How You Can Save the Planet

By on April 22, 2009 in Green

Rex Weyler, co-founder of Greenpeace International, concludes our four week/20-post series honoring Earth Day. 

After four decades in the environmental movement, I rejoice at signs of progress, but I also believe the pace of change remains too slow. We – especially those privileged with daily meals and computers – need to do more.
 
I often struggle to reconcile realism with optimism. Realistically, two-thirds of natural services to humankind are in decline: depleted fisheries, extinct species, toxic pollution, soil erosion, dying rivers, lopped-off mountain tops, melting glaciers, and an atmosphere heating up like a flambé.  
 
Facing these realities, my optimism comes from two sources: One, historic achievements for civil rights, women’s rights, and disease treatment show that we can change. Secondly, most people show compassion and know how to enjoy rich lives with modest consumption. I know we can achieve a richer quality of life with simpler means.
 
To do this, we must preserve the two elements of our world that sustain us: the environment and our communities. We must adopt personal and social strategies that “relocalize” society. We don’t need super-heroes, but ordinary heroes and common decency.
 
Humanity requires large-scale change, but eventually, change comes down to the daily choices and actions that make large-scale change possible. We must act as if the age of ecological enlightenment has arrived.
 
Here are some key ways we can be part of the solution:
  • Stop hydrocarbon use: Walk, ride a bike or take public transport. Urge politicians to create low-impact public transportation.
  • Grow and eat local food: Dining on exotic food, wrapped in plastic and shipped around the world with fossil fuels, is not sustainable. Preserve local agricultural land and start a backyard or community garden. To impress guests: serve something you grew.
  • Slow consumption: We must virtually stop consuming certain products and slow down all consumption. Shop second hand. Recycle everything. Make global responsibility your fashion statement. 
  • Build community: We cannot solve the global ecological challenge as individuals, but we can as neighborhoods and communities. Grow compassion.
  • Have courage. Challenging conventional thinking may attract ridicule. Do not be intimidated by the consequences of having a conscience. When one person stands up, others are inspired to stand up. This is the multiplying power of Gandhi or Aung San Su Kyi.
  • Research. To transform society toward ecological responsibility, one must possess a genuine curiosity about how society works and how nature works.
  • Use your skills: The best way to change the world is through the things you already know how to do and love to do. Use your skills, knowledge, and passions.
  • Practice self-reflection: Ecology asks us to be humble, not proud. We must discover how to learn from nature. 
Ordinary heroes, who practice modesty and courage, lead social change. Committed, organized citizens have always led important social transformation. Personal action defeats feelings of hopelessness. The choices we make transform the world.
 
Ready to save the planet? Post your green intent.
 
Also Listen to Rex Weyler’s podcast interview with Mallika Chopra – Realistic Optimism and the Future of Our Planet with Rex Weyler
 
Rex Weyler is a co-founder of Greenpeace International and the author of Greenpeace: The Inside Story. His new book, The Jesus Sayings, examines the evidence for an authentic message from the first century Jewish sage. Contact: www.rexweyler.com.

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About rex.weyler

REX WEYLER is a journalist, writer, and ecologist. He was a cofounder of Greenpeace International, and his book, Greenpeace: The Inside Story (Raincoast Books and Rodale Press, 2004) appeared on the Publishers Weekly list, "Best Books of 2004."

 

Weyler was born in Colorado in 1947, attended Occidental College in California, where he studied physics, engineering, and history. He worked as an apprentice engineer for Lockheed in 1967, but left engineering for a career in journalism. In 1969, he published his first book with photographer David Totheroh, a pacifist discourse with photographs from a winter in California's Yosemite Valley. In 1971, he immigrated to Canada, where he began his writing and journalism career as a reporter and editor for the North Shore News in North Vancouver.

Through journalism, Weyler expressed his passion for wilderness and ecology. In 1975, he sailed on the first Greenpeace anti-whaling voyage, and served on subsequent campaigns as photographer and writer. He served as a director of the Greenpeace Foundation from 1974-1982, edited the monthly Greenpeace Chronicles, and co-founded Greenpeace International in Amsterdam in 1979.

He published a book of Greenpeace campaign photographs, To Save a Whale (1979). His book Blood of the Land, a history of the American Indian Movement, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1982. He is the author of The Story of Harmony (1996) and coauthor of Chop Wood, Carry Water: a Guide to Finding Spiritual Fulfillment in Everyday Life (1984).

Weyler's latest book, Greenpeace: The Inside Story (Raincoast Books and Rodale Press, 2004) is the definitive history of the founding of Greenpeace from the mid-1960s to 1980. The book tells the story of a small group of journalists and activists in Vancouver, Canada, who envisioned and created a global environmental movement. The book was honoured as a finalist for Shaughnessy-Cohen Award for Political Writing, the Hubert Evans Award for Non-Fiction at the BC Book Awards, and was listed by Publishers Weekly among the "Best Books of 2004."

Rex Weyler has contributed photographs, essays, and poetry to many books, including: The Power of the People, ed. Robert Cooney and Helen Michalowski (New Society Publishers, 1987); Shorelines (Kingfisher Press, B.C., 1995); Witness, Twenty-five Years on the Environmental Front Line (Andre Deutsch, London, 1996); Greenpeace: Changing the World, ed. Conny Boettger, Fouad Hamdan (Rasch & Rohring, 2001); and The Book of Letters: 150 Years of Private Canadian Correspondence, by Paul and Audrey Grescoe (Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 2002). His photography and essays have been published in the New York Times, Vancouver Sun, Oceans, Smithsonian, Rolling Stone, Conscious Choice, New Times, National Geographic, and other publications.

As an active ecologist, Weyler worked on water quality issues in the Georgia Strait and helped draft legislation limiting dioxin effluents from pulp mills in B.C. He is a founder of Hollyhock seminar centre on Cortes Island, B.C., and co-developer of music tuning software for Justonic Tuning Inc. In 2005, Weyler received a Social Justice Award, from the Urban Environmental Policy Center, Los Angeles.

Currently, he provides weekly commentary on the Canadian television news show, The Standard, Omni-10 television, writes for the Tyeeonline news, and for print, television, and the Internet. Weyler helped organize the World Peace Forum 2006 in Vancouver and is currently working on a new book about religious history and personal choice. He lives in Vancouver with his wife, Lisa Gibbons, and two of his three sons; his oldest son is a musician in Victoria, B.C.

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