By Marisa Pyle
Reusable water bottles. Paper cups instead of plastic. Energy-efficient light bulbs. Almost daily, we are bombarded by ways to live greener and reduce our personal impact on the environment. We see Smokey Bear-esque messages of the 21st century: “only you can prevent climate change!” Advances in understanding how humans contribute to global warming have led to a myriad of suggestions about how to act individually to cut down on pollution and waste, creating a society with unprecedented awareness of human impacts on the environment. Recycling rates are at an all-time high, with more than half of Americans reporting that they recycle 75 percent or more of recyclable items. Undeniably, this has led to citizens seeking to live more environmentally-friendly lives and to diminish the impact of climate change. But what if this is not addressing the real problem?
Without a doubt, climate change is a man-made phenomenon. Over the last century, the average global temperature has risen by 0.7 degrees Celsius, an increase that is more than ten times faster than the previous global averages over the past five millennia. That, combined with ozone layer depletion and a dramatic spike in carbon dioxide levels since the Industrial Revolution, threatens to dramatically change weather patterns and global climate – scientists estimate that the two-degree temperature increase known as the “danger zone” will be reached as early as 2036 if no large-scale action is taken. This alarming temperature increase could produce devastating effects including extreme storms, droughts, and sea level rises across the globe.
This increasingly present threat has led to a worldwide movement to try to avoid global impacts, but by focusing the efforts on individual change and personal decisions, we are missing a key part of the problem. A new study from the Climate Accountability Institute reports that 71 percent of global emissions contributing to climate change come from only 100 major companies – most of them multinational fossil fuel companies, like BP and Chevron. During the 1990s and early 2000s, these companies spent millions of dollars in advertising trying to cast doubt on climate change, with one 1997 ExxonMobil ad in the New York Times reading, “Let’s face it: The science of climate change is too uncertain to mandate a plan of action that could plunge economies into turmoil.” This denial has been prolonged to the present, although it has mostly shifted to political lobbying instead of public advertising.
However, the impact of these decade-long misinformation campaign has been that, for the most part, the focus has shifted from the impacts multinational companies are having on the environment to instead the impact of everyday life choices. This in turn has prevented any large-scale, coordinated effort to address the largest contributors to climate change and has damaged the effectiveness of movements to divest or sanction these companies. By shifting the onus onto individuals to change their appliances or eat organic foods, the impact of environmental activism has been reduced severely. For example, some advertisements say that taking the stairs instead of the elevator to work is a viable way to reduce our carbon footprint, while in reality, it would only reduce energy use and emissions by a fraction of one percent. In contrast, widespread divestment from fossil fuels could reduce emissions by up to 18 percent over the next five years.
So in the search for green energy and climate change solutions, why has corporate and industrial change gone mostly unaddressed? Part of the problem could be the more recent neoliberal focus on individualism, deregulation, and market efficiency. These ideas seem to have come at the cost of lower levels of pollution and emissions. Popularized by President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s and early 80s, neoliberal ideology is at its core an individualistic ideal, where personal decisions are paramount to global change rather than governmental policy or international standards. Unsurprisingly, neoliberalism has become popular especially in the corporate world, leading to propositions of carbon and emissions trading rather than taxing or sanctioning large-scale polluters. And while trading schemes do temporarily offset emissions, they do not resolve the fundamental problem of the emissions being released in the first place, leading to no substantive reductions in greenhouse gas production.
As emissions and temperatures continue to rise, however, the world is seeing a resurgence of solutions that challenge the free-market theories of the present. Large-scale movements are developing around institutional divestment from fossil fuels, carbon taxes, and governmental support for renewable energy programs. These movements are mainly reactionary to what they see as an overall inefficacy of prior individualistic solutions, and are gaining momentum, with US states like New York and California considering total divestment as well as lawsuits, import bans, and other strategies on top-tier polluting companies. These plans are also being developed at the international level, with official United Nations policy encouraging carbon taxes and governmental incentives promoting the reduction of emissions levels and penalties for high rates of greenhouse gas emissions. This strategy promises to be effective by targeting countries that contribute most to global pollution, like China and the US, which are respectively responsible for 29.5% and 13.3% of global pollution annually.
Without a doubt, individual lifestyle changes still have their role to play in sustainable living: the world must adapt to green technologies and a changing scientific landscape. However, expecting these choices alone to resolve an increasingly dangerous climate crisis has proven to be largely ineffective and environmentally irresponsible, leading instead to an overall increase in emissions from fossil fuel and energy corporations. To prevent global damage and environmental catastrophe, it is not enough to rely on personal choices and reusable shopping bags. Instead, it is crucially necessary to recognize the largest sources of emissions and require that, for the lion’s share of the problem, they must provide the lion’s share of the solution.