The climate movement has a myopic view of carbon footprint. By focusing on carbon footprint, however, we create a zero-sum game in which people think that the only thing they can do is reduce their life — less driving, eat less meat, less home heating, less flying. All these actions would reduce your carbon footprint, but they also make your life less enjoyable. It’s as if we are all caught in a trance of mass navel-gazing.
C’mon people! Do you really believe that reducing your thermostat by 2–4 degrees is the only contribution you can make? When you look out and see all the cars commuting to and from work every day, does your choice to eat more quinoa and less chicken look like a good climate solution strategy? Don’t you have more to contribute than these low-level personal choices? Or are you just looking for a way to relieve your guilt?
I’m sorry to be so harsh, but the climate crisis is real and urgent, and while these lifestyle choices might be good ideas, humanity needs each of us to do better than that.
How to Make a Bigger, Better, Bolder Contribution
There are four things to start with that can make a real difference.
First, evaluate your job. You spend most of your best time and energy working. You can have more impact on climate through your choice of a job than any other single decision you make. How does your work contribute to a solution? How could it contribute if you changed jobs?
Here’s an example: I used to own a sales consulting company. I helped large companies sell more stuff, and some of it was good stuff — cardiac pacemakers, legal information that improved our justice system, and so on. While important, I was not contributing to the most urgent issue on the planet — climate change. So, I thought about what I could do with my skill to make a difference. I left sales consulting to become a sales leader in rooftop solar. In that job, I accounted for 32MW of rooftop solar within a few years. Those sales stopped over 36,000 tons of greenhouse gases every year for the life of those systems, estimated at 25–40 years. I did it by redeploying my skills.
Here’s the question: Should I have avoided that job because of a commitment to shrink my carbon footprint and therefore refuse to commute except on a bike? That would be myopic; not all carbon use is the same. My commute was a small investment of carbon for a much larger return. You can make a similar difference by the thoughtful redeployment of your career energy and how you invest your carbon usage for a bigger return.
Second, electrify everything in your life — your car, stove, dryer, water heater — everything. Electricity can be obtained from renewable sources. Non-electric vehicles, gas furnaces, fuel oil boilers, and gas water heaters require the burning of fossil fuels. Electric cars and appliances do not. They can find non-fossil fuel sources like wind and solar. This is a personal investment, to be sure. But it is also a real, tangible commitment.
Third, source all electricity from renewables. Install your own rooftop solar if possible. If not, subscribe to a solar garden or wind farm. Make sure you subscribe to enough energy to cover everything. Once you electrify, you will use more, but it will be clean. Electrifying everything and going renewable is the only way you can eliminate fossil fuels from your carbon footprint today.
Fourth, source your diet as close to home as possible. The food and agriculture sector contributes to greenhouse gasses, though not nearly as much as transportation, industry, and electric generation, which together account for over 75% of US greenhouse gas emissions. Food produced close to home, whether it is vegan or meat, will have a far lower carbon footprint than food from far away. The carbon is in the processing and transportation, not the substance of what you eat. If you have the ability and inclination to grow your own, all the better.
These four steps will harness your energy and commitment far beyond the old tropes about refusing to fly, riding your bike, going vegan, or writing to Congress. You can eliminate your carbon footprint, make your life better, and contribute your energy to real solutions. You just need to break free of old ideas and imagine the new.
Making Life Better While Fighting Climate Change
We need a new way to think about our contribution to climate change solutions. Your lifestyle’s impact on your individual carbon footprint is only one part of it, yet this is what gets all the attention. “Go vegan and vote green” isn’t enough. You can do better and so can I. Look for the big return.
Part of doing better is how we think. If our myopic thinking focuses us on “less,” we will get less, but we won’t get the revolution we need. Like him or not, Al Gore made a huge impact on the climate debate with An Inconvenient Truth. His carbon footprint was large as he flew around the world to deliver his message, but the return on that investment was also enormous. One might say the same about Elon Musk, who is creating many aspects of the more abundant future we all deserve. The question is, can we say the same about you? Are you going to contribute your energy to living better and building the future with your skill and contribution? Or are you going to shrink into that navel-gazing myopia, refusing to participate in the creation of the great revolution we all need? You don’t need to be Al Gore or Elon Musk, you just need to look outside the box and commit to putting your life energy into the task at hand, and then make the contribution you can make.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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