What Can I Do? I’m just one person.
– Sharon Sand, Associate, plot 36, California Public Grants Program Manager at The Trust for Public Land
I’m just one person. I compost my food scraps and yard waste, I don’t eat beef, I have solar panels covering our electricity, and I drive a hybrid. Could I do more? Yes. Are you judging me? Okay. Maybe you do more, maybe I do more.
I can live in isolation off the grid and have my own private zero carbon footprint, or I can live in the lap of luxury, consuming every last consumable known to humans, or I can do something. But what can I do that will make a difference? Maybe not much. And what can you do? And you? And you? Maybe not much. But together, we can make a difference. Together we can have hope for a future for this planet. We need to make a vast and rapid adjustment in our infrastructure, not just in our homes, not just in our personal lives. To do that we need momentum, to do that we need money, to do that we need to have a seat at the table, and back up those at the table. Send them letters, join a local group doing what you know is important, join a national group, give money, and do it again. Together, we can do this. Let’s get our heads out of the sand and get in the game.
-Inspired by so many of you, but especially and most recently and urgently by my professor at UCLA, Kian Goh, and by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
-Written in 2019 when I was studying climate change adaptation. Other professors who greatly expanded my thinking and understanding in this area included Steve Commins, Walker Wells and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris. Now I’m working on climate change adaptation, protecting biodiversity, and providing equitable access to greenspace and nature through connecting public funding to projects.
What can I do? Just some thoughts and encouragement in response.
– Ottotuinkabouter, Plot 43a.
It’s heartening to see efforts and enthusiasm in response to impending crises that face our planet and all its species, crises for which our species is largely responsible. Indeed, this should probably be first thought on our minds in the morning but why has progress toward sustainability been so ineffectual? Why has it fallen prey to highly ingenious ploys? As Greta Thunberg put it, “Almost nothing is being done apart from clever accounting and creative PR.”
We do remain far from accomplishing or even addressing the “vast and rapid adjustment” to which you refer and which would indeed be required if we are to reverse our accelerating descent into irreversible climate disaster. The one thing that might foster such an adjustment would be if becoming carbon neutral in one’s practices and consumption were made a simple default option, instead of requiring vast knowledge, time, energy and financial investment on the part of every active participant.
Take Heart Greta
We applaud your resolve when you sound the alarm And disparage the deeds that will cause our world harm When one sees how depravity took us so far It's hard to believe how dimwitted we are! But despite noble efforts from scientists who research and conclude what what we really must do So much of our leadership shrugs and says "No" To making commitments best made long ago. Are we really so shortsighted, puerile and mad That we'll throw away any last hope that we had Of saving Earth from a Venusian fate By making adjustments before it's too late? But there are those whose goals tend a different way Who erode common sense in our minds every day For PR folk are clever at sowing confusion They're expert at image, desire and delusion And their skills are for sale – at the bidding of those Who can pay for the misleading prose they compose No rigorous testing can get a fair trial When well-funded campaigns are intent on denial! With the end of the quarter's net profit at stake There's no limit to what drastic steps they will take. But take heart, it might be that we will not all fall To catastrophes stemming from climate at all! With technology's future, pandemics and war There's so much to choose from and every day more. Though the best case for climate might well be the worst We may well kill ourselves off some other way first.
True, individually our potential to bring about change is negligible; refining our personal habits is a high-effort, low-impact strategy. There may well be far more promising strategies that could be followed, even locally on a small scale, steps that might make it possible for anyone to achieve a carbon zero footprint with a few mouseclicks that would change our consumption and waste patterns, if only the option to do so were available. If only such options could be put in place, they could set precedents and might be adopted quickly elsewhere and may go far beyond anything that “One person” might accomplish.
Suppose for example that it became possible to purchase only products whose packaging were reusable or compostable and whose manufacture were carbon neutral. Enough consumers working together might make something like this feasible, perhaps through using a “buying bloc” of members on a local level to calculate the carbon footprint of different products and publish it, thus creating something of a “Sustainability market” for more climate-benign goods. At some point it might be possible to impel vendors to display ratings in stores, to incorporate sustainability factors into buying apps and indeed to provide goods whose production, use and waste were carbon neutral. Such strategies can rapidly become high impact; they could really make a difference. But unlike the minimal impact of changing personal habits, such widening strategies can and will awake the attention of entities that are intent on preventing such movements.
We have seen laws passed to prohibit revealing the practices of, and damage caused by certain agricultural practices (see ag-gag laws) and laws to illegalize boycotts or protests, or to penalize those who divest from harmful fossil fuel. Laws have been passed against speaking of specific issues, teaching specific things, researching practices, or to muzzle scientists who would publish their findings. Many other very effective weapons can be wielded by unfathomable wealth against those less well endowed, but such laws are the exceptions and are brought to bear only when other tactics fail – a rare occurrence. With virtually limitless resources and visibility, the most brilliant PR minds and algorithms that can be bought can and do easily distract, divert and divide public opinion into quiescence and scattered ineffectual remnants. To entice, mislead and confuse has become a very highly refined art – whether used to sell a product, to push an emotional button or to defuse a movement whose effect might promise to inspire a twinge of skepticism of the delusional vision we are being sold.
With more than 90% of the media owned by a tiny handful of corporations, the dominant voice is not that of the people nor that of disruptive movements which have any hope of engendering the “Vast and rapid adjustment in our infrastructure” that would be necessary to avert climate disaster.
Through the highly scientific and time-proven PR to which we have unwittingly been subjected, we have become an extremely segmented and separated society of noble people with noble ideas all running in different directions while the primary course of our culture is being steered by a far smaller number toward disaster for ourselves and all other nations and species around the world. Be it global warming, pollution, animal rights, anti war, water crises, black lives, LGBT rights, immigrant rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of the internet, personal information privacy, freedom from institutional education and so many more genuinely deserving causes, these causes are used to separate us into ineffectual little blocs while the ultimate underlying cause is mainly the same and remains largely unrecognized and impervious to assault.
The fact that our world is careening in a direction disapproved of by the majority of knowledgeable people is undeniable. The conclusion can be clearly drawn that highly adept opinion manipulation is being practiced to prevent dominant benign forces from unifying and exerting significant influence. When faced with practically unlimited resources, it also goes without saying that the rapacious and intransigent forces can’t be outspent and their armies of minions can’t easily be out-thought nor out-maneuvered.
Is there then any way to prevail against this seemingly unassailable and dauntingly armed assailant? It might seem impossible. Still, common sense, compassion, circumspection do reveal that it must be done and so many are beginning to see that despite the waves of soporific persuasion we have been steeped in. Even among the minions of the monster, among those brilliant image weavers – long having prostituted their minds, skills and reputations to corporate masters – there may be some who find a way to serve the greater good.
Though half our legislature continues to deny climate change and many intelligent people still regard it as debatable – both ineluctable testimony to the efficacy of creative PR – the truth is emerging, but is still lacking the rapid increase in that needed momentum which could bring about effective changes.
What can we do? we can certainly be part of that momentum and some of us will be the ones to generate the brilliant ideas needed to light the spark that ignites the movement. Let’s do it. It certainly needs people like you.
Reply
I’m trying to make the ‘right’ choices while still living in harmony with the world, but doing this on my own can drain my hope and send me down a rabbit hole of despair. The solution, in my mind, is to join with others and acknowledge that what we do in our own lives is important but that without working together we won’t make the difference we need to make. By working together we can have hope, by working together we can make the difference we need to make. Yes, let’s do it.