We’re All Responsible for Climate Change — and That’s a Good Thing
Finally, climate change has become a central political issue. This is largely thanks to the work of grassroots movements and progressive politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Even most of the mainstream media is now on board with the importance of the climate crisis. It’s an exciting time to be an environmental activist.
Climate change solutions have largely focused on the Green New Deal, which has five goals that can be summarized as achieving net zero emissions while creating thousands of high paying and sustainable jobs, with a special emphasis on the inclusion of traditionally oppressed groups. This is an important plan. We should fight for, and pass, the Green New Deal. But we also have to acknowledge that it can’t solve the climate crisis alone.
Our economic and political systems incentivize constant growth. These incentives have traditionally assumed that resources are infinite, which of course they aren’t. For more information, an analysis of how our economic system drives climate change can be found here. It’s true that all systems which prioritize growth over sustainability are the primary drivers of the climate crisis, among most other social issues, but there’s a problem with our discourse here. Discussions focus almost exclusively on top-down solutions, thereby taking away power from us, the consumers.
In truth, we have an enormous amount of power already, and we don’t need the approval of politicians or corporations to use it. Beware of people who tell you that you don’t have any power, because they’re trying to disempower you themselves. The scientific literature proves that we can effect change at the grassroots level through altering our personal habits. What could be more empowering than that?
It’s now commonly understood that our diets are a major contributor to the climate crisis, with as much as 51% of all global greenhouse gas emissions coming from animal agriculture alone. A 2017 study from the University of Oxford found that huge reductions in meat-eating will be essential to avoiding catastrophic climate change. It was the most comprehensive analysis ever done on how agricultural systems effect the climate. Researchers found that beef consumption needs to fall by 90% in western countries and be replaced by five times more beans and pulses. Animal agriculture produces more greenhouse gasses than all of the automobiles, boats, planes and trains in the world combined. This is in part due to high methane and nitrous oxide emissions, but carbon emissions are also extremely high. Over a 20-year period, methane has 86 times more climate change potential than carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide has 268 times more, according to the United Nations.
In practice, this means we can produce observable changes in the greenhouse gas effect within decades by radically reducing the amount of methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. Boycotting animal agriculture is an easy way to do this. Animal agriculture is a major source of these emissions, and with every dollar we spend we’re voting either for or against the creation of more emissions. The same reductions in atmospheric carbon dioxide would take nearly a century to come to fruition. Given the recent IPCC report, which gave us a 12 year timeline to avoid 1.5 degree global warming, this is no small matter. Emissions from the agricultural sector will only increase as the population grows. By 2050, dietary trends will lead to an 80% increase in emissions.
That brings us to the issue of population growth. In 2017, the American Institute of Biological Sciences published an open letter signed by over 15,000 scientists, including Jane Goodall and E.O. Wilson, titled “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice.” It states, “We are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats.” It was the most scientists to ever co-sign a published journal article.
Wealthy countries don’t have the highest birthrates, but our birthrates coupled with our high standards of living makes us the most important drivers of population growth in terms of climate change. Today, a child born in the United States will have a carbon footprint 7 times higher than that of a child born in China, and 168 times higher than that of a child born in Bangladesh. From a climate change perspective, it takes 168 births in Bangladesh to have the emissions footprint of a single American birth, or a ratio of 168 to 1. The true ratio of Bangladeshi to American births is 18.8 to 12.5, or a ratio of 1.5 to 1. Meaning, our birthrate will have to fall substantially, to a rate of just 168 to 1, before our contribution to climate change becomes equal.
Scientists have proven that the earth can only sustainably hold a maximum of 1.5 to 2 billion people if all of its human inhabitants live as western Europeans do, meaning that everyone has access to plenty of food, water, renewable energy, and human rights. The sustainable population size is even less if we continue to use fossil fuels. The developed world also has better (though still imperfect) access to family planning, further making population growth our responsibility to address.
Scientists have proven that procreating is the single biggest greenhouse gas emitting activity a person can take part in. In terms of environmentally sustainable activities, foregoing biological birth has a greater impact than all other top six activities combined, such as driving a high-mileage car, recycling, using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs, among other lifestyle practices. In other words, birthing children negates all other environmentally friendly activities. Every child born in the United States will add 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent. The study concludes with the quote, “Clearly, the potential savings from reduced reproduction are huge compared to the savings that can be achieved by changes in lifestyle.” These effects will last for generations. Although access to family planning needs to be improved, many of us have the ability to practice climate-centered family planning now, even if it’s only with condoms. Climate-centered family planning means prioritizing adoption or a childfree life over reproduction, or limiting our family size to only one biological child.
Then there’s air travel. One round-trip flight from New York to San Francisco creates a warming effect equivalent to 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person, or around 14% of a person’s annual emissions. According to the Air Transport Action Group, the world’s airlines carry a total of over 3 billion passengers in a single year. Oxford Economics researchers expect passenger numbers to reach 5.9 billion by 2030. Ground transportation should be used instead of air travel whenever possible, even if that means a longer travel time before reaching your destination. This is especially true for luxury travel, such as for vacations and holidays, because that travel isn’t necessary. As a travel lover myself, and with friends and family spread all across the globe, air travel was the hardest thing for me to give up.
Consumer excess includes a wide variety of activities. A 2005 analysis showed that divorced households use an extra 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity compared with married households. This was the result of the additional homes needed to house the now-separated couples. Of course, I’m not suggesting that anyone stay married if they don’t want to. Please don’t do that. But what this study does prove is that minimizing the size of our homes is important. We can do this either through living with roommates or in smaller spaces on our own. Home heating and cooling aren’t luxuries, but doing them in an excessively large space is. Excess material consumption is also important, because it takes a huge amount of energy to produce every single item we consume. $100 worth of clothing every month will cost the planet 0.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. To give some perspective, H&M made over $23 billion in 2018, costing almost 10 million tons of carbon dioxide that year. The Story of Stuff illustrates this ecosystem of consumption well.
We can reduce our emissions sharply if we practice climate-centered decision making, especially in terms of major lifestyle choices like diet and family size. I hope this research leaves you feeling as empowered as it left me, because it shows the power we have to help address climate change ourselves. We can’t stop or reverse climate change on our own, but we have the power to help lower emissions even if the systems of power won’t help us. We can avoid making things worse. We can eat plant-based meals, take trains instead of flights, and practice consumer minimalism. We can limit ourselves to adopting children or a childfree life, or having only one biological child. For those of us who have more than one child already, or require air travel options, we can work to educate and empower others about these issues. We need to weigh our decisions based on how they’ll effect our neighbors, because the impacts of our choices will be felt by everyone.
This isn’t meant to let the political and economic systems off the hook, or to devalue the work of political movements or progressive politicians. We need them too. But if we rely on the political and economic elites to save us, we’ll be waiting until we’re all underwater. Those in power have too large a financial incentive to maintain the economic and political status quo as it currently exists. But even if they eventually come to their senses, they won’t be able to solve the climate crisis without us. They need us to act as much as we need them to. Switching to renewable energy sources won’t be enough to reduce emissions if we also keep our lifestyles the same as they currently are.
Research proves that making climate-centered personal choices is also necessary to successfully fight the climate crisis. These personal choices have to include more that just using energy efficient lightbulbs and turning off the faucet while brushing our teeth, they have to include a radical rethinking of our lifestyle philosophies. We need to create a culture of climate-centered decision making. We need to reward each other for framing our decisions based on how they’ll effect our neighbors. It will be worth it, I guarantee, because taking this type of personal responsibility is profoundly empowering, and it’s something each of us can practice today.
