changes. For someone to make changes in politics or public opinion, they need to be paid. Spending the money on such projects is the way to make actual change.
Source: my spouse works in ESG scoring at a big bank
Donate to an indigenous community
This is probably the most impact you can have with that little.
Fund a sterilization program for young people who have come to understand the future that humanity is hurtling towards, and who want to avoid bringing a child into such a brutally cruel future.
Both my niece and nephew have sworn off of children, as they have good educations and have fully understood just how badly humanity is fucking itself over. They’re just trying to find doctors that will do those procedures on people under 30.
Really good idea. Rid the world of enviromnetally responsible people so climate change is accelerated. Thanks for the counter-argument.
Humanity may be fucking itself over, but how does that lead you to conclude that taking yourself out is (part) of a solution?
I am not talking about taking yourself out. I’m talking about not adding to what will be a very big problem within the next two to four decades.
The only reason why we have reached 8 billion is because of industrialized agriculture. Climate change - via chaotic weather - will make agriculture in general impossible. When agriculture at scale ceases to be functional - and the collapse of the AMOC will make one of the bigger impacts in the middle of this century - the ability for humanity to feed more than a billion or two will cease to exist. Humanity will tear its entire infrastructure apart in a desperate bid to live another day. Anyone who wants to subject their children to such horrors is not a person who cares for their children.
We are already exceeding the “worst-case scenario” that has projected a likely extinction of humanity within this century. Why add innocents to the potential misery and suffering?
Ahh, you’re beyond doomsday prepping
No, I refuse to look away from facts and reality. I read the science before the IPCC gets to it and “politically massages” it into useless pablum. I listen to those who actually do climate science as a day job… and most of them have started calling themselves “climate pathologists” and are refusing to bring children into this world, because to intentionally bring children into such a future would be to inflict malicious cruelty onto those children.
May I suggest advocating for better sexual education and healthcare? This will have a much bigger impact than taking smart and understanding people out of the genepool
A blissfully naïve ideal, considering the rightward shift of almost all governments world-wide. The political right depends vitally on creating an ignorant, illiterate, and uninformed electorate who breed like rabbits… you really think that they will willingly fund education and healthcare of any effective kind?
Right now, our best bet is to stop pumping out innocents who will only know a life that is brutish, cruel, and (once civilization collapses) short. They may have a decade or three of modern conveniences, but anyone under the age of 30 will likely die long before they would otherwise experience a natural death.
You’re not getting a perfect solution. And with this foresight not having kids is the responsible thing to do. But no matter how weird some governing bodies might behave, you shouldn’t go silent when the world needs people to push for what they think is right.
This situation isn’t absolute. There are still people out there who listen, and want better information. People that do care. If you can reach even one person you have a good chance of saving someone else and/or their kids/loved ones from the threats we see before us
