There is no Planet B
Floods, mega-fires, heat waves: from Italy to Germany, to Australia and the Amazon, we receive continuous alarms about human and environmental tragedies caused by the climate gone mad. In a sense, these were disasters foretold: climate change wasn’t put on hold with the Pandemic.
What’s more shocking, however, is that in the face of this apocalyptic scenario there are still those who continue to do business with gas, oil and coal, exploiting natural resources to the limit.
Companies and politicians fill their speeches and their campaigns with words like green and renewable, but the facts are different: coal-fired power plants continue to burn, oil pipelines pump oil causing disastrous accidents like the one in Mexico, and drills continue with the extraction of oil and fossil gas: tons of it, every minute.
How is that possible?
What’s really behind this business? How much are the lives of people and the thousands of species that inhabit the seas and our forests worth? For the companies that pollute by extracting and burning gas, oil and coal, they are probably worth less than zero. Exploiting natural resources, on the other hand, yields a lot of profits.
The pandemic has taught us that the price to pay for the destruction of the planet, and the alteration of natural balances, is high.
What we can do
Sometimes we feel we can do nothing to improve our planet. Alone, certainly, there’s no much we can do, but together there’s no limit to what we can accomplish!ย The first basic thing we can do is sign petitions online. For example, petitions to ask governments to halt the corporations that are polluting the earth or petitions against the banks that are still investing in unsustainable industries. Visit WWF and Greenpeace websites to find new petitions to sign.
Another important action is to boycott these banks and corporations.
Abandoning coal, gas and oil and refounding our economy by investing in 100% renewable energy is possible, and must be done immediately.
Anna, Italy
Become a volunteer
Another opportunity to help โ we can become volunteers and join ecological and humanitarian groups and organizations around the world that are fighting for this cause. As volunteers, we can get personally involved in nature conservation, environmental education, or animal welfare. We can also help to organize events and workshops related to education and ecology. Or we can organize protests and marches against wasteful and polluting industries.
Many volunteer campaigns held by WWF or Greenpeace have already obtained important victories against big insurance companies, and much more can be achieved to change the system of financing fossil fuels, and thus put a brake on climate change.
There are many other websites where you can find volunteering opportunities to help stop climate change. On Voluntouring.org we have created a couple of sections that will hopefully improve and expand soon in order to offer many more projects and volunteering opportunities to support our planet! There is one program related to sailing with sea shepherds to protect the ocean and marine life. This organization in Norway is recruiting volunteers for free sailing adventures with beach cleaning activities.
Note ๐
Most volunteer projects on voluntouring.org should cover at least food and accommodation for free to their volunteers. However, some volunteer projects might require you to pay a contribution fee for the living costs, this changes according to the host/organization financial resources.
Feel free to browse the different volunteering opportunities sections:
- Volunteer to fight Climate Change
- Conservation programs
- Environmental projects
- Animal Welfare
- Ecological projects
Go back to the blog section
Become an international volunteer
