Depends on where you live and your situation. You either limit your personal CO2 or the society's CO2 or even both. Most of my suggestions will make or save you money over time.
For personal you could do these, most of these will pay themselves back within 10 years in savings.
- Swap gas stove for induction stove
- Swap a gas boiler to heat pump + electric boiler
- Buy solar panels for the roof and/or battery
- Heat pump for domestic heating for colder regions.
- Home insulation such as triple glass windows
- For hot regions getting an awning for the windows facing the sun goes a long way.
- Selling car to buy EV (CO2 neutral at 1 year, less CO2 after that)
- Buying an E-bike if you have short trips and would like to bike more (CO2 negative almost instantly if you prevent car trips)
Otherwise if you don't feel like any of those investing in solar companies or battery production companies will make it easier for them to finance expansions to their operations and maybe even make you some money along the way.
If you live in the UK or applicable countries getting in on Octopus energy co-op energy production is a good way to invest the money and reduce CO2 at the same time.
Don't forget that an easy way to limit your carbon footprint is free. Notably plastics, aluminum, steel, other metals, concrete and beef.
To limit society's footprint you can show up to city Council meetings and advocate for bike paths and public transport which really goes a long way. Showing up with a couple of buddies, making them talk and buying beer for them after in one of the most cost effective ways to stop climate change. Often city council members just need some people to back them up when proposing the CO2 negative urban planning improvements.
Stopping climate change is all about taking small steps towards the solution, asking this question on lemmy is a great start.
Pay to have someone shoot EM.
I doubt that kill is that cheap...
Why is this so low in the comment section
Delay, deny, defend.
If you had a genie, you could just stop the global warming
via nuclear winter
Use it to free your own time to plant trees or contribute in another way. Spending 10k isn't gonna reduce climate change, but being able to work on the problem yourself will.
solar panels or something? No one is stopping climate change with $10K, I don't even think $10B would make a substantial dent.
I think they're just asking, from a categorical imperative perspective, what is the most effective way for all individuals with a bit of savings to help the climate situation.
And tbh, at this point OP is probably better off spending that $10k on preparing for:
- inclimate weather (HVAC, water proofing, warm clothing)
- inconsistent power (battery backups, a generator)
- food/clean water shortages (home gardening skills, rain catching/water purification).
At this point, there's virtually nothing that can be done to stop the impact of climate change, there is only adapting to survive it. The best we can do is vote and/or hope for our global political situation to finally reach its inevitable crisis point. But I don't expect that to be a pleasant experience.
10B could make a couple underground metro lines in an otherwise extremely car dependent city with no public transport
More effective would probably to buy yourself (or a person that has political potential/influence with the right intentions) into politics like president muskrat, and do well placed populistic propaganda against the actually evil fossil industry. You don't even have to lie, just do some good rethoric speech, ads etc.. We need policies on a larger level, and I think 10B$ should be enough to gain significant political influence for something that the major mass of people is already behind of, just needs a good spark. I think Thunberg has shown that. Not that we shouldn't of course improve public transport in cities. Additionally do (employ) investigative journalism probably in the same process to give all of this a good foundation..
10K is a home solar investment. Where I live, people tend to live in multi-family buildings about 3-6 floors high, often split between siblings and their families. Depending on how many are in the country year-round, that might even be enough for the whole building with careful management. Obviously wouldn’t be the same if the neighbors are strangers. (I appreciate that the familial emphasis might seem a bit random in your culture). Ideally 10K might just be enough for one or two households.
The much more interesting prompt is 10B, imo.
10B? Oh man. I’m in Lebanon. We’ve effortlessly squandered more generous fortunes than a measly 10B grant, but here’s how I’d do it:
1B: buses, trams and parking garages to decongest some of the nicer (and underperforming, touristy) old town areas. Should give them a sorely needed boost 3B: modern seaside train running from north to south, with a small number of branches into the interior. Mostly freight. 3B: start phase of a Beirut metro. It’s not enough for a full metro system especially with our geological conditions, but the core city isn’t too big and one line should be feasible? 2B: functional army so we still have civilian infrastructure next time our noisy neighbor gets a hissy fit (infrastructure is worthless if it’s destroyed) 1B: modern fossil fuel power plant. Yeah it’s not green, but we generate a fraction of our needed power, meaning most people have to pay off a local generator mob for electricity. They use diesel and relatively inefficient smaller generators. Our existing ancient power plants use dogshit-tier diesel. I insist that some kind of LNG plant maybe would actually make the situation more green. As it stands the convenience of combustible fuel is more pertinent than the environmental cost
Ya its a decent start. My point here is the scale of what we're facing. Its going to take trillions of dollars, synchronous action taken by many nations simultaneously and a complete restructuring of the current world order. There's always hope but at this point i'm fairly cynical and don't have a lot of faith that the right people are in charge to even start the conversation.
As I havent seen a single actually effective answer:
Donate it to organisations fighting climate change. For example FCA (researching climate friendly ways of producing cement, steel, fuels), gfi (researching food alternatives), CATF (tries to influence political changes)
The only ways you can fight climate change in any meaningful way with 10k also involve going to prison
More likely dead (shot to death by cops)
I think that depends on your skill, i.e. good planning, and obviously execution. If you're really good, you don't even get caught, although that might help politically as we currently see with Mangione
10k is cutting it thin… the Accuracy International ACSR is just a hair under $10k USD… and that is before taxes. Then you need the 1,000-10,000 rounds of ammo for training before you become good enough to start taking out card-carrying members of the Parasite Class from a kilometre-plus distance.
Now granted, you can go a lot cheaper than that, but accuracy and range will suffer. Remember, you want to be far enough away that you can reliably pack up and sanitize the scene before you leave.
Alternatively, swarming AI drones in the hundreds, with on-board explosive packages, would allow you to deploy from abandonable emplacements that can loiter for many hours to even days. No-one is going to question a cube van that sits in a paid spot for a week, at least until it’s roof opens up and a thousand tiny drones with facial recognition take off and take out a few oligarchs.
But honestly, you’re likely talking a few tens of thousands for that scenario, at minimum. I would likely bank at it being in the low hundreds of thousands for a truly effective and difficult-to-counter deployment.
10k is cutting it thin… the Accuracy International ACSR is just a hair under $10k USD… and that is before taxes. Then you need the 1,000-10,000 rounds of ammo for training before you become good enough to start taking out card-carrying members of the Parasite Class from a kilometre-plus distance.
Now granted, you can go a lot cheaper than that, but accuracy and range will suffer. Remember, you want to be far enough away that you can reliably pack up and sanitize the scene before you leave.
Alternatively, swarming AI drones in the hundreds, with on-board explosive packages, would allow you to deploy from abandonable emplacements that can loiter for many hours to even days. No-one is going to question a cube van that sits in a paid spot for a week, at least until it’s roof opens up and a thousand tiny drones with facial recognition take off and take out a few oligarchs.
But honestly, you’re likely talking a few tens of thousands for that scenario, at minimum. I would likely bank at it being in the low hundreds of thousands for a truly effective and difficult-to-counter deployment.
You're not personally responsible or able to prevent climate change. This is a societal issue that requires societal changes. Don't feel obligated to put yourself in financial trouble since the impact to your life is potentially devastating and your impact to solving climate change would be negligible. It fucking sucks but we live in a brutal capitalist system and you need to make sure you can care for yourself.
I might suggest seeing if there are local advocacy groups where you can contribute your time and, if you truly have excess wealth, help with direct financial support as needed, small contributions to things like mailing campaigns or buying a booth at a faire will help much more than blanket contributions - but, IMO, the bigger need is in effort and time.
You're not personally responsible
While I agree with your overall comment, I disagree with how it starts. We are all responsible for the decisions we make, once we are educated about those decisions.
Example: You can buy bamboo toilet paper for less than Charmin when purchased online. This reduces the deforestation of old growth trees by reducing the demand. Now that you know this, you are responsible for the choice you make on what you purchase. Or buy a bidet. Every person who talks about this spreads education, which is what influences larger scale decisions about regulation (albeit much more slowly than campaign donations).
For those whop ask, source: https://savetrees.co/products/bulk-toilet-paper?variant=44493957431458 vs https://www.walmart.com/ip/Charmin-Ultra-Gentle-Toilet-Paper-18-Mega-Rolls-231-Sheets-per-Roll/2846366584
$0.0039991667 per sheet vs $0.0048027898 per sheet for Charmin.
Political advocacy is the way to go. Pushing politicians to change laws is what got renewables to be cheap in the first place. We need more of that.
Climate change is tied to capitalism. Use it to run for office.
Considering we live in a conflicted world where capitalism has ruined everything, I'd say donate a few thousand of it around, but also save it and just make the right choices on what you buy:
- buy zero waste, local and bio
- buy fair and repairable phones
- buy fair and ecological clothing
- etc..
So many people don't realize that every time they buy something in a store, they are casting a little capitalistic vote. We have to speak the language of what these evil sons of bitches speak, money. So I think for individuals, it mostly starts with us.
Look at the bright side, with rampant inflation and wage stagnation; soon no one will be able to buy anything anymore!
Buy the cheapest viable land you can and build an Earthship home out of tires, cans, bottles, and compressed Earth. Take yourself off the grid as much as possible.
I'd also suggest a career in or adjacent to alternative energy.
So buy land, dump trash on it. Got it.
*Repurpose trash...
No. Build an Earthship home by recycling and reusing inexpensive, rejected materials that don't break down easily and would otherwise become trash to affordably construct an off-grid structure that will gather and generate electricity, water, warmth, and food for potentially centuries.
https://youtu.be/wgUkjbMhF18?si=T08Ks0-iPDOoe2dl
Also Earthship.com
Enjoy the money and tell yourself its not your fault.
Or alternatively, become an eco-terrorist.
Think of:
-
Pipelines - buy explosives
-
Certain individuals pertaining to the oil industry - buy a firearms
-
Certain politicians - buy firearms
I am not a lawyer, this comment is for entertainment pur-
Hmm, why is there loud knocking on my door?
Why are you making your fed work on the lord's day?
NO KINGS!
NO GODS!
Ted Kaczynski is still alive it seems.
When did he get out?!
-
You cannot have any significant impact with 10,000$ use it to enjoy your life. We are all doomed anyway.
This is bs, please dont spread misinformation like this. With your logic, we should all stop voting because a single vote doesnt have impact.
Every person is responsible for their own decisions and 10k from a single person have a huge relative impact. If every person with 10k available would use those for fighting climate change, we would have overcome it already.
If you have any natural gas appliances in your home (like water heater, dryer, stove, oven, HVAC), transition to an electric version. Cancel your gas service.
Also, improve insulation and other items to reduce you heat/cooling loss.
Yeah that should offset the massive pollution from global industry right? I feel that the shift of responsibility to the individual is a distraction.
10k will not do much good on the grand scale of things. Once you start involving other people directly, the costs start skyrocketing. Be it if you want to bribe politicians, fund a revolution, invest into sustainable tech or just creating a bottle cap recycling programme, 10k just isnt gonna get you far enough. So focus on your own climate impact. I think the absolute best you could do for the most positive net good is to take inventory of your own carbon emissions and replace or upgrade whatever you need to lower them. Lower your heating usage by getting a heat pump instead of burning coal for example. This will depend on how low your carbon output currently is though.
Fund journalism and media against fossil fuel
You’re not funding anything important for 10k
You would be so very surprised how far a little money gets public opinion.
Especially when you cut out the middlemen and fund independent creators you find impactful, instead of big megacorp news with CEO salaries in the millions.
You can blaze a whole lot of posts in tumblr for that kind of money.
10K could be leveraged toward making oil executives live in constant fear.
A gun and lots of ammo and a one way ticket to D.C. is a start, I'd say.
A few guns won't do anything. Guns and violence are never effective without the right ideas behind them.
Think Occupy Wall Street, but everyone has an AR-15.
Use it to fund Luigi
You could buy a couple of acres of land and turn it into a forest preserve. And then don't let anyone buy it to build or cut down trees / etc.
Depending on how much you care, you could even plant a sustainable forest and grow hardwood as an investment.
You need to be careful with this. Depending on your location, there might be laws imposing that you use the land, otherwise you might lose it. I don't know the exact conditions, and I suppose they vary.
Also, 10000 USD doesn't buy you a lot of land, depending on location.
Where I live, that could buy a parking space.
In the nearest metro region (about 3 hrs away), ten times that amount might buy a parking space. A very sketchy parking space, at that.
Land prices in British Columbia - even way out in the boonies - is totally f**ked.
Give it to a group like Just Stop Oil or other direct action / sabotage focused climate activism group - they're perpetually broke and could do a lot of good with that money.
I agree with the other guy, get yourself some solar panels and make yourself climate friendly, or even look at other ways you yourself an change in order to be carbon neutral
Aside from solar panels, as others have mentioned, I have a few other suggestions for things to get/do:
- Hydroponic garden
- Sewing machine
- Heat pump water heater
- Heat pump a/c
- Induction stovetop
- Upgrade insulation
- Compost bin
- Tools to repair common items
- Promote the use of libraries and support their growth into other communal resources
- Only buy things when needed
As others have said, there isn't much that a single individual can do against climate change, but let me explain my suggestions. Some of the most carbon intensive activities include the transportation of items like food, clothes, and other goods. To reduce your impact, you need to reduce your reliance on this carbon intensive logistics network. By growing your own food, learning to repair what you own, and learning to sew, you're making a large impact on your personal contribution to climate change. By supporting the library, you're encouraging the use of a shared pool of communal resources, which also reduces your community's climate impact.
The other items are what you can do to improve the efficiency of your house, if you own it. Induction stoves are incredibly safe and a highly efficient cooking surface. Heat pumps are crazy efficient at both heating and cooling, so slowly replacing old appliances with high efficiency options as they fail will maximize the use of what you own before it gets replaced. Compost bins and insulation certainly aren't glamorous like the other tech options, but they'll also go a long way: Landfills create an anaerobic environment, meaning food that gets thrown end up producing methane, and single family homes consume a lot of energy because heat escapes from every wall open to the air.
Solar panels and a vasectomy
People who care about climate change aren't the ones who need to get a vasectomy.
While this isn’t a suggestion, just want to say don’t let other people saying one person doesn’t make a difference discourage you from doing what you can anyway.
“What is any ocean but a multitude of drops”? If a million people each don’t bother because they alone don’t make a difference?
Similar to the Starfish Story.
Actual suggestions:
- Aid education. Lots of illiterate youth is going to be a problem when they can’t even read to research on their own.
- Encourage increasing plant-based agriculture and the reduction of animal agriculture. Animal agriculture is terrible for the environment, and ironically the “green” version of it is even worse for the environment than factory farming if it were done to scale with the same product output. (Hunting is also not good to promote as an alternative, because if we hunted as much as we eat we would absolutely cause mass extinction very fast.)
Its a drop in the ocean and I'm going to come off negative here but your up against jets, deliveries on demand from across the globe, mass meat industry and oil companies that will lobby against their destruction and in tern for mass extinction. If you really want to fight climate change move somewhere that won't see the effects, install solar learn to live off the land. An alternative if not too late become a revolutionary topple capitalism the system that allowed us to get to this point and beyond.
"live off the land"? You are about 5 billion people too late for that.
topple capitalism
Would you like to work for me for free then?
i have friends that live off grid grow food and share produce with neighbors.
no i wouldn't want to work for anyone for any price, rather i would work for my community.
Dude, leave the meat alone. Humans have been eating meat for tens of thousands of years and there was never a problem. It's the life style we have which created the demand for cars, deliveries, heavy machinery spinning. Those are bigger enemies. Meat is like you said, a drop in the ocean.
If one wants to individually help reduce their carbon footprint, the biggest things one could do is to...
- Not have children
- Not eat meat (or animal by-products)
- Not take international flights
Some people want kids, and some people want to travel. Some people want to eat meat, and that's ok too. But I'm pretty sure those are the top 3 things an individual can do to reduce their personal carbon footprint.
Spending and consumning less could help more. Espicially gas and meat.
Invest it into a mutual fund fighting climate change. My bank has one. I guess many banks do. Some relevant terms in their fund names: fossil-free, climate, forest, sustainable agriculture.
Several funds in my bank have ESG in the name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social,_and_governanceUnfortunately investing money does veeeeeeeery little against climate change. Think like 0.1% of your invested sum. The money you invest still goes to shareholders, just those of companies that meet certain criteria.
Of course it is better (i.e. has bigger impact) than investing elsewhere, dont get me wrong. But investing doesnt promote actual changes. For someone to make changes in politics or public opinion, they need to be paid. Spending the money on such projects is the way to make actual change.
Source: my spouse works in ESG scoring at a big bank
If you truly don't need the money, donate it to an org that's doing political advocacy.
10k of solar isn't going to make a difference in the grand scheme of things. Changing laws and regulations will.
You're implying advocacy can beat financial and industrial interests on critical topics, something that goes against what we have been witnessing for a while.
Solar, wind, and EVs have become much cheaper after they received significant government incentives. Feed in tariffs started in the 1990s, implemented by Japan, Germany, China, and many other governments decreased the cost of renewables and built industrial capacity.
Governments did that because of significant environmental advocacy from the 1960s onwards.
Advocacy feels like it doesn't work now because there's massive advocacy pushing back against our longterm interests, but it's couched as "industrial interests" so we don't see it.
A website with detailed steps on eco-terrorism.
Your time and energy is far more valuable than your money.
I would recommend using that money as an emergency fund, and getting involved with an activist organization working to stop climate change. There are a wide range of them, with tactics ranging from legislative pressure to property destruction and civil disobedience. Believe it or not, there are lots of small local problems that a small group can meaningfully impact, and will add up.
While there are systemic problems that cannot be solved by an individual, they can be solved by collective organization. You have to be part of that collective if you want to stop climate change.
As a few people have said, buying something like solar panels, or the deposit on an electric car would probably be the best - reducing your impact is probably the most you can do.
The other option could be green investment.... They do exist, ignore 'transitional energy' funds (90% oil majors), look at the individual shares that any fund that looks interesting. I have some money in EdenTree funds. That way your money is hopefully helping do good, while (hopefully) growing so you can do something that will have a bigger personal effect.
Children of Kali
Buy second hand, don't buy new unless you know that the company is trying to solve climate change. Example, at Honolulu there's a company that is setting up water filling stations on some hotels and providing these hotels with aluminum bottles for the folks staying in the hotel so hotels can provide water to their guests and stop plastic pollution.
Send it to me, I’ll grow some trees and hemp and shit.
Plant a fuckload of protected species trees
Wont have much impact unfortunately. Climate zones are shifting already, those trees will die before growing up because they would belong further north by then.
But do your research or better find an organization who did the research, can be trusted to know what they’re doing and makes sure to protect the trees afterwards. Just planting random trees somewhere is not necessarily going to help. It could even make things worse for that area.
Probably planting trees as effectively it's free to scatter seeds you find.
Well, a certain cadre of income is responsible for the lion's share of western emissions. Maybe you could use that money to "influence" them.
Put that money in stocks or ETFs that align with your climate goals. You don’t even have to dig too deep to find ones that meet your needs. Much digital ink has been spilled on the topic. Just find one or two you like and go for it.
In a general sense, put the money where you want change to happen in this version of reality.
Not 10k but I would figure something out with 100k
Fund a sterilization program for young people who have come to understand the future that humanity is hurtling towards, and who want to avoid bringing a child into such a brutally cruel future.
Both my niece and nephew have sworn off of children, as they have good educations and have fully understood just how badly humanity is fucking itself over. They’re just trying to find doctors that will do those procedures on people under 30.
May I suggest advocating for better sexual education and healthcare? This will have a much bigger impact than taking smart and understanding people out of the genepool
A blissfully naïve ideal, considering the rightward shift of almost all governments world-wide. The political right depends vitally on creating an ignorant, illiterate, and uninformed electorate who breed like rabbits… you really think that they will willingly fund education and healthcare of any effective kind?
Right now, our best bet is to stop pumping out innocents who will only know a life that is brutish, cruel, and (once civilization collapses) short. They may have a decade or three of modern conveniences, but anyone under the age of 30 will likely die long before they would otherwise experience a natural death.
Really good idea. Rid the world of enviromnetally responsible people so climate change is accelerated. Thanks for the counter-argument.
Humanity may be fucking itself over, but how does that lead you to conclude that taking yourself out is (part) of a solution?
I am not talking about taking yourself out. I’m talking about not adding to what will be a very big problem within the next two to four decades.
The only reason why we have reached 8 billion is because of industrialized agriculture. Climate change - via chaotic weather - will make agriculture in general impossible. When agriculture at scale ceases to be functional - and the collapse of the AMOC will make one of the bigger impacts in the middle of this century - the ability for humanity to feed more than a billion or two will cease to exist. Humanity will tear its entire infrastructure apart in a desperate bid to live another day. Anyone who wants to subject their children to such horrors is not a person who cares for their children.
We are already exceeding the “worst-case scenario” that has projected a likely extinction of humanity within this century. Why add innocents to the potential misery and suffering?
I'd probably donate it to the Thorium guys. Either the ones that just built the reactor research lab in Texas, or the shipyard ones. If coal becomes economically obsolete, the gigatons of CO2 will drop off like a rock.
Get a vasotomy/tubal ligation.
Start a fund raiser, do advertisement, (make some donations your self so that it does not look dead) - ones you get a lot of money (lets say you have doubled) - start again and repeat until you double - within 10 cycles of doublings, you reach 10 million, and keep doing until you get rich enough (lets say 10 more cycles to reach 10B) then you have 2 paths to choose - either be a hero and actual invest in research and actively reversing shit done, maybe helping displaced or other good deeds, or the mlm path, and continue the doubling cycle, keep earning - with this much money, you can now have actors and fake donations, maybe even fake researches into how you are helping, and keep growing your wealth, and maybe then escape to a tax heaven.
Apologies for the dystopian ending, but realistically a person even going full carbon negative is not even a dent. If you actually want to do good, then you realistically require trillions, and then you feed that money to politicians, and reverse launder your way towards actual green solutions.
Become a shareholder for one of the many giant corporations responsible, and try to sway them into cleaning thier mess up.
