Why sign petitions? Does it help and what does it take to get involved?
For almost 3 years now, I search and share environmental petitions in an advocacy section of a weekly environmental newsletter. This has meant that each week I learn about our world and find a way people can help it. Does it solve all the problems? No. Does it help? Yes.
Connection: When you add your voice to a petition, it connects to dozens, hundreds, thousands, and perhaps even hundreds of thousands of other voices. Your volume grows and your world grows. This happens from internal learnings and from seeing that people around the world have the same needs, hopes, and beliefs. This does equal power to create change; from community and connection, individual action and passion! Such a beautiful and worthwhile thing on it's own.
Outcome: Governments are supposed to represent the people and supposed to hear our voices and needs. A petition is a way for leaders to hear, a way for people to gather and express their needs, a way to give a voice to nature. Not all petitions have momentum or the ideal outcome, but many do result in movement. This can look like corporations changing policies, partners, or products, governments adding protective legislation or implementing solutions, or wildlife and environmental groups having numbers behind their work. A voice is a powerful and needed thing, and we all have one. Environmental petitions are a way to globally connect and put pressure on those with power on behalf of the people and places that could use the green advocacy support.
Logistics: Signing petitions is incredibly easy and typically takes less than a minute. It does involve leaving some contact information. If you are worried about getting emails, you can unclick any subscribe boxes on the petition or unsubscribe from your email. Creating an email account just for petitions is a further option. Most petitions do require your postal code so that your message can be matched to local representatives. Entering a postal code of 0's is usually an option if you are signing from a different country or not wanting to use your postal code. (This applies to phone numbers as well, although efforts are made to avoid petitions that require this.)
Belief: We are not as separated as our borders can make it seem. There is no reason why me or you shouldn't care about the forests, animals, land, and ocean - even if it's in a place that we've never heard of or been. Nature is connected, it functions in a connected way. We can choose to function in a more connected way too. It's our world and if you don't accept what is happening to it and nature, then petitions are a form of action to help and have a say. They can be used to fight hopelessness and instead work towards creating hope. We are all citizens of our planet, we all depend on nature for life, we can treat it better and we each have a voice.
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