In Short : In 2024, commit to boosting renewable energy use, achieving carbon neutrality, embracing sustainable transportation, minimizing waste, fostering green home practices, staying informed about climate change, prioritizing eco-friendly purchases, supporting tree planting, engaging in community advocacy, and practicing water conservation for a greener future.
In Detail : The climate crisis has intensified this year, underscoring the urgent need for emissions reductions.
We have seen harrowing weather extremes across the world, and more records broken as the year progressed. But there is hope: with many nations and economic sectors bolstering their climate commitments. This growing determination must propel a united global effort towards much more ambitious action to reduce emissions.
As we ring in a New Year, join us in committing to resolutions that help to reduce Australia’s emissions, continue positively influencing the national conversation on climate change, and pressure decision-makers to take climate action seriously.
Here’s our top eight suggestions for your New Year’s resolutions:
1. Take collective action
Community-led action has historically been a great catalyst for systemic change. Joining a petition or protest, or contacting your local MP with an email or phone call can be powerful ways to spark important climate conversations, and can help keep climate action in the public eye. Everyday Australians speaking up to support ambitious climate policy when we see it and calling for far greater action will help shift the dial. It’s going to take all of us.
2. Move your money to ensure it isn’t used to support the fossil fuel industry
Do you know where your personal finances are invested? Many banks, super funds and share portfolios invest in fossil fuel projects. Making informed choices about where to invest your hard-earned cash will put pressure on financial institutions to do better.
Thankfully, there are a lot of options out there for banks and super funds that support renewable energy and the environment. Find out where your bank stands here, and find out more about the future your banks and super are funding here.
3. Change how you get around
Personal transport is the fastest growing source of emissions in Australia, so rapidly reducing emissions calls for a re-think of how we get around. Cars are responsible for more than 60% of Australia’s transport pollution, and while electric vehicles (EVs) are an important piece of the puzzle, we won’t achieve our climate targets with EVs alone. The way Australian cities and towns have been built forces us to be reliant on cars – so it can be hard to leave our four wheels at home and look to alternatives. Nevertheless, there may be some car trips you can swap out for a walk, ride or a trip on a bus, train or tram.
4. Make your home more energy efficient
Electricity generation is the biggest contributor to climate change in Australia because the majority of our electricity is still made by burning fossil fuels like coal and gas. Australians are also among the biggest carbon polluters on the planet, which means there is plenty more we could be doing at home to reduce our energy consumption heading into the new year. Check out our top tips for improving your home’s energy efficiency here, and find out how much you could save in energy bills and emissions each year by making basic changes around your home with our energy savings simulator here.
5. Ensure the climate information you consume is credible and science based
This could mean taking stock of where you get your news from and who you trust as a reliable source, such as the Climate Council, CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology. Have a good look at what sort of news content you’re currently consuming and think about where it comes from, what vested interests or personal bias may be influencing the news piece, and whether the claims can be fact-checked
6. Make climate action your lasting legacy
For many Australians, the new year is an important time to take stock, catch up on life admin and revisit finances. That’s why it is an increasingly common period to look into leaving a charitable bequest.
With this in mind, we’ve partnered with Gathered Here, Australia’s most trusted online Will provider to give supporters access to a free simple online Will, with unlimited updates for life!
7. Commit to having more conversations about climate change with your nearest and dearest
A few top tips to get you started:
Find common values. What is that thing that both you and the person you are talking to care about? THAT is where you start the conversation, by sharing that interest/love/value you hold dearly and explaining how climate change impacts or threatens it, or how climate solutions can help protect it.
Come armed with the facts. There’s a whole lot of misinformation out there that gets peddled to confuse, distract or delay action. So point people to trustworthy sources of information and refer to one or two facts that are compelling and easy to remember.
8. Become a Climate Council member
The World Meteorological Organisation has confirmed that 2023 will be the warmest year on record by a large margin, coming in at 1.4 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial level.
Now is a crucial time to push hard and fast to develop new climate friendly policies to slash emissions and keep us safe from worsening extreme weather.
We’ll keep fighting back against dangerous and unnecessary new fossil fuel projects to accelerate the switch to renewables. We’ll continue advocating for energy efficient homes powered by renewables and the policy to enable this. We’ll continue fighting for fuel efficiency standards to help ring in the switch to electric vehicles across Australia.
We are committed to being brave and bold in demanding science-backed climate action. From the biggest international and national media publications, to boardrooms and the general public, the Climate Council is focused on transforming what Australians think is possible when it comes to climate action in this country.
It’s our Climate Council members, who contribute an average of $7 a week, who underpin the work that we do. So if you haven’t already, consider joining us by becoming a Climate Council Member today.
Weekly and monthly donations make up a significant proportion of our funding, and they’re critical in helping us shape the conversation on climate change in Australia and push for real action from our federal politicians. Time is running out, and we know that we need to be bigger and better to help drive significant emissions reductions and large-scale solutions to climate change.