I’m writing this on an early July day where it’s 100 degrees outside, except when there are vicious thunderstorms.

This year, we went directly from spring days with temperatures in the 60s and 70s to 90+ degrees with a generous helping of humidity. I guess there are fewer pleasant June days in the age of climate change. This summer’s weather is just one sign that many of the planet’s systems — you know, the ones that make it possible for human civilization to function — are clearly in distress. If there was a dashboard for Earth, it would be filled with blinking red warning lights.

Even though climate change is hard to deny these days, it’s very tempting to ignore it. The climate crisis is such a massive problem — literally enveloping the entire earth and all of its ecosystems — that it’s hard to know where to start. It’s a collective problem, so it feels like my actions won’t necessarily accomplish much if that guy down the street keeps buying 12-mpg SUVs and cranking up his AC. It’s incredibly easy to let yourself get paralyzed. I know I have, at times.

I’m here to encourage you not to let yourself get stuck in a hopeless rut. There are things you can do that won’t take a ton of time or money. In fact, I’ve got five suggestions for you: two consumer choices you can make today, one thing you can do over time, and two ways to push systemic change. Ready? Let’s make a difference.

First, two consumer choices that won’t cost you much and will make a difference — starting today. The first is the easiest: change how you eat.

Many of the things that cause climate change are tough to change easily. You own the car you own, for example. If you’re like me, you don’t have the resources to go get an electric car this afternoon to replace it. You may not be able to easily change where you live or commute using mass transit. But you do one thing several times a day that has a big climate impact and is easy to change: you eat.

Agriculture and food production are a big part of the climate problem. If we add up all of the agriculture-related carbon emissions — food transportation, deforestation, methane from animals, etc. — it comes to something like 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. We should put that in context — yes, those are a lot of greenhouse gases but at least agriculture is feeding people, which we can all agree is a worthy goal. Those 5–6 billion tons of carbon a year are doing some good, which is more than we can say about frivolous air travel or unnecessary, gas-guzzling SUVs.

But agriculture is still a wasteful industry. It’s also a business that is very responsive to consumer demand. If enough of us stop buying food that is bad for the planet, the industry will produce less of it, and therefore emit less carbon.

So how should you change your diet to help the planet? There are two main things you can do, and they’re both easy: waste less food and eat less meat.

Wasting less food is great in all sorts of ways — it will save you money while reducing the 30-40% of food that is produced, often in carbon-intensive ways, and then simply tossed in the trash (where it often decomposes in a way that puts more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere). So be a little more thoughtful about what you buy, use up those old vegetables in the crisper rather than letting them go moldy, and don’t throw stuff out just because it’s past its best-by date.

Eating less meat is pretty easy to do as well. Americans, especially, eat far more meat than is healthy, and it’s perfectly possible to live a healthy lifestyle without consuming any meat.

Each time you choose veggie pizza over pepperoni or PB&J over turkey, you’re doing the planet a great service. Your choice to avoid meat reduces the amount of animal suffering on the planet while reducing the amount of farmland (often created through deforestation) used for grazing and animal feed. If you feel you must eat meat, avoid beef, which is by far the worst of the meats for the climate.

A second easy thing you can do today is to switch to renewable electricity. This can often be done with nothing more complicated than a call to your utility’s customer service department. When I moved into my new house a couple of years ago, I called up my township’s electricity aggregator and told them I wanted my money to go to renewable energy rather than fossil fuel energy. It costs a couple of extra bucks a month — hardly noticeable in the context of my overall bill.

If your utility company doesn’t offer this option, you can look online for ways to buy “renewable energy certificates” or investigate joining a local community solar project.

You might wonder what you’re getting when you make the switch. The way the electricity grid works, you can’t really choose where your electricity comes from — power companies generate electricity, that electricity is all mixed together, and each of our homes draws on that power. But we can choose which power our money pays for. So make sure you’re paying for the generation of wind or solar power rather than the burning of fossil fuels!

The third thing you can do may not be possible today or even this year, but it makes sense to have it on your radar. Try to be on the lookout for ways to electrify your home. Depending on where you live in the country, you may be burning lots of fossil fuels in your house. You might have a gas stove, a gas water heater, a gas furnace, or even a gas clothes dryer. Plus, you likely have one or more cars that burn fossil fuels, and maybe a gas-powered lawnmower. All of these contribute directly to climate change. Electric versions of them wouldn’t, as long as the electricity coming into your home comes from green sources.

I’m not necessarily advocating getting rid of these items all at once and spending thousands of dollars to replace them. Throwing out still-useful things is also wasteful and environmentally harmful! But all of these items have lifespans. Someday, your water heater will die, or your car will need a new transmission, or your lawnmower will start acting wonky, and it will be time to get a new one. When you do, get an electric replacement!

If, every time a fossil-fuel-burning item in your household dies, you replace it with an electric one, within 15 years or so you stand a pretty good chance of having a carbon-neutral household. Plus, the electric versions of things are often superior — many cooks rave about the superiority of induction cooktops, for example, and I would never in a million years swap my electric lawnmower for a louder, heavier, dirtier, more expensive gas version.

Now, if you’ve read with me so far, you’re probably asking the obvious question — “What does it matter if I make these changes? Isn’t systemic change the only way out of this mess?” This is a good way to think — you can be a vegan who walks to work and installs solar panels on your roof, but your personal choices won’t matter much unless we transform our political and economic systems.

The problem with systemic change is that it seems impossible, and it’s hard to know where to start. And, yeah, let’s be honest, people like Joe Manchin and Joe Biden and Brett Kavanaugh are unfortunately going to have much more say in American climate policy than you will.

Fortunately, there are a couple of things you can do that will make a difference, and the good news is that they’re free and easy.

First, you can talk about climate change. As someone who spends a lot of time thinking and teaching about the climate crisis, I find that most people find it uncomfortable when I bring the subject up in social settings. It feels like I’ve done something impolite — sort of like I stated a strong religious view or asked my dinner companions their weight. I think people shy away from talking about the climate for a couple of reasons — first because it feels vaguely political, and therefore might steer a conversation into choppy waters. The second reason people shy away from talking about climate is that it feels so damn depressing. Who wants to shift from talking about the kids’ little league tournament to a discussion of mass extinctions or wildfires?

But talking about climate is important. There are a lot of reasons to do it. First, a lot of people vaguely know that climate change is happening, but they don’t know much else. If people understood a) how bad the climate crisis is and will be and b) that it’s not hopeless if we act now, they might be more inclined to change their behavior. I like the way the Climate Reality Project explains the effects of talking about the crisis:

We are social creatures. How we act helps set norms and expectations for our tribes. When our friends see us talking about the climate crisis and saying, “Hey, I’m concerned, but here’s what we can do about it,” it legitimizes their own feelings and tells them they’re not alone. It says, “People like us talk about this issue.” Which makes them more likely to talk about it when you’re not in the room. Which starts the cycle all over again, helping spread awareness and raise concern to the society-wide levels that policymakers’ attention.

This brings us to the final thing you can do. It might be a little awkward, but I promise it won’t take more than 10 minutes of your day. Call your representatives — local, state, and federal — and ask them to pass legislation that will curb climate change. Even if they’re red-meat Republicans who would never in a million years vote for climate legislation. If you don’t know who your representatives are, you can use this tool.

One of the biggest problems with climate change is that there are millions of Americans who are quietly apprehensive about the crisis but mostly keep it to themselves. According to Yale researchers, 65% of Americans are worried about global warming. Unfortunately, politicians don’t hear much from this quiet majority.

What good will calling your representative do? Well, first, like all of the things on this list, it will alleviate your climate anxiety because you’ve done something other than worry about the climate crisis. Second, it will give your representatives a clearer sense that Americans do care about climate change.

Hopefully, at some level of government you are represented by someone who listens to constituents and will act on climate. But even if you are in the reddest of red districts, your call might persuade your representative to fight against climate legislation a little less. Every member of Congress has to figure out where to allocate his or her time. Make sure yours knows that they should put effort into helping to solve climate change — or at least to get out of the way of those who will.

The climate crisis can be overwhelming and even crushing at times. But the worst thing you can do is impotently fret about it. Take a couple of minutes today to do something from this list to put a tiny dent in the climate crisis. You’ll feel better for it.

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