Forget about system change vs individual behaviour change; what matters now is political change.

Hannah Ritchie takes a shot at the question: do our individual actions make a difference? In this election season, it is all about individual action, and how we vote.

While Kelly drove me home from closing up our cabin recently, I kept seeing these signs by the side of the road, from north of Gravenhurst right down into the city. This is not just a bunch of right-wing cranks that hate Justin Trudeau; this is an organized campaign covering a lot of ground. The elaborate website it points to is a compendium of every conspiracy theory you ever heard of and many you haven’t, ranging from COVID to 15-minute cities. It raises so many questions; who is paying for all of this? Who is trying to convince Canadians that everything our government does is a lie, that climate change is a hoax, that electric cars are a scam, that vaccines are deadly? How did we get such craziness and polarization?

I thought about this as I read Hannah Ritchie’s recent article, The false dichotomy of systemic and individual behaviour change, about what she called the “polarising debate about who is “responsible” for climate change, and ultimately, who should fix it.” Ritchie is part of the Our World in Data team and recently published Not the end of the world, my review here. She writes:

There is the “systemic change” camp who tend to put the focus on big corporations, governments, and economic systems. You see this narrative in popular headlines such as “Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions”. Or claims that BP and other big oil companies promoted the personal carbon footprint to shift the blame onto consumers. Then there is the “personal responsibility” camp which puts focus on individual lifestyle changes: driving a petrol car, flying, and eating lots of meat leads to a carbon-intensive lifestyle; so we should cut back to live more sustainably.”

The popular headline was in the Guardian in 2017 and has been misused and misunderstood ever since, and has hilariously been used as justification for everything from bitcoin to air conditioning to eating hamburgers, because as I noted in my post, Just because 100 companies are responsible for 71% of carbon emissions doesn't mean you can buy Bitcoin, “Anything goes when you are not responsible and it is all somebody else's fault.” The systemic change camp has been taken over by cranks and conspiracists as a way to blame someone else.

It goes right over this tweeter’s head that what those 100 companies are producing is fossil fuels that we put in our cars or burn when we choose to fly, as I have been doing this year. As I wrote in my book, Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle, 90% of the carbon emissions from those 100 companies are from “downstream combustion” of the fossil fuels, what is known as “Scope 3 emissions.” That’s us buying what they are selling and burning it.

“Scope 3 is us consuming, putting their gas into our cars and planes and heating our houses; it’s companies making steel and aluminum and concrete that goes into our houses and cars and buildings. They are lifestyle emissions, coming from the choices we make, the things that we buy, the governments we elect.”

My emphasis on that last point about the governments we elect; It is particularly relevant right now, a few weeks before the American election and not long before the next Canadian one is fought over a carbon tax. Or in my home in the Province of Ontario, where Premier Doug Ford, planning a snap election, believes (correctly) that the road to re-election runs on highways and gasoline. He’s capped gas taxes, eliminated licence fees, raised speed limits, promised new highways, and most recently proposed a 55 km tunnel to double highway capacity across Toronto and wants to ban bike lanes where they replace car lanes. He understands the Ontario lifestyle and what the majority of voters want: cheap gas and fast roads.

Ford and the federal government are also going all-in for electric cars, investing billions in battery plants and subsidies. Ford is fine with this, as long as people still have their open roads and suburban single-family houses. Hannah Ritchie supports this approach of incremental change.

“I also tend to emphasise like-for-like substitutes or swaps for existing behaviours. If people like driving a petrol car, then give them an electric one. Of course, also invest in public transport, bike lanes, and liveable cities to make it even more attractive for them to leave their car at home. But many are still going to get a car for journeys that can’t be taken conveniently on a bike or a bus.”

Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t work that way. You can design a city or suburb for cars, or you can design it for people walking, biking or taking transit; it is hard to design it for both. You can’t just say, lets give everyone electric cars; there simply isn’t enough room. Given how long cars last, there also isn’t enough time. Our politicians have to make tough choices, and none of them appear to be willing to.

Richie notes the importance of elections.

“People emphasise the importance of voting at the ballot box. This is arguably where you can have the biggest impact. But you can also vote with your wallet, sending a signal to the market about what types of products you want and don’t.”

I agree, and have often written this, but right now, the voting I do with my wallet is going to be donations to the political party that is doing the most to fight climate change. For the first time since 1972 when I voted for David Lewis’s New Democratic Party, I am not voting NDP because of their current position on the carbon tax.

The problem is that we now all vote with our wallets and for our wallets, for whoever offers us the lowest taxes. I am still digesting George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson’s latest book, Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism” which starts by describing how neoliberalism has changed the way we think about ourselves and society.

It casts us as consumers rather than citizens. It seeks to persuade us that our well-being is best realized not through political choice, but through economic choice—specifically, buying and selling. It promises us that by buying and selling we can discover a natural, meritocratic hierarchy of winners and losers.”

We are way past the time when we can debate whether we need “systemic change” or “personal change.” It’s all personal, it is all a lifestyle choice, and all comes down to how we vote. In both the US and Canada, it’s a choice between the new crazy conspiracy agenda where climate change is an expensive hoax, and the less crazy centrist agenda where climate change is real but expensive and inconvenient. There doesn’t appear to be a third option, where anyone will do anything serious about it.

That is why this election season is so nerve-wracking; in a normal world, the American election wouldn’t be close. The new British government wouldn’t be acting more conservative than the conservatives. Justin Trudeau would be revered for everything from daycare to carbon taxes. Doug Ford wouldn’t be on cruise control to another re-election. I would still be voting NDP. Theylied.ca would be a bunch of unknown cranks instead of being on every lamppost between here and Huntsville.

So lets not worry about personal change vs systemic change; let’s worry about political change, that’s what matters most right now.