How to use your agency for impactful climate action
Although modern life makes many of us feel powerless, we all have agency to act and stop the climate crisis.
Written by Jack McGovan / Edited by Libby Langhorn
When I started working for a startup that rescued surplus food and sold it on, I noticed an issue with the way we delivered packages. Returning customers received the same welcoming letter every time they ordered; a groundhog day of paper platitudes that many complained about. Recognising the wasteful practice, I implemented a simple change in the system to add a line of text to their orders—which took me minutes at most—so they would no longer receive the letter.
My decision to make that change meant we saved on paper, particularly as the business scaled in the sixteen months I worked there. The decision wasn’t, however, imposed from upper management. I noticed a problem and used the agency I had from my place on a relatively low rung of the company ladder to fix it.
“Everyone's part of something—a city, a school, a university, a sports club, a business, whatever it is—and probably that place will have to transform and do things differently for a safe climate future,” said Charlotte Kukowski, postdoctoral research associate in climate change mitigation at the University of Cambridge. While that change can come from the top down, “often for these kinds of organisations it also needs to come from within, and if you don't do it, probably no one will.”
Kukowski is part of a team of researchers who have come up with a framework encouraging people to seek out the spaces in their lives where they have the most agency for climate action. The so-called a-frame first asks people to reflect on the roles that they have in their lives as citizens, consumers, investors, professionals, and role models, and then figure out where they can make the biggest impact.
Being an investor, citizen, or role model could see you shifting investments into green energy, lobbying for climate action in your constituency, or doing some kind of climate education at your kid’s school. As a consumer, flying less, eating less meat, and driving less are the most impactful actions you can take. As a professional, however, you might be in charge of catering at your organisation, so procuring plant-based meals would have a bigger impact than just changing your own behaviour.
Jack McGovan
“A high-impact action doesn't always, in every role, need to have direct carbon impacts,” said Kukowski. “It can also sort of go the indirect route by changing perceptions of what's normal, what's doable.”
When I decided to stop flying six years ago, for example, it was because I felt responsible in my role as an environmental journalist to show that it’s possible to live without air travel. While a student before that, I’d decided to go vegan to reduce my emissions and overall impact on the environment. Voting for candidates who promote environmental policies is another way I’ve used my agency. Freelance journalists don’t, unfortunately, often have a lot of spare money lying around for investments though.
An important part of the framework, Kukowski added, is that some people have more agency than others. Someone who’s in charge of pension funds—which have pumped trillions into fossil fuel extraction—has more power to make a difference in a professional role than someone who’s on a seasonal contract at a restaurant. The seasonal worker, however, could still find other avenues through which to have an impact such as civic engagement. Each of us has our own unique set of circumstances that will determine how to best direct our efforts.
While modern life certainly has a way of grinding us down and making us feel powerless, many of us have more agency than we might think. The wealthiest 10 percent of people globally, which includes around half of all people in the US and EU, have been responsible for two-thirds of emissions since 1990. “A lot of us actually have more privilege and responsibility for emissions, but then also, on the flip side, more agency and capacity to actually make a difference than we might realise,” said Kukowski.
Jack McGovan
The framework emerged from the authors’ frustrations with a debate that seems neverending in climate circles: the idea of individual action versus system change. Where one side mostly argues for people to change their consumption behaviours, the other says that we instead need to change the systems that govern us and that promoting individual action is something fossil fuel companies have done to distract us from systemic failings.
Kukowski said that both extremes are unhelpful. Focusing heavily on consumption behaviour can mean an overemphasis on low-impact actions, where that energy could perhaps be better spent elsewhere. At the same time, systems are not immutable structures outside of human control. “Systems are made of people, and we are part of those systems, and so as a part of those systems, we can also change them,” she said.
In many cases climate action could mean, yes, changing certain consumption behaviours, but it could mean a whole host of other options in your capacity as a role model, citizen, professional, and investor. This week's heatwave in Europe shows us that our leaders have failed to properly address the climate crisis, and nobody is coming to save us but ourselves. Our only chance of success is to throw the biggest pebble we can find into the pool of climate action in the hopes the ripples create an insurmountable wave.
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