What can I do to combat climate change?

Summer 2021 was a season of catastrophes.

In June, a heat domeThe Pacific Northwest saw temperatures soar as they fell from the sky. Aim for 30-40 degrees above the average. It was so hot Plants scorched in soil, Roads cracked, streetcar cables meltedTemperatures of over 115 degrees Fahrenheit.

Then, in July Extreme floods swept through northwest Europe, leaving at most 199 dead. The same happened in China’s Henan provinceThere were subways that flooded and roads that collapsed. At least 99 people died. And last week. Another heat domeThe US was swept by the heat advisory, with 17 states now under heat advisory.

Scientists and activists have been warning about climate change for decades — and plenty of people around the world have experienced its effects long before now. John Paul Mejia, for example, became a climate organizer as a Miami high school student, after seeing what Hurricane Irma did to “people who both looked like me, and came from the same background as I did.” (Climate change didn’t cause Hurricane Irma, but it did Its effects can worsen.)

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“I understood the climate fight through the justice lens from experience, not from an article,” Mejia, now a spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement, which mobilizes youth to fight climate change, told Vox.

But through the events of this summer, many Americans — including those from more affluent communities that have been insulated so far — have seen more direct and devastating impacts of climate change on their own lives. Many people feel despair when they see the effects of climate change on their lives. Literally on fire?

“What happens is, when people first realize how bad it is, they feel powerless,” Mary Annaïse Heglar, a Climate writerco-creator of podcast Hot TakesVox. With the extreme weather this year, “there’s a new wave of new people realizing how bad it is.”

According to a survey, 40% of Americans feel helpless regarding climate change and 29% feel hopeless. December 2020 survey. It’s also no surprise that these emotions are coming up during a devastating pandemic — yet another global disaster over which individual humans have seemingly little control.

To help stop climate change, we’ve sometimes been told to change our personal habits: recycle, reuse, take shorter showers, etc. However, these individual choices can be dwarfed when compared to the actions of countries and corporations. Just 100 companies are responsible for 70 percent of the world’s carbon emissions since 1988, According to one study, and sweeping changes aren’t possible without government intervention. Not to mention that poverty and other factors limit the choices many people have in the first place.

Given all this, it’s no surprise that “all of a sudden, everybody’s going into nihilism,” as Heglar puts it.

But experts say we’re not completely powerless, and there’s a way to live in an age of climate change without giving up or sticking your head in the sand. It’s not necessarily about going vegan or making your home zero-waste, either.

The idea of reducing your personal carbon footprint, while not inherently wrong, has often been used as a distraction, “pitting working people against each other with morality choices about how sustainable you are,” rather than “realizing how much you actually have in common,” Mejia said.

Instead, many say the key to fighting despair is to think beyond the individual and seek community support and solutions — especially those that put pressure on governments and companies to make the large-scale, sustainable changes necessary to reduce emissions. As Heglar put it, “the most detrimental thing to climate action is this feeling that we’re all in it alone.”

Many Americans are now waking up to the reality of climate change

Climate anxiety, and even despair, are not new phenomena. But this A terrible summer has caused home the message that the changing climate “is not something we can avoid,” Sarah Jaquette Ray, leader of the Environmental Studies Program at Humboldt State University, told Vox. “I’m literally talking to you from the smoke right now.”

This message is being reflected in polling. About A third of Americans believe that the government is responsible. (and two-thirds of Republicans) still don’t believe that humans are causing climate change, but a lot of people have been growing more concerned in recent years. For example, this year, 50% of participants in a Morning Consult poll said the changing climate poses a “critical threat” to American interests, up 6 percentage points from 2019 and 10 points from 2017.

The American attitude towards climate change is changing. The problem of carbon emissions has often been seen as something that must be solved by changing our personal consumption habits. This is despite the fact that there has been an explosion in carbon dioxide emissions. Products made from green materials aimed at capitalizing on people’s desire to be environmentally friendly. This approach, aside from the irony of encouraging people to buy more stuff to reduce their environmental impact, also masks the true culprits, many claim: Companies that use large amounts or produce large quantities of fossil fuels and governments that are far too slow to reduce emissions.

ExxonMobil, for example, has used sophisticated PR to make climate change look like an issue of personal responsibility and deflect blame from their actions. Vox, Rebecca Leber reported. “A lot of the individualist solutions that have propagated across society and across our discourse, such as the carbon footprint and the idea of self-sacrifice in order to save the planet, really have the fingerprints of a few oil companies,” Mejia said.

In fact, the United States is the largest contributor to carbon emissions. Transportation, electricity, industry, are only partly under individuals’ control. People can choose to use less energy in their homes, but household electricity use only accounts for about 10 percent of CO2 emissions in the US — even getting rid of it entirely wouldn’t be enough to stop climate change. And while some people can choose to drive an electric car or go car-free, they can’t individually shut down coal plants or redesign America’s public transit systems to make that an option for everyone.

US Environmental Protection Agency

That’s why it will take government action, not just individual sacrifice, to meaningfully rein in emissions. For example, Congress could pass legislation to reduce emissions. Clean electricity standard nationwideThis would require utilities to obtain their electricity from renewable sources, such as solar, and not from fossil fuels. Without that, even supposedly environmentally-friendly individual decisions like driving an electric car may not mean much, since that electricity could still come from burning coal. Only governments have the money, authority, and the means to do this. Improvements to public transit and other infrastructureThese are essential to drastically reduce emissions over the long-term.

In recent years, there’s been Growing awarenessThe large role that large companies and government entities play on climate change. “We’ve really changed the conversation around climate change away from individual action, which I think we really needed to do,” Heglar said. However, now we’re “in danger of the pendulum swinging too far,” she said, with people thinking “they can’t do anything at all.”

Here are some ways Americans can think about — and act on — climate change

Giving up Experts and advocates agree that changing the climate is not an option. As Mejia puts it, “cynicism serves no purpose but to uphold the status quo.”

Instead, people who’ve been steeped in climate action for years or decades have some advice for those who might feeling powerless today in the face of the problem.

Don’t try to do everything. Do what you can.

Individual “green” behaviors aren’t enough to stop climate change on their own. All people can reduce their carbon footprints, but not everyone can. Many Americans can’t afford solar panels or Insulation for hot water heaters — many others don’t live in places where they can control such things. Time is also a factor — reducing waste in a society designed to produce a lot of it is labor-intensive, and that labor often falls disproportionately on women, as Alden Wicker reported at Vox.

So rather than beating ourselves up when we fall short of environmental perfection — or criticizing others when they do — we can choose the most meaningful actions that are doable for us. You can reduce your consumption of animal products, drive less, and take fewer flights. biggest impactOn our personal carbon use.

Everyone’s capabilities are different. Overall, “it’s important to find the ways that you can reduce your consumption, that work for your lifestyle and within your means,” Heglar said.

And it’s important to remember that those consumption decisions are just the beginning. “It’s a good starting point, but it’s a really dangerous stopping point,” Heglar said. People must exercise their power as consumers but also remember that they have the power to be citizens and members of the community.

Think communally

Many agree that collective action is the most important step. In America, “we have such a myth of individualism,” said Humboldt State’s Ray, also the author of A Field Guide on Climate Change: How to Keep Cool on a Warming Planet. That myth can make people feel “that they have no power, because they can’t do anything against such as something so big as climate change.” For many in climate movements, the antidote to that feeling — and the way to build real power — is to band together.

For example, the Sunrise Movement advocates for a Green New DealAlong with other priorities like Climate investment in the infrastructure dealCurrently before Congress. The movement has hosted Marches in all parts of the country in recent months to bring the Biden administration’s attention to the problem, as well as reaching out to More than 6.5 million voters2020 election. “Since the winds of change are blowing,” Mejia says, “why don’t we make them sail in our direction?”

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The Sunrise Movement is only one of many groups currently working on climate advocacy. For some, joining a collective action effort can seem almost as daunting as reducing your own carbon footprint. For Heglar, the answer is simple: “You do what you’re good at, and you do your best.”

“If you’re good at organizing, organize. If you’re good at taking care of people, take care of people who do other things,” Heglar said. And “no matter who you are, build community.”

Around the world, people are already working on communal solutions to environmental degradation, and have been for generations, whether that’s Indigenous firefighting practicesOder the Colombian rainforest protection: We must fight for it. There are many ways Americans can come together to help the planet and one another. Local mutual aid groupsCommunities can use these tools to cope with the impacts of climate change. Water and sunscreenDuring heat waves. Local Buy Nothing groupsPeople can reduce waste by donating and sharing their used items.

One of the best ways to put pressure on elected officials. Most important collective actionsPeople can take action. People can contact their representatives in Congress, the state legislatures, or city governments. To support climate investments, public transit and clean energy standards. The Natural Resources Defense Council GuideTo lobby your legislator.

Getting involved in communities doesn’t just multiply your impact — it can also stave off despair. Ray has witnessed this in her classes at Humboldt State. She encourages students to build trust and express their feelings about climate change. “The alleviation of anxiety that happens when you’re working towards a common goal, even if it’s a really depressing one, in community is actually very joyful and very fulfilling,” she said.

Long-term thinking is key

Just as no one person can fix climate change, the crisis isn’t going to be solved overnight — and it may not be “solved” in a conventional way at all. Heglar stated that people must look at climate change as a long-term effort they engage in over time to address this fact.

We should see the problem “in the same realm that you would see reproductive justice or racial justice or any other justice issue,” she explained. “You would never say, what’s the one thing I can do about racism?”

Especially since the uprisings last summer following the murder of George Floyd, more Americans — especially white people — are beginning to internalize the idea that the fight against racism will be a long-term struggle, one that probably won’t ever be “over,” but that they have a responsibility to keep committing to, again and again. And racial justice activists have experience working for a cause that can seem hopeless, and confronting an existential risk to themselves and their families — but they keep doing the work anyway.

It’s also important to remember that for many communities the world over, facing a major threat to the present and future is nothing new. Anti-colonial and abolitionist movements “have had long traditions of movement resilience that have a lot to teach the climate movement,” Ray noted, including the message that climate change is not “the first and only existential threat we’ve ever faced.”

Indeed, social movements from the opposition to apartheid in South Africa to Indigenous rights activism here in the US have “seen a lot of reason for despair, and no evidence for hope, and have still figured out how to fight the fight,” Ray said.

Find joy, but be open to grief

The fight against climate changes can be difficult, slow, and painful. But in order to stay committed for the long haul, people need to think about the positive too, Ray said, to “actively discipline into your life the cultivation of joy.”

This could be as simple as reading environmental news. Success StoriesYou can also be a successful activist in your local community. Ray is involved in a local organization. The Just Transition movement, which works toward an equitable shift away from fossil fuels, and says “the newsletter that they send me is enough to keep me going.”

“The world is awful,” Ray said. “And there’s so much beauty, joy, and delight to be had too.”

Nathan Howard/Getty Images

It’s also okay to feel the awfulness of the world. After all, climate change for many Americans today means risk to themselves or their loved ones, or destruction of their homes or places they’ve come to love. And part of acknowledging climate anxiety and grief, for people not yet personally affected by disasters, can be asking yourself, “If I am hurting so much, what is happening to people who are less privileged?” Kritee, a senior climate scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, Recently told the New York Times.

Heglar said that even those who have been involved for years in climate science or activism still feel sorrow, despair or rage. In fact, “I feel comforted by the fact I can still feel that way, because it means I’m not desensitized,” she said. “I never want to be that person who can look at the world burn and feel fine.”

When climate despair or grief becomes overwhelming, the key is reaching out to others in your local community. “You are not the only one feeling this way,” Heglar said, adding that “it benefits the fossil fuel industry when you think you are. So find the other people who are feeling it too.”