That's how the NCP t-shirt puts it: One Earth, One Chance.

And we're fast running out of chances to get it right. With each tick of the clock, 2.4 million pounds of CO2

enters the atmosphere. Every minute, the world loses 150 acres of tropical rainforest. Every hour, US'ers

toss over 2 million water bottles into the trash. Fossil fuel air pollution take an average of 2.3 years off every

human lifespan; all forms of pollution take 9 million lives per year. And there are 3 billion fewer birds in

North America than 50 years ago - anybody notice?

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NCP's earth care work featured in this Brethren Voices video - give a look!

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Want to do something about it? Here's the alliterative list on the back of our shirts:

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- Less stuff: all told, humans extract 100 billion tons of materials from the earth annually - with only

8.6% of it recycled. The average American buys 60 items of clothing every year, with big eco-consequences

related to water, chemicals and greenhouse gases, and together we toss 60 million water bottles per day.

And getting the finished products made from these materials to us has its own (carbon) cost: a

mega container ship emits 250,000 tons of CO2 per year, equivalent to the annual emissions of 50,000

average cars - and wreaks havoc with whales' emotional well-being!

    Re-everything! Up to 80 percent of our greenhouse gases come from our daily household purchases:

refuse, reduce, repurpose, reuse. AND products we purchase can have a waste trail the is 90 percent

of the weight of item we have in our hand, a kind of embodied waste that we never see. Read Wasteland

on the NCP Reading List. 

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- Lower on the food chain (more grains, fruits and veggies): food production is behind a quarter of our

greenhouse gases and requires half of the planet's habitable land - meat and dairy have an out-sized

role in land use and climate change impacts.

    Vegans live longer and slash emissions by two tons of CO2 per year; vegetarians by 1.5 tons. Going 

veggie also reduces one's land use by 64 / 75 percent (vegetarian / vegan), preserving ecosystems.

 

- Lighter carbon footprint (think cars, cows, consumption, convenience - and green energy): thanks to

climate change, earth is now losing 1.2 trillion tons of ice per year = sea level rise, loss of habitat

(polar bears!), a slowing Gulf Stream (!), new pathogens released from their frozen slumber?! Air pollution,

mostly due to fossil fuel combustion, takes an average 2.3 years from our lifespan (and much more than

this in cities in South Asia). Job losses in moving away from fossil fuels? A green energy economy will

bring a net gain of 18 million jobs. 

   De-carbonize! See the car as a seldom-used transportation option; hanging out the clothes saves up to

a ton of CO2 per year - adjusting the thermostat by 3 degrees each way summer/winter saves the same; 

plant trees in your neighborhood (reduces heat and crime) or via NCP's Two Million Tree Campaign. 

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Check out The Ten (Climate) Commandments - not religious, but righteous and rigorous!

 

- Learn from nature's ways (we're the only creature that creates trash - and we're the "smart ones"):

we waste 40 percent of the food we produce, also "wasting" the land, fuel, greenhouse gases,

chemicals and eroded soil involved. Check out our interview with the trash guy on our Stuff page

to see what happens to our recyclables now that China isn't taking them anymore. Speaking of pollutants,

and especially "forever chemicals" that are contrary to nature's ways, read about the impact of war on

the people and environment in this report from the US war in Afghanistan. 

  Naturalize! Un-trash by presorting purchases to avoid anything that will end up as trash; be the food

waste police in your household (food waste is world's third largest source of greenhouse gases, after China

and the USA); make your lawn a bug-friendly space (insect populations are falling by 1-2 percent per year

as bird populations decline - is there a connection?)

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- Love this planet - our only home. We can't know whether we will save our environment, but we never

abandon what we love, no matter what!

   Show the love by helping restore some part of our world that seems abandoned. Clean and restore a

nearby stream? Or go global: Orangutan populations are down by 150,000 in Borneo, largely due to

palm oil plantations - and palm oil is an ingredient in half the stuff in the grocery store! Educate your

group about the plight of our great ape neighbors - and about being on the lookout for palm oil in their

purchases.

THEN restore forests and mangroves through our new Mangroves to the Rescue initiative in Borneo! This

island has lost half its forests since 1950, and the world has lost half its mangrove swamps over the past

50 years, even though they are wonders of nature, stabilizing coastlines as sea levels rise, blocking storm

damage, being habitat, sequestering carbon at 4x the rate of rainforest. They are disappearing thanks to 

"development", palm oil plantations and aquaculture. Show that you're not giving up on what you love!

 

- Let your voice be heard! It's not enough just to change ourselves - we have to get the word out!

Our Sustainable Living Centers are actively engaging their communities around energy efficiency,

bike lanes, food production and more. Olivia took on the Girl Scouts with a petition campaign over

their cookies containing palm oil, as producing the stuff is destroying tropical forests and using child

workers. And a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter told her story!

   Get a reputation for your eco-actions! Be the one at your congregation, school, workplace, town 

council meeting who brings up earth care - and practices what you preach!

 

Knowledge is power: Your Ecological Footprint - newly updated! We can't change what we don't know!

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Get yourself on one of our Learning Tours to the Amazon, Arctic, Asia and Africa to see what's at stake.

Get yourself one of our new t-shirts to share the good news of a better way!

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