Isn’t every day Earth Day?

Cooking for the climate, counting Earths, and tracking time in nature

Food, agriculture, and land use together make up 24 percent of heat-trapping gas emissions, according to Project Drawdown. This includes what we eat, how and where it’s grown, and what we do with our food waste.

Often, we just aren’t aware of how our shopping, cooking, eating and food disposal habits contribute to climate change—which is why I was so happy to learn about EcoCooks, a non-profit in western Canada that “empowers youth to take climate action by connecting how our food choices impact the planet.”

At EcoCooks, students learn to cook plant-based recipes using ingredients they can easily find at the local grocery, like lentil tacos, vegetable and tofu stir fry, and vegan breakfast burritos. At the same time, students learn how our food systems impact the climate. “Whatever we eat can also affect the planet,” Jaela Villalobos, a 10-year-old Vancouver student told the CBC. “I had no idea that agriculture could actually release greenhouse gasses.”

These hands-on lessons build efficacy, which in turn makes kids feel enthusiastic about fighting climate change. “When kids feel empowered or excited about something, their parents often follow their lead, so it’s a really great way for them to say ‘I want to help out or I want to do this…’ and maybe influence their parents to make some changes or try something new,” said Laura Bamsey, manager of the EcoCooks Club program in Metro Vancouver. Kids often let her know they’ve made the recipes at home with their parents.

In Saving Us, I wrote about a study by researcher Danielle Lawson showing that when middle-schoolers in North Carolina learned about climate change, their parents became more concerned too. EcoCooks is a perfect example of that—when we teach children, they often turn around and teach us right back!

Today is celebrated as Earth Day – but isn’t every day Earth Day? We can’t survive without the resources this planet provides. It literally gives us the oxygen we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and all the resources we use. Yet we are depleting nature’s ability to support life about 70% faster than it is able to regenerate. That is the definition of unsustainable!

And we aren’t all contributing equally. If everyone on Earth lived like we do in Canada or the U.S., we’d need five planets to support us all. Australians, South Koreans, and many in the EU would each require more than four Earths. Even countries like China and the UK would need around 2.5 Earths if everyone adopted their lifestyles. Meanwhile, dozens of nations—like Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Haiti, Yemen and more—are using far less than their share of the Earth’s resources.

The concept of the ecological footprint was developed in 1998 by Swiss sustainability expert Mathis Wackernagel and Canadian urban planning scholar William Rees. It measures the resources needed to support one person: water, land, climate and more.

To calculate your own personal ecological footprint, use this handy calculator. If your results surprise you, check out this list for ideas on what you could do to live more sustainably—on the only planet we’ve got.

We protect what we love—but how can we love what we don’t know? Modern life often keeps us indoors, disconnected from the natural world. When was the last time you walked barefoot on grass, stopped to listen to birdsong, or sat under a tree just to breathe?

The more time we spend in nature, the more we value it—and the more motivated we are to protect it. But this isn’t just about caring for nature: it’s about caring for ourselves, too. Nature gives back, generously! As I’ve written about before, research shows that time outdoors cuts stress and can improve our mood. It sharpens our focus, lowers our blood pressure, and can even reduce inflammation linked to chronic illnesses. That’s why doctors in many countries, from Canada and the UK to Japan and New Zealand, are now prescribing nature as part of a healthy lifestyle.

And did you know there’s an app to help with this? NatureDose uses your phone’s location to track how much time you spend outside each week. It offers reminders and challenges to encourage you to spend more time outside—and to help you notice how it affects your well-being.

One tester of NatureDose described how he appreciated “knowing that I can typically correlate a week where I’m feeling more overwhelmed with a week where I spent less time outside. This is usually an after-the-fact confirmation, but also gives me motivation to get out the door each day, regardless of other influences or weather. For me, more time outside is directly proportional with less mental anguish and more happiness.”

So this week, why not give it a try and see how it makes you feel? Even 20 minutes a day in a natural setting can reduce cortisol, a stress hormone. You don’t need a forest or a mountain—just a patch of grass, a garden, a tree-lined street or a park will do.

The benefits are real, and they’re within reach for nearly all of us.

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Sat April 26 at 2pm ET - Annual UCC Earth Summit with The United Church of Christ - online, free

Wed April 30 at 8pm ET - Don’t Say Climate? Bridging Divides with Katharine Hayhoe a fundraiser for the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America - virtual, $35