What You Can Do
Melinda Kramer, Founder/Co-Director, Women’s Earth Alliance
1. “Connect to your environment anyway you can. Drop into nature. Fall in love with what protects us, and what we get to protect,” Melinda says.
How and why to connect with your environment.
2. “Make your presence count. Get involved in organizations working to end environmental injustice. Bring your talents and resources (financial, time, skills) to efforts you’re passionate about.”
NAACP defines environmental injustice.
3. Understand that “global is local and local is global. What happens across the world profoundly influences our lives.”
NASA summarizes the effects of global warming.
Pew Research reports that in the US, recognition of the local effects of climate change vary widely.
4. “Understand and reduce your ecological footprint. Then do a little more. In the aggregate, small steps have a huge impact.”
The World Wildlife Fund helps you calculate your footprint, and suggests how to reduce it.
5. “Let corporations know that you don’t support single use plastic bags and bottles, GMO seeds, pesticides, fracking, and oil pipelines.”
As You Sow and Ceres exert investor pressure on public companies to demand that they operate in a safe, just, sustainable way in which environmental health and human rights are central to the bottom line.
6. “Know when to speak up and when to step back. Center the voices of women, particularly frontline women and women of color. If you are one of those women, speak up and share your story.”
The Women’s Earth Alliance’s You Tube channel includes women’s stories from around the world. Here’s an example.