You are standing at the sink carefully filling the kettle with just enough water to make a cup of tea. The reason that you are doing this is that you want to reduce your carbon footprint and therefore do your bit to combat climate change.
Many people’s approach to climate change centres on the reduction of their carbon footprint like this. The problem with this approach is that is by definition an approach of limited ambition. The maximum that can be achieved is the reduction of one person’s carbon footprint by 100%. The effort to achieve the maximum of 100% becomes increasingly difficult with more and more difficult challenges.
This blog respects science, therefore would not normally suggest, like a cliché sports coach, that people give it 110%, because 100% is the maximum that one can give by definition. However, in this case setting a carbon footprint reduction target of >100% of your own is essential.
Doing this clarifies the lack of societal impact that concentrating on yourself has. By setting a target that cannot be accomplished by reducing your own carbon footprint it forces the individual to externalise their efforts and to reduce the carbon footprint of others. Influencing 11 other people to reduce their footprint by 10% gets the job and creates the necessary mind-set required to make change that will matter.
Influencing the policies at one’s place of work, may also have benefits that exceed that 100%.
(Note that reducing your own footprint is also helpful)
So, set a 110% target. Easy.
Or not so easy. The interesting aspect of modern society, is the increased focus on individualism.
AS detailed in many papers / books, the younger generations, on whom so much depends, are not as concerned with society as they used to be.
[The Rise of Self Interest and the Decline of Intellectual and Civic Interest, J. Twenge]
For America, this can be read across for much of the west.
A Similar study concludes
“The idea that today’s emerging adults are as a generation leading a new wave of renewed civic- mindedness and political involvement is sheer fiction….They are so focused on their own personal lives, especially on trying to stand on their own two feet, that they seem incapable of thinking more broadly about community involvement, good citizenship, or even very modest levels of charitable giving”
[Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood, C. Smith et. al]
Whether these conclusions are contested or not, the fact is that greater civic engagement is essential to solve systemic issues that concentrating on the self cannot.
Something to think about the next time you are making a cup of tea.