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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.

Featured Action Organizations

  • EcoMadres mission is to empower and mobilize Latino communities to fight for clean air, equitable climate change solutions, and protections from toxic chemicals. Working with a growing network of state-based field teams and allies in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, and Texas, the team facilitates conversations between Latino communities and lawmakers at the state and federal levels about the connection between environmental issues and our children’s health.
  • The Eco-anxiety in Africa Project (TEAP) seeks to understand and validate the experiences of eco-anxiety and environmental-related emotions in Africans. Through research, space-making initiatives, and climate-aware psychotherapy support, TEAP intends to raise awareness on the interlocking effects of the changing climate and other social challenges unique to the African population.
  • The Leftovers Foundation is a Canada-based organization seeking to ensure that good food does not get wasted. With networks across Alberta and Manitoba, the organization connect food donors with service agencies to redirect food surplus to where it is needed most.

Explore Buddhist and Interfaith Organizations

 

“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 Calls to Action

As the humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens, urge your government, especially if you are in the United States, to insist on an immediate ceasefire. If you are in Canada, call for an immediate arms embargo. You can also support Support Standing Together, Combatants for Peace, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), all grassroots movements mobilizing for peace, equality, and justice.

Upcoming

Global

 

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).
  • 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.
  • 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 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 made the largest climate and clean energy investments in U.S. history. However, big polluters and their polluter allies in Congress are working to dismantle this progress. Sign the petition to call on Congress to defend our climate progress for current and future generations.

 

Canada 

  • As violence and destruction continues to escalate and play out in Gaza, insist on an immediate arms embargo, and email your Member of Parliament, the Prime Minister, and the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, International Trade, and Defense to demand that Canada stop arming Israel’s genocidal violence.
  • The upcoming global plastics treaty negotiations held April 23-29 in Ottawa are an opportunity to put a stop to plastic pollution. Send a message to Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault and party environment critics to commit to reduction targets for primary plastic production and banning the export of plastic waste.
  • The Climate-Aligned Finance Act (CAFA) introduced by Senator Rosa Galvez  in March 2022 would comprehensively align our financial sector with the realities of climate change. Send a letter to the Senate Banking Committee Chair and Deputy Chair urging the advancement of the CAFA.
  • Greenwashing by oil and gas companies knowingly misleads the public with false claims of “net zero” and “carbon neutral” oil. Support the passing of Bill C-372 calling for a fossil-fuel advertising ban.
  • Despite plans to transition away from coal, Canada still exports millions of tonnes of Canadian and American thermal coal every year. Urge your MP and key cabinet ministers to support Bill C-383, calling for the ban on thermal coal exports.

 

Ongoing Opportunities & Action Resources

Featured Campaigns

Campaign
Campaign

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.
EcoDharma
EcoDharma

Talking About our Earth and Ecological Crises

One week before Earth Day, we share this article from our archives in hopes of helping you with what can be difficult conversations.
Campaign
Campaign

Regenerative Solutions for the Living Earth Community

Regeneration Nexus is a database of ecological solutions that aim to nourish and regenerate broader systems within the living Earth community while reducing warming.
Campaign
Campaign

We Can. We Will.

🌏This year’s Climate Week NYC will take place September 17-24. A march with a multi-faith contingent kicks off this week of virtual and in-person activities.

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

EcoDharma
EcoDharma

A Community Renounces Fossil Fuels

With its recent installation of an emissions-free heating system, Zen Mountain Monastery is one step closer to its goal of phasing out fossil fuel use by 2030.
EcoDharma
EcoDharma

Demand for Statehood and Ecological Protections in Northern India

In Ladakh, India, a coalition of political and religious leaders is organizing to safeguard human rights, cultural heritage, and environmental well-being.
EcoDharma
EcoDharma

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.