This spring, we’re digging deep into our mission with fresh enthusiasm and determination. But before we lose sight of 2023 and the hard work that got us here, we anticipate the release our 2023 Community Impact Report on May 1, 2024.
This report encapsulates the significant strides we took in the past year to address the pressing environmental challenges facing our community and our planet. We are proud of our accomplishments and deeply thankful for your support in achieving them.
From Our Archives:
As humans, we are struggling to address the existential environmental threats of global warming, ecosystem collapse, mass extinctions, and petrochemical and toxic pollution. Despite all of our technological advances and our ever-increasing wealth and capacity, sometimes it seems like we just can’t get it together to save ourselves.
But 2022 was a hopeful year. Important framework agreements on sharing the benefits and burdens of climate funding were made at COP 27 in Egypt. We are moving significantly toward reducing our emissions by 50% by 2030 and reaching carbon net zero by 2050. The Biden administration was able to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest-ever US investment in a clean green future. Governments initiated a Global Plastics Treaty process through the United Nations. By October of 2022, more than 100 nations had joined together to protect 30% of the land, air, and sea by 2030,
known as the 30×30 initiative. There is a lot of forward motion.
In this report, you will see our impacts in the areas of zero waste, climate equity, food and farming, and youth development. We are in the community educating, advocating, demonstrating, and replicating the solutions that have proven successful. We are bringing thought leadership, education and outreach, infrastructure, and many other elements to the movements, local and global, that address the acute threats we face as a community and a species.
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently informed us that we are crossing into truly uncharted territory with more than 420 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. They call for radically accelerated mitigations to avoid cataclysmic impacts that will make the planet uninhabitable for modern human society.
What’s more, we face three other global threats to life as we know it: Ecosystem Collapse, Mass Extinctions, and a Toxic Pollution Crisis ranging from plastics to pesticides. These result from ever-growing human demands and greedy corporate actors devouring and despoiling the planet. National leaders have denied this for decades while our future literally goes up in flames.
Yet we can end the climate crisis in one generation if only we have the will and gumption to use the innovative solutions at our fingertips. These solutions start at home and ripple outward. The Ecology Center is part of a global tsunami of community action, and we are your local champion for accelerating and adopting solutions. We made real progress with deep impacts in 2021, as you will see in this report.
