What Can One Person Do for Climate Action?
Robert Christopherson, Geosystems textbook author and teacher, joined PECA Presents on April 5, 2026 and left us with the following guide for climate action.
2026: What Can One Person Do for Climate Change Action—brief sample:
Don’t try to do everything—just do something to get started. Start with a few actions. The reality of mitigating carbon dioxide emissions is that many actions save you money, improve health and welfare, reduce weather extremes, and, ultimately, benefit future generations. Here are quick links to the sections:
Sampler of Simple Things:
VOTE!! Be informed
Obey the speed limit and drive efficiently.
Check your tires for proper inflation.
Combine automobile trips.
Buy locally produced foods whenever possible—Farmers’ Markets!
Adjust your thermostat lower in winter, higher in summer.
Complain when you enter a building that is too cold in the summer.
Unplug electronics when not in use.
Wash most of your clothes in cold water.
Use the vacation-mode setting on the water heater when leaving home for more than a day.
Use a solar clothes dryer–an indoor (such as a shower curtain rod) or outdoor clothesline.
Plant trees that are native to the area where you live.
Remember the 3 Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
Inventory your trash for a week; find out what you use and where to make changes.
Buy items with the least amount of packaging.
Buy products made from recycled materials.
Use cloth bags for all shopping, refuse plastic bags if product can be carried without a bag.
Recycle newspaper, white paper, and magazines.
Buy recycled paper goods.
Use cloth napkins instead of paper.
Use cloth towels or rags instead of paper towels. Use non-plastic straws.
Bring your own non-plastic containers for take-home when eating out.
Reduce junk mail, register at “mail preference service.”
Recycle old electronics, cell phones, computers, etc.
Eat only sustainably harvested seafood–check Seafood Watch from Monterey Bay Aquarium).
Have one or more meatless days every week.
Don’t leave water running while you brush your teeth, shave, or wash dishes.
Repair leaking faucets or leaking toilets.
Wash produce in a bowl, not under running water.
Only run the dishwasher when it is full.
Use a car wash that recycles its water.
Properly dispose of hazardous wastes such as batteries, paint, and unused pesticides/containers.
Cook dishes in a solar cooker in summer. We use a small cardboard solar cooker that heats to 250°F
A Little Less Simple and A Little More Money:
Replace incandescent and CFL bulbs with energy efficient and long-lasting LED bulbs.
Turn off lights when leaving a room.
Install on-demand hot water tank or hot water pump.
Install low-flow faucets and showerheads.
Install dual-flush 1.28 gal/flush toilets.
Install a “whole house” fan, or an attic fan.
Use the Sun to passively reduce your energy footprint:
Cover south and west-facing windows in summer—curtains, sunscreens. Uncover south and west-facing windows in winter.
Plant trees and shrubs on the hot (south and west) sides of the house.
Replace all or part of your lawn with low water-use, drought-tolerant plants.
Start a worm farm to process your vegetable scraps or start a compost heap for yard waste.
More Commitment and Money, and more savings:
Buy an energy-efficient vehicle next time.
Buy energy-efficient appliances.
Install solar tubes or skylights in interior rooms.
Reduce your carbon footprint—buy carbon credits.
Install solar electric photovoltaic panels on your roof—solar panels.
Install solar water heating on your roof.
Additional background:
Obey the speed limit and drive efficiently. To improve gas mileage by 15%, obey the speed limit and avoid “jackrabbit starts” and heavy-footed stops. Each gallon of gas saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere—one driver in 1 car getting better mileage, times an average of 30,000 miles a year = approximately 4.0 tons of CO 2 avoided.
Properly inflated automobile tires improves gas mileage more than 3%.
Combine shopping trips, walk, bike, carpool, and use mass transit. Walking has the triple advantage of saving money, saving energy, and providing exercise. One pound of carbon dioxide is saved for every mile you don’t drive. (2000 miles less a year = 2.4 tons of CO 2 ).
Check out hybrid cars, electric cars, or Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs). We drove Honda hybrids (4-door sedans) for 15 years and experienced no problems and averaged 51 mpg on long drives. Our EV 2016 Nissan Leaf and EV 2024 Hyundai Ionic 6, both all-electric cars, charge from our solar PV panels!
Complain to the manager when you enter a restaurant, theater, or shop that is too cold by A/C. Heating and cooling of businesses is a significant overhead cost for them!
Do a home or apartment energy audit, check out Building Performance Institute (BPI) and Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) methods. Check Energy Star for information on Federal Tax
Credits of up to 30% for energy conservation and efficiency upgrades, https://www.energystar.gov/.
Adjust your thermostat 2 F° lower in winter and 2 F° higher in summer. For an average house this saves 2000 pounds of CO 2 a year—try for a setting of 70° to 72°F in winter and 79° to 80°F in summer—One house, 1 year = 1.0 ton of CO2 .
Unplug electronics from the wall when you’re not using them. In fact, the energy used to keep display clocks lit and memory chips working accounts for 5 percent of total domestic energy consumption, results in 18 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year from power plants! One house 1 year = 2.0 tons of CO 2 .
The concept of an individual’s “footprint” has emerged—ecological footprint, carbon footprint, lifestyle footprint. These consider what your affluence and technology cost planetary systems. Footprint assessment is grossly simplified, but it can give you an idea of your impact and even an estimate of how many planets it would take to sustain that lifestyle and economy if everyone lived like you.
Reduce your carbon footprint—Here is a sample of sites among others:
There are no mysteries here, except for human inaction! You can easily be part of action and be joining others along a positive pathway and be saving money all along for yourself and family.
Demand your Congressional representative support climate change science and action—We must rejoin the Paris Climate Treaty. We are the world’s scientific and economic leader, yet, other countries and cities are moving forward without us at this time!
Seize the day!!
2026 Climate Change Update:
NASA/NOAA/NCDC reported that 2023 broke temperature records in the entire record for Earth’s lands, oceans, and atmosphere. 2024 broke all temperatures for land, sea, and air for the entire record, 2025 continued—annual climate-change related losses in the U.S. total more than $150 billion. Then the January 2025 climate-change related L.A. wildfires in January are estimated at $250 billion in damages! 2026 is forecasted to bring more record-shattering conditions.
For a region-by-region analysis of climate change impacts see: Fifth National Climate Assessment, Climate Change Impacts in the U.S., published in 2023 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Get a free download of a Summary for Policy Makers version or the full report: https://www.globalchange.gov/. In late April 2025, Trump cancelled the Sixth Assessment Report project, dismissing the 400 climate research scientists who were all volunteers! The National Climate Change Program is gone!
To overview climate change, please see What We Know: The Reality, Risks and Response to Climate Change, chaired by Nobel Prize scientist Dr. Mario Molina, from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 18 March 2014, free download at: https://whatweknow.aaas.org/
For the latest data and information browse these key web sites, unless cancelled:
Coordinating Global Climate Change Research:
United Nations Environment Programme UNEP - http://unep.org
World Meteorological Organization WMO - https://wmo.int
World Climate Research Programme WCRP - http://www.wcrp-climate.org
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC - http://www.ipcc.ch/
Arctic Council AC - http://www.arctic-council.org/
Arctic Climate Impact Assessment ACIA - https://acia.amap.no/
U.S. Global Change Research Program GCRP- http://www.globalchange.gov
National Climate Data Center NCDC - http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
Nat’l Environmental Satellite, Data, & Infor. Service - http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/NESDIC
NASA Global Climate Change NASAGCC - http://climate.nasa.gov/
NW Climate Prediction Center CPC - http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/
National Ice Center NIC - https:/lusicecenter.gov/
National Snow and Ice Data Center NSIDC - http://nsidc.org/
National Center for Atmospheric Research NCAR - http://ncar.ucar.edu
British Antarctic Survey BAS - https://www.bas.ac.uk/
International Union for the Conservation of Nature, IUCN - http://www.iucn.org
Union of Concerned Scientists UCS - http://www.ucsusa.org/
Carbon dioxide (CO2) measured in the atmosphere in parts per million (ppm):
May 2005 = 382 ppm
May 2006 = 385 ppm
May 2007 = 387 ppm
May 2008 = 389 ppm
May 2009 = 390 ppm
May 2010 = 393 ppm
May 2011 = 394 ppm
May 2012 = 397 ppm
May 2013 = 400 ppm
May 2014 = 402 ppm
May 2015 = 404 ppm
May 2016 = 408 ppm
May-2017 = 410 ppm
May 2018 = 411 ppm
May 2019 = 415 ppm
May 2020 = 417 ppm
May 2021 = 419 ppm
May 2022 = 421 ppm
May 2023 = 424 ppm
May 2024 = 427 ppm
May 2025 = 430.5 ppm
Jan. 2026 = 429 ppm !
In the last 3-million years CO2 was never higher than 300 ppm (data from Dome-C Ice Core, Antarctica, and new ice cores now available worldwide). In 1970, CO2 was 319 ppm. About half of cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions between 1750 and 2020 have occurred since 1975. Scientists regard a CO 2 level of 450 ppm as a critical threshold to avoid. [For data see: https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/]
We must return atmosphere to 350 ppm CO2 !!!