Only You Can Prevent Climate Change

Only You Can Prevent Climate Change.

Look, I know it’s not true. Of course it is not only you who can prevent climate change. It’s no truer than when Smokey the Bear said it about wildfires. I have never started a wildfire and yet the West is burning again. Clearly, it is not only me who can prevent wildfires.

Technically, I can only prevent my 1/8-billionth share of climate change. And even though my 1/8-billionth share of emissions will not have any measurable impact on climate change, I still feel a responsibility for my carbon impact.

I don’t feel this responsibility because I think that by keeping my carbon emissions low I alone might stop the ocean from rising or prevent deadly heat waves, but I feel this responsibility because I believe in culture. I believe that my actions can influence others. I believe that we are social animals and that we share a culture that is shaped by each of us.

I believe that we will only stop climate change when we build a culture that really wants to stop climate change, and this culture will only take shape when many of us are willing to assume a responsibility for our own personal impact.  

The cynical might dismiss this sort of thinking. The cynical might say that we live in a world that is too big for individuals to shape culture. The cynical might believe that you cannot prevent climate change. Only someone else can do that—the government, big corporations.

I do not want to deny that these cynics may indeed be right. The fossil fuel industry is of course powerful, but I refuse to believe that we cannot build a culture that is even stronger.

To believe that we are powerless to stop the actions of big corporations makes the individual insignificant. It makes the idea of culture essentially nonexistent. It negates the idea that individuals—not corporations— make up culture. It denies that it is we who determine the values that our society holds.

There used to be a time when people, culture, and politics were not seen as separate.

Kennedy asked “What can you do for your country?”

John and Yoko sang “War is over, if you want it.”

That of course is not strictly true either. I want war to be over, yet it still rages.

But the you is not just you. The you is the collective we. And if the collective-we wanted war to be over, there would not be war.

If the collective-we wanted climate change to be over, it would be over.

We would not vote climate-change deniers into office.  

We would not give money to corporations that emit planet-destabilizing amounts of carbon into our atmosphere.

We would not live like we do if we really wanted climate change to stop.

But the sad truth is that we do not want to stop climate change. We do not live in a culture that really cares about the climate.

Building a culture that cares about the climate is a daunting task. Even if many of us care, there are many who don’t right now and who do not want to. Power and money and ordinary greed are on the side of maintaining the status quo. The job for those who care about the climate is to build a culture that not only makes preserving the climate possible but that makes it beautiful. This culture can be about the joy of a backyard garden, the charm of a street of bike commuters, the peace of not wanting to consume endlessly. This culture can be better than wat we have right now.

To deny that we might be able to build this culture feels to me like giving up.

And I am not ready to give up yet.