We focus on mitigating climate change at Drawdown Dietetics, so we think a lot about which solutions are best. There’s a valid critique out there of individual-level actions on climate change, so we took a look at it for this month’s blog post.
The concept of “carbon footprints” was popularized by a fossil fuel company (BP) for a reason: it downloads responsibility and guilt onto individuals. It focuses attention on consumer demand, rather than corporations and governments (which hold much more power). For climate change solutions that involve large-scale behaviour change (like diet), we need to consider what we’re asking of people, what the pros and cons are, and how much impact it will really have on the outcome we want (achieving drawdown).
Knowing that some dietitians will (rightly) be wary of asking individuals to shoulder the responsibility for lowering emissions, we asked an ethicist about collective action problems like climate change to understand the bigger picture. Eric Mathison is a clinical ethicist and runs an ethics consulting company called Canmore Ethics. He’s also married to one of our directors (Anneke). His responses to our questions are below.
1. Can you describe the nature of collective action problems like climate change?
Collective action problems are about coordination. They have the following form: if a bunch of people do some action, the collective result will be bad. However, each individual’s action makes no perceptible difference. There are examples everywhere you look. If a bunch of us fly in planes or drive cars with internal combustion engines or use coal, then the result will be the negative effects of climate change. But given how pollution works, each of us can say that our individual action makes no difference, since climate change isn’t affected by any one individual’s actions of this sort.
Many personal lifestyle choices that people worry about are actually collective action problems. For example, carbon emissions calculators will usually say that taking one return flight emits a huge amount of CO2, so cutting out flights would make a big difference to someone’s carbon footprint. But the reality is that one passenger isn’t going to determine whether or not that plane flies, so it isn’t actually true that our choices about flying have such a high effect on greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, they almost certainly make no difference. Similarly, one person’s decision to stop eating meat—otherwise a sound ethical decision—isn’t going to make a difference to how many animals are killed, so calculators that show that one person going vegetarian will save x amount of animals are false. There are lots of other examples! My vote isn’t going to determine the outcome of an election. My paying taxes isn’t going to determine whether a road or hospital gets built. And, unfortunately, etc.
Someone might be thinking, “Well, of course. But together we can make a difference!” This is true, but it’s still the case that one person’s decision won’t make a difference, so that person can reasonably object that their actions don’t matter. The obvious problem is that we’ll be in big trouble if everyone thinks this way!
It’s worth noting that, while collective action problems are common, sometimes our actions really do have direct consequences. If a factory owner decides to dump chemicals into the river and those chemicals harm people, then the owner is directly responsible for that harm.
2. There’s a common belief that individual actions are meaningless when it comes to climate change, so all the responsibility is on corporations and governments. What’s your view?
For me, the big issue is that people focus too much on their own actions in ways that make their lives more difficult with little actual benefit. Also, since it can be hard to figure out what’s actually effective, it’s easy to get caught up in movements that aren’t backed by evidence (e.g., local food, buying non-GMO products, opposing nuclear energy).
While it’s true that much of climate change, and collective action problems generally, must be solved by organizations, corporations, and governments, there are still ways to make a difference individually. Luckily, there are organizations dedicated to determining what’s most effective. Overwhelmingly, they find that the best way to make a difference is to donate to effective climate charities. Charities such as the Clean Air Task Force find policy and technology solutions to climate change, and the effect of donating to them is substantial: Founders Pledge, a charity that promotes effective giving, finds that a personal donation of $1000 is one hundred times more effective than having one fewer child or living car-free. (You can see their report and check their numbers here.)
In some cases, individuals can help resolve collective action problems. People who have influence in large organizations can make a bigger difference, since policy changes can add up and the effects will be bigger.
3. How do you personally think about the significance of your own individual-level actions in similar situations, like voting?
Although collective action problems are appropriately considered problems, they aren’t all bad. Many well-meaning people go to great lengths to help the planet, but incur significant personal expense in the process: They avoid flying, even to see loved ones; they feel tremendous anxiety if they forget to bring their reusable bags to the grocery store; they spend half their Saturday going to a farmers’ market; and they inconvenience themselves in myriad other ways. But they don’t need to do these things and they don’t need to feel guilty about not doing them.
Instead, we all need to give more consideration to what will actually make a difference. Climate change is a very serious threat, but focusing on ineffective interventions is hindering progress.
I still vote, but I do it because I personally enjoy following and participating in politics, not because I think that my one vote is going to change the outcome of an election. I know that I can make a much bigger difference in other ways, such as donating money or in my ethics consulting work, so I prioritize those.
Thanks for these responses Eric!
In some ways this might be hard to hear–since each individual action probably won’t have a direct impact, we’ll have to continue to ask governments and corporations to resolve this collective action problem at a higher level. But in another way, we think the framework of collective action is liberating: there are a million different potential actions that individuals could take to get small reductions in emissions. Hang-dry laundry; take short showers; turn off lights when not in the room, etc. etc. These things are all promoted as sustainable, and technically they are, but the effects are small compared to the most impactful solutions.
We all have limited time (as does the climate!), so a strategic approach is essential. As with nutrition, it’s not all or nothing: an individual meal does not make someone unhealthy, and will not make a difference to the climate. It’s what most people do most of the time that matters. It’s also worth reflecting on how many big changes we’ve seen in the food system that have been largely driven by consumer demand (i.e., individual buying decisions). There are many more plant-based meats, gluten-free products, and local foods available now due to shifts in consumer behaviour (for better or worse).
Both the IPCC and a Project Drawdown analysis recently reported that reduced food waste, plant-rich diets, and composting are relatively high-impact individual-level actions (with individual-level solutions adding up to about 25% of the total needed emissions reductions), so these consistent findings add to our confidence in the core recommendations at Drawdown Dietetics. However, knowing that it takes population-level involvement (like voting), it does not make sense for dietitians to spend time ensuring that each individual person/patient/client is following a strict climate-friendly diet. This is helpful, because some people will not be able to make dietary changes for various reasons–and if they’re concerned about climate change, they could look for other ways to have an impact instead (like donating to a climate charity, as Eric noted).
Another take-away is that our recommendations are especially important for dietitians working at group or population levels (community, public health agencies, governments, corporations, and food service systems). Dietitians in these settings may be able to impact policy, affect social norms, redirect the procurement of large amounts of food, run awareness campaigns, teach dietetics students, direct research studies, and more. Even dietitians working with individuals may see many clients in their practice, or have large social media followings, and have opportunities to give clear, consistent messaging around climate change and food when opportunities arise. They may also have insight into how individuals move through behaviour change, and how to protect nutrition status for people with specific chronic diseases. For these reasons, we think that many dietitians can help resolve the collective action problem of greenhouse gas emissions generated by the food system.
We hope this was helpful–as always, let us know what you think!
Anneke and Renita