Explore Solutions
Ideas to shift perspectives and paradigms.
Guide to the Page
This page has solutions for everyone.
Indigenous philosophies, generations of academic work, environmental advocacy, and the results of scientific research have laid the foundation for great change. We hope the ideas on SoCal Earth can help to localize this change by empowering people and communities with data and tools at this pivotal time in planetary history.
Finding joy, community, creativity, and connection to our landscape will nourish us as we find a new pathway forward.
- Making Sense of It All: Where to Focus Our Efforts
- Climate Change and Biodiversity Are Bookends to All Earth's Systems
- Key Topics, Key Solutions
- Approaching Solutions
- Scalable Solutions
- Featured Explorations
- Regeneration, Not Extraction!
- Toward a Circular Economy
- More of Our Favorite Models
- Band-Aids vs. Faucets
- Business Unusual: Invest | Divest
- Keywords for Climate Crisis
The titles of the books above are the nine planetary boundaries that we must respect in order to preserve life on the planet. You do not have to know what these terms mean in order to make change. If you are curious to learn more, we recommend that you watch the TedTalks of Johan Röckstrom and visit the website of the Stockholm Resilience Center to learn about the planetary boundaries concept that partly inspired our project. Their academic papers contain a wealth of information--and very specific metrics and goals for how we need to reframe our priorities.
- Prevent climate change and improve biodiversity on land and ocean, and everything else will follow.
- See earth's systems as extensions of ourselves, earth's creatures as our kin, and earth as our only home.
- Be like a bookend. Hold up the values and actions that put community and climate first in order to preserve life for ourselves and the planet.
Key Topics, Key Solutions
Biodiversity
Conserve habitat above all else. Fight for a proprotional approach to 30x30 or 50x50 (see biodiversity section) on the planet as well as in your own city and community.
Indigenous Perspectives
Land back to Indigenous partners will also preserve native habitats and will expand the views of Indigenous people that prioritize kinship with the earth and all its creatures.
Water
Increase percolation to feed aquifers. Stop trapping water outside of the water system by using water bottles. Explore solutions: fog catchers, atmospheric water generation, and everything from grey water to swales.
Climate
Imagine a fossil fuel free future. Reject any climate solution that bolsters fossil fuels. Phase out natural gas. Invest in nature-based solutions first. Be careful that technological solutions do not reproduce patterns and harms.
Food
Build a local food system. Support the creation of positions and institutions whose sole focus is securing a reliable food supply in the case of supply chain breakdown. To relocalize food, we need to preserve land.
Built Environment
Listen to the messages of old infrastructure: depave, build with new materials, create multiple pathways, embed redundancy in systems. Break cycles of harm through the placement of locally unwanted land uses. Build equitable housing.
Ocean Health
Prioritize what the largest and smallest ocean creatures need and everything else will fall into place. Halt polluted urban runoff into the oceans and reengage with coastal wetlands for multiple benefit.
In terms of energy, the direction is clear: shut down oil wells, do not open new wells, do not expand of fossil fuel infrastructure, no excuses for continuing oil and gas business as usual. Decarbonize, transition, test and scale. Reject false climate solutions. Learn to tell the difference.
Toward a Circular Economy
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is a key global hub for understanding and participating in what we call the circular economy. Circular economics, donut economies, and degrowth are linked to the concepts of regeneration above--and linked to utilizing design and core principles of access rather than ownership to redevelop our relationship to things we make, eat, wear, and use.
One key question in circular economics is whether we can decouple growth from resource constraints. A related question is whether our own sense of progress can be decoupled from growth--that is what's known as degrowth.
More of our Favorite Models
Below, we've gathered together some of our favorite approaches, models, and solutions.
Band-Aids vs. Faucets
Flowcharts, memes, and infographics to help us ask ourselves...
"Is the solution a band-aid or does it turn off the faucet?"
How to use this activity in a classroom or at home:
Review the graphics and discuss which ones are band-aids or faucets. Then create a list of solutions to environmental problems and in your area and see if students can move band-aids to faucets or vice versa. What about in between?
