Last Updated 10.13.23

Action Step 1: Reduce your carbon footprint and protect your future food supplies by planting an organic garden

Some of the worst and first big effects of accelerating climate change will be soaring food prices and food shortages caused by climate change-related crop failures and low crop yields. It is essential to have a secure food supply and back up food supplies.

As escalating global warming worsens, failed crops, soaring food prices, and growing starvation will be amongst the first wave of major consequences to shake populations all over the earth. To survive any length of time as the emergency deepens, you will need to be able to create and manage your own food supply beyond your initial 90-120 day emergency backup supplies as mentioned in Part 1 of The Job One Plan.

Get started as soon as possible learning all the skills and resources you will need to create your organic home, urban, community or, rural garden wherever you live. There are many resources on the Internet for successfully creating and maintaining organic gardens using permaculture, aquaponics or, hydroponics to create your own long-term food supplies.

Planting and maintaining a garden also can save money on food bills and it reconnects us with the true value of food. Garden creation, as well as other kinds of personal food-producing activities, will be essential to your long-term survival wherever you end up!

Research also suggests that growing more food organically can also help store more carbon. For example, by converting 10,000 small-to-medium-sized farms to organic production practices would store carbon in the soil equivalent to taking 1,174,400 cars off the road. Want more info? Visit www.plantingjustice.org.

One of the biggest questions people ask when creating their food supply with a garden or greenhouse is how much land or space they will need. This question is fundamental if you are in an urban or suburban area.

The answer to how much land or space is enough has many variables. This article is one of the best explanations of all the variables we have seen for determining how much land or space you will need for your garden and greenhouse. We strongly recommend you read this article before growing what you will need in your garden or greenhouse.

Now that you understand this important step, what is your plan to execute it, and when can you start? Make some to-do notes for yourself before going on to the next step.

(Support notice: Research has shown that having a support network is up to 90% of why people succeed with complex or multiple long-term tasks. So please take advantage of our email support with your questions, problems, and successes.  

What you learn, struggle with, or succeed with can also help motivate others. So please take advantage of our online email support by joining our climate change program by emailing us at ([email protected]). Be sure to put "Part 2 Support" in the subject line and let us know what is happening. We may also use what you share in our newsletter to help motivate and educate others if you permit us. We are all in this nightmare together. We have a massive challenge to fix the climate change extinction emergency, and it will take ALL of us working together to do it!)

Action Step 2: Vote in politicians who will radically reduce local, regional, state, and national fossil fuel use and become a runaway global heating activist

As your first adaptive step to the acceleration of climate change consequences, we strongly recommend that you vigorously use whatever political power and local influence you might have. The more our leaders enforce the required radical reductions in fossil fuel use, the faster your future will improve and become more survivable. 

This first step may in fact, be the most potent and effective adaptive action in Part 2 of the Job One Plan. 

The key to humanity surviving runaway global heating extinction is to get our politicians and governments to understand and enforce radical fossil fuel cuts to come close to the 2025 targets. For our politicians to do that, they must understand the ten big facts of runaway global heating and why getting close to the 2025 targets is a life and death matter for ALL of humanity.

Most of us do not directly influence our national politicians, but that does not mean there is nothing we can do politically. You can always become a runaway global heating activist and do the local, county, regional, and state actions listed below, but if, by chance, you do have a direct influence on your national politicians, please be sure to go to this critical page first! 

Here are the political actions and activism we all need to focus on:

1. Use your vote to support any politician who will make the needed radical fossil fuel cuts. 
2. Vote out politicians who support or subsidize fossil fuels' "business as usual" ongoing use or expansion.
3. Always vote locally (city or county), regionally (state), and nationally for green, non-polluting, and sustainable new energy generation methods. Also, vote for expanding natural carbon sequestration.
4. Vote for politicians who understand that we now face unavoidable severe mass to near-total extinction consequences because we have wasted over six decades with ineffective climate actions. 
5. Vote for politicians who understand we need to immediately start runaway global heating emergency preparations and build climate change resilience at local, regional, and national levels. (Click here to see many of the coming climate consequences, many of which are already unavoidable.)

Your vote and runaway global heating activism can still make a local, regional, and state fossil fuel use difference. But, at the same time, collectively, we can politically push to create the national and international fossil fuel reductions needed to get as close to the 2025 global reduction targets as possible.

Action Step 2B: In addition to voting, educate you leaders and use whatever influence you have with or over city, county, state, or national politicians and managers to motivate them to act on the climate change emergency.

Maybe you can't change your national politicians because you have no direct contact or influence with them. Still, you can probably influence your local city council, your local zoning board, or your local city mayor. You might even be able to influence your county politicians or managers. Some of you might even be able to influence your state politicians or managers. Any level of influence you can exert influence NOW is the time to educate and get these individuals to reduce fossil fuel use in every possible way radically.

Not only will these politicians and managers have to lower fossil fuel use, but they will also have to begin emergency preparation and adaptation actions. Preparation and adaptation are needed to prevent your city, county, state, or nation from suffering far more than necessary from the known and soon-arriving consequences of accelerating climate change.

Here is part of what must be done:

1. Educate your local, regional, state, and national politicians by sending them, and their staff copies of the ten facts of runaway global heating and why getting close to the 2025 targets is a life and death matter for ALL of humanity.
2. Educate them about what must be done to meet the 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets by getting them copies of Part 3 of the Job one Plan on what our governments must do to save humanity from near-total extinction. (Click here to learn more about near-total extinction and why we can still save up to 50 percent of humanity.)

To help you with this critical first educational step, we have created a unique handout to use with governmental managers and politicians. This powerful handout will get them thinking about what they will eventually have to answer to the public for concerning relevant climate change disasters and recovery. Getting them this thought-provoking handout will also prevent them from saying farther down the line, "they didn't know what was coming."

If you're really motivated, get those politicians to declare a citywide, countywide, statewide, or nationwide climate change extinction emergency. Here is a link to our emergency declaration petition for just that action!

If your various politicians, managers and leaders do not respond after repeated educational efforts, then the only cause of action left to you is:

1. Continue to engage in runaway global warming peaceful civil disobedience, and necessary disruption wherever needed and according to the wise activist policies and tactics described on this page.
2. Every chance and way you can, question, challenge, and disrupt your local, regional, state, and national politicians if they appear not to understand the ten facts of runaway global heating and why getting close to the 2025 targets is a life and death matter for ALL of humanity. (Please see our policies on necessary, peaceful disruption.)

Action Step 3: Divest out of fossil fuel investments and assets

If you have any fossil fuel industry investments, divest and get out of all of your personal holdings in this dead-end industry. Next, do everything within your zone of influence to convince others within your networks to do the same. Next, work to convince businesses, pension funds, endowments, and national governments to divest completely from the dying fossil fuel industry as soon as possible. Why?

• The fossil fuel industry is a bad investment. Other than for limited use in the future for the military, air travel, space exploration, and other limited applications, the age of fossil fuel energy generation has ended. No individual or organization should want to invest in an industry with its massive subsidies soon being removed, its profits being taxed at increasing rates, and with its growing legal liability to restore all of the damage it has done to the environment over the last 130 years. Get out before you get caught!

• Money is real influential power! Money talks, and it talks effectively! One strong way to help convince our governments and the power elite that the age of fossil fuels is over and the age of green energy generation is here is to pull all financial support from the fossil fuels industry as soon as possible.

• There is little future left for fossil fuel energy use. Global fossil fuel use has to be drastically cut while we rapidly move to global green energy generation to survive. Divesting quickly aligns beautifully and wisely with the many new fossil fuel use reduction laws that will be enacted.

"Money does not just talk, it screams influence and power. If you want to see a change happen fast, properly incentivize it with strong monetary rewards or disincentivize it by removing its profit."  — A Job One team member

Click here to make your pledge to divest and join the divestment honor roll!

For more information on why you should become a fossil fuel divestment promoter, please click here for a four-minute animation (1) that explains this tactic in more detail.

If you're still not convinced about the importance of immediate divestment, please watch this powerful 2-1/2 minute divestment video now by  The Guardian. (2)  See this article by Alister Doyle (3) for more information on why it’s important to divest now.

When you have personally divested out of fossil fuels, let us know by emailing us at [email protected]. You will be added to our Job One Plan divestment honor roll. If you have encouraged others to divest and they have done so, tell Job One your success story. Job One may share it in our Job One newsletter to help encourage others.

Now that you understand this important step, what is your plan to execute it, and when can you start? Make some to-do notes for yourself before going on to the next step. Create an ongoing personal master checklist of things you can do as you read each of the Job One Plan action steps.

Individual Action Step 4: Eat fewer animal and dairy products

Yes, you read this correctly. Other than having just one child, the single most important personal action you can take to reduce global warming and fossil fuel use is not, as much popular thinking has it, to buy an electric car, insulate your house, or cut your hot water use by 60%. It is to eat significantly less meat and dairy products.

This is because global food animal production and dairy agribusiness are leading causes of global warming, considering their total atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions.

The facts:

• Animal agriculture is a major emitter of greenhouse gases. One report (4) has estimated global agribusiness is responsible for a whopping 17% of all global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The frequently incorrect United Nations' IPCC uses a figure of 14% for agribusiness' share of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Unfortunately, like many IPCC calculations, this reported 14% figure overlooks key agribusiness emissions contributors. The IPCC report also did not include any calculation for greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-burning machinery needed for growing almost 50% of the world's total crops that are used in animal feed. This would be for things like mechanical plowing, seeding, harvesting, processing, and shipping the crops used exclusively for animal feed. The total greenhouse gas emissions from agribusiness' other systemic locked-in uses of fossil fuel that are withheld from the calculations could be equal to all other agribusiness emissions the IPCC uses to calculate its 14% allotment. In other words, the percentage of global warming being caused by agribusiness could be underestimated by half or more.

It might actually be much worse than that. Other reports listed below discuss the total greenhouse gas emissions from global agribusiness that consider all direct and indirect factors. These reports imply the real total greenhouse gas emissions attributable to agribusiness could be as high as 51% of all carbon and methane greenhouse gas emissions. (See the following article by Martin Hickman (5) and this Worldwatch report (6) for more on this higher 51% estimate.)

• By comparison, the fossil fuel industry (all industries related to the mining, distribution, and use of petroleum, coal, or natural gas) is estimated to be responsible for 40% of all carbon and methane greenhouse gas emissions.

• By comparison, even at the lower estimates, global animal agriculture may be responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the combined exhaust from all transportation—private, public, commercial, and industrial.

• Consistently eating a plant-based diet even just one day per week reduces more greenhouse gas emissions than buying local food all year long, and switching to a full-time plant-based diet results in greater greenhouse gas reductions than switching from a gasoline-powered sedan to a hybrid vehicle.

• Vegetarian-only diets generate up to a whopping 42% fewer greenhouse gas emissions and lead to dramatically lower overall environmental impacts compared to non-vegetarian diets. (See this 1.5-minute video (7) that illustrates the above facts and adds more specifics on why reducing your animal product intake is so important to reducing global warming in our future.)

If you cannot cut out all animal products and become a full-time vegetarian, at least start a program of eating fewer animal and dairy products, such as reducing your animal and dairy dietary intake first one day a week, then two days a week, and so on. You can start by eating less beef, which demands more fossil fuel resources to produce than chicken.

Everything counts. Begin by eating 20% less of the animal products than you are eating now within 6 months or less. You will save money and, according to recent studies, you will become far healthier, look better, and live longer. Once you hit your first target, keep reducing your animal intake by another 20% over the next 3-6 months and continue until you are either animal- and dairy products-free or you are eating very little of them.

Even though most people already know they are supposed to eat less animal and dairy products because of the many documented bad health impacts, this is a significant change for many people in their diet. Most of the time medical warnings don't change our behaviors, but when people also learn the hard science behind why reducing animal and dairy product intake is also important to their planet's future, many individuals are finally ready to make the commitment and change.

To help you understand the facts about how powerful changing your diet will be to reducing global warming, we strongly recommend you read this fact summary at: http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/ and see this 1.5-minute trailer for the documentary here. (8) (Cowspiracy is also available on Netflix.)

If you still need convincing on why reducing your animal products food intake is important to help slow escalating global warming, please read these two amazing articles by Khushbu Shah (9) and Felicity Carus (10) on how "voting" with your "low or no" animal and dairy products diet will help lessen global warming, as well as resolve other key global challenges to our shared future.

To help you make the change to eating fewer animal and dairy products, we also strongly recommend you read Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Furhman. You will not only discover how to have a tasty diet that will help save the planet from global warming, but you will also understand how this new low-to-no animal products diet will help you become healthier, look better, and live longer.

In summary, the most highly leveraged action any individual can take to reduce global warming is to reduce or eliminate the consumption of animal and dairy products. When you have reduced your animal and dairy product intake, send us an email to [email protected] and enter the following in the subject line: “I am eating fewer animal products to reduce global warming.” Job One will add you to our global warming dietary honor roll. If you have encouraged others to do the same, tell us your success story. Job One can share it in our newsletter to help encourage others.

Now that you understand this important step, what is your plan to execute it, and when can you start? Make some to-do notes for yourself before going on to the next step.

Individual Action Step 5: Reduce your carbon footprint by conserving energy at your home and business

Once you have stopped adding to the carbon and methane pollution problem with your current fossil fuel use by going green, you can then look at the issue of home and business energy conservation. For every $1 spent on home or office energy conservation, $1.80 is saved over time. Home or office conservation also can reduce energy bills by 32%, and energy-efficient households save an average of $218 per year on their energy bills. In the U.S. 21% of all energy used is consumed in homes. 40% of home energy use goes to heating and cooling; 20% goes to water heating; and lighting and appliances, including refrigeration, use more than 15%.

The key to home and business energy conservation is simply finding those places where your home or business is losing energy or using existing energy inefficiently. The U.S. Department of Energy has a lot of information on “Do-It-Yourself Home Energy Assessments,” including ideas for locating air leaks, inspecting heating and cooling equipment, perfecting insulation, and evaluating the lighting throughout your home or office.

No-cost energy conservation projects include closing blinds, shades, and curtains on cold cloudy days to retain heat; opening them on cold sunny days for solar warming; and closing them on hot days to hold heat out; making sure that your fireplace has a tight-fitting damper; and removing window-unit air conditioners in the winter to eliminate air leakage.

Low-cost and easy-to-do projects include blanketing your hot water heater, insulating hot water pipes, sealing holes around outlets with inexpensive outlet gaskets, and weather-stripping doors and caulking windows. Other projects include adding more ceiling and wall insulation, upgrading to energy-efficient units, insulating and properly sealing heating ducts, and sealing air leaks around doors, windows, and chimneys.

Once you have done all you can to conserve more energy in your home or business, you can hire a professional energy auditor to carry out a more thorough assessment. A professional auditor uses a variety of techniques and sophisticated equipment like infrared cameras to determine the energy efficiency of a structure and reveal hard-to-detect areas of air infiltration and missing insulation.

A word of caution: Regarding conservation, research has repeatedly shown that technology used to increase fossil fuel consumption efficiency more often than not increases overall fossil fuel use rather than reduces it. This is known as Jevons’s paradox. (16)

This happens because of the economic savings that fossil fuel energy conservation provides, which then frees additional resources to buy or use more things dependent upon fossil fuels. Don't let your fossil fuel energy conservation increase global warming by accelerating fossil fuel in other areas. Just pocket the savings and use it elsewhere.

Now that you understand this important step, what is your plan to execute it, and when can you start? Make some to-do notes for yourself before going on to the next step.

(Support notice: Research has shown that having a support network is up to 90% of why people succeed with complex or multiple long-term tasks. So please take advantage of our email support with your questions, problems, and successes.  

What you learn, struggle with, or succeed with can also help motivate others. So please take advantage of our online email support by joining our climate change program by emailing us at ([email protected]). Be sure to put "Part 2 Support" in the subject line and let us know what is happening. We may also use what you share in our newsletter to help motivate and educate others if you permit us. We are all in this nightmare together. We have a massive challenge to fix the climate change extinction emergency, and it will take ALL of us working together to do it!)

Individual Action Step 6: Reduce your transportation-related energy use

Tips to reduce your carbon footprint from driving:

• In the U.S. 40% of all trips people make are 2 miles or less. 90% of those trips are taken by car. If the trip is longer than 2 miles and too far to bike, consider carpooling or mass transit. If you must drive alone, be sure to combine trips, completing as many errands in one trip as possible.

• Drive a low-carbon vehicle. All vehicles now have an estimated miles-per-gallon rating (11) and pollution ratings. If electric cars are charged with clean electricity, they contribute no carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. After incentives and gas savings, it essentially costs nothing to switch to an electric car like the Nissan Leaf (12) or Toyota Prius. If you don’t charge the electric car with your home’s solar panels (or other clean electricity if it’s available), you’re better off with a high-MPG (miles per gallon) gas/diesel car or a hybrid. Here’s why.  (13)

• Don't forget that “high MPG” doesn’t always mean “low carbon dioxide emissions.” Always check the emission ratings before you buy.

• Take fewer vacations that are far away. Take more frequent and driveable “staycations” closer to home.

• Use cruise control. Unnecessary acceleration and speeding reduce mileage by up to 33%, (14) waste money and gas, and increase your carbon footprint.

• Avoid traffic congestion. Being unnecessarily stuck in traffic creates unhealthy carbon dioxide pollution and wastes gas. Use traffic apps and websites to go a different way or wait for less congested times.

• Tire inflation and engine tuning. Use the correct grade of motor oil and keep your engine tuned because some maintenance fixes (15) like fixing faulty oxygen sensors can increase fuel efficiency by up to 40%. Properly inflated tires improve your gas mileage by up to 3%.

• Remove excess weight from your car.

• If 1 out of 10 people switched to an alternative form of transportation (biking, walking or public transportation), carbon dioxide emissions would drop by 25.4 million tons per year in the U.S. alone. If you are going a distance of less than 1 mile, walk instead of drive. If it's too far to walk, ride your bike. This will help you save parking and gas costs while reducing the risks of obesity and improving health.   

Air travel tips to reduce your carbon footprint:

• Until petroleum-based aviation fuel is replaced, you should fly economy class, fly shorter distances, fly less frequently, and avoid flying altogether whenever possible.

• Increase your use of video-conferencing tools like Skype and Facetime to reduce work-related travel.

Now that you understand this important step, what is your plan to execute it, and when can you start? Make some to-do notes for yourself before going on to the next step.

Individual Action Step 7: Reduce your carbon footprint by buying local

A basic diet of imported non-local ingredients can require up to four times the energy of an equivalent locally sourced diet. Where possible, buy from your local farmers’ market or co-op. The typical meal in the U.S. currently travels anywhere from 1,200 to 2,500 miles from pasture to plate.

Buying local has a strong multiplier effect in the economy in addition to reducing the transportation carbon footprint. A 10% increase in purchasing from locally owned businesses in lieu of national chain stores would yield nearly $200 million in incremental major metropolitan area economic activity and create 1,300 new jobs each year. A dollar spent on local products and services can circulate in the local community up to 15 times.

Now that you understand this important step, what is your plan to execute it, and when can you start? Make some to-do notes for yourself before going on to the next step.

Individual Action Step 7: Get your home and business converted to green energy generation systems

(Please note that this step is not a substitute for first radically reducing your fossil fuel use to help meet the 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets. Unless it is hydroelectric or geothermal, green energy generation  also has many toxic by-products.)

Green energy generation can be solar, wind, hydroelectric, or some other alternative form of energy generation greener than fossil fuels. Today the reasons for converting to green energy generation in our homes and businesses are stronger than ever.

Switching to green energy as soon as possible can also be seen as a patriotic duty and national security imperative. The U.S. and many other countries in the world still get a significant portion of their polluting fossil fuel energy supplies from areas of the world that are high-conflict zones where our energy supplies could be cut off, radically reduced, or priced so high that these changes would destabilize the productivity and economic stability of all countries in any way dependent upon importing those fossil fuels.

Nations that import these fossil fuels from the high-conflict areas find themselves dragged into expensive, unending, or unresolvable conflicts in those fossil fuel-producing areas. These high-conflict fossil fuel-producing zones are also prime sources for exporting terrorism back out to the very parts of the world to which they sell their fossil fuels.

A nation with decentralized green energy systems in use by most of its population is no longer dependent upon or held hostage by the fossil fuel producers from many of the world’s high-conflict areas. Additionally, not having to send our military forces into these areas to protect our fossil fuel supplies and economic stability will also save lives and tremendous taxpayer costs in our national budgets. These savings can then be better used in other areas.

When you convert your home or business to green energy systems, you are making a powerful move to help build your national security. You are acting as a true patriot!

• Green energy generation has become cheaper than ever due to manufacturing at scale and the increasing number of people converting over. There are many improvements in green energy efficiency and in lowering the costs of installing green energy in your home or business.

• Green energy has come of age to such a degree that it is increasingly easier to finance in large and small green energy home and business installations. Soon it will be no more difficult to get financing to go green than it will be to get financing for a new car.

• Green energy generation is still subsidized in many areas with either direct subsidy payments or tax deductibility.

• Homes and businesses that are operating on decentralized green energy are far more prepared for any kind of emergency that would affect their current power systems and productivity. Having homes and businesses operating on decentralized green energy generation creates a high-level emergency reserve and a quick recovery resilience at both the local and national levels to any kind of emergency that would affect our existing centralized fossil fuel-dependent energy generation and distribution systems.

• Energy is power. When you go to green energy generation, often you can also decentralize power away from large utilities and international energy corporations. You bring real power and independence back into the hands of average citizens and small businesses.

Of all the steps listed, the step you just read is the second most powerful going greener step because it is about increasing green energy generation. Even if you don't own your own home or business, there is still something you can do here to advance national security and be a real patriot. You can convince those whom you are renting from or work for that converting to green energy generation as quickly as possible is the smart and patriotic thing to do for cost reduction, national security, reducing global warming, emergency preparedness, and protecting future generations.

Green energy generation also makes good economic sense by saving you money over the long term. Today, many individuals and businesses are converting to green energy not because they are sustainability advocates or want to save the climate from global warming but because going green saves money in their energy expenses over the long term.

Now that you understand this important step, what is your plan to execute it, and when can you start? Make some to-do notes for yourself before going on to the next step.

Individual Action Step 8: Buy energy-efficient appliances and products

Another good way to reduce your home energy consumption is to buy Energy Star™ appliances and products. Energy Star is a government-backed program using symbols that tell consumers if a product meets specific energy efficiency standards that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save energy.

The average home contributes two times the amount of greenhouse gases as the average car. In the long run, saving energy will save you money, as well as lessen your carbon pollution impact on our atmosphere and our planet. Many energy-efficient products such as windows and doors, water heaters, roofs, heating, and AC systems, and solar energy systems qualify for a Federal tax credit of up to 30% of the cost. Click here for more information. (17) Visit www.energystar.gov/

You can also reduce your home and business energy use by powering down and unplugging electronics. It comes as a surprise to most people that appliances still continue to draw a small amount of power even when they are switched off.

75% of the electricity used to power home electronics and appliances is consumed in the average home while the products are turned off! When you are finished using any appliance you do not have to leave on, always unplug it.

To make things easy, plug an appliance (or several of them) into a power strip. When you are done, just flip the switch to cut off the power. Gadgets like the SmartStrip (18) help by cutting the power to all electronics when it is turned off. Want more info? Visit www.energy.gov.

Although there are many types of subsidies and tax incentives for home and business energy conservation, do not put the energy conservation cart in front of the more important green energy generation horse. To slow the process of going over the carbon 500 and carbon 600 near extinction and extinction tipping points, we need to more effectively stop making the problem worse. We all can help do this by reducing our use of fossil fuels.

At this point in the global warming emergency, switching to decentralized green energy generation on a widespread basis will be a more cost-effective, time-effective, and successful strategy than trying to fix all of the much smaller energy loss inefficiencies of homes and businesses everywhere. Want more info? Visit www.energysavers.gov.

Now that you understand this important step, what is your plan to execute it, and when can you start? Make some to-do notes for yourself before going on to the next step.

Please check and start one of the other Part 2 action steps below: 

Introduction

Actions Step 1 to Step 8

Actions Step 9 to Step 18

Part 2 Summary