Someday You’ll Need to Stick Your Neck Out
If you think something’s not right with the climate, AND you want to do something about it, you are almost certainly in the minority in any group you belong to. I predict this will be true for at least another 20 years.
The groups I’m referring to could include your family, your board of directors, your shareholders, your religious congregation, voters in your country, your neighborhood, your student body, your online store, your town, your bank’s clientele, and so on.
Lots of climate activity over the past decade has focused on convincing various kinds of groups or institutions that there are acceptable and defensible pathways to actively fight climate change, in a manner acceptable to the majority of their members. This often means structuring rules and incentives that create a MEASURABLE and FORESEEABLE benefit to the group. Carbon accounting, carbon markets, tax incentives and subsidies, and ESG initiatives, for example, are the backbone of these efforts. The point of these is to convince the group that maybe it doesn’t really need to sacrifice anything, and the climate can get better under these rules.
But recent experience shows that your groups will get sidetracked and make the wrong decisions about the climate, and fail to support what you know is right. Your government will turn against the best policies, and most of your friends/family/neighbors will have voted that government in. Your religious institution will follow the wrong trajectory. Your employer will bury its head in the sand. Big businesses will break their promises. Investors will turn their attention to other shiny objects. The media, academia, and even scientists will lie to get attention. Even your family will doubt you.
In most groups, opposition and uncertainty are often an excuse to do nothing, or at least, to do nothing until the dust settles. I’m telling you, the dust will not settle for a long long time.
You may even need to make sacrifices to do right by the climate. In that moment you’ll need to decide a) whether planetary health matters to you, and b) what you are willing to do about it. You may need to take a stand that is unpopular, unprofitable, career-limiting, or against conventional wisdom.
You will need to imagine your actions–and your actions only–will save or condemn the world. Everyone else has abandoned what you know to be right. You’ll need to get up and keep going. You may not even be rewarded or even compensated in any way for your efforts, or at least not for a very long time.
I currently feel like my groups and institutions are abandoning the climate fight, and I will need to go on, in many ways, alone. I invite you to do the same. I admonish you to do the same. My admonition applies to both the powerful and the obscure. On this list I’ll bet you could do at least three of these:
Build a direct, science-based understanding of the climate-change problem and potential solutions. Ultimately, experts can help you with your opinions, but you will need a strong, independent point of view. Even the experts are fallible and fickle. Make this a lifelong endeavor.
Change your opinion when new evidence justifies it.
Change to a greener diet, even if it costs more money.
Cut your electricity consumption by 10% by changing your habits.
Take a shorter shower.
Attend a public utilities commission meeting, even if it’s not convenient.
Buy genuine quality carbon credits for trips you take, even if they are more expensive than the ones the airline sells.
Make plans to buy an EV, even if the local charging infrastructure is weak.
Make plans to install solar panels, even if it doesn’t save you money and there are no tax credits available.
Make plans to install a heat pump.
Change your career to align with climate-supporting technologies, even if you earn less, or nothing at all.
If you are an investor, spend extra time diligencing climate friendly projects, and assume it is partially your responsibility to actively bring about the assumptions you are relying on.
If you are in corporate sustainability, advocate for creating and sticking to SBTI, ESG and other similar kinds of objectives even if they are less popular now than they used to be.
If you are a politician, think twice about what industries you subsidize and penalize. Avoid selling the climate down the river.
If you have it, invest your own money in decarbonisation and carbon dioxide removal even if it isn’t popular.
If you have a media voice, try to tell the truth and avoid sensationalism, especially in headlines.
Yes, you will need to stick your neck out. Your head might even get chopped off. So be it.
And if you already are sticking your neck out, thank you. And stick it out a little further please.