"A Climate for Sufficiency" is a sobering update of the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle

Six years ago, I thought we had a working model for dealing with the climate crisis. Reading the latest report from the Hot or Cool Institute, I am less hopeful.

In 2019, I learned about a report, 1.5 Degree Lifestyles: Targets and options for reducing lifestyle carbon footprints, with Lewis Akenji as the lead author. I was intrigued by the concept of “lifestyle emissions,” which I thought of as those emissions we have some control over- I can’t stop the government from buying F-35 fighters, but I can stop myself from buying steak or a new iPhone. I spent a year trying to reduce my lifestyle emissions to 2.5 tonnes per annum and wrote a book about it.

Lewis Akenji is now the Executive Director of the Hot or Cold Institute, which has released an update, A Climate for Sufficiency: 1.5 Degree Lifestyles. Six years later, it is interesting to see what has changed and what hasn’t. One important change is the level of optimism that we can fix these problems: This time, they are hitting the panic button.

What hasn’t changed is that it still talks about 1.5 degrees as an achievable target, even though almost everyone has given up on it. This is technically true; as Amy Westerfelt noted in 2022, “The technologies and policies necessary to adequately address climate change exist, and the only real obstacles are politics and fossil fuel interests.” The very first sentence notes “that global warming is already rapidly approaching the critical 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C) guardrail, and the remaining carbon budget is now so limited that – if current emission levels persist – it could be exhausted by around 2028.” The report moves the goalposts to 1.7°C, which many would consider optimistic.

The definition of lifestyle has been clarified. I initially understood the definition to be “the total greenhouse gas emissions, expressed in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO₂e), that are directly and indirectly caused by an individual’s or household’s everyday activities – such as nutrition, housing, personal transport, goods and services – throughout the full life cycle of the products and services consumed.”

But it is not so simple. According to the latest report,

“Lifestyles are patterns of behaviour shaped by systemic factors, such as infrastructure and public policies, as well as by social norms and cultural identities. Lifestyles are not just about individual choices; they are embedded in infrastructures, provisioning systems and institutions that lock societies into consumerist aspirations and high-emission pathways. What societies consume reflects what they prioritise – and whose needs and aspirations carry weight.”

It’s not just about me buying a steak or an iPhone; it’s all about the infrastructure. Most people in North America are locked into high-emission pathways because they have to drive to work or to get their groceries. One could argue that where they live is a lifestyle choice, but it is often an economic one. I am a lucky boomer who gets to live in a hundred-year-old streetcar suburb where I can bike, and there are even still streetcars. A few kilometres north in the car-oriented suburbs, it is not so easy.

Perhaps the most important development in the new report is the concept of a “fair consumption space.” It is sort of a flat version of doughnut economics, looking at “the safe and just zone between an environmental ceiling and a social floor – and demonstrates how “sufficiency living” can support human flourishing while achieving climate stability.” It defines sufficiency:

“Sufficiency is radically different from efficiency. Efficiency seeks to do more with less, but rebound effects often undermine its impact – leading to more consumption rather than less. Sufficiency requires us to ask: how much is enough to ensure wellbeing within the regenerative limits of the Earth? It shifts attention away from endless accumulation and towards cultivating wellbeing, care and shared prosperity.”

The report shows the lifestyle emissions of many more countries, and for some of them, the emissions are shockingly high. In the USA, the elephant is transportation; it is almost 50% higher than in Canada. And services; why are they so high in the USA? Lewis explained in a LinkedIn post:

“Take a look at services in the US, the impact owing mainly to the private healthcare system. While there, also look at the impact of absence of public transportation systems. (According to most studies, people in America are neither healthier nor happier than people from Norway, Japan or even Canada.)”

And of course, we know how to reduce all the big items:

• Nutrition: go plant-based, or at least give up cows and sheep.

• Transport: avoid using a private car; get a bike.

• Housing: retrofit, heatpumpify, live in smaller spaces.

Easy! if everyone did this we wouldn’t have a problem. But getting buy-in for sufficiency is hard, as is any kind of change. However, in a section titled “Overcoming Fear of Change: Co-benefits of 1.5-Degree Lifestyles”, they write:

“Change is always unsettling. One of the best-known psychological phenomena is loss aversion – that we pay more attention to losses than gains. People focus on the loss of bacon, the loss of comfort from driving to work on a rainy morning, or the loss of income from reducing working hours. The societal transformation needs to be able to highlight the gains: the health gains from eating better and using active transport, as well as the gains from having more time and opportunity for social interactions, and to develop skills and engage in meaningful activities.”

The report has a solid list of recommendations:

• Recommit to 1.5°C. “Too late” narratives only serve the status quo. The curve can still be bent back – if rapid, coordinated action is taken.

• Implement globally coordinated wealth taxes. The report notes that after the Second World War, the top marginal tax rate in the USA was 94%.

• Take personal responsibility. See the REDuse chart above. People did this during the war as well. Readers often complain when I suggest this (or when I get on an airplane), but with the right motivation, people do it and are proud of it; just look at bourbon and orange juice sales in Canada right now.

In the end, Lewis Akenji and the authors of the 1.5 degree report call for a political and cultural reckoning. “The needed transformations span every level of society. At the personal level, we must redefine what constitutes a dignified life – embracing sufficiency over excess and prioritising collective wellbeing.” they conclude:

“Sufficiency is not a compromise between climate and justice; it offers us one of the most viable approaches to turning things around as we stand at the cusp of crossing ecological and societal red lines.”

I like to end on an upbeat note, but the report is sobering and depressing; it offers a plausible path out of this mess, but are we willing to make the needed transformations? We can’t even build bike lanes.

Read it here: A Climate for Sufficiency: 1.5 Degree Lifestyles.