How I Hope To Help On Climate Change
I’m exploring three issue areas as I look for my next work. For the past few weeks, I’ve been having conversations with folks about each of them, and I’m blogging 1) as a method of thinking through the issues, and 2) to share the way I see things in case that’s helpful to you.
In this post, I’ll share what I’m thinking about changing culture around climate change.
My focus here is that we need to de-carbonize our lifestyles, and the cultural shift that’s needed around that. When I say culture shift or cultural change here, I mean changing our shared attitudes, beliefs, patterns of behavior, and material lives.
To address the critique of this up front: there’s an argument among climate activists that talking about personal changes isn’t useful. The argument is that messaging around carbon footprint is misdirection as it passes responsibility to individuals, when really the government and industries need to enact massive change. I’m sympathetic to this argument. Not least of all because fossil fuel companies ran a massive campaign to focus on individual carbon footprints in an effort to make climate change about personal responsibility rather than systemic change.
However, here’s why I think it’s worth changing to change the way we think and talk about decarbonizing our lives:
First, we’ll have to do it anyway. Even if there is massive government and corporate action, our lives will need to change. We’ll have to electrify everything, eat sustainability, change the way we travel, and massively reduce waste. Since this will have to happen anyway, we’ll be better off if we start early rather than waiting for regulation.
Second, I firmly believe these changes in consumer behavior are one of the most effective forms of advocacy right now. For example, because of consumer interest in electric vehicles, it’s now much easier to make large investments in public charging infrastructure. Changes like stopping drilling permits and export terminals will be much easier if the public broadly demonstrates we’re done with the fossil fuel lifestyle.
Third, and this is the big one, I think we’ve had the messaging wrong, and there’s a massive opportunity if we get it right.
Generally decarbonization is framed by people making sacrifices in order to fight climate change. I think a lot of this framing is inherited from fossil fuel companies’ campaign to make carbon footprints a personal responsibility. They want the message to focus on sacrifice in order to save the planet. This framing is supremely detrimental. It’s about giving up meat, flying less, buying less, etc.
So here is the big cultural shift I think we need to make. We need to communicate that decarbonizing our lives is about building a better life.
Commutes that make us happier and healthier. Eating a diet that is healthier, leading to lower cancer risk and about ⅓ decrease risk of early death overall. Lower utility bills in a house that’s warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. Stoves that make it easier to prepare delicious meals. Cars that are more fun to drive and cheaper to maintain.
It’s about having a happier and healthier life.
All of these things are about a better life, and they are changes we have to make with all urgency in order to mitigate the impact of climate change. We’re not giving up anything, we’re simply choosing the better, happier, and healthier options.
Of course, even with the best messaging and resulting cultural shift, not everyone will make the changes we need to see. Costs will be a barrier and some people will take a position of opposition. However, a broad based lifestyle change movement will create a huge tailwind for advocacy efforts on the needed government regulations.
There are plenty of people who are ready to hear this positive message. According to Yale’s Climate Communication project, 33% of America are alarmed about climate change. Another 25% concerned, giving us an absolute majority of potential audience.
Certainly, that last bullet point in the graphic rings true. People don’t know what to do, and things that are known to do are hard to do. That’s the bit of work I’m hoping to get engaged in.
I think there are a nearly infinite number of ways to work on this problem.
- Influencers and celebrities could play a role leading by example.
- Large membership organizations could help their members change their perspective.
- Media companies could work on amplifying that top-line message of a better life.
- Museums could make exhibits about the future we’re building.
- Everyone has a role to play.
And if people are truly alarmed by climate change, then we should continue to see success in convincing more and more people to make the big changes necessary to improve their lives and decarbonize. At the same time, the game continues to mobilize those people making change to be advocates for the institutional reforms we need.
Coming out of a career at start-ups, I’m interested in working in a larger organization, as I feel I have a lot to learn in a context like that. Also, it would be great to be able to do some work that has impact at scale.
However, I think it’s important to note how much non-scalable work is needed in this area. We’re asking people to change the way they live, to behave in a way that is totally new and different from the way their friends and community are behaving. Asking people for this sort of change in leadership in many cases will take close personal connections and service work to help people make the change.
This work could be local service oriented work. Helping neighbors get biking. Building a community around healthful, local food. This sort of work is best when it isn’t built with an eye for scale, and is done locally and built on strong personal connections. So if you’re considering your own move in climate change work, and have lived in a social-impact work culture that has always focused on scale, please do have a look at the opportunities to do work that is about depth of change rather than breadth.
But no matter what work we are doing, we all need to be as vocal as possible about the changes we are making to mitigate climate change. This is absolutely necessary to help others see change is not just possible, but it’s what their peers are doing. It also is the drumbeat of any advocacy work, as it shows our government at every level that we’re walking the talk and ready for change.
I’m not going to sit around and wait on this last point about making all our actions loud and social. My wife and I have just made a 9 part series about driving an EV to show how well it works as a family road trip car, even driving around the most remote parts of America.
