Making Change on the Margins
Is individual climate action an exercise in futility?
Environmentalism has a big empowerment problem.
When I talk about adopting eco-conscious lifestyle choices, common responses generally include questions on whether these sorts of things even have much of an impact. It’s just one energy-efficient light bulb installed, one single-use K-cup avoided, etc.
This is a fair question. Making green decisions requires research, behavior changes, and sometimes money. All of which is friction — something our brains are very good at convincing us to avoid. If the individual impact is minimal, is it worth the time or potential monetary investment required?
Within that question lies an implicit assumption about our individual capacity to impact the world around us. It concludes that because we are one drop in a vast sea we’re unlikely to make ripples felt across the ocean.
Maybe that would be true if humans weren’t such approval-seeking, pack animals, but there’s compelling evidence to suggest that social comparison is far more influential than climate education is in changing behavior.
Even more impressive, a recent meta-analysis synthesizing the results of several hundred studies done on climate interventions found that observing the example of others is even more effective than financial incentives at motivating habit change.
If that’s not concrete evidence of a ripple, I don’t know what is.
Ideologically, many people believe in one person’s ability to make a difference, but the wall of skepticism I so frequently run up against tells a very different story. At the very least, it tells me that people rarely evaluate the potency of their personal actions through this lens.
In a culture obsessed with humility, I think there is resistance to putting bloated stock in our inherent influence. Frequently, downplaying the significance of our accomplishments is seen as a virtue, but I find it’s very easy to extend this seemingly moral mindset to its logical extreme — insignificance.
This warped sense of modesty ceases to be virtuous when it prevents us from feeling empowered to do what we suspect is good and worthwhile. Changing our behavior is already enough of an uphill battle, without perceived insignificance casting a convenient shadow of doubt over our efforts.
In case you’re still not convinced, an organization that quantifies the effects of potential climate solutions called Project Drawdown estimates that roughly a third of the climate solutions necessary to propel real progress will be led by individual decision-making. Sooo…
Sounds to me like we’re long overdue for some fearless do-goodery, and a heaping dollop of trust that, yes, even in this big ocean your efforts do have ripples.