Clicktivism in action: Guide to digital climate tools

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This guide compiles some effective digital tools to help you make a difference for the climate.

In a world increasingly defined by the digital realm, activism is no longer limited to streets and rallies. As a ‘clicktivist,’ you can drive impactful climate action right from your computer or smartphone.

Ecosia – Plant trees with every search

  • Purpose: Ecosia is a search engine that uses its ad revenue to fund global reforestation projects.
  • How it helps: For every search you perform, Ecosia plants trees, supporting biodiversity and environmental restoration efforts.
  • Environmental benefit: Over 150 million trees planted so far.
  • Get started: Visit Ecosia and make it your default search engine.

Bluesky – A cleaner social media space

  • Purpose: A decentralised social platform founded by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Bluesky offers a troll-free, misinformation-free experience.
  • How it helps: Features like the GreenSky newsfeed keep users updated on clean energy, sustainability, and climate news. Starter Pack Lists enable you to follow a long list of like-minded people with one click. For instance: Do Something About Climate Change Starter Park – and Climate Scientists Katharine Recommends
  • Why switch: Reduce exposure to manipulative narratives and misinformation prevalent on platforms like X (formerly Twitter). Bluesky now has over 15 million users, with two million people joining the network just in the first two weeks of November 2024. More info below
  • Get started: Join Bluesky.

Refoorest – Plant trees while you browse

  • Purpose: A browser extension that facilitates tree planting through your online activities.
  • How it helps: Automatically highlights partner websites that contribute to reforestation.
  • Environmental benefit: Makes everyday browsing a tool for environmental impact.
  • See video about it on Youtube
  • Get started: Install Refoorest.

One Small Step – Integrate sustainability into your daily operations

  • Purpose: An Australian platform to help reduce your carbon emissions and actively drive the sustainability revolution.
  • How it helps: Access steps to seamlessly integrate environmental sustainability into your daily business operations.
  • Environmental benefit: Rapidly decarbonise and learn the skills and practices to live and work sustainably, in line with the United Nation’s 2050 goal of reducing every person’s annual carbon footprint to 2 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) or below.
  • Get started: www.onesmallstepapp.com

iNaturalist – Biodiversity tracking and Citizen Science

  • Purpose: Helps calculate and lower your carbon footprint with actionable lifestyle suggestions.
  • How it helps: Set personal goals and track progress toward reducing emissions in everyday life.
  • Environmental benefit: Makes it easy for individuals to take small, impactful steps.
  • Get started: www.zero.giki.earth

Climate Action Tracker – Policy and emissions transparency

  • Purpose: Tracks government climate policies and their alignment with the Paris Agreement.
  • How it helps: Provides activists with data to hold governments accountable.
  • Environmental benefit: Drives policy change and increases climate literacy.
  • Get started: www.climateactiontracker.org

Too Good To Go – Fight food waste

  • Purpose: Connects users with surplus food from restaurants and stores at discounted prices.
  • How it helps: Saves meals from waste while reducing methane emissions.
  • Environmental benefit: Contributes to significant reductions in food waste.
  • Get started: www.toogoodtogo.com

Good on You – Ethical fashion tracker

  • Purpose: Rates fashion brands on sustainability, labour, and animal welfare practices.
  • How it helps: Encourages consumers to support ethical and eco-friendly brands.
  • Environmental benefit: Reduces the environmental impact of fast fashion.
  • Get started: www.goodonyou.eco

UN Climate Action Now – Education and engagement hub

  • Purpose: Provides resources to learn about climate issues and take action.
  • How it helps: Offers personal action guides and insights into climate policies.
  • Environmental benefit: Supports climate literacy and engagement globally.
  • Get started: This app is available for download via app stores. More on www.un.org/en/climatechange

Open Street Map – Mapping for change

  • Purpose: Crowdsourced mapping tool supporting environmental and sustainability projects.
  • How it helps: Enables communities to visualise and coordinate litter clean-ups and conservation efforts.
  • Environmental benefit: Provides open data for monitoring environmental impacts. Geelong example
  • Try this: Use uMap for custom mapping projects. More on www.openstreetmap.org

Carbon trackers and calculators

Eco Footprint Planner – for Surf Coast residents

  • Purpose: Online tool for Surf Coast residents to check where and how much impact they have on our part of the world, and to take action in the most important and personally meaningful ways.
  • How it helps: Enables you to determine your impact on the environment – and what you can do about it.
  • Environmental benefit: Reduces residents ecological footprint more broadly – not just the carbon footprint.
  • Get started: www.sceg.org.au/calculator

Giki Zero – Track and reduce your carbon footprint

  • Purpose: Helps calculate and lower your carbon footprint with actionable lifestyle suggestions.
  • How it helps: Set personal goals and track progress toward reducing emissions in everyday life.
  • Environmental benefit: Makes it easy for individuals to take small, impactful steps.
  • Get started: www.zero.giki.earth

Aerial – Automatic carbon tracking

  • Purpose: Tracks carbon emissions from online purchases, travel, and more.
  • How it helps: Provides detailed insights and opportunities to offset emissions.
  • Environmental benefit: Simplifies sustainable living for busy individuals.
  • Get started: www.aerial.is

BlueSkies – Personal carbon calculator

  • Purpose: Helps individuals understand and reduce their carbon footprint.
  • How it helps: Provides personalised insights and actionable steps.
  • Environmental benefit: Encourages sustainable living practices.
  • Get started: Available on the app stores. Here’s Apple’s app store

Earth Hero – Climate action planner

  • Purpose: Offers tools to track emissions and set personal climate goals.
  • How it helps: Encourages collective action and measurable impact.
  • Environmental benefit: Facilitates meaningful reductions in emissions.
  • Get started: www.earthhero.org

Making a difference

As a ‘clicktivist’, you hold the power to make a difference with just a few clicks. These tools offer various pathways to contribute to the fight against climate change, from reforestation and ethical consumerism to policy advocacy and education. By integrating them into your digital life, you are an active participant in creating a safer climate.

So, which tool will you start using today?

If you already have experience with some of these tools – or if you have a comment, for instance about a new tool you have discovered, or that we have left out on this list – we encourage you to place a comment in the field at the bottom of this page.

. . .

BLUESKY IS THE NEW TWITTER – ONLY BETTER

Bluesky, a Twitter clone founded by former CEO Jack Dorsey, now has more than 15 million users after opening to the public in February 2024, with over two million people joining the platform since the presidential election in the Unites States. www.thenewdaily.com.au

The Guardian announced that it would no longer post to X because of “the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism”.

BBC News wrote that Bluesky currently is picking up around one million new sign-ups a day.

I learned some stuff about Bluesky I did not know by reading this. Maybe worth passing it on to others so we can all start getting the full benefit of the 🦋.

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— Seth Abramson (@sethabramson.bsky.social) November 17, 2024 at 7:55 PM

“does bluesky have drafts?” no, but we have kindness. we have friendship. we know love. we know how to see the world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower. we know how to hold infinity in the palm of a hand, and eternity in an hour.
~ Emily

“Truth. Evidence. Journalism. Science. The Enlightenment. A niche concept you’ll find behind a paywall at the New York Times. You have a subscription? Enjoy your clean, hygienic, fact-checked news. Then come with me into the information sewers, where we will wade through the shit everyone else consumes. Trump is cholera. His hate, his lies – it’s an infection that’s in the drinking water now. Our information system is London’s stinking streets before the Victorian miracle of sanitation. We fixed that through engineering. But we haven’t fixed this.” 
~ Carole Cadwalladr

Starter packs on Bluesky

If you’d like to quickly start following more than 1,000 climate-focused and climate-inspirational people on Bluesky, and in that way get a newsfeed which is packed with interesting climate news and stories, you can do that in less than a couple of minutes – NB, that is: after you have logged in on Bluesky – simply by opening each of the following starter pack pages in a new tab or window (right-click on the link), clicking on the blue button at the top right, and then closing that browser window/tab.

Women in climate
Women/femmes doing amazing work on climate. By ‪@ericholthaus‬

AUS energy & climate starter pack
An incomplete list of people posting about energy and climate change in Australia. By ‪@sdhamiltonvic

Aus NGO climate & Enviro news
Starter pack for Australian climate Non Government Organisations (NGOs), big and small, from advocacy and research to direct action. No individuals, only organisation accounts. By ‪@camerribek‬

Climate Change Downunder
A starter pack with people based in Australia and New Zealand working in the broad climate change space. Science, policy, impacts, solutions and current events. By ‪@ailiegallant

Folks I Admire in Climate, Part 1
These are some of my favorite climate voices — mainly scientists — on Bluesky. By ‪@globalecoguy

Greenwashing Nemeses
Hate greenwashing? These are the people who are leading to the fight to call out greenwashing and climate misinformation/disinformation, and educate the public about its prevalence. By ‪@tpspencer88

Climate Psychology
Exploring the intersection of mental health, public opinion, collective action and the climate crisis, these experts address anxiety, grief, and psychological barriers to climate action. By ‪@katharinehayhoe.com‬

Climate Science & Research Orgs
This is a list of the research centers, groups, labs and departments that bring together scientists, researchers, and communicators to get it done on climate. And who are smart enough to have a Bluesky account. By ‪@katharinehayhoe

Climate Educators
Formal or informal, this pack includes educators researching or full-time educating about climate.
K-12 climate education is a key tipping point to accelerate climate action, making this work incredibly important. By ‪@katharinehayhoe

Climate Katharines
Katharinas, Kates, Kathryns, Katjas and all the creative variations that stray from the original Greek (but keep their climate focus) are warmly welcomed in this utterly biased starter pack, curated purely for my own enjoyment. By ‪@katharinehayhoe

Climate Social Science: Behavior & Systems Change
Starter pack of social scientists working on climate/environment with a focus on behavior & systems change through activism, civic engagement, policy advocacy, communication, education, and more. By ‪@carlietrott

Climate Crisis Club Starter Pack
by ‪@climatecrisisclub

UNSW Climate Change Research Centre Scientists
Scientists, alumni and friends of the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre. By ‪@ccrc

Political economy and climate crisis
Also feat ecological, planetary, energy systems etc. By ‪@rosiecollington

Do Something About Climate Change Starter Park
A few poasters to follow if you want to live…in a livable climate. Some climate researchers, some climate journalists, some climate activists, all climate poasters. By ‪@costasamaras.com‬

…and stepping into climate and politics:

Voices of Corangamite’s Starter Pack
by ‪@vocorangamite

→ See more climate starter packs

→ The Sustainable Hour on Bluesky

→ Centre for Climate Safety on Bluesky

News from the green web 

By Curiously Green – the green web newsletter, produced by Wholegrain Digital team

→ Here’s an older page we posted about clicktivism some years ago: What ‘clicktivists’ can do