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One Earth Action

Forms and Opportunities for Engaged Practice

Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth. Environmental despair is a poison every bit as destructive as the methylated mercury in the bottom of Onondaga Lake. But how can we submit to despair while the land is saying "Help"?

— Robin Wall Kimmerer

No small part of our challenge is the pervasive poverty of agency. How often do we hear, including from ourselves, “but I’m just one person”? Yet both Dharma and sociology disagree. Our words and actions matter so much and indeed they are all we have.

Yet whether or not our actions make a big difference that we can actually see, feel, and touch is, in a way, none of our business. Our opportunity is to meaningfully respond. We can speak in ways that actually help. We can act in ways that are deeply rooted, skillful, strategic, and unattached to specific outcomes.

“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” -Angela Davis

 

Featured Action Organizations

    • Jaguar Siembra is a community regenerative agriculture initiative for and by indigenous people in Colombia. Through the arts, storytelling, and education, they co-create natural and cultural projects with indigenous people’s wisdom to preserve their local ecosystems and cultural heritage wisdom.​
    • Blue Ocean Law is an international law firm based in Guam, specializing in human and indigenous rights, self-determination, and environmental justice in the Pacific. They adopt a grassroots orientation that privileges civil society and marginalized voices, works on issues of pressing concern to Pacific peoples—political and economic self-determination for non-self-governing territories, redress for victims of nuclear testing and non-consensual medical experimentation, accountability for anthropogenic climate change, and recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples.
    • Force of Nature helps young people turn climate anxiety into action, and work with leaders to drive intergenerational solutions. Through student programmes, teacher trainings, resources and events, they help young people translate climate anxiety into action, and enable educators to support them in their journey.

Explore Buddhist and Interfaith Organizations

 

Featured Calls to Action

Upcoming

Global

  • Support Standing Together and Combatants for Peace, two grassroots movements mobilizing Jewish and Palestinians for peace, equality, and justice.
  • Support Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP), an independent, local Palestinian child rights organization dedicated to defending and promoting the rights of children living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
  • Green Faith will be holding the Faith for Climate Justice in May 2024 – a week of mobilization calling for an end to fossil fuels, a sustainable future, and a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. Sign up to receive updates about getting involved, and sign the Multi-faith Climate Finance Pledge calling on banks and asset managers to align their portfolios with a 1.5 degree future and universal access to clean energy by 2030.
  • This Earth Day on April 22nd, EARTHDAY.ORG is advocating for the end of plastics for the sake of human and planetary health, demanding a 60% reduction in the production of plastics by 2040 and an ultimate goal of building a plastic-free future for generations to come. Check out their action toolkit offering suggestions for ways to get involved, access planning resources to host your own events, or join events happening near you.
  • Ecocide, committed repeatedly over decades, is a root cause of the climate and ecological emergency that we now face. Unlike suing and fining corporations, making ecocide a crime creates an arrestable offense which may deter harmful conduct and provide remediation. Explore ways to get involved and amplify the call to make ecocide an international crime.

 

United States

  • Call for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and Israel to avert further loss of civilian life and humanitarian catastrophe, call on your senators to do so (phone numbers here), and send a letter to Congress urging their support in the release and safe return of all hostages taken by Hamas.
  • Support Jewish Voice for Peace (JWP), a US-based, grassroots organization seeking to organize a multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of US Jews into solidarity with Palestinian liberation.
  • The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is about to announce its newest set of heavy-duty vehicle standards, which reduce climate pollution from buses, trucks, and tractor-trailers. Urge the Biden Administration to enact the strongest possible heavy-duty vehicle greenhouse gas emissions standards that protects frontline communities, public health, and our environment.
  • Both the Eastern and Western migratory monarch populations have declined by more than 90% in recent years. Your local leaders can help by joining a network of cities and communities that are investing in habitat restoration, community science, environmental education, and local policy change to benefit monarch butterflies. Send a message to your local leaders encouraging them to take the Mayors’ Monarch Pledge and commit to monarch conservation.
  • The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wants to devote 22 million acres of public lands across the West to solar development, including sensitive areas like the Arizona Strip, the shores of Malheur Lake in Oregon, adjacent to Nevada’s Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, and the Mojave Desert. Tell the BLM to pick a plan that doesn’t destroy public lands in a rush to expand renewable energy.

 

Canada 

  • Support Parliamentary petition e-4745, sponsored by NDP Foreign Affairs Critic Heather McPherson, calling upon the Government of Canada to immediately end all arms exports to Israel given the ongoing crisis in Gaza.
  • Share your ideas and input on different topics related to climate change as part of Environment and Climate Change Canada’s engagement on the 2035 emissions reduction target. Your feedback is integral to helping Canada determine and achieve its climate change goals under the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act.
  • Currently, 4% of Canada’s plastic waste is burned or incinerated, a fact that is often hidden by using terms like “energy from waste,” “advanced recycling” or “chemical recycling.” By 2030, up to 22% of Canada’s plastic waste is expected to be burned. Tell the Canadian government to ban burning plastic waste and to invest in refillable and reusable packaging solutions.
  • The use of Liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a shipping fuel is skyrocketing. While it does does emit less carbon dioxide and harmful air pollutants like sulphur, it is primarily composed of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that creates more than 80 times as much heat in the short term as CO2 and approximately 30 per cent of global warming. Urge the maritime industry to stop the expansion of LNG as a marine fuel.
  • The right to a healthy environment is essential to the enjoyment of other human rights, such as the right to life, water, food, and sanitation. Last year, Canada observed a historic moment for environmental justice when the right to a healthy environment was recognized for the first time in federal law. Send an email to Minister Guilbeault and Environment and Climate Change Canada to call for a strong right to a healthy environment.
  • Shift’s 2nd annual Canadian Pension Climate Report Card, released February 27, 2024, finds that despite incremental progress, Canadian pension funds remain off track in its alignment  with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C. Your retirement security depends on a safe climate. Send a letter to your pension manager telling them that you want your retirement savings invested in a safe climate future for yourself, your family, and your community.
  • The National Strategy Respecting Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice Act (Bill C-226) requires the federal government to establish a national strategy to assess, prevent and address environmental racism and advance environmental justice – areas which are often overlooked in Canadian law.  The House of Commons passed this bill in March 2023, but the Senate has yet to approve it. Call on the Senate to prioritize and pass Bill C-226 as soon as possible in 2024 to help keep the important work of tackling environmental racism and environmental injustice on track.

 

Ongoing Opportunities & Action Resources

Upcoming

  • #StopLine3: Check out the  @stopline3 linktree for information about how to join the movement by donating, attending a workshop or rally, helping allies on the frontlines get supplies, and more.
  • Oak Flat: US residents can ask your members of Congress to support and co-sponsor the Save Oak Flat Act.
  • Sign the Multi-faith Climate Statement to be presented to world leaders at COP26 in November 2021.

Ongoing Opportunities

Featured Campaigns

Faith Climate Action Week 2024
Our partners at Interfaith Power and Light are inviting people of diverse faith backgrounds to learn about and examine our relationship to our faith, food and climate this upcoming Earth Day.
Faith Climate Action Week 2024
Our partners at Interfaith Power and Light are inviting people of diverse faith backgrounds to learn about and examine our relationship to our faith, food and climate this upcoming Earth Day.
A call to defend sacred land of the Western Apache
Mining companies are threatening to turn a sacred site into a copper pit. Many Apaches are working to defend their historic homeland, and you can help.
Opportunities to Counter Structural Greed
United around a set of equity principles, this broad coalition confronts the financial sector institutions that fund climate chaos. If you're looking for a way to counter institutionalized greed, this might be a place for your practice.

Restoration is a powerful antidote to despair. Restoration offers concrete means by which humans can once again enter into positive creative relationship with the more-than-human world, meeting responsibilities that are simultaneously material and spiritual. It's not enough to grieve. It's not enough to just stop doing bad things.

— Robin Wall Kimmerer

Stories of Engagement

Buddhism, Social Change, and Skillful Means
How should our practice influence our political engagement? In 2012, three Buddhist leaders explored this provocative question in a conversation that feels just as urgent today as it did then.