The Case for Individual Action

I am deeply aware of how insignificant I am in the grand scheme of things. It is obvious to anyone who knows anything about climate change and the other environmental issues we are facing that individual action is not enough to stave off the worst of it. No matter how much I change my life (or you, or anyone else) I cannot make a dent in the climate change math. I could live under a bridge, naked, eating only grubs and cockroaches and never buying anything, and the math wouldn’t change.

But here is the secret: Individual action isn’t about solving the climate crisis. It’s about changing hearts and minds. My own, first and foremost. But also yours and everyone else’s.

The way I see it, individual action is about, among other things:

• Offers a more accessible option for thinking about something that is otherwise overwhelmingly huge. Climate change infinitely bigger than any of us, and trying to educate ourselves on it in its monstrous totality is a recipe for disaster for most of us. Individual action offers a way to engage with it in much more manageable bite sized pieces, and can help us feel empowered and active without completely overwhelming us or sending us into a fit of complete despair. For some of us (me) this is essential for staving off depression and hopelessness.
• It provides a path for learning that is much more manageable for most of us. As an example, I had no idea how bad grass lawns are for ecological health until I decided to help the bee population by becoming a beekeeper. I was not going to prevent the extinction of honey bees by becoming a beekeeper of course. But learning about them and how to care for them was a fun, fascinating and yummy-in-my-tummy sweet way of learning about why diversity (plant and animal) is so critical for ecosystem health, and why populations of both are tumbling toward extinction. Beekeeping made that information accessible to me in a way reading a book or a study on biodiversity never could.
• Individual action opens the door for deeper conversations with others about the issues of climate change and other environmental concerns. It’s much easier to talk to someone about why farmers markets are so awesome, why I’m carrying a metal straw around, or zero waste than it is to talk about the global phenomena of climate change and its implications for human civilization. And not enough of us are talking about these issues. We actually tend to avoid it, for many reasons – it’s too big, too scary, too political, too depressing. But breaking it into bite sized pieces helps open that door, helps us talk about it in a way that isn’t quite so scary or political or depressing.
• Individual action leads to connections that do create meaningful change. One of my areas of particular interest is local food and food justice. My individual efforts in this area led me to other people who were also interested in those topics, and those people led me to organizations like Denver Urban Gardens (back in CO), and those organizations are actively involved in things like ensuring poor communities have access to fresh vegetables through gardening and seed sharing as well as in influencing policy at the city and state level. You are able to buy things like bread and cheese from the local farmers markets because groups like Denver Urban Gardens joined together to force changes in legislation that made it easier for people like you and me (as opposed to huge corporations) to sell our bread and our cheese.

So here is my TL/DR for this post: Individual action is the gateway drug to collective action and collective action leads to policy changes that DO impact climate change math.

Case in point: Oregon and Washington both recently had carbon tax legislation on their ballots, and that legislation failed overwhelmingly. The reasons are, of course, complicated. But one significant contributor to the failure was the number of folks still driving internal combustion engine cars, many of which are large trucks and SUVs. Those folks already feel that gas is expensive, and the low MPG rating on their cars means they pay a lot to fill their tanks. They didn’t want to pay even $.001 more for their gas.

But imagine if individual action had been much more pervasive in those states ahead of the legislation. Imagine if more people biked/walked instead, or drove electric cars or cars with super high MPG ratings instead of large trucks/SUVs, or if they took public transportation more than private. Those folks, then, would have been far less impacted by the proposed legislation, may have been unaffected by it at all, and as such, would have been far more likely to vote in favor of it.

Politicians won’t touch meaningful climate legislation today because it is political suicide if they do. But individual action creates waves of influence that have the power to reverse that current, making it political suicide to not touch it.

So here is the thing. I don’t do these things because I think they are going to solve the climate crisis on their own. I do them because they help me understand the issues at play and what sorts of policy changes could make a real difference in the grand scheme of things.

I don’t talk about them because I’m trying to brag about how awesome I am. I talk about it because I am hoping to connect with you in a more accessible way, and, frankly, because I’m hoping those connections will lead to bigger waves that eventually lead to real change.