Personal efforts make a difference when they gather momentum across society, says a climate economist
It is tempting to dismiss personal responsibility for lowering one’s carbon footprint. After all, it was bp that popularised the concept in the mid-aughts, telling everyone that it was “time to go on a low-carbon diet”. The company knew full well how impossible that was, much like its own ambition to go “beyond petroleum.” Instead, sharply cutting emissions take changes in business operations, advances in technologies, new incentives for financing and muscular government policies—in addition to individual efforts.
Not all personal actions are equal. Refusing a plastic bag at a sales counter looks saintly but it won’t do much, especially if one then carries the bagless products on to an aeroplane. Scale matters, as do actual emissions reductions. There are good reasons why airlines offer to offset flight emissions: it makes passengers feel better and fly more. The illusion of progress that comes from performing small, single actions is a cognitive bias that undermines real advancement.
For individual actions, however small, to be effective it is essential that they generate momentum. Consider cycling in cities. Cyclists demanded more and safer bike paths, which in turn led to more cyclists—virtuous cyclists leading to a virtuous cycle of policy push and pull. Amsterdam, Copenhagen and other cities famous for having more cycle-trips than car-trips reached that point because of early cycle activists demanding safer roads. It was a process, and they started the transition away from car-centric street design earlier than others. Paris and other cities are now following suit, prompted in part by covid-19 and broader thinking about how to use limited public space.
Cutting carbon elsewhere demands a similar sort of fundamental rethinking. It takes a cohort of early adopters of green products to start the process. They show what’s possible, spur the market and work out the kinks. That inspires a wave of others to follow suit—the momentum that is needed to make an impact. It is a self-reinforcing cycle: the products become better and cheaper and thus more in demand.
Cities play an outsized role when it comes to individual effectiveness. Just by living in New York as a typical New Yorker, the average household halves carbon emissions compared with living in a single-family home in the suburbs. The reasons are simple: smaller spaces, combined with shorter commutes to work and play. Does that imply a personal sacrifice? Judging from the eye-popping property prices in New York and other major cities, people do not consider it as such.
Of course there are misaligned incentives that lead people to maximise living space rather than to optimise it. Everyone from real-estate agents and mortgage brokers to divorce lawyers benefit from more square metres. It doesn’t help that home size is a public signal (and easily visible on Instagram), while a longer commute is private (and scarcely broadcast on social media). Ideally, policies could be put in place to make city-living more attractive to families, which would lower individual carbon emissions. For example, fewer paved surfaces for cars and more greenery improves both the urban microclimates and the global climate.
Fortunately, many of the steps that improve urban living also improve cities’ climate balance. Yet carbon-efficient living is not enough. Cities must also develop programmes to decarbonise buildings and improve transport. In urban centres, insulating one building warms the homes of many families, and good public transport reduces pollution and emissions.
The rich need to lead. Whether as countries or cities, wealthy places ought to be pioneers in decarbonising activities, such as insulating homes. An environmentally-friendly home is a more liveable one. Drafty windows and poorly-insulated walls make for lousy domestic life. Having gas lines go directly into one’s home is neither green nor healthy. It is also unnecessary, with heat pumps and induction stoves offering more expensive but greener alternatives. Hyper-efficient German household appliances are an easy sell to those who can afford them.
Some individual initiatives can be costly. Though an induction plate to replace the clunky four-burner stovetop that is standard in middle-class households in the West costs less than $100, a fully electrified home that doesn’t use gas for heating often remains a luxury. The task for architects, designers and builders is to convince those who can afford it to make the investment. The task for policymakers and urban planners is clear: subsidise their rapid adoption while the world climbs up the learning curve and slides down the cost curve of low-carbon technologies. Yes, this would mean subsidising things that the well-off are buying, but policies could easily be targeted. Moreover, the subsidies can be justified to achieve green goals.
Time is the essential factor. It is one thing for a government to promise significant carbon cuts by the end of the decade. It is another to realise that today’s living and mobility choices lock in emissions for years to come. New York City has laws for large buildings to cut carbon emissions by 40% by 2030. In building terms, that is right around the corner. It takes years to draw up plans, secure financing, obtain permits, hire contractors and then manage the renovations.
What is crucial is to find the right balance between a top-down regulatory push and bottom-up individual pull. Just as “sequencing” public policy requires pushing renewable technologies first in order to price the cost of carbon emissions later, so too must committed individuals be the starting point for broader green policies. Reducing beef consumption is a crucial individual contribution to cutting emissions. Vegetarians, meanwhile, won’t cut carbon at scale because of having removed beef from their diet: they will cut carbon because they represent a committed, vocal, core group organising and pushing broader climate policies.
Importantly, countering the cognitive bias of the single action is the equally well-documented phenomenon of momentum through gradualism: once people have agreed to one thing, it’s easier to get them to accept others. (In psychology, it’s the foot-in-the-door theory; or, in for a penny, in for a pound.).
As with most things, the first step is often the most important. Everyone will be affected by the push to decarbonise the economy. For those who are able, you might as well seize the opportunity and choose where and how to live based on the greener world of tomorrow rather than the waning fossil age of today.
Gernot Wagner is a climate economist at New York University. He writes the Risky Climate column for Bloomberg Green and is the author of four books, including “Climate Shock” (Princeton, 2016) and “Geoengineering: the Gamble” (Polity, 2021).
This essay was first published by The Economist “By Invitation” on 10 November 2021. In German: “Auch kleine Schritte gegen den Klimawandel zählen.” Die Presse, 19. November 2021.