Many non-profit organizations focus their resources on the environment, energy use, and sustainability, but not all of them make as large of an impact as you would hope. The way non-profits like NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) are impacting climate change is by encouraging countries, like China and the US, that have large carbon pollution output to implement policies that will limit carbon emissions. And they are trying to help these countries figure out clean energy solutions and boost energy efficiency. The NRDC also looks at ways to help low-income communities that are the most affected by fossil fuels by empowering the residents in these communities to stand up for their neighborhoods and create a healthier climate. Right now, most non-profits associated with climate change are looking at ways to encourage countries to switch to cleaner energy sources and implement policies reducing their carbon impact. For the most part, the best way for citizens to impact climate change globally is contacting your representatives and joining protests and rallies. But citizens can get involved on a local level to start a change that could eventually spread to make a larger global impact. On a local level, you can attempt to make your city a “climate sanctuary”, attempting to reduce food waste by starting composting and teaching other people in your community about how they can do the same. One of the key points of starting on a local level is making sure to focus on education of the community around you so that you can get more people involved and start a ripple effect as these people gain the ability to educate others. There are a lot of challenges that non-profits face, and one of the main challenges would be attempting to get country leadership on board with the policies that need to be implemented.
When viewing climate change through a non-profit lens, it is important to consider that not all non-profits can achieve the same goals. For the most part your non-profit needs to have a lot of public support/backing to get countries to listen to and hopefully implement your policies. Also, you have to think about the kind of impact that a particular non-profit can even have considering what they plan to do.
With the Justice Oriented Citizen model, non-profits take the role of a personally responsible citizen by encouraging recycling and reducing individual carbon footprints. The second level, the participatory citizen, is accomplished when a non-profit attempts to educate a community about the environment and how to start locally making an impact to improve public awareness of of climate change. And in the third level, the social-justice oriented citizen, non-profits are looking at ways to prevent further climate change and also looking at the reasons that climate change is an issue to begin with and trying to implement change that will hopefully influence a global change. Like, how the NRDC is attempting to educate citizens about their rights and how to fight back against local fossil fuel usage and fracking in their area, and helping impoverished areas by providing legal services and the tools necessary to influence the change that the community wants to achieve.
I watched the “Which Country Does the Most Good for the World?” TED Talk by Simon Anholt. In this TED Talk he talks about how there are 7 billion people on this planet all responsible for the decline of the environment and these same people have to be responsible for fixing the wrongs. But as he points out we need to be unified as one, and although out governmental systems work, they do not think as globally as they need to to fix the problems, they all act to provide help inwards, to their own people. I think this is where non-profits can come in, by helping each government come together to implement policies that go hand and hand to bettering our environment. He points out the fact that most countries act selfishly, or as though they are the only one to exist, that they have a microscopic view of the world. I think that non-profits can definitely come into play to help address this issue and hopefully bring about a change in the way that people see the world and issue that impact us on a global level.