How effective can one person's actions be in fighting climate change and keeping the environment healthy?
As a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology working on energy technologies, I've spent many late nights in the lab digging into whether any of the widely touted personal approaches are making much of a difference, and sadly, research shows that many of the climate actions we have embedded into our daily lives are only marginally beneficial.
In many cases, systemic problems—a dirty power grid, pollution from manufacturing, or simple inconvenience—reduce the impact of individual actions. For example, recycling, particularly of plastics, is largely ineffective, according to Greenpeace, with only 5 percent to 20 percent of recycled plastics making it back into a new product, due to sorting and cost challenges. Even if we recycled all plastics, we would only reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 3.7 percent due to the intrinsic energy requirements of plastics manufacturing such as heating and processing, according to researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
We could go vegan, but plant-based foods can still have a large environmental impact—for example, rice production results in just 25 percent less emissions than poultry farming. Indeed, if everyone in the U.S. went vegan, the country's greenhouse gas emissions would decrease by only 2.6 percent, according to researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And, of course, getting everyone to take these actions is wildly unrealistic due to the inconvenience it adds to their daily lives—in a survey conducted by Kantar Public, only 18 percent of participants said they would reduce meat consumption despite knowing about the impacts of climate change.
We need systemic change to ensure our individual climate actions aren't going to waste. If you're serious about fighting climate change this year, instead of recycling more, consider shifting focus to policy support and investments.
One example of a highly effective policy has been the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA), which is expected to reduce U.S. emissions by 40 percent by 2030 by using tax and investment incentives to increase solar, wind, and storage capacity, deploy more carbon capture, and encourage electrification. This far outweighs the cumulative impacts of recycling or going vegan while at the same time making acts like buying an electric vehicle or installing a heat pump more effective. Many parts of the IRA are at risk of being repealed under the Trump administration, so individuals should call their representatives to express support for the bipartisan portions of the policy such as manufacturing incentives and onshoring energy production.
Even with Republican control of the federal government, blue state governments will still have flexibility to pass climate legislation—and regulation in particular. Washington State recently passed a cap and invest program that limits the total amount of state greenhouse gas emissions and requires companies to bid to buy their share of emissions allowances within that cap. The payments are then invested in projects like expanding EV charging networks, improving public transportation, and restoring wildlife ecosystems. People who want to see tangible change within their own communities should encourage their state lawmakers to enact similar programs – which are already in various stages of development in New York, Oregon, Maryland, Vermont, and Pennsylvania—and vote for local candidates who are pro-climate.
Another area where individuals can have a large impact is through investments—specifically in climate adaptation and energy infrastructure projects. Trump is likely to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement again, which means federal funding for helping communities adapt to climate change (e.g. flood protection) will probably dry up. However, such funding is critical to prevent the projected economic losses of $330 billion per year and additional deaths of 250,000 per year associated with climate change. Individuals should invest in climate adaptation through green bonds, sustainable mutual funds, or donations to non-profits. Fortunately, these investments have high yields—the research organization World Resources Institute found that each dollar invested returns $2 to $10 in economic benefits since improved resilience results in lower property loss, higher agricultural production, fewer displaced populations, and stronger water and food security.
One program that makes individual investment in climate projects easy is California's recently-passed climate bonds program, which allows the state to borrow $10 billion to invest in forest fire prevention, sea-level rise protection, and energy infrastructure projects. Individuals should buy these bonds and voters in every state should press their local lawmakers to pass similar programs (New York and Massachusetts are the only other states that have issued green bonds, and Maryland is currently considering them).
This year, we should worry less about our personal climate footprint and start thinking more about our climate handprint—how we can use the resources at our disposal to enact systemic change. Small actions like recycling, going vegan, or buying an EV will, on their own, have limited success. But if we advocate for change at the federal and state level, we can build an effective bridge between our individual actions and the change we want to see in the world.
Shomik Verma is a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose work focuses on developing revolutionary energy technologies. He is a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow and a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
English (US) ·