i thought individual action was useless
For the longest time I had trust issues with individual action when it comes to climate change. After years of studying the topic academically and hoovering up articles and podcasts on the topic, I still couldn’t make up my mind about it. On one hand I fully acknowledged its achievements to draw attention to issues, create noticeable pressure in the markets and drive attitude change that is contagious. But most of the time it still felt like a form of distraction designed to keep us busy and looking the other way.
We’ve been recycling for decades, and no one wants to hear advice on shorter showers and changing to LED lightbulbs anymore. Contemporary versions of these tropes could be zero-waste shops for pasta, the war against plastic straws or 20€ flight offsets while refusing to give up multiple city breaks in Europe every year.
Many people are able to see these in the context of wider climate action required, but for too many this is where the journey ends. Planting a tree with your credit card while filling up on gas allows you to feel like you’ve done your part, and now it’s someone else’s turn to do the rest. And as with all work, there’s a reason why low-hanging fruits get picked up first.
The sociologist Stanley Cohen calls this implicatory denial. We intellectually accept and recognise climate change as a real threat, but the actions taken in response don’t match that understanding. A form of psychological defence or dissociation, implicatory denial keeps us feeling busy and filled with a sense of purpose when we’re really just sweeping leaves on a windy day.
This understandable but incredibly unhelpful response speaks to the scale of the challenge and the enormity of the response required. Just like an anorexic watching over daily calories in a desperate attempt to cling on to control of the physical, obsessing over getting all recycling into the right bins gives us a momentary illusion of control, when the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.
Implicatory denial is a form of psychological defence that keeps us feeling busy and gives an illusion of control.
This form of denial is not available to everyone. When you’re not being chased to higher ground by rising seas only to be driven back to the water by forest fires, you have the luxury of these lifestyle actions. Similarly, it is only a subset of the population that has the possibility and bank account to shop at WholeFoods in search of organic food and plastic free packaging. That’s why it is particularly important that people who are in the position of making environmentally conscious choices really do so in a meaningful manner and with increasing ambition.
There is nothing inherently bad about recycling or WholeFoods of course.
It becomes problematic when it saps all our mental bandwidth and leaves us unable to look beyond ourselves or creates smug complacency.
If you think carbon offsetting your flights to south of France with planting a few trees and buying yoga pants made of recycled bottles means your part is done, it’s time to pull that head right out of the sand.
Individual action becomes problematic when it saps all our mental bandwidth and leaves us unable to look beyond ourselves.
The narrative that centres our individual consumption choices as being responsible for a liveable future is both isolating and disempowering. This is particularly poignant for women, who are more likely to take the environmental impacts into account in decision making. Malicious or accidental, it is yet another way to bully and pressure women silent. Making us feel guilty for household plastic waste or the carbon footprint of a ‘thank you’ email means we have less energy for more impactful action.
Guilt and its close cousin shame are very isolating and energy intensive emotions. They keep us in our silos, without the energy to organise and come together, unable to speak up and hear others. And what is a group of people that come together? A collective with the power to drive collective action.
The narrative that centres our individual consumption choices as responsible for a liveable future is particularly poignant for women. It is yet another way to bully women silent.
This is where individual action matters. It can act as catalyst to change, to do more, to demand better, both in our lives as well as in the lives of those around us. That’s why we need to shout out about every single individual action to make noise and draw others in to join.
Request an electric car next time you choose to rent one, and talk to the rental agency about why this is important. If there is one available, write a Google review about it. Talk to your neighbours or landlord and start lobbying your building to switch to renewable energy or install bio bins next to the regular ones. Switch to a bank and pension fund that doesn’t fund fossil fuels and chat about this with your friends on your next zoom catchup.
Compassion and trying to put things into perspective also helps. Even though throwing away mouldy leftovers after too many evenings of takeaway makes your heart bleed, it doesn’t make you a monster or a failure. Yes, try to order one less takeout next week, but also remember that there are far more impactful choices you can make for a more sustainable future.
This is also how we build better decision making habits. Thousands of second changes allow us to try again, do better every time rather than seeing our imperfections as somehow indicative of our value as human beings or worthy ‘climate people’.
Choosing progress over perfection helps build better decision making habits, when every decision is a chance to do better.
Individual action and systemic change are two points on a spectrum rather than two opposite ideologies they’re often positioned as. This perspective can help us toe that fine line between resignation and overwhelm, and keep us from falling into the trap of implicative denial as a psychological pacifier.
To quote the famous British Suffragette Millicent Fawcet:” ‘Courage calls to courage everywhere.’
