Tackling Climate Change: Individual Actions and Policy Priorities According to the Top Thought Leaders Across the Country
The past year has been a whirlwind of work, research, new clients, and more. Unfortunately, as a result, I’ve let posting here fall on my priority list. Looking to get back to periodically sharing insights into energy, sustainability, and more, as well as giving insight into what I’ve been working on, I’m going to start sharing some posts highlighting insights gained and successes achieved while working away from the blog. Enjoy!
In recent years, the urgency of tackling the climate change crisis head-on has finally gained consensus and has become a (mostly) recognized goal across the world. While many advocates and scientists worked tirelessly for many years just to reach this point, a far cry from early calls for climate change action being dismissed as untrue or purposely buried for fear of the changes that would be necessary if people took them as truth, the mission is far from over.
The general public, even long holdouts, are waking up to the dire situation we face, and they’re turning to people they trust, experts in the public sphere, or even just to ask the Internet: what can we do next? I know I get this question from people in my personal life all the time. Achieving a broader consensus of scientists, leaders, and public opinion alike to agree on the goal of fighting climate change is one thing, but getting them to agree on how to do so is quite another.
When people educate themselves on the issues surrounding climate change and the importance that action is for the preservation of life as we currently know it, the instinct to move next to action is natural and typically follows two main trains of thought:
Asking themselves what they can do to minimize their personal contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and resultant climate change; and
Asking what sort of policies, regulations, and laws they should be supporting to promote the type of systematic changes that can prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis.
People sometimes advocate for one of these pathways over the other– for example, many will argue that putting the onus on the individual to make personal changes (even sacrifices) is letting off the hook the large corporations and governments who are responsible for the bulk of climate-changing carbon emissions; while others still will advocate for personal responsibility and note that success starts with individual action to really make a difference, especially when without such actions people may feel hopeless and succumb to real feelings of climate grief.
Source: Yale Climate Connections
As is often the case, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Promoting education and action from both a bottom-up and top-down approach is so critical, and each is a vital piece of the puzzle should we collectively hope to succeed in mobilizing towards successful action in the face of climate change.
Recognizing this need to approach climate action from the perspective of the individual and from the policymaker, as well as the immense and irreplaceable value of listening and learning from experts in these fields, I spearheaded an effort at Solar Tribune to bring together thought leaders and representatives from key organizations who are making great strides in the fight against climate change. We engaged in dozens of extensive interviews and deep conversations with them about what climate priorities should be, both for individuals looking to start with their own actions and for policymakers who can engage in systematic change.
As a result of those efforts (which are actively ongoing and continually being updated), we’ve generated an extensive set of resources that highlight the voices of these experts, creates a virtual conversation among experts who at times disagree on the optimal approach using their input, and share with concerned citizens additional information and resources about the priorities for climate action on which they can focus:
Source: UNDP
Climate change is widely considered to be the most significant technological and geopolitical, even existential, challenge of our time. But whereas 20th-century landmark events like the World War II mobilization efforts or the Space Race gave great examples about how governmental bodies were able to come together with their citizens to create the unprecedented progress needed to tackle those obstacles, action on climate change to the scale that’s necessary has been notably hard to come by in recent years. Whether that’s because of the present-day nature where everything, even science, gets politicized, the opposition from large corporate-backed actors who stand to lose their profitability edge should certain policies come to be, or simple disagreement about the optimal strategies, the fact is that political / regulatory gridlock has been one of the more unfortunate hallmarks of the 21st-century response to the climate crisis.
We’re quickly running out of leeway before the clock on preventative action runs out. Political leaders need to start listening to the climate change movement and enacting policies that will start making the change that’s desperately needed. Among the challenges, though, is turning the enthusiasm and clamoring for action into pragmatic and impactful solutions. Voices all across this topic area and on every spectrum of politics see different climate policy levers as being the right ones to pull at this critical juncture.
So, for activists and politically involved climate fighters, for what policies should they specifically be advocating? That question, and its potential answers, is quite complex.
Economic Approaches: Many people advocate that the best way to correct for the negative impacts that carbon emissions cause via climate change and other negative effects is to properly price them so those doing the polluting must pay for their emissions. By creating market signals via such economic approaches, taking sustainable action to reduce emissions will become more financially viable than the status quo of emitting carbon and that will create a market-based approach to tackle the climate problem.
Adjustments to Energy Markets: In the United States, the energy markets are complex and have evolved over many decades to create the utility sector that exists today. Some aspects of those energy markets perhaps made sense when they were developed many years ago, but in today’s world where technology and public focus are advancing so rapidly, one category of approaches to climate change could come from adjusting those energy markets.
Shifting Government Support Towards Clean Energy Sources: Regardless of how free the markets are across the United States, in one way or another the government typically does find its thumb on the scale that impacts where public financial support goes. These government support measures include both explicit funds paid out to certain areas of the business as well as implicit support of a system that supports other aspects of the energy industry.
Mandatory Renewable Energy Policies: When the end goal is to make sure the energy supply is made up of more carbon-neutral solutions, some would argue that the most effective climate policy tools would thus be mechanisms that require utilities to make such a switch from their fossil fuel generation.
Transportation Policies: While many people focus on the carbon emissions coming from the power sector when discussing climate change, a large percentage of the issue also comes from transportation and the burning of fossil fuel products to move people and goods. Recent years have seen a rapid advancement in cleaner transportation technologies, and some of the most commonly discussed climate change policy levers involve ways to foster adoption of and improvement upon these cleaner transportation options.
Built Environment Policies: Climate change public policy also often looks at various aspects of the built environment, where people live, where jobs are done, and where goods are manufactured. When totaled up, the built environment is another significant factor of national and global emissions, so finding policy mechanisms that help to reduce the carbon footprint of these areas is critical.
Technological Solutions: When it comes to truly embracing the energy transition, the right technology must be available first and foremost. While the markets have been good for various technological solutions to climate change, there are further advancements that many have their eye on that would benefit from government support. As such, public policy measures addressing climate change will often include assistance for certain technological solutions.
Utilizing Natural Resources: Climate change, at its core, is an issue about how we’ve been treating the planet and what the impact of that behavior over many, many years has been. Before the Industrial Revolution, there was always a naturally correcting carbon cycle, which included natural elements like how trees consume and store carbon, and forests full of trees act as the planet’s lungs. When addressing what a future looks like where we appropriately tackle climate change, keeping an eye towards these natural resources and how they can benefit the fight is not to be overlooked.
Bigger Picture Policies: Many advocates in the climate fight argue that addressing the existential climate change issues we’re facing requires more than just considering carbon emissions and how to stop them. Rather, they argue, some bigger picture and societal issues must be seriously analyzed and debated first, and if those implications aren’t integrated into climate change policy then those efforts will always be incomplete.
Source: Phys.org
In the face of climate change, one of the gravest and most complex challenges our collective societies have ever faced, many individuals and organizations are asking the natural question: what can we do personally to minimize our impact?
A particular challenge, though, has been that as far back as the 1970s when conservation and energy efficiency was being touted by President Jimmy Carter amid the oil crisis, the energy-conscious lifestyle changes have been unfairly and unnecessarily associated with sacrifice and a decline in quality of life. The truth of modern technology and creative innovation across energy-related sectors, though, is that individual climate-positive actions can be made that maintain or even improve quality of life.
Below are the main categories under which the answers to those questions may come, each linked to the Solar Tribune landing page where you can learn more about the individual actions that can be taken, quotes from experts and thought leaders that we talked with, and additional resources to inform how and why to make these changes.
Getting Involved: When you realize the seriousness and the wide-scale action needed to try to address climate change, you’ll have a natural inclination to want to get involved. Among the most important ways to do so is in educating yourself and others, engaging in climate and environmental advocacy, and the political route of voting, helping others to vote, and then holding elected officials accountable to their promises.
Investment Decisions: While voices and votes are important, some of the most effective strategies for influencing change came via bank accounts and wallets. Recognizing the importance that companies, organizations, and even governments will place on where people choose to spend their money (or willingly avoid spending their money), speaking with dollars is an important strategy for any fight, and that rings particularly true for climate action, whether through purposeful investment in climate solutions or divestment from the bad actors out there.
Choices Related to Energy Providers: A household’s daily energy consumption is among the most visible and tangible ways in which everyday people interact with emissions and climate change. By ensuring a greater portion of the energy used is coming from carbon-neutral sources, individuals can actively address their carbon footprint, whether through installing solar power, finding green power provider solutions, or otherwise engaging your utility.
Transportation Actions: Considering the emissions associated with many of the most common forms of transportation, making climate-conscious decisions with our transportation decisions is one of the most consequential green acts one can take. That can take the form of purchasing an electric vehicle as your next car, identifying public transportation or other clean options, or even avoiding unnecessary air travel.
Reduce/Re-Use/Recycle More in Daily Life: Since the rise of environmental awareness and conservation came about decades ago, we’ve been taught from a young age that one of the best ways to live ‘green’ was to be sure to follow the three R’s: reduce, reuse, and recycle. The most we engaged in these three activities, the less material waste would end up in landfills and the cleaner the planet could be. These types of actions ring true for a generation now focused on climate action, as they can minimize the needless emissions of carbon.
Food and Diet: The agricultural process, the food production industry, and transporting foods from where they are sourced to where they’ll be consumed in the end all create a level of emissions that impacts the climate (which will, in turn, affect what food can grow where in the future). If we want to prevent the most damaging impacts of climate change, then addressing food and diets is critical.
These landing pages, as noted, are constantly growing as we engage more people and organizations in conversation about these critical topics. So, check back often, as these can be considered living documents and the conversations built using quotes and inputs from those who have agreed to talk with Solar Tribune are consistently deepening. And with that in mind, if you’d like to participate in this project, reach out to me and I’ll be happy to schedule a call to discuss your views, experiences, insights, and anything else on your mind that you think you can contribute to this important project. In doing so, you’d be adding your name or organization to this list of dozens (and growing every day) of impressive organizations who have shared a 20-minute call with us to share their perspective and participate in the growing virtual conversation on how to tackle the existential threats of climate change: