Going Beyond Personal Action
Okay, so you have done your part on climate — you installed solar, bought an electric vehicle, converted to electric appliances, and installed a heat pump. There are no chimney emissions because you don’t have a chimney and there are no tailpipe emissions because you don’t have a tailpipe. You swore off beef and haven’t been on an airplane in years. Yet you look at the news and see all the catastrophic problems still occurring and wonder — have I done enough? What’s wrong with this picture? Is there some other way to contribute?
There is another way to contribute, and it may have even more impact than the work you have already done. I’ll explain in a second, but let’s look first at why I believe personal actions aren’t enough to solve the problem.
The necessity and insufficiency of individual choices
Climate change goes beyond individual choices. Climate change is, indeed, a systemic problem. Our personal actions can only go so far because much of the carbon comes from the system that provides us with things we need — materials for construction, the ability to transport things, electricity to run things, chemicals, cement, steel, glass, bikes, trains and buses, and on and on. Even if everyone eliminated their personal emissions completely, we’d still be emitting too much carbon as a society. Everything we see around us comes from a system that burns fossil fuels for energy and thereby creates GHG emissions in the process. To live in this world is to be in the system and to be participating in the carbon economy.
The logical conclusion, then, is straightforward enough: We need to get carbon out of the system, and that is where one’s contribution can go beyond managing your own carbon footprint. The very human needs of the 8 billion people on the planet are not likely to change any time soon. Nor are their desires and aspirations. We need heat, cooling, food, water, clothing, and shelter. We want good homes, good work, good families and communities. We want to travel and explore, to socialize with those a distance away, and we want to talk on our phones or text message each other. The problem is not the needs or the desires and aspirations — it is how we meet them in the current system.
This feels really big to people. I get it. It does to me, too. No one can wave a hand and make the solution, but we can all participate more in creating it — and that is exactly the additional step you can take beyond managing your personal footprint. Get involved in changing the system. Here are a few ideas.
Dedicating one’s career to solutions
In most places in the industrialized world — where most emissions come from — there are thousands of open jobs in the climate solutions area. Everything from research engineers focused on batteries, EVs, and carbon capture, to heat pump installers, product marketers, solar installers, and electric grid engineers. There are openings everywhere, and wherever there is an opening, there is work not getting done — work that is essential to changing the system. As more and more work is not done, we slow the transition to a carbon-free economy.
Work involves the commitment of one-third of our day-to-day time on the planet during our working years. We put much of our best energy into advancing our careers. How much better would it be to commit your best energy to transitioning to a carbon-free economy?
The more people that fill the climate solution jobs that are open, the faster it goes. There are thousands of openings, and dedicating your work life to climate change solutions can have a big impact.
Activism to push utilities to go renewable
As the world electrifies, local utilities are going to have to generate or purchase more electricity. Local activism can have a big impact by pushing utility managers to purchase renewable electricity, especially solar and wind. At one level, this is easier than it used to be because the cost of building and operating renewable is far less than building or operating coal or natural gas power plants. Nonetheless, there are challenges both with the intermittency of solar and wind, as well as with the mindsets of utility managers. Public pressure can help change those mindsets.
In many local situations, activism can also be education. The Inflation Reduction Act in the US, for example, created many grant programs, tax changes, and other incentives that can help utilities make these investments even more financially appealing, but local operators often are not aware of them. Knowing these programs and educating the managers can go a long way toward impacting the necessary change.
Getting utilities to increase their mix of renewable electricity is one of the most important and effective things we can all do to change the system. Unlike putting solar on your own home or business, utility-level investment changes the share of electricity that is renewable for everyone who is a customer of that utility — whether they are climate activists or climate deniers. Hence, if your utility goes from 10% of its energy from renewable to 20% renewable, that ten percent increase is effectively a 10% change in everyone’s carbon production. This is why systemic change is so important.
Activism to overcome the NIMBY complaints
As the world has begun to move and develop toward renewable energy, there has been predictable backlash from the so-called NIMBYs, which stands for Not In My Back Yard. The acronym has become a pejorative term used to describe local resistance to systemic needs and was usually used by corporate and government types to overcome local groups opposed to dirty, polluting industries they didn’t want near them. In some ways, NIMBY was an acronym for local democratic control.
Today we are seeing the NIMBY phenomenon occur in a very different way. The folks on Martha’s Vineyard don’t want offshore wind farms because it will ruin their view, and they justify it with a speculative (and disproven) argument about the impact on whales. People oppose grid expansion and development because they don’t want the ugly power poles running through their area of forest, farm field, or suburban dream. They claim they are protecting their “way of life.” These arguments and emotions are completely understandable at one level, but they are a big problem at another. They are not the same health and welfare arguments over pollution that gave birth to NIMBY decades ago, but rather based on a concern to preserve an aesthetic. Rather than taking pride in doing their part, folks are saying, “Let someone else do it. Not us.”
Activism and education are needed to change this ethic. We need to see folks take as much pride in what their community is doing to do their part as we take in our personal decisions to go solar, buy an EV, or stop eating beef. It can be less about conflict and forcing power over others, and more about education, pride, and realizing that this is part of saving our world from the ravages of climate change.
Activism toward putting a cost on carbon
In the US and around the world in non-communist countries, the core of the carbon-based economic system is corporate capitalism. The corporate sector has adopted the carbon economy for the same reason most people have done so in their own lives — until now, it appeared to be the least expensive way to meet needs, reduce expenses, and increase profits. Most corporate leadership still sees it that way, with less than half seeing climate change as any risk to their business, and only 19% seeing climate change as a serious risk.
The way to change this is to create a cost for carbon and GHG emissions. Why? Because it is the only language the corporate system understands. As a client once told me years ago, “People choose who to do business with based on who they know, like, and trust, and then they justify their decision with the numbers.” Indeed, this is why all the calls for corporate leaders to “do the right thing” always have and always will fail to make change happen. Sure, there may be a few inspired leaders who risk it all to do what they feel is right, but a few outliers do not change a system.
So, how do you change a system that makes decisions this way? You change the math. Carbon taxes and carbon markets are the only way we have to do this, and such taxes are a political act. Today, about 30% of global emissions are now covered by some kind of price on carbon, according to the IMF, yet the average global price on carbon emissions is only $6 a ton. The EU has a price of $90 per ton, and the same IMF report calls for the average global price to be $75 per ton by 2030. We have a ways to go.
Too often I hear people argue that the problem is a lack of political will by our leaders, but this notion belies a central reality in democracies — political leaders do not lead, they follow. The political forces are resident in the population, not in the leadership. Leaders who do the right thing when it is unpopular rarely last and the work is often reversed if the political will of the people is not present. This is why you can help with political activism and education. As FDR once told a bunch of activists he agreed with: “I agree with your position. Now, go out there and make me do it.” What he meant was: Create the political requirement that I do this, and I will make sure it happens.
Pricing and taxing carbon and GHG emissions is a powerful way to change the system. It is not a panacea any more than any other action mentioned in this article is a panacea. On the other hand, we can’t get the systemic change needed without it either, and we need people to empower this work.
Beyond our own personal emissions, then, we need to change the system by which our needs are met. We can get there as we get more people to add their energy to the effort, either through their career energy or through activist and educational activity. The more energy we get into this effort now, the fewer the disasters we will experience later; yet if we delay, humanity will suffer more and more, and much of that suffering could be among the people we each know and love. There is no telling where climate change will hit. This is the calling of our time.
Anthony Signorelli