Mission Statement
What is our mission?
The Planeteer Handbook is intended to be used as a guide to help anyone concerned about the environment to understand the dangers facing Earth and everyone who lives here. However, unlike many of the resources we learned environmentalism from, the focus here will be on the growing variety of things that we can do, with the knowledge, groups, technology, and resources that are available right now.
If we want to stop the decline of our planet, repair the damage, and brace for a difficult future, our solutions will need to be diverse, accessible, and affordable. Fortunately humanity has a long history of unprecedented challenges where people came together to survive. We live in a time when we can draw on lessons from the past and have more scientists with their ever-growing knowledge to help find solutions that our ancestors might never have dreamed of.
Many of us have felt frustrated and impotent, confused about which solutions are even worth pursuing. This site is dedicated to unraveling these questions, focusing on solutions that can be executed by anyone from the political level down to small grass roots groups, or even individuals.
Who can help make a difference?
Everyone has a part to play, from individuals changing simple habits, to corporations taking responsibility for their pollution, and governments passing legislation that will create jobs while solving Earth's most pressing dangers.
To assist you in your mission, we are presenting information on each page in the following format (more or less, some sections are missing as we continue to gather data):
Problem - We are trying to keep these brief, and focusing on "worst offenders" or at least articles/studies/graphs explaining how different issues stack up against one another (for example which are the worse greenhouse emitters, which can help guide us on what to tackle first).
Solutions - Ideally these will generally be in order of effectiveness, but when we have been unsure they have been listed them alphabetically or in their estimated order of effectiveness. If you have questions, doubts, or suggestions about these please feel free to talk to one of the r/planeteerhandbook mods on Reddit.
Calls to Action - These are a selection of actions that we can pick and choose from. You may only be able or willing to do one, or you can choose to try each of the listed actions, or even others we haven't mentioned. Sometimes these are listed from greatest impact first, other times we have organized them according to "Level of Activism" to give planeteers can gain a stronger idea of how these actions might affect them, the environment and/or their community.
Tools - These are mostly listed alphabetically and by location. These include apps, how-to guides, PDFs, infographics, pamphlets, directories, and more.
Maps - For now we are focusing on world maps and continental maps, with more smaller-scale maps to come as we create country/island/state pages.
Groups/Organizations - These are generally being listed by continent/country/region and alphabetically. These may include informal groups online or in person, schools, charities, and government branches or programs pertaining to the subject of said page. You may want to join these organizations and help with their projects, search through their resource pages/kits/media, donate to them, take their training courses, do outreach with/for them, or invite them to talk to your students or to other groups.
Grants & Funding - Sometimes the labeling of this section changes as the section in question may include tax rebates, coupons, tax breaks, loans, etc. We try to organize by International or specific region and include links to government websites, extension offices, charities, banks, and other resources providing funding or other monetary/crypto opportunities to people or organizations who want to start or expand existing programs or projects.
Looking Ahead
In an attempt to provide a more rounded, international, and equitable selection of solutions and resources, we are attempting to find tools, databases, statistics, and groups from around the world, with at least one country per continent were possible. With time and additional help we hope to be able to keep adding more so that anyone in any country and find groups, services, resources, etc. specifically for their area, instead of feeling left out which often happens when resources are only offered for certain western countries.
We plan to start with general information and directories for each of these topics, subjects, and solutions. Eventually we hope to include continent/country/state/regions-specific pages with a selection of locally appropriate resources for these specific places.