It would be more useful to separate individual actions from collective actions. If I want to know what /I can do now/ to ensure I’m doing all I can, the collective stuff is just clutter.
Switch to Ecosia
Ecosia looks like a greenwash to me:
Microsoft syndicate
MS partnered with the absolute worst of the worst oil companies to help them find places to drill for oil (#Chevron and #ExxonMobil) which also feeds the republican party and climate denial lobbyists
Patronizes Amazon for hosting (it’s hard to be more evil than Amazon)
Reverse proxies through Cloudflare who then pushes countless graphical CAPTCHAs (see ¶9).. not to mention being responsible for compromising the privacy of everyone in the world while enshitifying 30% of the web.
Forces use of Paypal so they can sell swag, yet Paypal was caught under estimating their CO₂ footprint by something like 4000%.
Ties to Google, who helps Total Oil find places to dig for oil.
The list just goes on and on... And Ecosia hopes planting some trees will somehow offset the damage of their own existence. Not even close. Mojeek does less environmental harm by far.
Prioritize transit over cars
W.r.t. individual actions public transport doesn’t improve much because public transport systems are also quite harmful. Bicycles are the answer here. I had to take the car → tram step because it’s psychologically harder to make the big change to bicycle. But then eventually realized I could skip the wait at stops by going to bicycle. I wish I had been faster to upgrade from tram to bicycle.
Ride your bicycle instead of the car
Ah, so you had that already.. that’s the problem with this list. I guess the public transport prioritization was a collective action.
-More widespread use of contactless payments
Cash is better for the environment. The #WarOnCash is giving far too much power to banks, who also have a huge CO₂ footprint that shadows what the armored trucks do. Those banks are dumping huge amounts of money into oil companies -- see the Banking on Climate Chaos report. And see the environmental abuses column on this page. The best move is to use cash for everything.
-Require all office work to be done from home for as much as possible
Suppose it’s the middle of winter or middle of summer and 1000 employees work in an insulated energy efficient commercial building. Sending 1000 people home to heat or cool 1000 uninsulated homes is not favorable, even if those homes have heat pumps. Teleworking likely only makes sense during moderate climate times of the year.
-Improve insulation in older buildings
Perhaps a rule that employees who live in a passive home or heavily insulated home can telework all year long would inspire that.
Increase energy efficient standards with new houses with solar panels mandatory
I heard Belgium has mandated that all new builds must be a passive, meaning the not just insulated but designed with big south facing windows and everything necessary to not even need a heating or cooling system. They go as far as not even allowing a windowsill to act as a thermal bridge. Whereas in much of the US people haven’t even heard the term passive house. I spoke to a real estate agent who never heard of a passive house but he was confident that no such house existed in his state.
Someone living in a significantly sized city in the US could not find a single roofer who could install a vegetated roof. So what do you do there? Ideally roofers would get asked for a vegetated roof often enough that they come to realize they should adapt.