What Can Homeowners Do to Fight Climate Change?

What are homeowners struggling with the most?

"There is a kind of sexiness right now around renewable energy," Stark says, "but energy efficiency is really the lowest-hanging fruit." Ideally, she says, we would all be investigating and installing the best renewable energy sources, like solar and wind, and ensuring its energy efficiency, once in place. "But, usually, a better starting place is saving energy rather than generating energy." This means evaluating the energy efficiency of your home, right now. Investigate things like insulation, windows, programmable thermostats. For new builds, design elements also come into play: is the home-oriented for maximum direct sunlight in autumn and winter? Whatever power you're using—solar, wind, gas, coal, oil—you'll use less, says Stark, if you work first on your home's energy efficiency.

What are some myths that need to be dispelled about 'going green'?

"There's this idea," says Stark, "that in order to go green people need to live in a former century, that it is limiting, less luxurious, that it would be a life of sacrifice. But in many ways, going green can increase peoples' quality of life." Examples she gives are physical and mental health benefits, including that people often feel more life satisfaction when they make environmentally sound choices. "It's not about going back in time, and it's not about sacrifice. It's about overall improved quality of life."

What are some ways to dispel these myths?

The best way to dispel the myth of going green as limiting and less luxurious, says Stark, is to "empower people who have made [green] choices, to let them tell their stories. They are the people who understand it best. They have pride in how everyone says, 'Look at the design. Look how beautiful!'"

Other "green is limiting" myth-busters, she says, are:

• getting homeowners the right information
• marketing new products widely
• incentivizing the purchase of green products

She cites recycled paper countertops as an example of how markets have difficulty keeping up with innovation. "In many places in Canada," she notes, "you can't just walk into a Home Depot and find them." Given the choice of ordering a new product online (if it's even available online) without seeing it, and waiting extra weeks for it to ship, homeowners may simply opt for a more commercially popular (and less green) option.

What People Can Do Together to Fight Climate Change

Another area in which Stark has unique experience and expertise in combatting climate change is "focusing more on community projects, seeing what happens when a whole community goes renewable." In Canada, she adds (and we affirm it for the US, too), "too often the perception is that the environmental movement is for middle-class white people. She says that showcasing the movement's diversity can help expand it. 

The David Suzuki Foundation's Charged Up, for example, is a program designed to empower whole communities to invest in a low-carbon economy, says Stark. One particularly successful story involves the Louis Bull Tribe in Alberta. "Alberta is our Texas," says Stark: it is Canada's oil-producing center. In a unique partnership between the tribe and a group called Iron and Earth (a worker-led non-profit comprised of energy workers retraining in renewable energy projects), tribe members and former oil sands workers were able to expand their skills by receiving training in how to install solar panels, and subsequently put their new skills to work to power the community's daycare center. 

Similarly, much like Rise's "Stories and Insights," the Foundation brings sustainability home to many in its Queen of Green pages. Alone and together, and across at least one border, it seems there are ways we CAN all make a difference in fighting climate change.