A holiday gift guide for climate cranks
In this issue:
A rather long “where the hell have I been” preamble
A quick, easy climate action
Don’t you touch those leaves
A holiday gift guide for the environmentalist Grinch in your life
Hello. It’s been a while.
My last email went out in April 2022. What have I been doing since then? The honest answer is: a lot of things that were not climate actions.
I want this newsletter to do more than just broadcast my thoughts and opinions; that’s what journals are for. I want it to hold me accountable for regular climate actions and, ideally, inspire readers to try those same actions. I could just pivot to the “sustainable living” content we all see on social media—a DIY cleaning spray here, a plastic-free alternatives list there—but that doesn’t usually meet my criteria for what this whole project should be about.
One of the greatest scams capitalism ever pulled was to let big companies trash the planet and make consumers believe it’s our job to clean up. Yes, we should all eat less meat and take public transportation. Yes, we should leave the leaves and ditch our gas-powered leaf-blowers.
But even if every single one of us starts living in perfect accordance with our climate values tomorrow, the Exxons and Nestlés of the world will still be here; the doomsday clock will keep on ticking. If you’re not currently in charge of a national government or, like, PepsiCo, the most effective thing you can do to change that is engage in political activism. But I’m not going to nag you all to take a weekly or biweekly action if I didn’t do it myself—and I don’t know about you, but I don’t always have it in me to call my representatives and beg them to care.
So here’s what Now Is Long will be going forward: You’ll get letters about both political actions we can take together and individual choices we can make to reduce the daily harm we inflict on our planet. I will try to keep it hopeful. I will try to be consistent, but I don’t promise perfect regularity. And I’ll endeavor to make it worth your time to open this newsletter whenever it arrives in your inbox.
If you ever have ideas, suggestions, gripes, or concerns, please let me know. It’s always great to hear from you.
Take action: say no to new natural gas exports
Venture Global’s CP2 is a proposed liquid natural gas export project that would produce more emissions than 30 coal plants and threaten vulnerable communities and ecosystems in Louisiana.
Tell the White House and the Department of Energy that you don’t want that.
Pretty easy, right? Tell them again through the Greenpeace campaign.
Then share one of those links with a few of your friends! If they won’t listen to you, they’ll definitely listen to Jane Fonda.
What was that about leaving the leaves?
Each spring, trees pull nutrients from the soil and turn those nutrients into leaves. In the fall, the leaves drop. Time passes, the leaves decompose, and by spring the nutrients have returned to the soil. The circle repeats. Life is poetry.
Rather than let this happen, humans like to gather up these leaves and stuff them into large plastic bags, which then get chucked into a landfill where zero nutrients return to anything.[1]
Leaves are good for our soil; they’re an essential habitat for some overwintering insects; they can actually help your lawn grow and suppress weeds; and, I promise, they’ll be gone by the end of winter. Leave them where they are!
If you simply cannot leave them be, then please don’t use a leaf-blower to move them around.
Running a leaf-blower for one hour is the same thing, pollution-wise, as driving a car for over 1,000 miles.[2] To say nothing of the dust and debris it kicks up! If you live in Denver, a city whose air quality is an international embarrassment, hopefully you’ll understand why the slight convenience of leaf-blowing does not justify the damage it wreaks.
And if none of that changes your mind, just remember that they’re loud and annoying as fuck and that I, personally, will think less of you for using one.
“Help! Christmas is coming and my [insert loved one] is a climate crank who hates gifts!”
Caring about the planet can, at times, preclude me from Just Enjoying Things. Last month I felt anxious, not celebratory, when my neighborhood turned into an overdecorated Halloween amusement park—plastic skeletons and polyester spiderwebs as far as the eye could see. Temporary embellishments destined for a landfill.
I tend to feel similar around the winter holidays. The “spirit of giving” that enters our bodies during this season is still, at the end of the day, conspicuous and needless consumption. More and more, I find that I can’t receive a little knick-knack (however thoughtful) without worrying about how I must eventually dispose of it and which ecosystem it will take part in destroying.
To be clear, I don’t feel bad about thinking this way. Everyone should! If we all got a little itchy every time we remembered just how long our plastic objects will stick around after we are dead, we might produce and accumulate fewer plastic objects.
But I know this mindset can make me seem pretty Grinchish to my friends and family. So I want to help anyone shopping for a fellow member of the Climate Anxiety Club this season. I won’t recommend cash or donations or anything like that—I understand that the giving and receiving of things is special. It is nice to pass an object from your hands to someone else’s, to materially add to their life.
With that in mind, here are a few ideas to guide your conscious holiday shopping this year:
Give them something edible.
Food is something we all have to buy, no matter what. If you know what your giftee likes, bundle up a nice little charcuterie set, ethically sourced chocolate, some high-quality beans, or even a tasty baked treat that will get gobbled up within a few hours. Food is also something that we share with others, so if you are offering the goods and your company in one go, even better.
Give them something they’ll use.
Same concept as above, but any uses that aren’t eating. Think nice soaps, plastic-free lip balms or hand salves, indulgent candles, comfy socks or hats (look for natural fibers), the list goes on. If you are DIY-inclined, this is a great opportunity to make something. I’ve received lip scrubs from friends and I’ve knitted hats for just about everyone I know; it always feels special to receive something that came straight from the intimate workings of your friend’s life, and vice-versa.
Release your regifting inhibitions.
All I want for Christmas, honestly and truly, is to participate in a no-buy book exchange. If your friend is a reader, they’ll thrill at any book you give them, no matter where it came from. Is there anything in your personal library that you won’t read again and that a loved one would enjoy? Perfect. Wrap that shit up in some of the brown paper you get in packages and call it a day. If your own books fall short, secondhand bookstores are a great next step.
Support important causes or vulnerable communities with your purchase.
I like to seek out local businesses, companies that engage in transparent environmental advocacy, charitable organizations, and Indigenous sellers/collectives for holiday shopping. I’d encourage you to start with shops close to home, but here are a few good online options:
Eighth Generation — think Etsy, but curated; and all its designers and creators are Indigneous
Parks Project — support your favorite national park, plus all the other ones
Clean02 — soaps made from carbon capture processes! Talk about ocean cleanup!
Navajo Water Project — 100% of net profits from your purchase support the organization
Made Trade — an all-around marketplace where you can shop your values: made in USA, woman-owned business, vegan, etc.
Or, maybe… just don’t purchase anything.
If the experience of shopping for someone causes you too much agony, try to consider that the person may not be the issue, but the shopping. Bringing more stuff into someone’s life is not the most meaningful way to enrich it. Remember that even the Grinch embraced the holiday spirit when he saw that it came without packages, boxes, or bags.
It’s so easy to go online and see the effortless availability of infinite stuff and think that we need to reach out and take something. But we don’t. I’m looking around the room right now and there is already so much here. Most of the people reading this newsletter will find the same is true for them. How lucky are we, to have more than enough already. How nice could it be, to brighten our full homes with friends and music and shared food and clinking glasses—rather than to crowd them with just a little more stuff.
And what a relief for a planet already choking under the weight of it all.
That’s all for this letter! Thank you for reading.
Now Is Long grows exclusively by word of mouth; you can help it reach more people by sharing this email with a friend who’s determined to get all their holiday shopping done before Thanksgiving.
Footnotes
[1] “But my leaves go into a paper bag and get composted!” That’s great. Your tree is still missing out.
[2] Many sources report this figure or similar, but it’s important to note that they’re talking about smog-forming pollutants, not carbon dioxide. Cars still produce waaaay more CO2, and are still, societally speaking, worse than leaf-blowers. But one of these things is much easier to get rid of than the other.