What can I do about it

Reading time: 9 minutes

TL;DR

Hot take

There are dozens of different actions you can take personally but the key thing to remember - we also need systemic change.

We need all the things

Disclaimer

Do what you can. Don’t beat yourself up. There’s some easy changes and hard changes. These changes take time. Understand what’s making the most difference. This great article by ACT MLA Jo Clay about her personal experience is a good balance.

The idea of a personal carbon footprint and the guilt associated with it was pushed hard by BP. It’s a scheme to deflect attention away from their carbon footprint and the power changes needed to topple their industry. It’s another form of blaming consumers for the system they live in.

Last, but important point: don’t be a scold. Don’t judge others. Everyone is doing what they can. You don’t know everyone’s circumstances. Actually you can scold the fossil fuel executives, those buggers deserve it. But your fellow citizens, friends, family - be kind.

Some potential actions

Transport

Walk, ride a bike, take public transport. If you have to drive, try and drive an electric vehicle, or a hybrid at worst.

That’s pretty much the correct order. You can dive deeper into What about electric vehicles here.

Not enough public transport in your area? Talk to your politician about it (see below).

Fly less

Still a transport action but worth discussing on it’s own. If carbon offsets for flying are bullshit (they are), your flights are causing damage.

If you can, fly less. The plane still goes without you - at first. As you set an example and others start to follow, there will be less demand for flying. There has to be. It’s bananas that the airline industry is planning to grow, they think sustainable aviation fuel or carbon offsets (funded by passengers) is going to see them through.

Recycling

You should recycle, but shop smart. Don’t buy excess plastic because you think it can be recycled, because most plastic recycling is a scam. Recycling of other materials is better, but plastic recycling not so much.

There’s a great Climate Town episode on plastic recycling. Or this New Republic article.

Change your diet

I find topic is an area that is easily weaponised to make people feel guilty.

You could:

Eat and drink less
Eat and drink less carbon intensive foods
A bit of both

I’m not trying to be a scold here, food is very personal and culturally important. Of course the reality is different foods have different carbon impacts. Be aware, choose wisely. If you can’t go vegan, or vegetarian, just try having a meat free day once a week or twice a week. It’s a small action, it’s only a drop in the ocean but it’s something you can control.

Just remember the system has much larger problems than your food alone.

Electrify your things

If you can afford it, electrify your things. I know not everyone owns their own home or has the means to upgrade appliances - but if you can you absolutely should.

Disconnect gas - use induction stoves, heat pumps
Get solar panels
Don’t buy another ICE vehicle, buy a BEV when you can: (What about electric vehicles - remember, walking, riding, public transport is better)
After solar panels consider home battery storage - I would look at a BEV before this, but everyone has a different situation. Dollars wise these take a long time to recover costs, but they can also provide some local resilience if done correctly.

The Big Switch by Saul Griffith is one of the best books on this.

Also: Focus on efficiency to reduce your overall electricity usage. Remember the 90s when everyone went crazy for halogen downlights? If you still have those get them swapped out for modern LEDs and use a fraction of the energy as one example.

Find a community

Find a community that is right for you, join, participate. There’s strength in numbers but there’s also massive benefits from finding like-minded people and working together for climate action.

There’s hundreds of different climate communities out there ranging from in-person to virtual and support groups through to Extinction Rebellion. You don’t have to be all the way down to getting yourself arrested, just join local like-minded people for a cup of tea or a coffee and support each other.

Even if it’s not a climate-community, knowing your neighbours and local community is a climate solution in it’s own. If neighbours know each other, they’re more likely to check on each other during heatwaves and other events to ensure they are OK. It could even benefit your health.

Reminder the massive corporations want to keep us individualised (see their centuries-old campaign against trade unions). That’s how they maintain their power.

Contact politicians

Great, you voted - job done right? Nope. All politicians should be continually reminded about what their job is. You can’t just vote for them every 3 to 4 years and expect them to act in our best interests - that’s what got us into this mess.

Contact them - phone, email, letter, request meetings, sign petitions. Remind them about their climate policy. Tell them how important it is. Politicians are mostly reactive, they want the annoying problem to go away. If constituents are constantly contacting them about topics they will may eventually do something about it. But even after the announcement you have to keep them to their word.

To be clear though, I don’t think this has a lot of effect as I think a lot of the major parties are behold to their large donors and influenced by industry more than individual voters. Voting them out is one of the few mechanisms we have, so you can at least remind them of that.

Contact corporations

Same as the above - contact them. If you end up changing banks or investments, be sure to tell them why in their inevitable “tell us what we did” survey. Vote with your feet but tell them.

You can’t complain about the excess plastic at the supermarket without at least registering the feedback with the supermarket. The people you speak to don’t control the system, but once enough people complain change is more likely to happen.

Talk to people about climate change

More people want climate change action than the media and political classes would have you believe. Climate change as a topic became a political topic because how we go about addressing it comes down to policy determined by politicians. Living in such a polarised world climate change then somehow became a hot topic that everyday people tend to avoid in conversation because they aren’t sure everyone is on the same page. You never know until you talk about it.

Don’t focus on the global scale doom and gloom, find local impacts and things to talk about that you might have in common with others - like oysters being unavailable because the ocean was too warm, or it being harder to get maple syrup or how it’s sad about the Great Barrier Reef having yet another mass coral bleaching, or festival shows getting cancelled due to bushfire smoke, or how wine is changing because of climate change.

Shareholder activism

Businesses are there to make money for their owners - shareholders. The Board, the CEO - they answer to the shareholders. There is an increasing trend towards shareholder activism to force large companies to take more aggressive stances on climate change.

The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility is an example of an organisation that helps shareholders organise and apply pressure for causes such as this. In some cases you can assist by pooling your voting rights with organisations like this. So if you have investments and own shares in some of these companies impacting the climate, exercise what rights you have to influence them - after all you’re the owner.

Be an activist

Go to a protest. Write a letter. Talk to people about climate change. Just doing some of these simple things makes you an activist and that’s a good thing, we’re going to need more and more to reach the social tipping points we need for climate action.

Posting on social media is one thing, try and get some traction in the real world. Work up to it - you don’t have to block roads and get arrested or throw food on art, but you can support just by turning up and adding to the numbers of people present at a march or rally.

Move your money

Got a retirement fund? Where is the money invested? There’s heaps of guides to ethical investment funds - those that avoid investing in the worst kinds of money making evil. I’m not a financial advisor, talk to someone who is and / or do your own research. There’s guides out there with these Australian examples:

Change your bank

Even if you don’t have huge investments or savings, if you have a mortgage you could be helping a bank that is also furthering fossil fuel investments.

Climate Town has a great episode on this.

The Banking on Climate Chaos report has lots of details.

Buy less stuff

You could even have the same amount of stuff, just don’t replace it as often - if you replace your mobile phone every 12 months but slow that down to every 24 months, then you’ve halved your mobile phone consumption. Overly simplistic? Of course. But big ticket items like cars, appliances, computers, phones etc - the less of those we make and use the better. I know some of these devices are crucial to participating in society so I’m not telling you to go and live in a cave, but just string out your purchases as far as possible.

Reminder though - if something is essential, it’s essential. Don’t fall back into the personal carbon footprint guilt trap here. If you’re in a position in the workplace to also enact a buy less stuff approach, that’ll have a greater impact than you can achieve alone.

Creating less new stuff could greatly help Earth’s climate

Support Journalism, Authors, Podcasters, Creators

Don’t just listen to your favourite podcasts - rate, review, support them on Patreon or however they want to be supported. It’s really important that we keep these excellent information sources alive because corporate media sure isn’t going to cover climate change properly.

Invest in community projects

What to do if you live in an apartment and can’t get solar panels? Or you rent and can’t have them installed? There may be community projects investing in renewable energy in your area.

I’m not a financial advisor and of course this is all at your own risk - but if you have the means and want to make a difference support what you can. Be a part-owner in a solar farm, or a wind farm or a community battery. Further reading see Community Renewable Energy: What It Is & How You Can Get Started

Well

You got to the end?

Contact me if there’s other ideas - there’s plenty of things we can do as individuals and I’m sure my list will grow over time.