Here Are Some Crucial Climate Actions You Can Take To Protect The Environment In 2026

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Our eyes need to be on the environment in 2026. No longer will we accept individual guilt for climate degradation. Yes, changing behaviors is a starting place to protect the environment, but we can only achieve about one-tenth of the emissions-reduction potential that corporations need to adopt, says the World Resources Institute.

We’re done shifting our collective gaze from fossil fuel companies, the biggest drivers of the climate crisis, to individuals like you and me.

Corporations and governments continue to shape the speed and scale of climate disruption, and we as climate activists need to drive systemic corporate change in 2026. It’s going to happen through a confluence of pressure that creates enabling conditions and individuals who make eco-conscious daily choices.

The following list gives you an idea of ways that you can up your climate action game in 2026. The stakes are high, and we need everyone to make an impact.

Vote at both the national and local levels, as elections directly determine whether governments enable or hinder pro-climate behaviors. A 2025 Yale Program on Climate Change Communication report indicates that US voters want more from their leaders policies to reduce carbon pollution and promote clean energy. These include:

• 87% support federal funding to help farmers improve practices to protect and restore the soil so it absorbs and stores more carbon.
• 77% support funding more research into renewable energy sources.
• 74% support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
• 66% support transitioning the US economy from fossil fuels to 100% clean energy by 2050.

Know your climate data. Instead of bowing to climate misinformation as a fact of life, we must inform others everyday about the imperative to stop the western world’s runaway greenhouse gas emissions. Renee Hobbs of the Media Education Lab says that five touches are needed to get messages to audiences, so climate information messages might be wrapped within a blog, conversation, email, social media post, and speaking at a local event, for example. In this overt advocacy we need to make clear how important it is to replace high-emitting fuels like coal, oil, and gas with zero emission alternatives such as solar and wind power.

MIT’s Climate Portal suggests we should update our buildings and infrastructure, too, so that it takes less energy to build and use them. We must reforest the Earth by changing our farming practices and storing more carbon in the soil. Remember: Collective consumer pressure can help shift large companies toward more climate- and environmentally friendly practices.

Celebrate states that make laws to protect the environment. Leaders are writing lots of climate policies at city, county, and state levels. You can push for even more environmental legislation by contributing public comment, putting pressure on your elected officials in local offices, even showing up and expressing your concerns. Explain the importance of climate action plans, which are framework documents for measuring, tracking, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adopting climate adaptation measures.

Build resiliency to the climate-induced disasters by attending board elections, meetings, and policy discussions to reinforce how imperative it is to manage public affairs in a climate-conscious way. Even deeply red states enact good environmental legislation, such as setting renewable energy goals to banning the worst single-use plastics. Such actions are part of important community building and impacting change within your sphere of influence.

Spend time in nature to deepen your understanding of our interconnections with the environment. Spread the gospel of nature. Being immersed in nature can improve your health and well-being. It can improve brain function, reduce stress, support heart health, improve mental health, boost immunity, and even extend our life span. Being outside can encourage you to think and act in ways that are better for those around us, explains Colorado State researcher, Kaiya Tamlyn. That includes other humans as well as the larger natural world. Once you start spending time in nature, you are more likely to act more compassionate and pro-environmental.

Protect and enhance the resilience of ecosystems. Your advocacy for ecosystems can help natural resource managers, legislators, and other decision makers to take effective steps toward ecosystem abundance over the next five to ten years. The US National Resilience Toolkit offers several strategies to help ecosystems cope with the effects of climate change.

You can relate the importance of conserving habitat to support healthy fish, wildlife, and plant populations and ecosystem functions in a changing climate. You can explain why they should manage species and habitats to protect ecosystem functions and provide sustainable cultural, subsistence recreational, and commercial use in a changing climate. You can push for enhanced capacity for effective management in a changing climate. You can show your support for adaptive management in a changing climate through integrated observation and monitoring and use of decision support tools. You can impart knowledge and information on impacts and responses of fish, wildlife, and plants to a changing climate. You can increase awareness and motivate action to safeguard fish, wildlife, and plants in a changing climate. You can offer guidance on why non-climate stressors help fish, wildlife, plants, and ecosystems adapt to a changing climate.

Clean up your digital footprint. The state of your digital life is cluttered; admit it. Deleting and reorganizing is not only cathartic: it also sets a personal habit to limit how much you ask of data centers. Deleting old data collectively reduces the total storage volume, slowing the need for new energy-intensive data center construction. Wired offers a cool list of simple tech chores, including to dump your computer’s trash, close excess tabs, clear your browser history, tidy up the desktop, unsubscribe from unwanted emails, check your Shared with Me folder on Google Drive and erase lots of unnecessary docs, and review and cancel subscriptions.

Go renewable energy wherever you can. Solar energy is so accessible! Many countries, small and large, are looking to solar as well as other small scale renewables as a way to gain independence from an unreliable grid, power outages, or even to have access to electricity where none existed before. You can draw on the sun to charge your cell phone, illuminate street lights, heat and cool your home, and charge your electric vehicle. It’s also great for return on investment (ROI) through saving on electricity bills. And battery-powered vehicles, which can be hybrid or electric, are incrementally extending beyond personal to public transportation: short haul trucks, buses, ships, and planes have new electric versions starting to emerge on the roads.

As you accentuate your climate actions, talk about a few of these climate-forward initiatives with interested others. Take a moment to breathe in hope for a healthy and sustainable planet.

Resources

• “10 Tech Cleanup Tasks for New Year’s Day.” Jill Duffy. Wired. January 1, 2026.
• “Climate Change in the American Mind: Politics & Policy, Fall 2025.” Leiserowitz, A., et al. Yale University and George Mason University. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
• “Disinformation Detox.” Media Education Lab. 2026.
• “Protecting and enhancing the resilience of ecosystems.” US Resilience Toolkit. Retrieved January 1, 2026.
• “Spend time in nature: It’s good for you, your community, and the planet.” Kaiya Tamlyn. Sustainability: Colorado State University. December 2, 2025.
• “The most impactful things you can do for the climate aren’t what you’ve been told.” Mindy Hernandez. World Resources Institute. April 6, 2025.