Things We Can Do to Save the Planet

Traditionally, this is a day devoted to making green accessible to all. It's a day when each of us is invited to take small, individual steps toward reducing our carbon footprints, limiting our waste, or restoring the environment. See how easy it is – and how fun – to do your part to save the planet?

So screw the little things. Here are 5 big, difficult, world-changing concepts we can get behind.
1. ELIMINATE NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Czech crowds cheered for U.S. President Barack Obama's recent announcement that America must lead the charge to eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide. But no matter which nation or alliance takes the helm, reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction is a critical part of sustainability. Simply put, nuclear weapons have no place in a bright green future.
Problems This Helps Solve: Nuclear warheads are like the anti-resilience. They don't make us safer; they actually make us brittle. And pouring enormous amounts of money and natural resources into mutually-assured destruction seems like an outdated model for peacekeeping on a finite planet.

2. STABILIZE THE BOTTOM BILLION
In order to have a resilient and peaceful planet, we must first meet the basic needs of all the people who live here. Each person deserves clean water, adequate sanitation, and access to health care. But building this basic foundation will also require stability of a more intangible kind, including giving every person access to education, protecting civil rights around the globe, and putting an end to human servitude.
Problems This Helps Solve: The difficulties the bottom billion people face don't just waste their human potential; they also undermine global public health, accelerate habitat destruction, worsen the destabilizing effects of violence, and drag down failing states. In a very real sense, the problems of the bottom billion are problems for us all, and tied into every other problem we want to solve.

3. NEGOTIATE AN EFFECTIVE CLIMATE TREATY
We need a global treaty that holds all players accountable to decreasing their carbon emissions. This treaty must decrease global carbon levels to 350 parts per million by 2080, if we are to avoid a series of global tipping points that will push us over the edge and make life on this planet unbearable for the majority of life on Earth.
Problems This Helps Solve: An effective climate treaty will help create global accountability for decreasing our greenhouse gas emissions to a level that allows humans to remain on the Earth. As we've said before carbon-neutral prosperity is possible. We can design and build a sustainable society within the time we have remaining. The matter hinges entirely on having the will to build it. And that's what's going to be tested now, and big time: our will.

4. BUILD BRIGHT GREEN CITIES
We are now an urban planet. In general, urbanization offers many benefits. But we need to design cities that allow people access to their greatest potential within a framework of sustainable prosperity. Bright green cities are designed so that residents have access to public parks, basic goods, entertainment, services and jobs within walking distance. Bright green cities include transit systems and mobility options to allow people to get from one place to another comfortably and on time without the use of a private vehicle. Bright green cities feature carbon-neutral buildings that are healthy for the people who live and work inside them. They use strategies like zero-waste plans and producer takeback laws to channel materials in closed loops.
Problems This Helps Solve: Because people who live close together use infrastructure and space much more efficiently, cities may just be our most powerful weapon against global warming. As the human population continues to grow on a planet that remains the same, our urban centers will continue to grow to accommodate those people's needs for shelter and employment. If we design our cities well, they will become places where people can live in bright green prosperity, enjoying access to a larger number of goods and services

5. BUILD NO NEW HIGHWAYS
It's time to stop building highways, and stop developing the disconnected, suburban sprawl they support. Instead, local and national governments in the Global North need to focus their resources on improving the streets and infrastructure that's already in place, making those streets work for all forms of mobility, from transit to cycling, to walking, to driving and cargo transport. This solution must go hand-in-hand with building comfortable, attractive, bright green cities where people can live densely while living well. If we redefine the model for growth, density and transportation in the industrialized world, we will help rapidly growing nations avoid the problems associated with auto-dependent development.
Problems This Helps Solve: We're stuck on the outdated idea that highways equal mobility. But although most of North America continues to pave new lanes in the hopes of reducing choking congestion, we're actually making the problem worse. According to this study from the Sightline Institute, adding even one mile of new highway lane will increase C02 emissions by more than 100,000 tons over 50 years. But the problem of highways goes beyond traffic, and beyond North America. Highways feed development that sprawls further and further out from urban centers, destroying green space and farmland, and locking residents into patterns of car-dependency. Not only does sprawl exacerbate the problem of emission.

from:world changing