In a letter to Congress, the groups said data center development raises concerns about rising energy costs, water use and climate impacts. Many communities are fighting back.

By Lauren Dalban

More than 200 environmental organizations signed a letter to Congress supporting a national moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers. The letter, sent Monday, highlights these centers’ impacts on water resources, electricity rates and greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmental Groups Demand a Nationwide Freeze on Data Center Construction

Climate change is often discussed in global terms, such as the melting of ice caps, rising oceans, and the spread of wildfires. However, the truth is that it begins at home. Every single-family household, whether in the bustle of Toronto, the suburbs of Vancouver, a farming community on the Prairies, or a small northern town, is an active participant in shaping the climate future. The actions we take or fail to take are not isolated. They accumulate, reverberate, and shape the quality of life our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will inherit.

The Myth of Insignificance

Many households believe their contribution is too small to matter. “What difference does it make if I leave the lights on, drive everywhere, or throw food scraps in the garbage? I’m just one family.” But this myth of insignificance is one of the greatest dangers of our time. Each discarded plastic bottle, each unnecessary car trip, each bag of wasted food does not disappear. It piles up, becoming part of the global crisis of climate change. What feels like a private choice is, in reality, a public consequence.

Inaction as a Legacy

Imagine a Canadian family that chooses not to recycle, not to conserve, not to shift their habits. For a year, the consequences may feel invisible. But roll the clock forward. By 2050, their grandchildren in Toronto will wake up to summers filled with weeks-long heat advisories. Schoolyards and parks sit empty in July because it is too dangerous for children to play outdoors. Ontario’s hydro grid is stretched thin due to millions of air conditioners running simultaneously, leading to rolling blackouts. Food prices have doubled as droughts in the Prairies devastate crops, and supply chains falter. Sound familiar? Its already happening across Canada!

Meanwhile, their cousins in Prince Edward Island are coping with rising seas. Entire communities along the coast are gone, washed away by storm surges that happen with increasing frequency. Families that lived by the water for generations have been forced inland, their ancestral homes now threatened by sea rise. This is not exaggeration, climate science paints a stark and very real picture of future coastal realities.

By 2075, their great-grandchildren in northern communities will live with constant water restrictions, as the thawing of permafrost has altered rivers and lakes. Traditional hunting grounds are unsafe because the ice forms too late and melts too soon. Invasive pests and fire scar forests that once provided medicine and food. The Earth around them bears the weight of countless small inactions compounded across time. And when they look back, they see a generation that knew better but refused to change.

Action as a Legacy

Now imagine another Canadian family. They compost, recycle, conserve, and teach their children that every small act of stewardship makes a difference. For a year, the impact may seem modest. But roll the clock forward.

By 2050, their grandchildren in Winnipeg will be growing vegetables in backyard and community gardens, nourished by decades of composting. Energy bills are lower because their homes are equipped with rooftop solar panels and properly insulated to conserve heat in winter and cool in summer. Children still play outside freely because air quality warnings are rare.

Out east, their relatives in Halifax have adapted coastal homes to utilize renewable energy micro-grids and employ storm-resilient design. They continue to live by the ocean, harvesting from healthier waters thanks to decades of careful stewardship and waste reduction. By 2075, their great-grandchildren in northern Ontario communities thrive in local economies powered by clean energy.

Rivers run clearer because they are not treated as dumping grounds. Indigenous and non-Indigenous households work together in climate-adaptive food systems, including greenhouses, hydroponics, and land-based harvesting, to ensure food security without overburdening ecosystems. This family’s small actions, multiplied over decades, became part of a collective movement toward renewal.

The Full Cycle of Consequence

Every household action has a cycle. Throwing out food waste creates methane gas, which accelerates global warming, intensifying storms that flood homes, including those in Montreal, Calgary, and Fredericton. Driving when public transit is available contributes to emissions, which in turn lead to hotter summers in Ottawa, resulting in higher cooling costs, increased strain on the grid, and potentially blackouts during heatwaves. Buying fast fashion creates textile waste that ends up in Canadian landfills, similar to those outside Vancouver or Edmonton, polluting soils and waterways long after today’s wearers are gone.
The cycle is relentless, and it all begins with decisions made in the privacy of the household. What we must recognize is that there is no neutral choice. Every action either adds to the problem or contributes to the solution.

Looking Generations Ahead

The question is not whether a single-family household can “solve” climate change. It cannot. The question is: will this household’s actions add to the burden or lighten it? Will future children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren wake each morning in a Canada that is habitable and thriving, or one that is hostile and diminished?

To answer this question, every family must reflect on what kind of ancestors they want to be remembered as. Because, in truth, the climate crisis is not just about us; it is about them.

Blog by Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock

Image Credit :Olivie Strauss, Unsplash

The post The Household Choice: Climate Change and the Weight of Everyday Decisions appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.

The Household Choice: Climate Change and the Weight of Everyday Decisions

Beverly Besmanos is the national coordinator of Bantay Kita-Philippines, a coalition of NGOs advocating for transparency and accountability of the extractive industries in the Philippines. Nsama Chikwanka is the national director of Publish What You Pay Zambia. They are both members of the Resource Justice Network.

The clean-energy transition, the solution to the climate crisis, is bulldozing through the Global South, driving a surge in demand for minerals such as copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium.

These transition minerals are crucial to build cleaner energy systems and help the world transition away from fossil fuels. Yet, without guardrails, the mining rush is fuelling human-rights abuses and environmental destruction.

As the seventh session of the United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA-7) gets underway in Nairobi this week, we need to sound the alarm and mobilise countries to stand for equity and rights in mineral governance.

Voluntary safeguards and corporate goodwill are not stopping are not stopping mining harms. National policies and laws are also falling short of what is needed.

What we need are binding global rules. What UNEA-7 can deliver is a credible pathway to deliver them.

Since recent UN climate talks have ignored mineral governance, and domestic approaches have clearly failed to enforce consistent standards, UNEA-7 cannot afford to stall.

Under the leadership of Colombia, several mineral-rich Global South countries are taking action for stronger global mineral governance. This is a unique chance we cannot miss.

An opportunity to chart a way forward

Countries in Nairobi must adopt Colombia’s resolution to develop international instruments for the “socially and environmentally sound management of minerals and metals” across their entire life cycle, from mining to recycling.

Crucially, they must establish an ad hoc open-ended working group with an ambitious mandate, tasked to identify gaps, develop proposals for international rules, and unequivocally keep legally binding options on the table, so that these recommendations can be presented at the next UNEA session in 2026.

Binding rules are the only way to create a level playing field, reward responsible companies, and prevent a race to the bottom where purely voluntary schemes leave honest actors undercut.

The necessity for enforceable global standards is written in the polluted waters and degraded lands of our homes, from Zambia’s Copperbelt to the nickel mines of the Philippines.

The view from the mine

In Zambia, Africa’s second-largest copper producer, two tailings dam breaches six months apart in 2025— in Kalulushi and Mwense districts — released toxic effluent into rivers. These disasters disrupted livelihoods, killed aquatic life, and exposed communities to long-term health risks and loss of economic opportunities.

Weak local safeguards and the sheer impunity of multinational companies enabled this disaster. The alleged suppression of a study into the disaster’s true scale proves that when profits are threatened, truth and life are sacrificed. We cannot rely on companies to police themselves; we need a global legal hammer to enforce accountability.

In the Philippines, a key nickel supplier for electric vehicle batteries, nickel mines in Caraga Region, Tawi-Tawi, and Palawan are stripping forests and mangroves that protect coasts. Siltation and runoff choke farms and fisheries, water turns reddish-brown, carcinogenic chromium appears in drinking supplies. Food insecurity follows.

The social toll is equally severe. Too many projects proceed without securing Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) from Indigenous Peoples, and land and environment defenders face harassment and violence. A global instrument must centre FPIC, defender protection, due diligence, and access to remedy as enforceable obligations to halt this cycle of abuse.

The UN is the place to broker new rules

As mining supply chains are inherently transboundary, only cooperation and consistent, open standards will yield resilient, equitable, and transparent mineral extraction. We must hold multinational enterprises, which operate across borders, to the same environmental and human rights norms worldwide.

Such legally binding rules are essential to establish equal standards for all and operating certainty for businesses.

The UN is the right body to carry this work. As the world’s highest-level decision-making body for matters related to the environment, UNEA is tasked with setting priorities for global environmental law — a mandate that needs to include mining.

We don’t need another dialogue or a light-touch technical platform. Countries must instead turn best practice and voluntary principles into enforceable rules.

We want justice now for the communities and ecosystems being sacrificed in the name of the energy transition. By acting decisively, UNEA-7 can set a new paradigm across the full life cycle of minerals, rooted in environmental integrity, human rights, Indigenous Peoples’ rights, justice, and equity.

We urge countries to support Colombia’s initiative and adopt an ambitious resolution as a key step towards concrete, decision-ready options for a global instrument to govern mineral extraction.

The post Mining is destroying our homes: We need global binding rules for mineral extraction appeared first on Climate Home News.

Mining is destroying our homes: We need global binding rules for mineral extraction