Wednesday 22nd April is Earth Day this year, where people around the planet support environmental protection. You can see more at https://www.earthday.org/

Planet earth is an amazing part of the universe where conditions have existed for us as a species to survive and thrive over millennia. Whether or not you believe in creation it is obvious that this is something that needs to be protected. All the evidence is that over the past two centuries the actions of people have started to damage the balance of this existence by our actions.

Earth day helps us stop focus and shine a light on this. Individual actions can’t change the direction which we have been going in, but together we can overcome problems, and get to a better place.

Below I have outlined a few ways in which I try to do my part, maybe some of these actions will resonate with you:

10 ways I try to support our planet

1. Political change – join and strengthen political parties that prioritise environmental policies, and engage with them to keep the pressure on to change the environmentally damaging status quo. If you can’t join a political party support change through environmental charities such as https://www.friendsoftheearth.ie/
2. Consume less: global trade drives the consumption of resources and causes damage to ecosystems. Buy only what you need, and repurpose, sell, give away or recycle anything you don’t need any more.
3. Walk, cycle or take public transport when you can, saving the air that we breath for all of us and the space on our roads for those who are less able.
4. Eat less meat. We don’t need too eat the amount of meat that we buy in the western world to get the protein we need. Cutting down will cut our carbon, fossil fuel and water output hugely.
5. Shop local for locally produced items – cut down on transport emissions and on the transport emissions of the items that you purchase.
6. Reduce your flying habits.
7. Consider your data footprint: energy guzzling data centres are partly encouraged by our habits of hoarding information on the cloud.
8. Know what you are buying – find out the carbon and water footprint of what you are buying, whether people or the planet have been exploited in its production or transport or whether consuming it funds a repressive or environmentally destructive regime.
9. Invest any money you have ethically – including your pension: there is no point in growing a nest egg for an apocalyptical future, created by this investments (check that the ethical investments that you make are truly carbon free)
10. Aid and trade with the global south – people there deserve a standard of living equivalent to ours, but we need to help them achieve that without burning our planet.