Four High Impact Ways to Fight Climate Change
I just read an interesting study by Seth Wynes and Kimberly A. Nicholas entitled, “The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions.” The study begins by analyzing a range of personal lifestyle choices and calculates their potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It then lists four high impact actions that can potentially mitigate climate change. More on that later.
Then it scours high school textbooks and government literature to find that these documents tend to promote the lower impact lifestyle choices.
This gap needs to be closed. There is a great potential to reduce emissions by promoting higher impact choices. Further, we should promote these to younger generations to truly make a difference.
So, what are the four high impact actions? Well this might get controversial.
1.) Having one fewer child (58.8 tonnes C02-equivalent emission reductions/year)
2.) Living car free (2.4 tonnes CO2e saved per year)
3.) Avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tonnes CO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic flight)
4.) Eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tonnes CO2e saved per year)
The article goes on to state that eating plant-based (as defined in this study as avoiding all meat) for a year is 4 times more effective than recycling. However, eating a completely plant-based diet (avoiding all animal products by adopting a vegan diet) can be 2 to 4.7 times more effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions than simply decreasing meat intake. A final note the study makes regarding diets is that we cannot expect to stay under the 2-degree Celsius limit without a shift in our diet.
Something has got to give. We can and we must personally make choices to mitigate climate change. Whether you chose to have fewer kids, to go car free, to go plant-based or all of the above, great. Just empower yourself to make some change in the right direction.
Start small. Start going without meat on Mondays for Meatless Monday and gradually go towards plant-based eating. Start biking more.
Even the moderate impact choices are important, keep recycling and keep washing your clothes in cold water.
If we all make small changes working towards the same goal, we can have a great impact. We can be the change and mitigate climate change.
