Chandra Clarke's Blog, page 7

Corporations

As long as politics is the shadow of big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.

― John Dewey

Whether you’re a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist or an ardent socialist, it’s fair to say that large businesses – multinational corporations especially – have incredible power. It’s also fair to say that that power isn’t always used for the greater good.

John Bunzl and Nick Duffell, writing in The Simpol Solution, suggest that we are in the grip of what they call “destructive global competition” or DGC. As long as there is one jurisdiction that ‘competes’ by offering low corporate tax rates, lax environmental regulations, soft labour laws, or some other incentive for corporations, then all the other jurisdictions have to do something similar. Otherwise, corporations move jobs elsewhere. No jobs results in no votes for politicians, and of course, unemployment for the citizen. 

DGC is why even progressive-leaning political parties seem to promote the status quo. They can only push so hard in this environment, before losing votes and thus losing the power to change things. 

This must change. It is completely unsustainable, no matter what timeline we consider. 

So what can we do? As a consumer, we’re often told we can punish companies by boycotting their products. That is still true in certain industries, especially for small- to medium-sized businesses, if you can get enough people on board for a boycott. I’m sure you can think of many examples where public outcry and a drop in sales reversed an announced policy or changed a specific company practice. 

It’s not terribly effective in the long term, however, as public attention is fickle. Neither is it much of a bother for large or multinational corporations. Consider The Procter & Gamble Company, which owns something like 65 different brands, with dozens of individual products under each brand line. You could boycott one brand of laundry detergent in favour of another, only to discover, once you read the label carefully, that they’re both owned by P&G. So not only is it hard to avoid that company’s products in the first place, they have so many that a temporary drop in sales for one brand won’t hurt them much.

Boycotts are also only truly available to the privileged: those who have the time and the money to be able to make considered purchases. A single mother working two part-time jobs, and who is reliant on public transit to get groceries, doesn’t have nearly as many choices as a double-income family with two personal vehicles. So while you may be able to avoid one corporation’s products completely should you want to, that corporation is still able to make millions of dollars from other consumers. Thus, we need to do more than just temporarily avoid a product for a while.

How to Take Action:

Complain directly to that company’s customer service channel. A drop in sales can be attributed to too many other things: a dud advertising campaign, a new competitor, a sudden price sensitivity, the end of a trend. If you’re going to stop buying a company’s product, you have to let them know why. (Note: Don’t be rude to the customer service rep for any reason. They’re just doing their job.) In a blog post, grocery store chain owner Galen Weston once noted that the most angry emails they’d ever received was when they started wrapping their cucumbers in plastic. A flood of complaints does get attention.Publicly call the company out on social media. Not only is it harder for a company to ignore something being done publicly, but other people will see you taking a company to task, and might be encouraged to avoid the product and voice their displeasure as well.Do both of the above even if you have never bought the product and don’t intend to. For example, I never buy soda, but I have complained to soda manufacturers about their continued use of plastic o-rings to distribute their products. If you see something, say something.Bring the problem to the attention of a larger organization or media outlet, too. For example, it wasn’t widely known that retail clothing stores were actively destroying and dumping millions of unsold items, until it came to the attention of the media and advocacy groups. Now there’s considerable pressure against these “fast fashion” practices. Rethink your investments. If you are fortunate enough to have a retirement fund, have a hard look at where you’re invested. There’s no point in avoiding a company’s products if you’re actively supporting their current stock market valuation with your mutual funds!  Many brokerages and banks now offer “ethical portfolios,” and while there’s a lot of greenwashing out there, these are worth a look. Talk to your advisor about establishing an investment policy.Push an investment entity to divest. When big investors, like the Vatican, for example, announce they’re no longer going to invest in anything related to fossil fuels, you can bet it makes a difference. Pick a bank, a mutual fund, a private equity firm, your government’s pension plan, and tell them to divest themselves of environmentally-destructive companies.Do the same to your insurance company. Big investments come with big risks, which big insurance companies underwrite. There have been a number of successful campaigns to pressure insurance firms into declining to insure things like pipelines. Support eco and social justice lawsuits. Individuals don’t have the resources to fight corporations in court, but non governmental organizations (NGOs) do, especially if you donate to their legal funds.Finally, rather than boycotting, which is temporarily abstaining from purchase, permanently and proactively switch to ecofriendly products and services. Indeed, we’ll talk about how to do just that in later posts.

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Look what the cat brought in

According to a study, an estimated 275 million animals die in Britain every year. Was urban sprawl responsible for this carnage? Pollution? Sport hunters?

No, researchers have pointed the finger at…

Minky the cat.

Minky wasn’t working alone of course. His accomplices, Buster, Gracie, Cosmo, and several million other domestic felines in the UK are responsible for this, um, catastrophe.

That’s according to the British Mammal Society, which apparently conducted a survey of about cats over a period of five months. Word has it the survey was extremely difficult to conduct:

INTERVIEWER: Excuse me, Ms. Whiskers, isn’t it? I’m wondering if you could answer a few questions?

WHISKERS: [Looking bored]

INTERVIEWER: Um, yes, could you tell me how many rabbits you’ve killed this month? Or would that be a faux paw?

WHISKERS: [Looking bored]

INTERVIEWER: Ah, well then, how about mice? I hear they’re just the cat’s meow.

WHISKERS: [Looking bored]

INTERVIEWER: Cat got your tongue? Ahahaha.

WHISKERS: [Looking bored]

INTERVIEWER: How about worms? Rats? Frogs? You don’t need to give me numbers for all nine of your lives, you know…

WHISKERS: MEOWR! FSST!

INTERVIEWER: Right, I’ll just bleed my way over to my bag and call an ambulance, shall I?

The society members eventually collected data from 964 cats in about 600 households over a five-month period – during which the pets killed more than 14,000 animals. Or at least, killed them and brought them home as ‘presents’ for their human companions. Their actual kill rate might be much, much higher.

Previous surveys have suggested that about 68% of these were mammals, 24% were birds and 1.3% were listed as “unidentifiable,” which means that British cats are either very vicious killers or they cough up really bad hairballs.

The survey also found a small percentage were reptiles. At first, I doubted this statistic, because when I think ‘reptile’, the British countryside is not the first image to spring to mind: 

NIGEL SAND LIZARD: Wot’s the forecast today, Alfred?

ALFRED GRASS SNAKE: C-c-c-old and wet.

NIGEL: Wot’s the forecast for the fortnight, then?

ALFRED: C-c-c-cold and wet.

NIGEL: Crikey, I wish me Mam had moved to the colonies with me Dad.

ALFRED: T-t-too right! I hear it’s n-n-nice in Arizona this time of year.

NIGEL & ALFRED: [Sigh.]

Another interesting fact from the survey was that felines with bells were the deadliest hunters, bringing in an average of 19 bodies in five months. (They really had no scruples about killing at all -in fact, you might say they had the morals of an alley cat).  The only exception to this finding, was Miffles, who had an unfortunate run-in with a dog that left him almost, well, catatonic.

As hard as the cat quizzes were though, the British Mammal Society has had tougher assignments. How about that rare mouse species study?

INTERVIEWER: Excuse me, Ms. Brie? I’m conducting a survey on mice species.

MS. BRIE: Yes?

INTERVIEWER: Are you a yellow-necked mouse?

MS. BRIE: What did you just call me?

INTERVIEWER: Um… yellow-necked?

MS. BRIE: Are you calling me yellow? A coward?! Do you think I can=t be tough just because I=m a mouse?!

INTERVIEWER: Nononono! It’s a species na-

MS. BRIE: SQUEAK! [Chomp!]

INTERVIEWER: OW! Blimey, that hurt! You’re related to Mr. Whiskers, aren’t you?

I’m guessing the barn owl diet survey wasn’t exactly a hoot, either, as participants had to collect owl … pellets for about four years. And we won’t even get into the problems associated with the – I swear this is true – road kill study.

Why do they do this sort of thing. Because we’re losing animals at a shocking rate, through pollution, habitat destruction, and apparently, our domesticated animals. If we’re losing that many in critters in the UK, think, for example, how many songbirds die worldwide.

The thing is, there’s something you can do about the cat issue: keep your cat(s) indoors. And be sure to spay or neuter them in case they escape.

If you think about it, it’s not only better for the environment, but it’s safer for your cat, too. Cats that roam around outside risk being injured by other cats, being hit by cars, eating toxic garden plants, or picking up an expensive-to-treat disease. Nobody wants that for Fluffykins.

So if you’re smitten with kittens with murder mittens, keep them inside. Purrvana now!

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National Government

“The idea is to change the nature and value system of the nation as whole” 

― Sunday Adelaja

It’s a frustrating time to be a progressive voter. On one hand, the existing power structures seem inclined to corporatism and incrementalism, when what we need are sweeping changes, fast. On the other hand, the opposition parties in many countries seem actively regressive, and so the choice seems to be vote for the status quo and hope to inch it forward or risk sliding backward. 

It also doesn’t help that world leaders spend a lot of time pointing fingers at each other, insisting that the other country needs to go first when it comes to cutting emissions and reducing pollution. While it’s true that certain countries have outsized numbers because of the size of their population (e.g., China) or the size of their economy (e.g., the USA), the truth is all of us, particularly the rich, so-called “developed” nations have terrible numbers on a per person basis. For example, Canada emits 16.1 tons per person versus India at 1.9 per person.⁠1 In fact, on this basis, Canada is worse than China and India combined! So don’t assume your country is doing well based on overall numbers. Dig into the data, and use these numbers when you take action. Speaking of which:

How to Take Action

Vote! The nail-biting closeness of the 2020 US elections is evidence enough that every vote does count. Make sure you vote in every election that you can, at every level, but especially the national level.Work against gerrymandering, which can happen anywhere. Make sure your voting district hasn’t been tinkered with such that it geographically favours one party over another. If you can’t vote to move forward, at least vote to prevent harm (to yourself but especially to vulnerable and marginalized populations). Do consider what splitting the progressive vote in your district might do before marking that ballot. The same goes for deliberately spoiling your ballot or abstaining from voting. It might give you a temporary righteousness boost, but it won’t change a damn thing, except maybe to make things worse.Email or call your current national representative and be sure they know how you feel about environmental issues. Change things from the inside: actively join the party that has the best chance of forming a government and start grassroots work to make the party platform progressive. Join big organizations that change things from the outside. Groups like the World Wildlife Federation, Greenpeace, and others have enough members (and funding) that they can browbeat governments into being better from time to time. Protest! Join or organize peaceful demonstrations. 

In our next post, we’ll discuss the power behind the throne: big corporations. 

NEXT POST: Corporations

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Five Interesting Things – August 2022

It’s time for the August 2022 edition of 5 Interesting Things. It’s a short round up of things I’ve found that are: potentially actionable, inspiring, thought-provoking.

Self Driving… Ships? Self-driving cars get a lot of press, probably because cars are more likely to be part of the average reader’s experience. However, sea-going vessels are getting in on the action, with talk of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS). With more than 80% of international trade conducted over the water, and with human errors being very, very costly (we’re looking at you, Ever Given), MASS makes a lot of sense.

Mini-forests We all know it’s a good idea to plant a tree, but how about pushing for mini-forests? A new book by Hannah Lewis advocates for transforming empty lots, backyards, and degraded land into mini-forests. Sound like a project for you? Don’t forget to buy the book from an independent bookstore.

Architecture Matters. I’m a technofile and I always appreciate a labour saving device. However, sometimes we rush to new without consideration of why we did the old a certain way. That’s the case in India, these days. Always a hot country, citizens have been suffering more brutal heat wavers earlier and more often lately. Modern building styles, which use a lot of heat trapping and radiating concrete, are not helping.

Take Out Still Bad There are a lot of reasons why you should avoid take out (or if British, take away) food: It’s usually heavy on the calories, sugar, salt, and fat, you probably went through the drive-through to get it, and… the packaging. A new study shows that takeaway packaging dominates ocean litter. Treat yourself to a dine-in restaurant experience instead.

Modular Buildings Are you a Lego(R) fan? Then you’ll love the idea of modular buildings. Construction generates tons of waste, both in the original building process, and later, in the demolition process. Buildings can age out beyond repair, and purpose built buildings can be hard to, you know, repurpose. (Props to my local microbrewery, which found a way to reuse an old six-screen movie theatre to brew delicious beer.) Modular buildings solve some of these problems.

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What’s Happening Where You Work?

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

— Edmund Burke.

In previous sections, we’ve talked about how we desperately need systemic changes, and in particular changes in the way corporations do business.

And it’s absolutely correct to focus on the damage large companies have done to our planet. One only has to look at the damage caused by state oil company Pemex, which managed to set the freaking’ ocean on fire, to see that there’s a problem.

But it’s not just corporations — small- to medium-sized businesses have environmental impacts too.

And what are businesses, but organizations made up of people? People like you and me?

Sure, you might not be a CEO, or in the C-Suite at all, or even at the middle-management level. But even if you’re just a cog in the proverbial machine, you do have a voice. And it’s time we all started using our voices at work.

Here are some ideas for using yours. Remember to frame your suggestions or push for changes in a way that demonstrates the benefits to the organization:

Sit down with a pencil and paper (or your phone, or whatever) and start thinking objectively about how you do your job. Are there ways to make it cleaner and greener? (For example, if you are a courier, are you shutting down your vehicle when you make a delivery or are you leaving it to idle? What would happen if turning it off was company policy? How much pollution would that remove from the equation? How much would it save the company in fuel costs?)Think too, about your section, unit, division, department, or whatever they’re called in your company. Maybe your specific job is pretty clean and green, but what about the bigger picture? What consumables is your organization constantly having to reorder? Could they be replaced with reusables? Or done away with completely? What happens to stuff that doesn’t get sold at your retail job? Does it get destroyed? Is it thrown in the dumpster? Can you push to have the stuff donated? Can you tally up how much the company is wasting and send a report up the chain? Are you in charge of ordering supplies? Can you influence what gets purchased? Can you push for more ecofriendly versions of the things you use regularly? What processes routinely produce a lot of waste in your company? Can you find a way to fix the process so it generates less waste in the first place? Can you find a way to reuse or recycle that waste?What’s energy use like where you work? Are people constantly leaving monitors and lights on? Leaving windows open while the heat is on? What solutions can you propose at the next staff meeting that would be more efficient and save the company money? Typically, posting signs around the office doesn’t work, but maybe having, for instance, the IT department implement a computer network power saving policy that shuts things down automatically might.

So, we’ve covered some basic actions we can take to improve things. These are generally safe to do, and might even be good for your career if you’ve done it in such a way as to demonstrate initiative and a willingness to help the company’s bottom line.

What about bad companies?

But what if you’re working for a company that is genuinely a bad actor rather than being merely careless? You know the kind: flouting regulations, dumping illegally, not looking after the health and safety of its workers or its community. Or even just in an industry that’s been proven to be bad for people or the planet, even if they’re theoretically doing everything “by the book?” (Remember that old adage: Just because it’s legal, doesn’t mean it’s right.)

What you do in these cases largely depends on your financial situation, your conscience, what legal protections you have and so on.

If it’s safe for you to do so — that is, you believe you’re in a position to push for change without losing your job and imperiling your family in the process, you could make those suggestions. (Just remember that businesses might demand loyalty, but rarely give it back, so assume you’re not truly secure).

If it’s not safe for you do so, then your priority should be to find a way to leave the job. Yes, leave it. You don’t have to be part of the problem. (And if you’re a young person just joining the workplace, don’t sign up to work for bad actors or industries in the first place.)

That might mean sacrificing evenings to attend night school and reskill; or if you already have transferable skills, start applying for new jobs; and getting your finances in order so you won’t be bankrupted (which is just a good idea anyway) by a change in, or complete loss of salary.

In other words, find a way to get off the treadmill that forces you to accept a status quo that is endangering us all.

Pulling in big bucks and being able to afford that house or nicer car won’t help you when your town sets temperature records and then burns to the ground, or when there are food shortages because you have a record-setting plague of mice.

And while I would never suggest that anyone break the law, I will say that whistleblowers are key to getting corporations and systems to reform. Fortunately, for anyone contemplating blowing a whistle on the activities of their organization, there are lots of articles freely available online on how to do so and protect yourself.

There are even search engines like DuckDuckGo that don’t track your activities, or special browsers like Tor, which helps you stay anonymous online. And there are a lot of news organizations that have anonymous tip boxes available too.

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Dispatch From The Gnome Front

A while ago, at great personal risk (there was the potential for really deep paper cuts), I brought you a story about a shadowy, underground revolutionary group called the Gnome Liberation Front (GLF). Their purpose: to free garden Gnomes around the world from captivity, and end years of exploitation and “statuarial tyranny.”

Originally a European movement, I have now uncovered evidence that shows the GLF has operatives in North America. According to a Calgary Sun story, homeowners Tara and Keith Zalischuk reported that one of their garden Gnomes, “David” disappeared for several weeks last summer. They assumed he had been stolen by local vandals until one day he reappeared, a photo album of holiday memories at his side.

Now I suppose it’s possible that David’s trip really was a “holiday” and that there are many things a Gnome would like to see. If he were a gastrognome, for example, he might go to France for the food. Perhaps he’s a religious sort, an avid reader of Deuterognomy, and he wanted to see the Gnome of St. Peter in Italy.

Or perhaps David is a wild and crazy kind of Gnome who would visit the red light districts of Amsterdam, looking for both female and male action – making him bi-gnomial. He could even be into the group thing, making him poly-gnomial.

Of course I’m assuming David’s an urban kind of guy, you know, a metrognome. He might prefer a more rural holiday, and be something of an agrognomist.

But let’s not kid ourselves: do we really believe that David’s trip was an innocent little getaway? That he went to, say, Ireland, that tax haven for writers, to scout out a nice little cottage where he could spend his retirement writing under a gnome de plume? No! I think he is a revolutionary agent for the GLF operating under a gnome de guerre.

I suspect our gnomadic friend actually went overseas to recruit more agents for the North American wing and do some fund-raising (GLF members have to pay a yearly, gnominal fee). While he was there, he probably campaigned for official Gnome recognition and entry into the European Ecognomic Union (where they would be, owing to their size, in charge of microecognomics). And I would bet money that, while in England, he made a pilgrimage to that haunting site symbolizing the human exploitation of garden rockery, gnome henge.

Want proof? Just ask David as to why he keeps calling it the Human Gegnome Project, or why he spent so much time convincing the Zalischuks to make their home office ergognomic. Yes, when it comes to spreading propaganda, David is a real gnomepareil amongst his brethren.

Or if you really want to wind him up, ask him how he feels about the fact that Camille Sansnom, the gnome with the starring role in the movie Amelie, wasn’t gnominated for an Oscar or a Golden Globe.

I know what you’re thinking: that my concerns are unfounded and alarmist. That I’m just another journalist who’s into muckraking and sensationalism by appealing to the lowest common degnominator: fear.

If you don’t believe me, fine. Just don’t come crying when your neighbourhood turns into a gnome man’s land.

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Five Interesting Things – June 2022

It’s time for the June 2022 edition of 5 Interesting Things. It’s a short round up of things I’ve found that are: potentially actionable, inspiring, thought-provoking.

Green Wave – Looking for a complete career change? Consider ocean farming. That’s right, ocean. Green Wave is a regenerative farming project that does kelp and fish farming, and now they want to teach you how to do it. Read about the project here, and then if you’re intrigued sign up for courses.

Droning on – Do you have a drone? Are you looking for reasons to get one? This blog has a neat list of things you can do with one.

Algae lamps? – A French scientist has been working on a way to generate light using bioluminescent algae. The bonus is that algae are really good at chomping CO2.

Self-driving tractors – We’ve been a long, long way from horse drawn plows for some time, with farmers able to till and plant in the comfort of air conditioned cabs and stereo sound systems. John Deere kicks it up a notch with the release of an autonomous tractor. One of the biggest issues in farming is that the window of opportunity to get stuff into and out of the ground can be quite limited – you don’t want to try to take heavy machinery into a sodden field, or you won’t be getting it out anytime soon. Farmer Bob needs to sleep and eat, but his tractor? A self-driving one can stay in the field 24/7 until the job is done.

Achoo! – The research is really really preliminary, but scientists have made an interesting discovery with regards to allergies and autoimmune diseases. They have learned that neuritin, a protein, suppresses formation of rogue plasma cells which are the cells that produce harmful antibodies. Or in other words, it acts like an antihistamine. Incidentally, a great accessible book on the immune system is, well, Immune by Phillip Detmer. (That last is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, which supports indie bookstores).

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Five Interesting Things – May 2022

It’s time for the May 2022 edition of 5 Interesting Things. It’s a short round up of things I’ve found that are: potentially actionable, inspiring, thought-provoking.

Green Wave – Looking for a complete career change? Consider ocean farming. That’s right, ocean. Green Wave is a regenerative farming project that does kelp and fish farming, and now they want to teach you how to do it. Read about the project here, and then if you’re intrigued sign up for courses.

Droning on – Do you have a drone? Are you looking for reasons to get one? This blog has a neat list of things you can do with one.

Algae lamps? – A French scientist has been working on a way to generate light using bioluminescent algae. The bonus is that algae are really good at chomping CO2.

Self-driving tractors – We’ve been a long, long way from horse drawn plows for some time, with farmers able to till and plant in the comfort of air conditioned cabs and stereo sound systems. John Deere kicks it up a notch with the release of an autonomous tractor. One of the biggest issues in farming is that the window of opportunity to get stuff into and out of the ground can be quite limited – you don’t want to try to take heavy machinery into a sodden field, or you won’t be getting it out anytime soon. Farmer Bob needs to sleep and eat, but his tractor? A self-driving one can stay in the field 24/7 until the job is done.

Achoo! – The research is really really preliminary, but scientists have made an interesting discovery with regards to allergies and autoimmune diseases. They have learned that neuritin, a protein, suppresses formation of rogue plasma cells which are the cells that produce harmful antibodies. Or in other words, it acts like an antihistamine. Incidentally, a great accessible book on the immune system is, well, Immune by Phillip Detmer. (That last is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, which supports indie bookstores).

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Full Steam Ahead

Earlier this morning, I was reading an article about irons. It said that if I really wanted to splurge, I could buy a Miele Rotary Iron, for $3295. So naturally, my first question was: what’s an iron?

I am, you see, somewhat ‘clothing care challenged.’ When the soap commercial comes on TV and asks, ‘What is your biggest laundry problem?’ my family does not say ‘ring around the collar.’ They say: ‘Chandra.’

Let’s start with laundry collection. It was only later in my adult life that I managed to acquire anything as fancy as a ‘sock drawer.’ My old dresser only had two drawers; since I could never decide whether to file socks under ‘unmentionables’ or ‘mentionables,’ I usually just tossed them at the nearest piece of chair-like furniture. As the dresser was also quite small, many other stray bits also had to be, um, filed, the same way.

These days, of course, since I have children, One Must Set an Example. So I don’t have my laundry all over the floor in my room anymore. I shove it under the bed.

But I digress. Once I have gathered enough laundry to make up a load, I’ll take it to the washing machine, throw in some soap and … promptly forget about it. Indeed, laundry is one of the reasons why I got a PhD. This is so that a) I can really be an absent-minded professor and Eccentric rather than merely Lazy and b) so that I can study the strange, bluish life forms that appear on wet clothes after about a week.

After a second, and sometimes third wash (depending on how forgetful I am), I will actually manage to get the load into the dryer, where it will sit for another week. The advantage is that I never have to use fabric softener: after a half dozen consecutive washes and sitting for several days in a crush of heavy clothes, my unmentionables are as soft as can be.

It should be no surprise then, to realize that ironing is just not in my vocabulary. My approach to wrinkle management varies depending on the day:

Working in the home office: wrinkles, schminkles.Going out in public: Set six timers to remind myself to grab the clothes when they get out of the dryer and hope there’s enough random things to make up an outfit.

This way, I use far less energy with the dryer than I would with an iron, which I would forget and leave on for a week. (By which point, it would have burned its way through two floors to the basement.)

Which brings me to my second question about the $3,295 iron. Who the heck pays that kind of money for an appliance that you still have to operate manually? Plus, if you look at what a ‘rotary iron’ is, it looks like an exceptionally efficient device for catching and squashing hands. I had enough of that back in the bad old days when I had to run an ancient printing press for my job.

No, if I am going to spend that sort of money on anything to do with laundry, it’ll be for a robot. And it will be one that picks up my clothes, washes, dries, irons and puts them away.

And meanwhile, I could get on with… less pressing concerns.

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Regional Government

We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are.
— Max De Pree

In the last post in my series on the environment and what you can do to help, we talked about the need to push for change at the municipal level. Today, we’ll kick it up a notch and focus on regional government.

Depending on where you live, that could be your state, your province, your county, your canton, prefecture, etc. For the sake of simplicity, let’s consider this any level of government between municipal and national/federal.

These governments aren’t quite as monolithic and hard to budge as the national governments can be, yet they quite often have really big budgets and mandates to deal with environmental issues.

What should you press for at the regional level? Here are some suggestions:

The preservation of, the expansion of, and/or the creation of conservation areas, parks, or “green belts” (areas not made into parks but that are theoretically off limits to development).Subsidies for the development and installation of green economy infrastructure. This could include incentives to buy cars that aren’t powered by internal combustion engines, setting up charger networks, or providing incentives to homeowners for conservation and power generation.How is power generated in your region? Is it green or something like coal? What are the regulations regarding ‘going off the grid?’ Is it possible to sell power generated at home? Each one of these could be it’s own grassroots campaign.How do your waterways look? Are they clean? Which authority is responsible for them? Is there a plan to fix problems like phosphorus runoff from farms, or pollution from factories and municipalities? Who’s tapping into the water supply and are they paying a fair price to do so? (All that bottled water we drink? It’s purchased off municipal or state water systems for pennies and sold to us for dollars – and encased in plastic to boot!)How well do your public transportation networks link up? Is it possible to travel everywhere in your region through public transit? If not, could it be possible?

As with municipal-level issues, pick one to advocate for. You’re more likely to run into issues with multiple governing bodies here, so take the time to research who is responsible for what before you start taking action.

How to Take Action

There are three ways you can take action at the regional government level.

Find out who else might be making noise about your preferred issue already. Chances are, given that you’re looking at the regional level, that there’s some sort of advocacy group or non-governmental organization (NGO) already involved. Then join it, and commit some volunteer hours to making it succeed.It might be the case that there isn’t an organization already, or no local chapter. Guess who could start one? You! You can make your views known to your regional representative. A phone call might be more effective here, as regional reps get a lot of email. You could even go old school and send a paper letter by post. Don’t forget the option of running for office here too. Obviously, this is going to take more money and effort than it would at the municipal level, so it might not be an option for you. But you could also consider…Joining a regional-level political party. Candidates and elected officials don’t come up with policy on their own; they’re just the public face of the party in their area. You can be one of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ people, pushing for policies at the party level between elections, keeping party members organized, helping to select candidates or delegates within the party that align with your issues, and helping to get your preferred candidate elected when the time comes. We talk a lot about how much money goes into political campaigns, but tens of thousands of hours of volunteer labour is also required. What could you contribute?

What issue would you tackle at the regional level? Comment below.

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