Learning to walk the low-carbon walk

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/02/2024 (585 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Throughout this year of witnessing our amazing toddler learn to walk and talk, we also learnt the walk and talk of low-carbon living.

With climate-induced storms and unusual weather hitting communities across the country, we want to share our family’s story of reducing our carbon footprints by almost half.

The birth of our daughter was a turning point for our family in wanting to level up our climate action.

In January 2023, we set a new year’s resolution to reduce our emissions. With our newborn daughter in our arms, we typed up a two-page climate action plan, printed it, and put it on our fridge. We joined Canadian Geographic’s LiveNetZero challenge, a competition between eight families across the country to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

With the average Canadian emitting roughly three times the global average, our hope is that we can come together to reverse the trend of rising emissions in Canada, and be part of larger efforts to reduce our household and collective emissions.

One of the key learnings we took away from our experience is to accept what we can’t control, and focus on what we can control. We can’t control smoke outside from wildfires or the fact that ski trails are closed this winter. We can control how we move around, how our home is heated, and what we eat, to some degree. This mental shift has helped us move from feelings of climate anxiety to hopefulness.

It was rewarding to recalculate our carbon emissions in January 2024 after a year of working to reduce them and to see we’d reduced them by almost half!

Imagine if we all set a goal to reduce emissions by next year and made a credible plan to do so that is acted upon, including people, organizations, cities, provinces, countries! I genuinely think that this small but significant action would be transformative.

This year when we calculated our emissions, our daughter was walking around our office, whereas as last year she wasn’t even crawling yet! Throughout this year of witnessing our amazing toddler learn to walk and talk, we also learnt the talk and walk of low-carbon transition.

Being new parents while trying to reduce our emissions has come with its own challenges, especially around lack of sleep, and finding time and energy to do anything after work and caregiving. We found motivation by being part of a structured program with other committed families with a clear focus each month. As new parents, our brain is in learning mode as we develop new parenting skills like changing diapers, so that learning mindset helped us as we adopted new low-carbon habits like more plant-based meals.

It’s always been my dream to be one of those parents who cycles with their child.

That dream came true this summer when we cycled with our daughter in a used trailer gifted to us by a friend. It was inspiring to be part of a community of learning with other families where we could ask questions or share ideas through WhatsApp.

Which actions actually reduce emissions? Not knowing can be a barrier to action.

The most impactful actions generally involve directly burning fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal). The actions that reduced our emissions the most were going from two-gas powered vehicles to one electric, one less airplane trip, and installing a heat pump — all of which reduce burning oil and gas. Other impactful actions included more plant-based meals and composting.

We need programs so that all families, including lower-income families, have net-zero heating and transportation options.

Higher-income families generally have higher footprints, and can learn from lower incomes who have had to make lower-carbon choices out of necessity, like buying second-hand and reducing food waste — eco-friendly habits that also save money.

A lot of factors influencing footprints are systemic. Governments can help us reduce our footprints through no new investments in fossil fuel infrastructure and investments in renewable energies like Indigenous-owned wind, solar, and geothermal.

Likely the most significant choice we can make is to elect governments who make climate-friendly choices.

Becoming low-carbon is a huge transition and learning process for all of us. We’re not perfect — we buy plastic pouches and forget our reusable mug sometimes. Even some solutions, like electric cars, have issues around mining impacts.

We’re all coming from different circumstances, and our paths to emission reduction is going to look a bit different for all of us. Let’s celebrate the small wins. Let’s recognize that we’re going to make mistakes and learn from them.

Over the past year, our daughter has gone from saying no words to saying over 60 words! She’s gone from not knowing how to crawl, to running around the house! She’s reminded me how capable we are as humans of learning new skills and language. What we learn depends on our environment.

It’s been so interesting to see which words our daughter has picked up, like hockey and bike (very on brand for our family). Simultaneously, as a family, we’ve been learning new words and habits, like heat pump and plant-based meals. It’s shown us that lower-carbon living, like any other skill, is something that we can learn together.

It makes me hopeful that as we learn the language and skills of climate action, so does our daughter and the next generations.

Brigette DePape’s family represented Winnipeg as part of Canadian Geographic’s Live Net Zero Challenge.