Do I make a difference?

There is always much debate about what our governments and political institutions should do in order to tackle climate change. Important as this may be, I believe this focus should not obscure the role of individuals, but in the general perception as well as some accounts in climate ethics, individuals do not appear to be responsible for climate change, or have any agency in tackling it.

I believe this view is mistaken. In this series of blog posts for Justice-Everywhere, I try to address some pervasive, but (in my view) misleading assumptions regarding individual responsibility for climate change and offer some fresh arguments. I briefly summarise them here - please click on the titles to go to the original posts on Justice Everywhere.

1. The exceedingly small but fully real effects of my greenhouse gas emissions
   It appears to be the case that an individual's emissions, taken separately, are too small to make any difference. Therefore, to many people, they seem entirely faultless. My view, however, is that even though these emissions are indeed very small, they are fully real. For example, on average, Brits emit about 6.5 tonnes of CO2 per year. These emissions are of course tiny in comparison with the billions of tonnes of CO2 emitted by everyone around the world, but they are not zero, and they are emitted in the context of a climate regulation system which is already saturated with CO2, making a tiny but fully real contribution to global warming.
   
   
2. A threshold phenomenon? 
   Some people hold the view that global warming is a threshold phenomenon: individual emissions are neither sufficient nor necessary to cause climate change. However, I believe that this view is mistaken: there are thresholds in the climate system (for example, when the Greenland Ice Sheet disappears), but even below such thresholds, we see the detrimental consequences of climate change. Currently, the world has warmed about 1 degree Celsius since 1880, and we already see a higher frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. The only relevant threshold has been crossed when we started burning fossil fuels on a massive scale (say 200 years ago). Since then, any additional CO2 emissions have exacerbated the problem (and continue to do so), even the tiny amount of CO2 emitted by an individual. 
   
   
3. Unilateral duties to reduce greenhouse gases or promotional duties?
   Some people believe that individuals only have the duty to promote just institutions, and not to reduce their own individual greenhouse gases. However, if an individual's emissions contribute a tiny but fully real amount to global warming (see 1 and 2), then individual actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (for example, taking showers instead of baths, turning off the light when you leave a room, ...) contribute to solving the problem in an equally tiny but fully real way! In addition to this, people also have duties to promote just and adequate institutions. 
   
   
4. The agency of individuals and households
   We cannot expect people to reduce emissions that are unavoidable on the individual level, since everyone has to eat, breath and realise other basic rights. Nonetheless, there are a number of actions that individuals and households can take to reduce the emissions from their residential energy use, personal transportation, and consumption of animal products.

In sum, as Dale Jamieson's puts it so eloquently: "Biking instead of driving or choosing the veggie burger rather than the hamburger may seem like small choices, and it may seem that such small choices by such little people barely matter. But ironically, they may be the only thing that matters. For large changes are caused and constituted by small choices."​