Many times, when we confront environmental challenges, they are often presented as shortcomings of our personal choices. We are told to use less, to recycle, to change our personal habits, in order to “save the planet”.
This idea is nonsense.
Environmental challenges, like so many others, are systemic challenges and therefore require systemic fixes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of changing our individual behaviors for the better of the environment (and society). I encourage everyone to examine their own habits on a regular basis and find ways to improve. This is hardly limited to environmental habits.
But, if we rely on individuals to make changes, without changing the systems, we will fail. We know this for certain because we’ve tried it many times before.
I won’t go into a long explanation of systemic thinking and systemic issues (if you’re curious, I highly recommend “Thinking in Systems” by Donella Meadows), but it’s important to understand the basics.
Everything we do is part of a system. The way we build our houses, the way food is grown, the way Oscar nominees are decided, the way we punish criminals, the way we elect politicians, all of it is part of a system. The system itself creates the outcomes, good or bad.
Racism is perpetuated by a system. (actually, quite a few systems). Pollution is also perpetuated by systems.(The intersection of racism and pollution is something called environmental racism. The opposite of environmental racism is environmental justice).
The way we start to change systems is by changing policy. Of course, we can’t just legislate and expect immediate results. But bad policy that perpetuates bad systems will make things worse. Good policy that works to improve the system will make things better. I realize this is pretty vague, but bear with me.
Carbon emissions are created by a group of systems. The energy system, the agricultural system, the real estate system, the industrial and transportation systems, etc. If we really want to lower carbon emissions, we must identify the ways in which systems create emissions and then adjust the systems themselves.
I’ll use one concrete example: the airline industry. Airlines and their associated systems are not (usually) required to account for their carbon emissions. Flying is one of the most GHG intensive activities we do and yet airlines and airline passengers are allowed to send their carbon emissions into the atmosphere free of charge. In order to solve this problem, we have to either:
1. Require that airlines offset all their carbon emissions (this is called command and control) or
2. Make emitting carbon so expensive that airlines can’t compete on the open market (this is a carbon price or carbon tax) or
3. Come up with some other policy that forces, either through coercion or some other means, airlines to offset their emissions.
But can’t individual passengers either choose not to fly or choose to offset their own personal emissions? Of course. And for those to believe that individual freedom trumps all other things, this sounds like a good idea. But anyone with even a mild familiarity with human behavior would realize that not everyone is going to do this. We know because passengers can already do this and very few choose to.
Individual choice makes people feel good, but it doesn’t solve the problem. System change, brought about by policy and advocacy, is the only reliable way to fix system problems. Understanding that is paramount if we really want to do anything serious about climate or any of the other systemic problems we face.
The Mangrove 