Something like 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from the top 100 most polluting corporations. This often-cited fact does not matter in the way that people sometimes think it does. Emissions happen as a result of economic activity and if these companies weren’t engaging in the activities they are, then others would. Consumers want products in large quantities and at low prices and our current economic reality means that if a company wants to be competitive then they have to emit greenhouses gasses for the creation of most products. I would argue that these corporations aren’t nearly as responsible for their emissions as are the people consuming the products. There is a natural human tendency to offload blame, but in this case that is not a useful way to think about the problem. Large corporations can make modest changes in their carbon intensity that will have significant impacts because of their scale, but global warming is driven by consumption. It is driven by our collective desire for more. Even if we understand this though how can our individual actions really be enough?

Different beliefs about who is to blame for emissions or who has the responsibility to make changes informs different climate activists’ opinions about what measures should be taken and who should shoulder what burden. Opinions about who has the ability to make changes is perhaps even more controversial. These ideas contribute to the debate around individual versus collective responsibility and action. Each side of this debate feels justified in their positions, often to the extent of discouraging action they don’t support. This is a discussion that has gone on for decades, but there really isn’t any time left for it. We have a range of possibilities for what a future where we avoid the worst effects of climate looks like. It follows though that anyone who resists shaping their lives to fit into those possibilities isn’t part of a solution yet. Many individuals consume at unsustainable rates and think that they are helping. Any realistic solution requires a non-trivial amount of individual sacrifice.

This leads us back to the question that is meant to be raised when people look at the roll of corporations and broad economic systems. How can taking individual action be worth it if it isn’t a solution on its own? The answer is that individual actions have many indirect impacts onto human behavior in addition to their direct environmental impacts. When people take individual action, they tend to become more sympathetic to future environmental concerns, not less. Looking at broader impacts, our actions build social norms over time as humans look to their peers when deciding how they should act and what they should value. In this way individual actors can help build social norms that support the environment. If major concern about the environment becomes mainstream, then policy makers will also tend to react. Politicians are often vilified or seen as inadequate by all sides of this argument, but for the most part they are just following the whims of their voters. If pushing climate policy becomes a good way to get elected, then it will happen much more often than it does now.

What then does it really mean to be part of the solution? One step is really understanding ones level of consumption in context of the rest of the world. Even the most environmentally conscious person in the United States is going to consume as much as much as whole families or whole communities in the global south. There isn’t really a way to make that jump by one’s self, but there are still actions that help. Driving down individual emissions coupled with influencing others to do the same is most effective. Normalizing environmentally conscious decision making has a multiplicative effect on individual impacts. Listening to people talk about problems does not motivate people as well as watching them diligently implement solutions. This isn’t a time for stoic heroes fixing problems on their own. It is a time to sweep other people up with us into our struggle.