Hey there 👋 , this is one of my more serious posts where I write something I hope is interesting about product management, tech, or climate change, sign up😊.

I want to challenge the way you think about living sustainably. I’m sure you’re aware that there are countless articles, videos, and various other types of media that talk about reducing your carbon footprint. They say it’s important for you to know your footprint so you can reduce it, and be a good climate advocate. I’m not going to say that’s wrong, necessarily, but I want to shift the focus and talk about something more important.

There are two arguments I hear read more than any other about how to be more sustainable. This article is about flaws in them and a way to fix them. Sound Read good? Okay.

The first is the most common. It goes like this:

‘I need to do my bit to save the planet and make a difference’.

This typically comes from the younger generations and is usually well intentioned. The idea being that they know about climate change and the risks it poses to the planet and so want to do something to help. Very noble, very valiant, that’s great. But we’ll get to the issues in this argument later.

The second, though less common, is more pervasive. It goes like this:

‘You should  x to reduce y’

For example:

‘You should eat vegan to reduce agricultural emissions’

Or,

‘You should drive an electric car so there are less petrol and diesel cars’

This follows the same principle, and is similar to the first argument, but with different subjects. The second kind of arguments usually come from a more ‘officious’ source: a business, or a government, or a media company, something like that. The idea being that someone is telling you to do something, to change your behaviour, saying that if you do so, things will be better, that you’re a good person who’s helping the planet. Go you. 

I’ve not gone insane, I’m not about to tell you not to eat more sustainably or to drive dirtier old petrol cars, but focusing on you and your own footprint can be detrimental to the bigger issue. So let’s dig into these things.

Climate in the context of society

Scene change, let me see if I can make things a bit more relatable – think about the history of Twitter for a moment. When was it better? In the beginning when there were limitations, when there were rules, and when seemingly not every single person from the age of 4 had an account? Or is it better now, where there are very few limitations, no(?) rules, and anyone with a phone number or an email can have an account?

Well, in the world of climate action we’ve jumped straight to scenario two. Despite the fact scientists have been telling us it’s a problem for decades, only in the last few years have we seen the topic really be taken seriously in the court of public opinion and in the real courts with laws and such. Everyone who can access the internet can make up whatever rubbish they like and be corroborated by the ignorant or the uneducated. And more importantly, because it’s gone on so long the people in positions of power to effect the most change are the ones with the most to lose. 

This is an example of an idea called ‘neoliberalism’. It’s a political economic term that describes two core ideas: 1. that increased competition achieved through deregulation is the best way to organise humans and 2. that neutral regulatory bodies should play a smaller role in society, achieved through things like privatisation. On the face of it, this is not necessarily a bad idea. It has been interpreted before as ‘let go of the reins, trust the people’. A noble sentiment. But it doesn’t work like that, it’s not that easy. When these two ideas are taken to the extreme they are dangerous. 

Twitter is actually not a great example, but there’s lots of research on this in government and economic settings. For the sake of this article, just know that it is likely you are living in an increasingly neoliberal society, and one major effect of neoliberalism is that there are less people to take responsibility, or to be held accountable when things go bad. Then, because of this lack of regulation, the people who get successful stay successful, the people who are unsuccessful struggle for anything else, and it doesn’t matter how either got there because that’s how the system is built. 

Further than that, if there’s no regulatory body or governance to be accountable, who do you think ends up with the blame when things go wrong? It’s not the people who are on top, they’re successful, this is a pro-competition idea, they must be doing something right. No, the blame rests with the unsuccessful, in practice, and that means individuals. For better or for worse, neoliberalism is a big part of the society that a lot of us (in the western world) live in. As a result, individual behaviour change appears to be the only meaningful way to ‘do something’. Sound familiar? ‘Calculate your footprint so you can do something about climate change!’ Okay, now hold that thought.

The problem with individualist thinking

With this in mind, let’s get back to talking about climate change. Let’s look briefly at the problem both of the arguments from earlier are in favour of. They’re about people ‘doing something’ to impact climate change. For the sake of this article, let’s equate that to simply(?) wanting to reduce their emissions.

First, let’s look at the problem on a global scale, where are all the emissions coming from? All the sources I find agree that the biggest sources of emissions come from the following places; industry, transportation, electric power, commercial and residential use, and agriculture. We could argue about the break down of these sources for a while, but we can agree that the biggest source of emissions comes from generating energy. 

Now we can examine the arguments a little better. First, ‘I need to do my bit to save the planet’. ‘I need’ and ‘my bit’ imply an individual's point of view, so let’s look at the individual.

Nature.org tells us that the global average for a person's carbon footprint is 4 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. (Quadruple that in the U.S). These emissions mostly come from the energy it requires to travel (burning petrol in cars, kerosene for planes, etc), the energy you require at home (gas and electricity for heating, cooking, etc), and the energy used in less direct sources like the goods and services you buy. We have to factor all of these in because everything you buy has a footprint too: how it was manufactured, delivered, disposed of, etc, and all of that contributes to your footprint. So, if those are the emissions of the person behind our quote from earlier, let’s call them Lisa, can’t Lisa just reduce her emissions and save the planet? 

Let’s take it one at a time. Can Lisa reduce the energy she requires to travel? Certainly, she can walk places instead of driving, whenever possible. If she can afford it, she could buy an electric car for greater distances or choose to use public transport. She could get the train for even longer distances and only fly when absolutely necessary, or indeed not at all (since flying generates the most emissions). What about the energy in her home? Well, if she can afford it, and it’s available, she can change her energy supplier to a renewable source and/or turn her heating down by more degrees more often.

Hmmm, but then, even in the very ‘modern’ western world I live in, a lot of people need to have a car and need to drive around. The most common and affordable car on the market is petrol. In the world we all live in it can also be hard not to fly. Whether it's to visit friends and family, go on holiday, travel for work, or whatever else, it’s hard. And then there’s the energy at home, if you have the funds, and your supplier isn’t misleading you, wind turbines, solar farms, and hydroelectric power generating plants require fossil fuels. Yes, require. Currently, we need tonnes of cement and steel that needs metallurgical coal to actually build turbines and solar farms. Plus the tonnes of conventional metals (gold, silver, tin, zinc, aluminium etc) and special metals (lithium and cobalt) that go into the electronics and the complicated makeups of solar cells and, and, and, all need mines and demand loads of energy too.

Can you see the flaw in the first argument now? ‘I need to do my bit to save the planet’, but what if the ‘bit’ that you alone can do isn’t enough? I’m happy to go on record saying that even if you could afford it, making all of these changes in isolation isn’t enough. (I don’t know if you can tell but I made that fullstop bold). And you might say ‘well, if everyone did it, it might be.’ And you might be right…but that’s delusional. Even if every single person in the world suddenly became hyperconscious of their individual emissions and decided they wanted to bike to work, eat vegan, eat local, shop local, and shop sustainable, the majority of the population of the world (which is growing) can’t afford these changes. And even if they could, with the current state of the energy we use (in terms of how much we use and where it comes from) and how we use it, I’m not sure even that would be enough.

Why individual action isn’t enough

So that’s the first one. Now to link to the second argument, I want to ask why? Why won’t an individual doing their bit be enough? You might say it’s because one person alone isn’t enough. And while obviously that’s correct, it doesn’t address the bigger issue. It depends on what the ‘bit’ that they’re doing is. The kinds of measures we talked about earlier – flying less, electric cars, etc – are limited. You are limited in your options. You only have the options that are presented to you. And if you don’t like any of them your only option is to stop – to not fly, or not drive, or not heat your home. This, is bullshit.

Let me try and illustrate what I mean. You’re in the supermarket, you’re buying groceries, you want cereal, how many options are there? So many. What matters in cereal, nutrition? Taste? Cost? Brand? Is there variety in these things? Yes. You want to buy a bike, how many different kinds of bikes are there? Frankly, too many. What’s important when buying a bike? Weight? Brake quality? Is there variety in these aspects? Yes. You want to take a flight to New Zealand? How many options are there? Quite a few, a quick search tells me there are dozens from the UK a day, and, as you know, there are lots of days. Let’s assume low emissions are important for flying, how much variety in flight emissions is there? None. The ‘low emissions option’ would be simply not flying. But what if that’s not an option? What if you have to go for work? Or your family member over there needs you? Making the choice not to fly isn't practical or even doable for a lot of people.

My point is: leading a sustainable lifestyle is hard.  It’s hard because you’re limited by your options, and more often than not it comes down to either paying a lot more, or not doing something you need to do. Why are you limited in your options? Well, perfect timing, get a biscuit, and let’s bring this back to neoliberalism and the role it plays.

We live in an increasingly neoliberal society – less regulation, more competition, all of that. And what are we competing for? Well it’s also a capitalist society so we’re competing for money. Let’s look at the biggest earners in energy: the oil and gas industry. The big ol’ fossil fuel companies. Who is the supplier of the choices that you have for energy? It’s not just the big oil and gas companies, but they’re the majority. And in our neoliberalist world that we talked about earlier, how do the 0.1% stay on top? Who’s to blame? The individual. The people who are not successful. That’s where we get quote number two, derived from this idea that the individual is the problem: ‘you should drive an electric car so there are less petrol and diesel cars’.

The big oil and gas companies say ‘hey, if you want us to be better, you should do better. If you used less fossil fuels, we’d make less’. The implication being that if people drove less or switched to electric cars, then they’d change. If everyone ate vegan/vegetarian, then the agriculture industry would change. They inflate emphasis on individual and moral action and make the narrative about personal choice. This accusation is known as ‘climate hypocrisy’, where you say you care about the environment, but you choose to fly. Or you choose fossil fuel sources for your heating. Or you buy the apples that come in a plastic bag. But often, fossil fuels are the only choice, and that’s no choice at all.

If we look bigger again, more globally, the UN tells us that the world’s population is growing. All of those people want to live better, happier, and more progressive lives too. There are countries with hundreds of millions to billions of people where vast majorities don’t live like we do. They don’t fly every year, they don’t have electric cars or even the option for renewable energy in their homes. Yet. But they want it. Sooner or later they’re going to expect the same standard of living as, let’s say, the US middle class. Where it’s safe to say the emissions are at least double that of the average person in say India. 

Are we going to say no to these millions of people wanting to live more ‘modern’ lifestyles, or even simply a better quality of life? ‘You can’t live the jet-setting vicarious life we’ve lived because you need to do your bit?’ Are we going to say, ‘no you can’t use a fossil fuel emitting car even though you don’t have the infrastructure for an electric one because you have to do your bit?’ No. Of course not. Those aren’t options. We have to create the options so people can make better choices.

Guilt and shame from Climate hypocrisy 

This brings us back to, ‘you should eat vegan to reduce livestock emissions’ and ‘you should drive an electric car so there are less petrol and diesel cars’. These are common ways for climate change opponents to discredit arguments and, unfortunately, are the kind of things avid climate activists believe in themselves. It positions the whole crisis as a consequence of personal choices, to make them sound like hypocrites. It perpetuates harmful narratives by targeting people's lives. And once you hear that it’s your damn fault enough, you start to believe it. You start to feel ‘climate guilt’ for your emissions and shame for not ‘choosing’ to do better.

You feel guilty for buying the fruit that’s wrapped in plastic, or for buying the drink that you like the most because it’s in plastic bottles. You change your behaviour because otherwise you’re a bad climate advocate. The implication being that if you didn’t buy them, they’d stop making them.

This, is nonsense. The idea that you can change the supply based on what you buy, is a myth. You can only buy what is produced. You only have the options that are put in front of you. And the options that are put in front of you are there to make the most profit. Think to yourself, are the options you have good enough? You should buy local produce not wrapped in plastic, and you should avoid one-use plastics, but not because you feel guilty about it. Not because you think you have to influence the whole world by doing so. You should do these things out of principle, and not feel bad about it when you don’t have the choice.

So what can we do?

This isn’t a defeatist article. I’m not saying, give up, it doesn’t matter. But I am saying let’s do away with the idea that if you’re not a vegan or you fly home for the holidays that you’re a bad climate advocate. And let’s kick the idea that to make a difference you have to change your own behaviour.

The first thing I’d like you to do is to stop feeling bad about flying when you have to. Take as few flights as you can, sure. If you have a super yacht, recycle or donate it you dumbass. When you can, choose the flights that are using sustainable aviation fuel and offsetting their emissions (or offset them yourself until the industry catches up). I personally do these things on principle (as often as I can), because I am privileged enough to have the means and the money to do so. Set an example, for what it’s worth, walk the talk. But don’t waste your time feeling guilty about what you can't do, instead focus on what you can do that is actually effective and in your means.

Sacrificing your happiness, or your cognitive capacity by making choices that add up to make your life harder, or at least unnecessarily complicated is taking away from what you could be doing. For the vast majority of people in the world who live from paycheck to paycheck, feeling guilty or like they have to sacrifice basic needs to be a good climate champion is counter productive. If you can make sacrifices or can afford to make more sustainable choices, do so. But that isn’t the ‘bit’ that’s going to make a difference. 

The bit that you can do to actually make a difference is to engage in more systematic structural change. We, as a society, need to demand and invest in alternatives. Better options, more choices. We need to think about the future. The underlying energy-climate challenge is the rise in population and their desire to, understandably, have the quality of life we expect in ‘the west’. Energy is always demand driven, so we need to demand better alternatives.

However, if you look at the global climate and energy future, it depends on India and China. Around half of the coal-fired power plants in these countries are less than 15 years old, meaning they’ll continue to burn for another 30+ years.  You could turn them off, but then where are those millions of people going to get their energy from? Someone has to pay to replace the stable, cheap, assured power that they’re getting. How do we do that? Holy cow, that’s the right question.

Let’s go more local, I’m from the UK so I’ll look there. The UK made gains in emitting less in the 1980s when they switched from large amounts of coal driven energy, to gas. Since then, emissions have more or less stagnated and most have essentially been exported as the UKs manufacturing is now predominantly done in China – no ‘real’ gain. They could turn off the gas altogether, and we could invest more in local, sustainable manufacturing. But people need to get their energy from somewhere and someone needs to pay for the manufacturing because it wouldn’t happen overnight. 

That’s where you can do ‘your bit’ to make a difference. Lobbying or petitioning for this kind of change. Yes, your vote matters, but you can do more than that if you try. You can accompany your vote by educating yourself on what you can do, by pushing oil and gas companies to invest in renewable energies, or by demanding packaging companies change to less plastic, and suddenly you’re doing something.

And to be clear, I don’t mean glueing yourself to the road outside of the oil and gas companies. Don’t do that. I mean investment in, and education around, the hard stuff. If you want to abolish fossil fuels, how do we do that? It’s what our society is built on, and what the growing global population is building on. How do we replace it while we maintain the quality of life we demand all over the world?

Conclusion

To wrap everything up, stop feeling bad about flying to go on holiday. If your only options are plastic or petrol, for whatever reason, be it financial, accessibility, or anything else, then that’s your only option. You are not to blame for the climate crisis, and you alone cannot fix it. Make good, sustainable decisions out of principle, and out of hope. If you care about the environment, don’t knowingly partake in its destruction. Do it because the world is catching up and new billions of people are going to want the industrial revolution the western world benefited from. Don’t choose these things because you feel like you have to or because you’d feel guilty otherwise.

Let’s reframe the argument. Let’s think bigger. What I’m trying to say is we need to get some bloody serious engineering, social science and economics done, across a wide range of technologies and advise short-termist politicians on what is needed. For every flight you take, maybe write letters to your local MP. If your energy bill is crazy enough and you can’t afford renewables, use fossil fuels and donate some money to research or take a course in sustainable economics. Something systematic that adds to the discussion, not something born out of guilt that takes away from your life. 

We should spend less effort worrying about our individual actions and more on looking at the route cause. If you’re passionate about something, whether that’s the oceans or your country, be a proponent of change for it. Build awareness, find organisations that are making big, systematic changes, and support them. There’s lots that you could be doing. I’ll cover what those things might be and how you might do more in another article, but feeling bad about flying isn’t one of them. 

If you’re interested in exploring these topics and ideas further I found the videos at the bottom of this article while I was researching the topic and took a lot of inspiration from both. They’re rather good.

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