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Maryland is up and ready to go!  The state is split into 6 regions with the links below:

Baltimore City & County:  werenew.net/baltimore

Montgomery County:  werenew.net/montgomery

South Potomac (Prince George's & Charles County):  werenew.net/southpotomac

West Chesapeake (Howard, Anne Arundel, Calvert & St. Mary's Counties):  werenew.net/westchesapeake

Eastern Maryland:  werenew.net/easternmd

Western Maryland:  werenew.net/westernmd

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How Empowering Women and Girls Can Stop Global Warming

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How Empowering Women and Girls Can Stop Global Warming

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Katharine Wilkinson: How empowering women and girls can help stop global warming

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If we really want to address climate change, we need to make gender equity a reality, says writer and environmentalist Katharine Wilkinson. As part of Project Drawdown, Wilkinson has helped scour humanity's wisdom for solutions to draw down heat-trapping, climate-changing emissions: obvious things like renewable energy and sustainable diets and not so obvious ones, like the education and empowerment of women.

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Welcome to the Plastic Free Challenge

As zoos and aquariums, we are keenly aware of the impact humans are having on wildlife every day. That's why we are so excited to open up the Plastic Free EcoChallenge to our communities! Each year, an estimated one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die from plastics in their environment. Recent research also suggests that terrestrial species are negatively affected as more microplastics make their way into their ecosystems. Through our collective effort, Plastic Free EcoChallenge gives us the ability to make a difference for these species most impacted by our plastic pollution.

We challenge you to make small changes to reduce single-use plastics and stick with it for one month. Plastic Free EcoChallenge aims to raise awareness of the problems with single-use disposable plastic and challenges people to do something about it. You pick your challenges, ask your co-workers, family and community to come along for the ride, and set a goal that makes a difference for you, your community and our planet.

Did you know that common wisdom says it takes three weeks to change a habit? If you can stick with a new behavior for 21 days in a row, you're a lot more likely to keep it up forever. We want you to share your progress and earn points for taking action for 31 days. The combination of collective inspiration, camaraderie and friendly competition makes change a little easier - and a lot more fun.

Explore the Challenges

Discover Change, Together.

We believe the solution to the planet's biggest challenges lies in the power of collective action.

The Plastic Free July originated with a nonprofit group in Australia and has now been adapted for the zoo and aquarium community. Your organization, or one near you, takes incredible steps to address plastic consumption and has signed on to make positive changes by joining our Plastic Free EcoChallenge! As conservation and sustainability focused organizations, zoos and aquariums know how imperative healthy ecosystems and habitats are for future generations. Single-use plastics are a major threat to all species, including ourselves-let's continue to tackle the problem together to see our collective impact.

Rise to the Challenge.

The Plastic Free EcoChallenge is powered by the EcoChallenge Platform.

The EcoChallenge Platform is a signature offering of EcoChallenge.org (formerly Northwest Earth Institute), a sustainability organization that provides innovative social and digital tools designed to be a launchpad for emerging generations and sustainability leaders to experience "ah-ha" moments that lead to extraordinary environmental and social change. EcoChallenge.org also hosts a global October EcoChallenge which is free and open to everyone, everywhere. Over 73,500 people from 101 countries have used the EcoChallenge Platform and the organization has engaged over 250,000 people throughout its 25-year history. The EcoChallenge Platform can also be used to create custom Challenges that meet the engagement and action goals of your workplace, college, or community.

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Join the movement to refuse single-use plastics with Plastic Free EcoChallenge!

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Welcome to the Plastic Free Challenge As zoos and aquariums, we are keenly aware of the impact humans are having on wildlife every day. That's why we are so excited to open up the Plastic Free EcoChallenge to our communities! Each year, an estimated one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die from plastics in their environment.

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This story is part of Planet or Plastic?-our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do toreduce your own single-use plastics, andtake your pledge.

Read this story and more in theJune 2018 issue ofNational Geographic magazine.

If plastic had been invented when the Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England, to North America-and the Mayflower had been stocked with bottled water and plastic-wrapped snacks-their plastic trash would likely still be around, four centuries later.

If the Pilgrims had been like many people today and simply tossed their empty bottles and wrappers over the side, Atlantic waves and sunlight would have worn all that plastic into tiny bits. And those bits might still be floating around the world's oceans today, sponging up toxins to add to the ones already in them, waiting to be eaten by some hapless fish or oyster, and ultimately perhaps by one of us.

We should give thanks that the Pilgrims didn't have plastic, I thought recently as I rode a train to Plymouth along England's south coast. I was on my way to see a man who would help me make sense of the whole mess we've made with plastic, especially in the ocean.

Because plastic wasn't invented until the late 19th century, and production really only took off around 1950, we have a mere 9.2 billion tons of the stuff to deal with. Of that, more than 6.9 billion tons have become waste. And of that waste, a staggering 6.3 billion tons never made it to a recycling bin-a figure that stunned the scientists who crunched the numbers in 2017.

No one knows how much unrecycled plastic waste ends up in the ocean, Earth's last sink. In 2015, Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia engineering professor, caught everyone's attention with a rough estimate: between 5.3 million and 14 million tons each year just from coastal regions. Most of it isn't thrown off ships, she and her colleagues say, but is dumped carelessly on land or in rivers, mostly in Asia. It's then blown or washed into the sea. Imagine five plastic grocery bags stuffed with plastic trash, Jambeck says, sitting on every foot of coastline around the world-that would correspond to about 8.8 million tons, her middle-of-the-road estimate of what the ocean gets from us annually. It's unclear how long it will take for that plastic to completely biodegrade into its constituent molecules. Estimates range from 450 years to never.

Meanwhile, ocean plastic is estimated to kill millions of marine animals every year. Nearly 700 species, including endangered ones, are known to have been affected by it. Some are harmed visibly-strangled by abandoned fishing nets or discarded six-pack rings. Many more are probably harmed invisibly. Marine species of all sizes, from zooplankton to whales, now eat microplastics, the bits smaller than one-fifth of an inch across. On Hawaii's Big Island, on a beach that seemingly should have been pristine-no paved road leads to it-I walked ankle-deep through microplastics. They crunched like Rice Krispies under my feet. After that, I could understand why some people see ocean plastic as a looming catastrophe, worth mentioning in the same breath as climate change. At a global summit in Nairobi last December, the head of the United Nations Environment Programme spoke of an "ocean Armageddon."

And yet there's a key difference: Ocean plastic is not as complicated as climate change. There are no ocean trash deniers, at least so far. To do something about it, we don't have to remake our planet's entire energy system.

"This isn't a problem where we don't know what the solution is," says Ted Siegler, a Vermont resource economist who has spent more than 25 years working with developing nations on garbage. "We know how to pick up garbage. Anyone can do it. We know how to dispose of it. We know how to recycle." It's a matter of building the necessary institutions and systems, he says-ideally before the ocean turns, irretrievably and for centuries to come, into a thin soup of plastic.

In Plymouth, under the gray gloom of an English autumn, Richard Thompson waited in a yellow slicker outside Plymouth University's Coxside Marine Station, at the edge of the harbor. A lean man of 54, with a smooth pate rimmed with gray hair, Thompson was headed for an ordinary career as a marine ecologist in 1993-he was working on a Ph.D. on limpets and microalgae that grow on coastal rocks-when he participated in his first beach cleanup, on the Isle of Man. While other volunteers zoomed in on the plastic bottles and bags and nets, Thompson focused on the small stuff, the tiny particles that lay underfoot, ignored, at the high tide line. At first he wasn't even sure they were plastic. He had to consult forensic chemists to confirm it.

There was a real mystery to be solved back then, at least in academic circles: Scientists wondered why they weren't finding even more plastic in the sea. World production has increased exponentially-from 2.3 million tons in 1950, it grew to 162 million in 1993 and to 448 million by 2015-but the amount of plastic drifting on the ocean and washing up on beaches, alarming as it was, didn't seem to be rising as fast. "That begs the question: Where is it?" Thompson said. "We can't establish harm to the environment unless we know where it is."

In the years since his first beach cleanup, Thompson has helped provide the beginnings of an answer: The missing plastic is getting broken into pieces so small they're hard to see. In a 2004 paper, Thompson coined the term "microplastics" for these small bits, predicting-accurately, as it turned out-that they had "potential for large-scale accumulation" in the ocean.

When we met in Plymouth last fall, Thompson and two of his students had just completed a study that indicated it's not just waves and sunlight that break down plastic. In lab tests, they'd watched amphipods of the species Orchestia gammarellus -tiny shrimplike crustaceans that are common in European coastal waters-devour pieces of plastic bags and determined they could shred a single bag into 1.75 million microscopic fragments. The little creatures chewed through plastic especially fast, Thompson's team found, when it was coated with the microbial slime that is their normal food. They spat out or eventually excreted the plastic bits.

Microplastics have been found everywhere in the ocean that people have looked, from sediments on the deepest seafloor to ice floating in the Arctic-which, as it melts over the next decade, could release more than a trillion bits of plastic into the water, according to one estimate. On some beaches on the Big Island of Hawaii, as much as 15 percent of the sand is actually grains of microplastic. Kamilo Point Beach, the one I walked on, catches plastic from the North Pacific gyre, the trashiest of five swirling current systems that transport garbage around the ocean basins and concentrate it in great patches. At Kamilo Point the beach is piled with laundry baskets, bottles, and containers with labels in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, and occasionally, Russian. On Henderson Island, an uninhabited coral island in the South Pacific, researchers have found an astonishing volume of plastic from South America, Asia, New Zealand, Russia, and as far away as Scotland.

As Thompson and I talked about all this, a day boat called the Dolphin was carrying us through a light chop in the Sound, off Plymouth. Thompson reeled out a fine-mesh net called a manta trawl, usually used for studying plankton. We were close to the spot where, a few years earlier, other researchers had collected 504 fish of 10 species and given them to Thompson. Dissecting the fish, he was surprised to find microplastics in the guts of more than one-third of them. The finding made international headlines.

After we'd steamed along for a while, Thompson reeled the manta trawl back in. There was a smattering of colored plastic confetti at the bottom. Thompson himself doesn't worry much about microplastics in his fish and chips-there's little evidence yet that they pass from the gut of a fish into the flesh we actually eat. (See We Know Plastic Is Harming Marine Life. What About Us?) He worries more about the things that none of us can see-the chemicals added to plastics to give them desirable properties, such as malleability, and the even tinier nanoplastics that microplastics presumably degrade into. Those might pass into the tissues of fish and humans.

"We do know the concentrations of chemicals at the time of manufacture in some cases are very high," Thompson said. "We don't know how much additive is left in the plastic by the time it becomes bite-size to a fish.

"Nobody has found nanoparticles in the environment-they're below the level of detection for analytical equipment. People think they are out there. They have the potential to be sequestered in tissue, and that could be a game changer."

Thompson is careful not to get ahead of the science on his subject. He's far from an alarmist-but he's also convinced that plastic trash in the ocean is far more than an aesthetic problem. "I don't think we should be waiting for a key finding of whether or not fish are hazardous to eat," he said. "We have enough evidence to act."

How did we get here? When did the dark side of the miracle of plastic first show itself? It's a question that can be asked about many of the marvels of our technological world. Since helping the Allies win World War II-think of nylon parachutes or lightweight airplane parts-plastics have transformed all our lives as few other inventions have, mostly for the better. They've eased travel into space and revolutionized medicine. They lighten every car and jumbo jet today, saving fuel-and pollution. In the form of clingy, light-as-air wraps, they extend the life of fresh food. In airbags, incubators, helmets, or simply by delivering clean drinking water to poor people in those now demonized disposable bottles, plastics save lives daily.

In one of their early applications, they saved wildlife. In the mid-1800s, piano keys, billiard balls, combs, and all manner of trinkets were made of a scarce natural material: elephant ivory. With the elephant population at risk and ivory expensive and scarce, a billiards company in New York City offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could come up with an alternative.

As Susan Freinkel tells the tale in her book, Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, an amateur inventor named John Wesley Hyatt took up the challenge. His new material, celluloid, was made of cellulose, the polymer found in all plants. Hyatt's company boasted that it would eliminate the need "to ransack the Earth in pursuit of substances which are constantly growing scarcer." Besides sparing at least some elephants, celluloid also helped change billiards from solely an aristocratic pastime to one that working people play in bars.

That's a trivial example of a profound revolution ushered in by plastic-an era of material abundance. The revolution accelerated in the early 20th century, once plastics began to be made from the same stuff that was giving us abundant, cheap energy: petroleum. Oil companies had waste gases like ethylene coming out the stacks of their refineries. Chemists discovered they could use those gases as building blocks, or monomers, to create all sorts of novel polymers-polyethylene terephthalate, for example, or PET-instead of working only with polymers that already existed in nature. A world of possibilities opened up. Anything and everything could be made of plastic, and so it was, because plastics were cheap.

They were so cheap, we began to make things we never intended to keep. In 1955 Life magazine celebrated the liberation of the American housewife from drudgery. Under the headline "Throwaway Living," a photograph showed a family flinging plates, cups, and cutlery into the air. The items would take 40 hours to clean, the text noted-"except that no housewife need bother." When did plastics start to show their dark side? You might say it was when the junk in that photo hit the ground.

Six decades later, roughly 40 percent of the now more than 448 million tons of plastic produced every year is disposable, much of it used as packaging intended to be discarded within minutes after purchase. Production has grown at such a breakneck pace that virtually half the plastic ever manufactured has been made in the past 15 years. Last year the Coca-Cola Company, perhaps the world's largest producer of plastic bottles, acknowledged for the first time just how many it makes: 128 billion a year. Nestlé, PepsiCo, and others also churn out torrents of bottles.

The growth of plastic production has far outstripped the ability of waste management to keep up: That's why the oceans are under assault. "It's not surprising that we broke the system," Jambeck says. "That kind of increase would break any system not prepared for it." In 2013 a group of scientists issued a new assessment of throwaway living. Writing in Nature magazine, they declared that disposable plastic should be classified, not as a housewife's friend, but as a hazardous material.

In recent years the surge in production has been driven largely by the expanded use of disposable plastic packaging in the growing economies of Asia-where garbage collection systems may be underdeveloped or nonexistent. In 2010, according to an estimate by Jambeck, half the world's mismanaged plastic waste was generated by just five Asian countries: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka.

"Let's say you recycle 100 percent in all of North America and Europe," says Ramani Narayan, a chemical engineering professor at Michigan State University who also works in his native India. "You still would not make a dent on the plastics released into the oceans. If you want to do something about this, you have to go there, to these countries, and deal with the mismanaged waste."

The Pasig River once flowed majestically through downtown Manila, capital of the Philippines, and emptied into pristine Manila Bay. It was a treasured waterway and civic point of pride. It's now listed among the top 10 rivers in the world that convey plastic waste to the sea. As many as 72,000 tons flow downstream each year, mostly during the monsoon. In 1990 the Pasig was declared biologically dead.

The Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission, established in 1999, is working to clean up the river, with some signs of success. Jose Antonio Goitia, the commission's executive director, says he is optimistic that the Pasig could be restored someday, although he acknowledges he has no easy way of doing that. "Maybe the best thing to do is ban plastic bags," he says.

The remaining challenges are clearly visible every day. The river is fed by 51 tributaries, some of them overflowing with plastic waste from squatter settlements that cantilever precariously over creek banks. A tributary near Chinatown, where rickety shanties are wedged between modern buildings, is so choked with plastic debris you can walk across it, forgoing the footbridge. Manila Bay's beaches, once recreational respites for greater Manila's 13 million residents, are littered with garbage, much of it plastic. Last fall Break Free From Plastic, a coalition including Greenpeace and other groups, cleaned a beach on Freedom Island, which is advertised as an ecotourism district; volunteers picked up 54,260 pieces of plastic, from shoes to food containers. By the time I visited a few weeks later, the beach was littered again with bottles, wrappers, and shopping bags.

The scene in Manila is typical of large, overcrowded urban centers across Asia. The Philippines is a densely populated nation of 105 million people that is still struggling with the most basic public health issues, including waterborne diseases such as typhoid and bacterial diarrhea. It's no surprise that it has trouble managing the explosion of plastic garbage. Manila has a metropolitan garbage collection system that stretches across 17 separate local governments-a source of chaos and inefficiency. In 2004 the region was already running out of land to safely dump garbage. The shortage of landfill space, and thus the crisis, continues today.

A small part of the slack is taken up by Manila's informal recycling industry, which consists of thousands of waste pickers. Armando Siena, 34, is one of them. He and his wife, Angie, 31, have lived their entire lives surrounded by trash. They were born on Smokey Mountain, an internationally notorious dump that was officially closed in the 1990s. They now live with their three children near Manila's waterfront in a one-room flat lit by a single bulb, furnished with a pair of plastic chairs, and lacking plumbing, bedding, or refrigeration. The flat is in a garbage-filled slum named Aroma, next to another slum named Happyland.

Every day Siena rides a rickety bicycle beyond Aroma's boundaries, scanning the streets for recyclable rubbish that he can stuff into his sidecar. Plastic soup containers are high-value finds, paying 20 pesos (38 cents) a kilogram. Siena sorts and sells his load to a junk shop owned by his uncle, who trucks the waste to recycling plants on the outskirts of Manila.

Waste pickers like Siena are part of the solution, some activists argue; they just need a living wage. In the Baseco waterfront slum in Manila, a tiny recycling shop operated by the Plastic Bank of Vancouver, British Columbia, pays a premium for bottles and hard plastic collected by waste pickers. It then sells that plastic at a higher price to multinationals, which market their recycled products as socially responsible.

Siegler, the Vermont economist, has worked in enough countries and run enough numbers to be skeptical of such schemes. "There is not enough value in plastics to make that work," he says. "It's cheaper to fund a solid waste management system than to subsidize collecting plastic."

The waste that clogs Manila's beaches and waterways reinforces Siegler's point. Much of it consists of sachets-tear-off packets that once held a single serving of shampoo, toothpaste, coffee, condiments, or other products. They are sold by the millions to poor people like Siena and his family, who can't afford to buy more than one serving at a time. Sachets blow around Manila like leaves falling from trees. They're not recyclable, so no waste picker will retrieve them. Crispian Lao, a member of the National Solid Waste Management Commission, says, "This segment of packaging is growing, and it has become a real challenge for solid waste management."

When Greenpeace cleaned the Freedom Island beach, it posted a tally of the brand names of the sachets its volunteers had collected. Nestlé ranked first, Unilever second. Litterbugs aren't the only ones at fault, says Greenpeace's Abigail Aguilar: "We believe that the ones producing and promoting the use of single-use plastics have a major role in the whole problem." A Unilever spokeswoman in Manila told me the company is developing a recyclable sachet.

After Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from radar screens in March 2014 while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the search for it extended from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean. It captivated a global audience for weeks. No sign of the wreckage appeared. On several occasions, when satellite images revealed collections of objects floating on the sea surface, hopes soared that they would turn out to be aircraft parts. They weren't. It was all trash-pieces of broken shipping containers, abandoned fishing gear, and of course, plastic shopping bags.

Kathleen Dohan, a scientist and the president of Earth and Space Research in Seattle, saw opportunity in the horror: The images from space were pushing a problem into view that had long been neglected. "This is the first time the whole world is watching," she told me at the time. "It's a good time for people to understand that our oceans are garbage dumps." Dohan sensed a tipping point in public awareness-and the events since suggest she may have been right.

The most heartening thing about the plastic waste problem is the recent explosion of attention to it, and even of serious, if scattered, efforts to address it. A partial list of the good news since 2014 would include, in no particular order: Kenya joined a growing list of nations that have banned plastic bags, imposing steep fines and jail time on violators. France said it would ban plastic plates and cups by 2020. Bans on plastic microbeads in cosmetics (they're exfoliants) take effect this year in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and four other countries. The industry is phasing them out.

Corporations are responding to public opinion. Coca-Cola, which also produces Dasani water, announced a goal to "collect and recycle the equivalent of" 100 percent of its packaging by 2030. It and other multinationals, including PepsiCo, Amcor, and Unilever, have pledged to convert to 100 percent reusable, recyclable, or compostable packaging by 2025. And Johnson & Johnson is switching from plastic back to paper stems on its cotton swabs.

Individuals are making a difference too. Ellen MacArthur, a British yachtswoman, has created a foundation to promote the vision of a "circular economy," in which all materials, including plastics, are designed to be reused or recycled, not dumped. Actor Adrian Grenier has lent his celebrity to the campaign against the plastic drinking straw. And Boyan Slat, 23, from the Netherlands, is charging ahead with his teenage vow to clean up the largest garbage patch in the North Pacific. His organization has raised more than $30 million to construct an ocean-sweeping machine that is still under development.

All of these measures help at some level-even beach cleanups, futile as they sometimes seem. A beach cleanup hooked Richard Thompson on the plastic problem a quarter century ago. But the real solution, he now thinks, is to stop plastic from entering the ocean in the first place-and then to rethink our whole approach to the amazing stuff. "We've done a lot of work making sure plastic does its job, but very little amount of work on what happens to that product at the end of its lifetime," he says. "I'm not saying plastics are the enemy, but there is a lot the industry can do to help solve the problem."

There are two fundamental ways industry can help, if it wants or is forced to. First, along with academic scientists such as Jambeck, it can design new plastics and new plastic products that are either biodegradable or more recyclable (see You Can Help Turn the Tide on Plastic. Here's How.). New materials and more recycling, along with simply avoiding unnecessary uses of the stuff, are the long-term solutions to the plastic waste problem. But the fastest way to make a big difference, Siegler says, is low tech. It's more garbage trucks and landfills.

"Everyone wants a sexy answer," he says. "The reality is, we need to just collect the trash. Most countries that I work in, you can't even get it off the street. We need garbage trucks and help institutionalizing the fact that this waste needs to be collected on a regular basis and landfilled, recycled, or burned so that it doesn't end up going all over the place."

That's the second way industry could help: It could pony up. Siegler has proposed a worldwide tax of a penny on every pound of plastic resin manufactured. The tax would raise roughly six billion dollars a year that could be used to finance garbage collection systems in developing nations. The idea never caught on. In the fall of 2017, though, a group of scientists revived the concept of a global fund. The group called for an international agreement patterned after the Paris climate accord.

At the Nairobi meeting in December, 193 nations, including the U.S., actually passed one. The United Nations Clean Seas agreement doesn't impose a tax on plastic. It's nonbinding and toothless. It's really just a declaration of a good intention-the intention to end ocean plastic pollution. In that way it's less like the Paris Agreement and more like the Rio de Janeiro treaty, in which the world pledged to combat dangerous climate change-back in 1992. Norway's environment minister, Vidar Helgesen, called this new agreement a strong first step.

Staff writer Laura Parker and photographer Randy Olson last worked together on a feature on the vanishing Ogallala aquifer, which was published in the August 2016 issue.

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We Depend On Plastic. Now, We're Drowning in It.

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This story is part of Planet or Plastic?-our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do toreduce your own single-use plastics, andtake your pledge. Read this story and more in theJune 2018 issue ofNational Geographic magazine.

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Project Drawdown Eco Challenge

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Connect the dots between your values and the impact of your actions with Drawdown Ecochallenge!

Drawdown Ecochallenge is offered in partnership by Ecochallenge.org and Project Drawdown. Together, we're taking action on the 100 most substantive solutions to global warming. Stretch your limits, earn points, and see your positive impact grow. Take the challenge, and see how a few weeks of action add up to a lifetime of change for you and the planet.

Ecochallenge.org's social change platform + curriculum connect a global community of advocates and changemakers, each doing what we can, in ways that are most relevant to us, to make this great spinning dot we call home a healthier, more equitable, more sustainable place.

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Join the Drawdown Ecochallenge, presented by Ecochallenge.org

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Connect the dots between your values and the impact of your actions with Drawdown Ecochallenge! Drawdown Ecochallenge is offered in partnership by Ecochallenge.org and Project Drawdown. Together, we're taking action on the 100 most substantive solutions to global warming. Stretch your limits, earn points, and see your positive impact grow.

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Make a difference on climate change.

Train with former US Vice President Al Gore and join a community of almost 50,000 changemakers working for just climate solutions worldwide.

The Climate Reality Leadership Corps was born from the simple belief that everyday people could lead the fight on climate and together change the world.

The program started back in 2006, when 50 aspiring advocates joined Vice President Gore at his barn in Nashville, Tennessee to learn how to share the truth about the climate crisis, just as he had in the Academy Award-winning film "An Inconvenient Truth."

Two decades on, that 50 has grown to over 45,000 advocates working together for bold and just climate solutions across sectors and continents. People come to the Climate Reality Leadership Corps with a desire to make a difference on climate. We give them the tools, training, and network to do it.

The first step to becoming a Climate Reality Leader is attending a special multiday training, either online or in person in cities and communities around the world.

By attending a training, you'll:

We hold numerous Climate Reality Leadership Corps trainings throughout the year, with varying thematic focuses and both online and in-person options available.

Led by Vice President Gore and featuring advocates and experts from a wide range of fields, our foundational Climate Reality Leadership Corps trainings provide attendees with a deeper understanding of how the climate crisis is transforming our world today and the solutions in our hands. Select trainings will also focus on the climate fight in strategic regions and countries, as recent offerings have with Brazil and the Western US.

Our newest offering, Power Up Trainings, focus on key issues and opportunities in the climate and justice fight, with targeted content and skill-building workshops enabling attendees to seize a critical moment.

To learn more about Climate Reality Leadership Corps trainings as they're announced, simply fill out the form to the right and we'll in touch.

"It was one of the best climate-related trainings I have attended. I was inspired to hear and learn from the work of a diverse group of climate advocates, and it has enhanced my knowledge on environmental justice and the links between inequality and climate change. I also found the facts and figures with regards to connection between lived experiences and climate science very insightful."

-Muna Mumthaz, The Maldives

-Ester António, Mozambique

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Learn more about the Climate Reality Leadership Corps and find out how you can join the global network of extraordinary people helping educate the world about the climate crisis.

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Delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held on October 24-27, 1991, in Washington DC, drafted and adopted 17 principles of Environmental Justice. Since then, The Principles have served as a defining document for the growing grassroots movement for environmental justice.
WE, THE PEOPLE OF COLOR, gathered together at this multinational People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, to begin to build a national and international movement of all peoples of color to fight the destruction and taking of our lands and communities, do hereby re-establish our spiritual interdependence to the sacredness of our Mother Earth; to respect and celebrate each of our cultures, languages and beliefs about the natural world and our roles in healing ourselves; to ensure environmental justice; to promote economic alternatives which would contribute to the development of environmentally safe livelihoods; and, to secure our political, economic and cultural liberation that has been denied for over 500 years of colonization and oppression, resulting in the poisoning of our communities and land and the genocide of our peoples, do affirm and adopt these Principles of Environmental Justice:

1) Environmental Justice affirms the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and the interdependence of all species, and the right to be free from ecological destruction.

2) Environmental Justice demands that public policy be based on mutual respect and justice for all peoples, free from any form of discrimination or bias.

3) Environmental Justice mandates the right to ethical, balanced and responsible uses of land and renewable resources in the interest of a sustainable planet for humans and other living things.

4) Environmental Justice calls for universal protection from nuclear testing, extraction, production and disposal of toxic/hazardous wastes and poisons and nuclear testing that threaten the fundamental right to clean air, land, water, and food.

5) Environmental Justice affirms the fundamental right to political, economic, cultural and environmental self-determination of all peoples.

6) Environmental Justice demands the cessation of the production of all toxins, hazardous wastes, and radioactive materials, and that all past and current producers be held strictly accountable to the people for detoxification and the containment at the point of production.

7) Environmental Justice demands the right to participate as equal partners at every level of decision-making, including needs assessment, planning, implementation, enforcement and evaluation.

8) Environmental Justice affirms the right of all workers to a safe and healthy work environment without being forced to choose between an unsafe livelihood and unemployment. It also affirms the right of those who work at home to be free from environmental hazards.

9) Environmental Justice protects the right of victims of environmental injustice to receive full compensation and reparations for damages as well as quality health care.

10) Environmental Justice considers governmental acts of environmental injustice a violation of international law, the Universal Declaration On Human Rights, and the United Nations Convention on Genocide.

11) Environmental Justice must recognize a special legal and natural relationship of Native Peoples to the U.S. government through treaties, agreements, compacts, and covenants affirming sovereignty and self-determination.

12) Environmental Justice affirms the need for urban and rural ecological policies to clean up and rebuild our cities and rural areas in balance with nature, honoring the cultural integrity of all our communities, and provided fair access for all to the full range of resources.

13) Environmental Justice calls for the strict enforcement of principles of informed consent, and a halt to the testing of experimental reproductive and medical procedures and vaccinations on people of color.

14) Environmental Justice opposes the destructive operations of multi-national corporations.

15) Environmental Justice opposes military occupation, repression and exploitation of lands, peoples and cultures, and other life forms.

16) Environmental Justice calls for the education of present and future generations which emphasizes social and environmental issues, based on our experience and an appreciation of our diverse cultural perspectives.

17) Environmental Justice requires that we, as individuals, make personal and consumer choices to consume as little of Mother Earth's resources and to produce as little waste as possible; and make the conscious decision to challenge and reprioritize our lifestyles to ensure the health of the natural world for present and future generations.

The Proceedings to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit are available from the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, 475 Riverside Dr. Suite 1950, New York, NY 10115.

Last modified: 6 April 1996

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Delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held on October 24-27, 1991, in Washington DC, drafted and adopted 17 principles of Environmental Justice.

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An international coalition of groups gathered in Johannesburg for the Earth Summit has released a set of principles aimed at "putting a human face" on climate change. The Bali Principles of Climate Justice redefine climate change from a human rights and environmental justice perspective. The principles were developed by the coalition -- which includes CorpWatch, Third World Network, Oil Watch, the Indigenous Environmental Network, among others -- at the final preparatory negotiations for the Earth Summit in Bali in June 2002.
Climate change may very well be the biggest threat facing humanity. Yet, the negotiations to find solutions have so far been mired mostly in the technical arena, and have been derailed by special interest groups such as large oil, coal and utility companies and governments such as the United States. The latest example are the efforts to sideline renewable energy plans at the Johannesburg Summit. For many, the issue of climate is a matter of life and death. The biggest injustice of climate change is that the hardest hit are the least responsible for contributing to the problem. The Bali Principles of Climate Justice seek to broaden the constituency providing leadership on climate change. They do so by linking local community issues to climate change. The Climate Justice coalition -- together with its members from India -- the National Fishworkers Forum, the National Alliance of People's Movements and Mines, Minerals and People -- also extend an invitation to the international community to participate in the Climate Justice Summit slated for New Delhi from October 26-28, 2002- parallel to the COP8 meeting on the Kyoto Protocol. The Summit will consist of a series of events that will emphasize the real impacts of climate change on people, while exposing the special interests at work in derailing the efforts to genuinely address the problem. The International Climate Justice Network includes: CorpWatch, Friends of the Earth International, Greenpeace International, groundwork, Indigenous Environmental Network, Indigenous Information Network, National Alliance of People's Movements, National Fishworkers Forum, OilWatch Africa, OilWatch International, Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice, Third World Network and World Rainforest Movement.
Bali Principles of Climate Justice
29 August 2002
P R E A M B L E

Whereas climate change is a scientific reality whose effects are already being felt around the world;

Whereas if consumption of fossil fuels, deforestation and other ecological devastation continues at current rates, it is certain that climate change will result in increased temperatures, sea level rise, changes in agricultural patterns, increased frequency and magnitude of "natural" disasters such as floods, droughts, loss of biodiversity, intense storms and epidemics;

Whereas deforestation contributes to climate change, while having a negative impact on a broad array of local communities;

Whereas communities and the environment feel the impacts of the fossil fuel economy at every stage of its life cycle, from exploration to production to refining to distribution to consumption to disposal of waste;

Whereas climate change and its associated impacts are a global manifestation of this local chain of impacts;

Whereas fossil fuel production and consumption helps drive corporate-led globalization;

Whereas climate change is being caused primarily by industrialized nations and transnational corporations;

Whereas the multilateral development banks, transnational corporations and Northern governments, particularly the United States, have compromised the democratic nature of the United Nations as it attempts to address the problem;

Whereas the perpetration of climate change violates the Universal Declaration On Human Rights, and the United Nations Convention on Genocide;

Whereas the impacts of climate change are disproportionately felt by small island states, women, youth, coastal peoples, local communities, indigenous peoples, fisherfolk, poor people and the elderly;

Whereas local communities, affected people and indigenous peoples have been kept out of the global processes to address climate change;

Whereas market-based mechanisms and technological "fixes" currently being promoted by transnational corporations are false solutions and are exacerbating the problem;

Whereas unsustainable production and consumption practices are at the root of this and other global environmental problems;

Whereas this unsustainable consumption exists primarily in the North, but also among elites within the South;

Whereas the impacts will be most devastating to the vast majority of the people in the South, as well as the "South" within the North;

Whereas the impacts of climate change threaten food sovereignty and the security of livelihoods of natural resource-based local economies;

Whereas the impacts of climate change threaten the health of communities around the world-especially those who are vulnerable and marginalized, in particular children and elderly people;

Whereas combating climate change must entail profound shifts from unsustainable production, consumption and lifestyles, with industrialized countries taking the lead;

We, representatives of people's movements together with activist organizations working for social and environmental justice resolve to begin to build an international movement of all peoples for Climate Justice based on the following core principles:

1. Affirming the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and the interdependence of all species, Climate Justice insists that communities have the right to be free from climate change, its related impacts and other forms of ecological destruction.

2. Climate Justice affirms the need to reduce with an aim to eliminate the production of greenhouse gases and associated local pollutants.

3. Climate Justice affirms the rights of indigenous peoples and affected communities to represent and speak for themselves.

4. Climate Justice affirms that governments are responsible for addressing climate change in a manner that is both democratically accountable to their people and in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.

5. Climate Justice demands that communities, particularly affected communities play a leading role in national and international processes to address climate change.

6. Climate Justice opposes the role of transnational corporations in shaping unsustainable production and consumption patterns and lifestyles, as well as their role in unduly influencing national and international decision-making.

7. Climate Justice calls for the recognition of a principle of ecological debt that industrialized governments and transnational corporations owe the rest of the world as a result of their appropriation of the planet's capacity to absorb greenhouse gases.

8. Affirming the principle of ecological debt, Climate Justice demands that fossil fuel and extractive industries be held strictly liable for all past and current life-cycle impacts relating to the production of greenhouse gases and associated local pollutants.

9. Affirming the principle of Ecological debt, Climate Justice protects the rights of victims of climate change and associated injustices to receive full compensation, restoration, and reparation for loss of land, livelihood and other damages.

10. Climate Justice calls for a moratorium on all new fossil fuel exploration and exploitation; a moratorium on the construction of new nuclear power plants; the phase out of the use of nuclear power world wide; and a moratorium on the construction of large hydro schemes.

11. Climate Justice calls for clean, renewable, locally controlled and low-impact energy resources in the interest of a sustainable planet for all living things.

12. Climate Justice affirms the right of all people, including the poor, women, rural and indigenous peoples, to have access to affordable and sustainable energy.

13. Climate Justice affirms that any market-based or technological solution to climate change, such as carbon-trading and carbon sequestration, should be subject to principles of democratic accountability, ecological sustainability and social justice.

14. Climate Justice affirms the right of all workers employed in extractive, fossil fuel and other greenhouse-gas producing industries to a safe and healthy work environment without being forced to choose between an unsafe livelihood based on unsustainable production and unemployment.

15. Climate Justice affirms the need for solutions to climate change that do not externalize costs to the environment and communities, and are in line with the principles of a just transition.

16. Climate Justice is committed to preventing the extinction of cultures and biodiversity due to climate change and its associated impacts.

17. Climate Justice affirms the need for socio-economic models that safeguard the fundamental rights to clean air, land, water, food and healthy ecosystems.

18. Climate Justice affirms the rights of communities dependent on natural resources for their livelihood and cultures to own and manage the same in a sustainable manner, and is opposed to the commodification of nature and its resources.

19. Climate Justice demands that public policy be based on mutual respect and justice for all peoples, free from any form of discrimination or bias.

20. Climate Justice recognizes the right to self-determination of Indigenous Peoples, and their right to control their lands, including sub-surface land, territories and resources and the right to the protection against any action or conduct that may result in the destruction or degradation of their territories and cultural way of life.

21. Climate Justice affirms the right of indigenous peoples and local communities to participate effectively at every level of decision-making, including needs assessment, planning, implementation, enforcement and evaluation, the strict enforcement of principles of prior informed consent, and the right to say "No."

22. Climate Justice affirms the need for solutions that address women's rights.

23. Climate Justice affirms the right of youth as equal partners in the movement to address climate change and its associated impacts.

24. Climate Justice opposes military action, occupation, repression and exploitation of lands, water, oceans, peoples and cultures, and other life forms, especially as it relates to the fossil fuel industry's role in this respect.

25. Climate Justice calls for the education of present and future generations, emphasizes climate, energy, social and environmental issues, while basing itself on real-life experiences and an appreciation of diverse cultural perspectives.

26. Climate Justice requires that we, as individuals and communities, make personal and consumer choices to consume as little of Mother Earth's resources, conserve our need for energy; and make the conscious decision to challenge and reprioritize our lifestyles, re-thinking our ethics with relation to the environment and the Mother Earth; while utilizing clean, renewable, low-impact energy; and ensuring the health of the natural world for present and future generations.

27. Climate Justice affirms the rights of unborn generations to natural resources, a stable climate and a healthy planet.

Adopted using the "Environmental Justice Principles" developed at the 1991 People of Color Environmental Justice Leadership Summit, Washington, DC, as a blueprint. Endorsed by: CorpWatch, US

Friends of the Earth International

Greenpeace International

groundwork, South Africa

Indigenous Environmental Network, North America

Indigenous Information Network, Kenya

National Alliance of People's Movements, India

National Fishworkers Forum, India

OilWatch Africa

OilWatch International

Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice, US

Third World Network, Malaysia

World Rainforest Movement, Uruguay For more information, contact Amit Srivastava, email: amit@corpwatch.org, Tel: +1 415 561 6472, +27 (0)72 477 2267 (in Johannesburg)
AMP Section Name: Climate Justice Initiative

100 Climate Justice Initiative

107 Energy

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An international coalition of groups gathered in Johannesburg for the Earth Summit has released a set of principles aimed at "putting a human face" on climate change. The Bali Principles of Climate Justice redefine climate change from a human rights and environmental justice perspective.

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At The Climate Reality Project, our global network of 3.5 million is working to build a just and sustainable true net zero future. Join us.

Get the tools, training, and network to help stop global warming and build a net zero future for the Earth.

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Get the tools, training, and network to fight climate change and together build the world we want.

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350.org: A global campaign to confront the climate crisis

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We are standing up to the fossil fuel industry to stop all new coal, oil and gas projects and build clean energy future for all.

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Drawdown: Getting into Action

Baltimore 350 has been running an exciting workshop where we learned about the latest research from Project Drawdown on reversing global warming. The last of four working sessions is scheduled for Saturday, November 9 from 2-4:30 PM EST.

OnDecember 3 (Tuesday evening), we'll share the climate solutions we've developed and celebrate our hard work.

Baltimore 350 invites you to an engaging discussion of Baltimore-based solutions to the climate crisis. Inspired by the solutions presented in Project Drawdown and the Pachama Alliance, this event will showcase projects to improve our local environment and economy that will:

Save money by using community solar

Reduce waste though composting and effective food management

Eliminate single-use plastics, improve education opportunnities, and more!

Enjoy a light dinner and join us in learning how we can build a stronger, healther, and more resilient Baltimore. Click to Register

Maryland People's Climate Summit

December 14, 2019

On December 14, 2019, a coalition of advocacy groups will be hosting an exciting one-day conference called Rebuild Maryland: The People's Climate Summit. We'll have inspiring speakers and give you an opportunity to tell us what climate solutions inspire you the most. Register

October 5 - Drawdown Session Two

September 21 - Drawdown Session One

Workshop sessions are being held in Lutherville at St. Paul's Lutheran church at 1609 Kurtz Avenue, Lutherville, 21093 -- (Building: Spangler Hall; room: the "Youth Room")

Google Map to St. Paul's // Directions (& Map)

In the meantime, visit the Project Drawdown website https://www.drawdown.org/ to learn more about 100 solutions for reversing global warming.

Climate Crisis Town Hall

Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger and Congressman John Sarbanes hosted on March 28 a town hall at the Towson library on the climate crisis.

The audience of more than 100 were able to question the two congressmen and determine their viewpoints and their work to address the climate crisis. Both have signed on to the New Green Deal Resolution.
[No, Ruppersberger wasn't trying to hit Sarbanes; they seemed to agree on what needs to be done.]

Baltimore350 visited Senator Chris Van Hollen's February 8, to drop off petitions and to obtain the support of the senator for the Green New Deal. For background info, see: [Sunrise-Green New Deal]
The House Resolution: Green New Deal
More Photos

Lobby Night

A group of Baltimore 350's members participated in the Lobby Night at Annapolis, sponsored by the Maryland Chapter of the Sierra Club. Our members met with the staff of Senator Chris West (District 42), and delegates Steve Lafferty (42A), Michele Guyton (42B), and Nino Mangione (42B). We applaud the stands taken by West, Lafferty, and Guyton who were generally in alignment with the four bills Sierra Club highlighted that evening.

Click the map for directions to First and St. Stephens United Church of Christ located on 6915 York Road, Towson Maryland, 21212.

Environmental Organizations in MD

Faith-Based Environmental Orgs.

Click on the image to learn about Denmark's approach to becoming energy independent

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Baltimore 350 has been running an exciting workshop where we learned about the latest research from Project Drawdown on reversing global warming. The last of four working sessions is scheduled for Saturday, November 9 from 2-4:30 PM EST. OnDecember 3 (Tuesday evening), we'll share the climate solutions we've developed and celebrate our hard work.

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This Sunday! We are speaking on a panel on environmental legislation starting @4 p.m. as part of this year's Maryland Legislative Coalition summit at UMBC! We'll be joined by partners from 1199 SEIU Maryland/DC and Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition.

We'll also have a table there, so come by and say hello anytime after 11 a.m.! This is a full day of presentations from policy advocates and experts on the most important legislative topics of the Maryland General Assembly's 2020 session, from education and health care to election reform and the climate crisis. See you there!

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This Sunday! We are speaking on a panel on environmental legislation starting @4 p.m. as part of this year's Maryland Legislative Coalition summit at UMBC! We'll be joined by partners from 1199 SEIU Maryland/DC and Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition. We'll also have a table there, so come by and say hello anytime after 11 a.m.!

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Home - Chesapeake Climate Action Network

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Best Earth Week film in Baltimore this year! Tue. 4/21 at 7 PM – Enoch Pratt Free Library Former Sun columnist Dan Rodricks joins producer/author Mike Tidwell for a screening and conversation about this inspiring climate-change film. RSVP NOW – FREE! Clean Energy & Climate 2026 MD and VA legislative session wrap-ups. Learn more […]

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A massive coalition is urging the state to move towards 100% clean electricity as soon as possible. This pathway can be accelerated by first doubling the state's current mandate for clean electricity to 50% by 2030, determining the best plan to achieve 100% renewable electricity by 2023, and implementing that plan by 2040.

Rights embedded in our founding documents - to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - are threatened by a damaged environment. Development without consideration of human health is a danger to every Marylander's freedom to enjoy pure water, clean air, and healthy communities now and in the next generation. The Healthy Green Maryland Amendment explicitly protects your right to a healthy environment now and in the future by enshrining it in the state declaration of rights.

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A massive coalition is urging the state to move towards 100% clean electricity as soon as possible. This pathway can be accelerated by first doubling the state's current mandate for clean electricity to 50% by 2030, determining the best plan to achieve 100% renewable electricity by 2023, and implementing that plan by 2040.

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About Us

Who We Are

We are a committed group of volunteers that have decided to do something about our plastic pollution crisis

HB1166

WE DID IT!!!! HB1166 has passed both chambers!! Now it awaits the governor's signature OR just a time limit slide into law. We would like to THANK Delegate Terri Hill for being our champion and sponsor for this bill!

Now on to the Council!

In the News

Less Plastic Please wins the Howard County Community Leadership Award at Greenfest 2019!!!

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Who We Are We are a committed group of volunteers that have decided to do something about our plastic pollution crisis HB1166 WE DID IT!!!! HB1166 has passed both chambers!! Now it awaits the governor's signature OR just a time limit slide into law.

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Paul Hawken on Project Drawdown  A New Context for Global Warming