5 Tips Won’t Save Us
Max shares his concern for the planet and how we hope to help through Green Growth Coaching
Max Rowe - skier, artist, @maxroweart @greengrowthcoaching @ritzcarlton, Charlotte’s husband 😊
Hitting close to home in colorado
I’m worried about the future.
To be fair, I’m a self-described worrier. I’m a stresser. I’m anxious. I keep a healthy balance in my daily life, and I try not to get overwhelmed. But I am concerned about the future of humanity and our planet.
Climate change continues to affect me more and more. And as a white male insulated by privilege of race, gender, and class, I know that it is affecting many more people across the world in far worse ways.
For me, it started with fires in my home state, Colorado. Once, wildfires were a yearly or bi-yearly occurrence and arguably an important part of the natural life cycle of our ecology. Now, year after year of continually low precipitation and increasingly high temperatures has made this beautiful state into a blazing inferno every summer, where I am lucky to have only been evacuated once with no serious consequences.
can’t escape it, even in japan
As a dedicated, lifelong skier, the dwindling and sporadic winters of Colorado sent me halfway across the world to Japan. Where I could reliably ski powder every week (or day) and rest easy knowing I had found the one place in the world where I no longer had to worry about winter. Then last year happened, where I spent more days watching it rain from my window than I did with skis on my feet.
That is just my most direct and personal experiences with natural disasters driven by climate change (and yes I do consider a lack of powder days a natural disaster). I am also living with the daily reminders of others directly impacted. The news is a 24-hour cycle of disaster. Is the media sensationalized with fear as a way to sell more ads, products, and political agendas? Sure. But the media being a shit vehicle for information doesn’t take away from the losses people have, and are, experiencing. Whether it’s fires in California, Oregon, or Australia, flooding in India and Japan, hurricanes on the east coast, plagues of locust in Africa, or bitter cold plunges in Texas, we are all starting to see the negative effects of climate change more regularly and on an ever-increasing scale.
It’s easy to see the news as something separate from ourselves. We’ve become desensitized to it. But no matter how far away you think you are from climate change, it is coming for you.
I may be taking a page out of the sensationalized media in saying that, but really, it comes down to this: Climate change is a global issue. If you live on this planet, you will be affected.
Even still, your mileage may vary with that statement. You may be affected a little (like you don’t get to ski as much pow as you want, boohoo) or you may be affected a lot, like people in Texas this winter. Massive power outages during the winter storm left many without power to heat their homes in below-freezing temperatures. And those who didn’t lose power are getting slapped with $10k dollar electrical bills. Honestly, I don’t know which is worse; going a week without power during a snowstorm, or paying out the nose for a semi-normal semblance of life after the fact. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/us/texas-storm-electric-bills.html
Either way, this event is a direct symptom of climate change.
It would be better if we had less of these, not more.
No snow at ski resorts in Japan (2019).
Texas deep freeze (2020).
what do we do?
Most likely, you will be affected in ways that we cannot currently measure or understand, well beyond the simple quality of life issues. I’ll spare you the hypothesizing science fiction (or maybe save it for another post), but the truth is that climate change creates erratic and unpredictable change. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say very few of us normal (non-scientists) folk figured global “warming” would lead to Texas getting dramatically colder in a flash freeze.
If you’re still not convinced, I’m not giving up on you, and will continue to reach out to you with empathy and kindness. If you are on board, the natural next question is, “What do I do?”
A profoundly complex question for one only consisting of three different words. Ultimately, there is a lot that you can do. Here at Green Growth Coaching, one of our goals is to share ideas with you about what you can start doing right now: concrete ideas about saving water and energy, small changes in how you shop and eat that you can start right away, strategies that can not only help you save money but also become more sustainable in the process. We aim to present these ideas in a way that shows how much YOU can BENEFIT from making those changes.
I don’t think we can fairly expect eco-martyrdom from anyone (though we appreciate and respect those people), but at Green Growth Coaching, we firmly believe you have more to gain from a climate-conscious attitude and lifestyle than you have to lose.
tips are just the beginning
However! More importantly than any amount of “tricks to make your home more eco-friendly,” our biggest priority is to CHANGE YOUR MIND, and your mindset, about your place within the climate change narrative. Because yes, bringing your canvas bag to the grocery store is good. Taking shorter showers is good. Recycling is good… But you want to know what’s great? Having the confidence to collaborate and share ideas with others. That is great. Owning your responsibility and having tough conversations with the people you love. That is great. Rejecting a fear-mongering media and creating a new mainstream ideal of accepting climate change as part of our lives, and doing something about it. That is great.
While I’ve already said, we don’t expect martyrdom, but we all have to change our minds about how we want this story to end. Need a push to get started? We’re gonna share all the tips and tricks you could imagine on how to “green” your personal habits, home, work, and community. We want this journey to be fun! We will help you understand how it can, and will, benefit everything from your health to your wallet, as well as the planet. 👇
But inevitably, when you hit a wall in your journey and start asking yourself, “Is this even worth it? What more can I do?” THAT. That is where Green Growth Coaching really begins.
It’s where we will help you confront the hardest questions of your life, the ones that lead to real, lasting, life-altering transformation. Where you reconsider your values and how you’ve based your actions off of them your whole life without really understanding why. It’s where we analyze your limiting beliefs so you can finally get a grip on what is holding you back, and move past it. Where you confront your fears, even the ones you can’t bear to admit to yourself (especially those, actually), and start achieving not only the climate change impacts you’re striving for but the things in your life you’ve only dreamt of.
we can do it together
While the steps you can take today are accessible and easy, climate change will not be tackled easily. There is a lot of work to be done and not just in reducing your water usage. For instance: WE WILL NOT ACHIEVE CLIMATE JUSTICE BEFORE WE ACHIEVE SOCIAL JUSTICE. And that’s just for starters. It will be hard. It will be overwhelming, scary even.
WE’VE GOT YOU.
We are committed to your success and positive transformation. It is a mission we’ve taken on with the hope that we can leave this place better than when we started. It is our belief that it takes the best version of yourself to make that happen.
It is up to everyone to save our world (looking at you too, big corporations), but as with any great movement in history, it starts with you. It will take the best version of ourselves to overcome the looming threat of climate change. You owe it to yourself, the planet, and every living being on it, to be the best version of yourself possible. You can get started today with the affirmation, support, guidance, and accountability we can give you.
Be the change you want to see in the world. It’s a corny-ass line for sure, but it’s also a cold truth. If you don’t change, your world won’t change either. The problem with that idea, and maybe the “American way,” is that it implies doing it on your own. This isn’t realistic. At Green Growth Coaching, WE don’t want to go it alone, and we don’t want you to go it alone either. We want a clean world for everyone to live in and prosper. To make that happen, we’re going to help you make it happen for yourself first.
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