“Personally Determined Contribution” to Climate Saving
Global solutions to global climate chaos are crazy complex. Hope lies in personal action.
What if, instead of adding to our sense of helplessness by pouring over complex “scenarios” that outline supposedly comprehensive solutions to the Earth’s climate chaos — solutions that no one is empowered to implement — we set our own personal and household goals for cutting emissions? If our first, simple goals are met, we might consider upping our ambition. Forget emissions counts. They’re not what matters.
The important thing is to do as much as you feel you reasonably can in an unreasonable situation. To make your “Personally Determined Contribution” (PDC) to saving the Earth, not someday, but now.
Paris Agreement
Setting and working towards PDCs would be to do at a personal level what the Paris Agreement of 2015 did at a national level.
How the negotiators of the 2015 Paris accords managed to break a long impasse in the UN climate talks was to give up on what should have been seen as an obviously impossible goal from the beginning: unanimous agreement by all UN member countries on a detailed plan for phasing out greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
Phasing out emissions means phasing out fossil fuels, of course. But illustrating just how unreal the ambition of detailed unanimity was, it took eight more years for participants in UN talks merely to say, just last year — in a tortured, round-about way — that UN goals require “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems.”
Instead of dreaming that impossible dream of unanimity, negotiators in Paris hit on the idea that each nation should submit its own plan for reducing CO2 and other gases causing the climate catastrophe that threatens our shared planet. What one country did as its contribution shouldn’t be dependent on what other countries did. It should be what that country was willing and able to do at that time. These plans were dubbed Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
Participants did manage to agree on a shared goal — stated in a tortured, round-about way — of keeping the average global temperature increase to “well below” 2℃ from pre-industrial levels and trying to hold the warming to 1.5℃.
The contributions countries initially offered didn’t add up to nearly enough reduction in GHG emissions to meet even the 2℃ goal, but the expectation was that nations would “strengthen their commitments over time,” to quote the UN. In the nine years since, countries have upped commitments some. Not nearly enough to meet the goal, as the UN regularly reports. But at least the negotiations didn’t stall out. The talks and the trying go on.
No Use Counting
The emissions counting doesn’t matter much in any case. One reason is that some countries pledge more than they’re likely to do, while others, most notably China, are conservative in setting goals. Beijing seems to prefer low-balling predictions, so it regularly comes in “better than expected.” It also likes to keep its options open. Over time, China’s understatement may simply balance out overstatements. But then again, it may mean global emissions get reduced faster than UN tallies suggest. No one knows.
Another reason is the enormous imprecision in virtually all the numbers that go into the UN tally. They’re guestimates more than hard data.
The impact of the varied measures promised on future emissions of different GHGs is at best an educated guess. Take promises to reduce coal-fired generation capacity. There’s no uniform amount of CO2 emitted from generating a given amount of coal-fired power. The UN assigns a number that’s a rough average. The real impact depends on the quality of the coal, the efficiency of the power plant, and other factors lost in the data collection and averaging.
Or take the much lower emissions numbers assigned to gas-first power than to coal generation. That’s just the CO2 emissions. Natural gas use emits more methane, it is largely methane. And gas moved around in refrigerated tankers as LNG emits more methane than gas flowed through pipelines. That isn’t considered in the counts. And the amount of warming that results from any given mix of greenhouse gases such as CO2 and methane in the atmosphere is highly disputed among highly reputable climate scientists.
Even more important to hitting goals measured in degrees of global warming are factors other than GHG emissions that have a large impact on weather. A huge one is the level of sulfur (SO2) and other particulates in the air that help to offset the warming from GHGs by reflecting sunlight — but that also create extremely unhealthy “smog.” Cleaning up smog speeds global warming even as it reduces deaths from lung disease. But emissions counts don’t, can’t really, take all that into account.
The important thing is that lots of different countries are trying in their different ways. They should try harder. They should do more. All of them.
But the Paris Agreement has created a framework that seems to provide some amount of political impetus for most of the world’s nations to do something. Which is better than doing nothing.
And as climate catastrophes worsen, it may yet provide a practical and intellectual platform on which to quickly build the more radical action the situation demands.
Personal Paris Approach
Still, if regional and local governments wait for national governments to keep the planet habitable, it won’t happen. That’s clear. And if individuals wait for regional and local governments to keep the planet habitable, it won’t happen.
That’s why individual and household “personally determined contributions” are vital. Don’t think about how little your PDC will change some computer-generated calculation of the enormous global problem. Don’t think about whether what you’re doing is more or less than your neighbors are doing. Or people in other countries are doing. Or whether oil companies are really to blame. Or billionaires with private jets.
Just act. The situation is dire. Regardless of where you live, odds are you can see that in your own weather. And everybody is complicit to some degree. So it’s vital that everybody acts, at every level, all the time. Act because it is the morally responsible way to live your life. Act because it will help you feel less helpless.
What does acting mean? It may mean buying an EV, or it may mean just driving slightly less in your old gas guzzler. Fully insulating your house or, if that’s too expensive, putting in dark shades to keep out heat in summer or transparent window coverings to keep in heat in winter. Installing solar panels on your roof, or drying your clothes on a line or rack to save use of the electric dryer. It may mean growing vegetables, or it may mean shopping less.
It means doing what you feel you can reasonably do, remembering how dire the situation is.
Such personal actions are too often presented as an alternative to politics or activism. They should be seen as complementary. Your PDC can include running for your town or city council and using that position to enact climate-friendly legislation. Or making phone calls to help elect climate-friendly candidates at neighborhood, state/provincial, or national level.
Your personal contribution to the global effort may also include crafting stories that help other people understand the situation. That help them understand how important it is to feel and exercise compassion towards each other in these difficult times. Such stories are needed at least as much as data collection and calculation for finding a path beyond humanity’s current impasse.
Of course, it makes a difference what it is you do and how much of it you do. But as with the nations that are signatories to the Paris Agreement, the most important thing for you as an individual is that you try. And that you be seen to be trying — not ostentatiously but in a way that might eventually influence others.
That might provide some impetus for others to do something.
If we act intelligently and comprehensively enough, we might even create a practical and intellectual platform on which communities could quickly build should climate catastrophe strike close to home — as it probably will.
