August Is for Optimism

Dear Partners in Green,

Hurray!

For the month of August I am just focusing on good news.

Worrying about Climate Change can indeed sap our energy and lead to what is termed climate anxiety, or eco-anxiety. I do believe that keeping us on edge and depressed is a strategy adopted by the current administration for keeping us ineffectual.

But I am hopeful that learning of some good news will recharge us, help us to stay on task as we focus on what we can do, individually and collectively, about the crisis in which we find ourselves. I am hopeful that we can be inspired, that is, be filled with confidence and the desire to make a difference, knowing that our enthusiasm can be contagious.

So, here is some good news.*

• In The Christian Science Monitor, Jacob Posner reports that teens in western Massachusetts are joining Greenagers, a local nonprofit, to work outdoors building trails and protecting ecosystems, gaining both job experience and a deeper bond with the natural world.
• For Yale Environment 360, Beth Gardiner reports: With power bills soaring and the national grid failing, Pakistanis are taking the energy transition into their own hands— and creating a bottom-up solar revolution.
• Bill McKibben reports for The New Yorker: Around the globe solar power is scaling up at a breakneck pace, reshaping energy systems, economies, and even geopolitics.
• Matt Simon reports for Grist: Cities worldwide are cutting emissions, greening streets and adapting to climate threats faster than national governments, according to a new international report.
• Emily Jones reports for Grist that solar panels now double as shade for sheep and a tool for rural energy production in Georgia, where some farmers are balancing land conservation and renewable energy development.

We, too, can add to this list of good news.

• We can add to the growing list of people who have reduced their consumption of meat, thus saving rainforests from deforestation.
• We can reduce our air travel, and we can find ways to offset the carbon footprint of the flights we do take.
• We can shop our own closets.
• We can compost, compost, compost.
• We can reduce, reuse, and recycle.
• We can ……………………

Don’t give up hope!

Thank you for being on this journey.

Wishing peace and health to you and your loved ones.

Until next time,
Beth

*The Daily Climate — https://www.dailyclimate.org