Unpopular opinion, maybe, but the narrative of “Here’s what you can do as an individual to fight climate change” isn’t useless.
It has its place, and that’s mainly in the mental health realm. I’m a super anxious person. I get depressed easily. Articles talking about little steps I can take to reduce my carbon footprint give me tangible ways I can contribute to the solution, and help give me a sense of control over the whole mess, however illusionary it may be.
The framing of the narrative is the problem, not the narrative itself; guilt-tripping people never works. Pointing out “if you’re feeling scared, here’s some steps you can take to be part of the process” is way, WAY better. And the more steps you include, the more myriad ways you can take some ownership of the process and go “I am NOT powerless you motherfuck,” the better. Not everyone can take all of the listed steps and that’s COMPLETELY understandable. You gotta take care of you, first. But the more we list, the more accessible ways we come up with to give climate change the finger in our everyday lives, and to refuse to let the fear win.
By all means, go after the corporations. They’re the big fuckers here and I am totally on board with that. But if you’re feeling helpless and hopeless? Maybe take a look at one of those “how can I help” articles and pick a few little things to implement.
It’s all about taking care of your mental health!
Also, if you’re creative, you can make a big impact.
Here are some things I’ve done:
- I periodically drop by home depot and other box stores, and if I see a big sale on LED lights I buy a ton of them. I have installed LED’s at dozens of people’s homes, probably saving collectively thousands of dollars. I also approached my apartment complex and replaced incandescent bulbs both in their office and their laundry room with LED’s…the laundry room lights are on nearly 24/7 and it’s a big space, and this has probably saved them around $300 annually for something that cost me around $20. And now the apartment complex really appreciates this so they’ve been very accomodating when I ask for things like doing non-essential improvements or upgrades in my apartment.
- There is a wild area behind my apartment complex and it’s part owned by the complex and part owned by the city. A large area of it was completely overgrown with invasive plants. I pulled a lot of them out and added a lot of seeds of locally native plants, and the plant growth now is MUCH more lush…there is much more biomass and also much more biodiversity. Some trees have sprung up that are now 9 feet tall and growing raipdly during the growing season. This stuff is all gonna sequester a lot of carbon. I also have planted previously barren areas of mulch flower beds densely with native flowers. These also sequester carbon and also contribute to biodiversity. The habitat created by all this work will also help insects and other species that are having their ranges altered by climate change, to adapt, by giving them more habitat.
- I chose to live in a place where I don’t need to use my car very much. I went from driving my car around 10,000 miles a year to driving it under 5,000 miles a year. This has saved me a ton of money (not just gas, but also maintenance, tolls, parking, and much lower insurance) and also improved my quality of life.
- I make periodic posts and videos about the things I’m doing, and I talk to friends. I also talk to businesses and mention energy-efficient things in reviews of businesses I write on Yelp. For example, if I notice a restaurant uses LED lighting I note that in the review and say I appreciate it, or the same for supermarkets like ALDI that make greater use of enclosed refridgerator cases.
- I and my brother continually pressed my parents until they did an energy audit of their home. We got them to buy a new furnace, add some insulation, fix some areas where air was leaking out, and get heat-insulating shades on some rooms with drafty windows, and we also tweaked the baseboard system. The house is now much more pleasant and even in temperature, and we’ve saved them thousands of dollars in heating costs that were associated with unnecessary fossil fuel use.
You may have different things you can do, but the point is, you can do big, substantial things. It’s not just personal choices, you can offer to help other people. You can research things, get good at doing certain things, and then share that knowledge with others.
You can save people money, hundreds or thousands of dollars. And people will appreciate that, like my apartment complex really likes me as a tenant and I see it in how they treat me, they’ve let me do A LOT of things that I asked like having a garden and planting things in vacant flower beds and upgrading things in my unit. And my parents really appreciate the work my brother and I did in the house and the things we convinced them to do cause they’re saving a ton of money already and the house is more comfy.
You might think up completely different things from these that I haven’t even thought of!
I think what’s especially helpful to keep in mind, which the second comment sorta implies, is that it’s not just solely about fixing the big underlying causes of climate change. Climate change harms people and the environment, and you can probably do more to fix that harm than you can to stop it.
So even if planting more wildflowers doesn’t stop climate change, it means that the individual animals in your area have more places to eat and hide. You might be able to help people stay warm or stay cool as seasons change. That tangible change is so reassuring, so healing, and might help you feel empowered to do harder, scarier things. Even if you cannot stop climate change, it is a wondrous feeling to know that there are lizards in your garden where last year there were none. That’s an entire lizard living in the world that might not have been without you.
But you can do community activism to help which DOES directly contribute to stopping climate change, rather than just focus on the personal. The way capitalism is designed encourages competition and isolation, it raises individualism above all else, and so it’s only natural that when people are looking for a way to feel like they’re helping, they go to focus on aspects of their personal life. But we’ve been given a report from the UN committee on climate change which has outlined the massive social changes that will be necessary if we are to avert disaster, and they all rely on economic democracy & community empowerment. So you want to attack the unsustainable agricultural industry and help build a community based alternative? Food Not Lawns. You want to attack the supermarkets and help show that scarcity is manufactured? Food Not Bombs. You want to help in the struggle for democracy in the workplace? Industrial Workers of the World. You want to undermine dependence on capitalism in your community? The Buy Nothing Project. There are so many more ways you can help than by just focusing on your personal waste/energy consumption - not to say that you shouldn’t cut down on that too, but that we are encouraged to focus on such things to draw attention away from the radical solutions that might actually work. Finally get involved in the Earth Strike, because if we do not force them to, big business will not care.
So, if you’re feeling scared, you really can help in ways that will do more than just put your mind at ease.
