Amidst the greenwashing from corporations and the desperate outcries from activists for collective action, a single individual wanting to do something on their part to counter climate change may feel as if their only options alternate between sliding down the consumerist chasm (which is by definition counterproductive, mind you) and experiencing a sense of insignificance so overwhelming it would render every personal effort a mere drop in the vast ocean. Taking action for the climate as an individual is something that the media and the authority increasingly draw attention to. Yet we citizens get incredibly mixed messages about what such action entails or whether it surmounts to anything relevant to the whole feat of “saving the planet”. So, what is one to do about climate change, does it matter, and if yes, how does each of us go about taking our actions effectively?
I suppose at this point it’s a no-brainer to acknowledge that climate change is a real, human-caused, and highly urgent crisis which we have to deal with on a variety of fronts. Still I can see how it may be a little challenging to wrap our heads around climate change because it seems somewhat removed from our reality. Climate change leaves less visible, everyday trace like the polluted air or smog crises that have taken over many industrial parts of the world throughout history. For climate change, there are fewer tangible images such as those of an unimaginably large wasteland or of plastics choking up marine animals that urge people to feel deep shame about their garbage or plastic use. The climate movement doesn’t bear the same emotional tingling that something like wildlife protection or conservation would (“the pandas are dying!” gets a different response from “the Earth is warming up!”). Despite the ever growing body of research that links the collapse of environments and species all across the planet (so, essentially all of the aforementioned problems) with this very climate change thing, climate impacts often fit into the pattern of “out of sight, out of mind” issues.
But let’s say we know that the problems are there, and that we feel a deep sense of responsibility to act on them. The difficulty of pinpointing what solutions need to be done or how much effort we should exert on each of them remains for a few reasons. First, we often don’t get a clean-cut breakdown of every single factor contributing to climate change – either because the planet works in unpredictable and complex ways (and we humans are better off not getting too smug about knowing everything about nature), or because human society itself tries to blur our culpability in ruining the planet. For decades, knowledge of global warming and its causes had been concealed from the public for the sake of exploiting the circumstances further before it was no longer possible to hide. The hesitancy in revealing with full transparency how corporations or governments contribute to climate change thwarts not only efforts to hold these very actors accountable but also the understanding of the actual problems.
Second, precisely because climate change operates in such convoluted and uncertain ways, all suggested solutions are based on hypothetical scenarios to some extent. Evidently, many of the recommendations from scientists have been solidified over time (we’ve got decades to make an action map; we are not newbies to this journey) so calling them “hypothetical” is also mistaken. Nevertheless, it is not a direct path from executing one solution to achieving the effects that this solution has been projected to have. So far we do have a rough picture of what steps need to be done and how important these steps are in relation to one another, but we can’t be quite certain whether our theories and projections remain accurate or consistent as the climate shifts.
Third, climate change wasn’t triggered by one individual, and as a result, it cannot be addressed by a lone person. There are those with the power and means who can most probably catalyze major changes in the world/to this planet, but they are not the key to this challenge. The demand for large scale climate responses cannot be stressed enough, because without them, we are still heading to one of the many versions of climate catastrophe (I’ll let the experts define what these versions look like). Mobilizing collective action is crucial for making sure that climate change will not increasingly make headlines (the bad, alarming ones) in the future. And with that, one person wanting to help the movement ought to also consider two questions: (1) is it worth it take action on something at the individual level when scaling it up is unlikely/impossible, and (2) how can one attend to and balance both actions at the individual level and those that aim at mobilizing collective responses? The dilemmas that these questions pose seem to make the undertaking from each of us towards climate change ever more complicated and prone to demotivation. They can leave us feeling overwhelmed and confused as to how to distribute our time and efforts to a laundry list of climate solutions.
I, along with many of my friends, struggle with finding a way to be an effective part of the climate movement. For a while now I have been telling people that I believe there is no “right” answer to the question of how we can help and that I’m tired of all the messages that one “should” or “must” do something to count. Every way we could help means something, as long as it doesn’t negate the efforts of others. We might not commit to the most ambitious, diehard solutions out there but that doesn’t mean that what we do now is rendered useless for the whole movement. In that sense, working on one’s own changes rather than attempting to generate a ripple effect in a larger crowd is not to be frowned upon. This philosophy saves me from being overly critical or demanding of myself and others. It also invites more understanding and camaraderie to grow the community of those who want to do something to help. And most importantly, it doesn’t delay urgent actions, while we take steps to figure out how to amplify the scale of our efforts or gradually turn our attention to the areas that make the most significant impacts.
I’m continuing to work on my own contributions to climate solutions as an individual. As I read the news and occasionally find myself feeling either helpless or infuriated at the choices of institutions much larger than me or individuals much more powerful, I think about the drop of water I’m adding to the seemingly infinite ocean. Is it all worthless? Am I even doing a good job with the changes I commit to do? Am I spreading some kind of enthusiasm for these issues to people I interact with? Am I doing enough to make a difference, or just doing the bare minimum to have something to pat myself in the back about? I doubt these questions will go away even as I get more and more invested in this journey, because the very nature of climate change is so overwhelming and grave that sometimes one could say we would hardly get “there” during this uphill climb, with “there” indicating a livable, decent planet. Still, I want myself and others to act however we can, even when prospects look grim, even when there still exist those who make our efforts futile while getting away with it. In the end, there is no scoreboard to measure whether what we do is “enough” or not for climate change. The only “enough” factor here is that you care, which is already implicated in the fact that you do take action, and that you are willing to take more going forward.
iamtreefarm 
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