Is changing our behaviour enough to save the planet?

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It's easy to feel overwhelmed when it comes to being sustainable, with research suggesting we should cut down on meat, use public transport, cut out single-use plastics as well as a whole other host of things. But, is doing all of this really enough to save the planet, and are those who call themselves environmentalists but who don't adopt a more sustainable lifestyle, hypocrites?

Most of us now are used to using re-usable carrier bags for shopping, recycling at home, reducing our meat consumption and being mindful of our energy output. Yet just 100 companies in the world have been responsible for 71% of global greenhouse gas emissions between 1880 to 2010, according to a 2017 Climate Change study. As well as this, over half of the world’s industrial emissions are traceable to just 25 state companies and entities.

Coal, oil, and natural gas are produced by 83 of these companies. The remaining are cement and building material manufacturing companies. Unsurprisingly, the companies most responsible for climate change included Saudi Aramco, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Gazprom, and National Iranian Oil Company- companies spread across the Middle East, Europe, Russia, the United States and China.

Under the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015, 196 countries committed to taking steps to limit the rise in global temperature this century to well below two degrees Celsius. Four years later, global emissions still increased: by 1.7% in 2017, a further 2.7% in 2018 and 0.6% in 2019.

It's not hard to see why trying to be sustainable as an individual can feel like a pointless endeavour.

The problem with focusing on individual behaviour-

There is often a tendency in the green movement to focus on individuals making changes to their personal lifestyles. The problem with this is that it fails to understand how individual choices are shaped and constrained by the system in which they are made.

For example, Lucy Ingram a 24-year-old, Climate Change MSc graduate tells me: "You have to question the morality of persuading someone to change their behaviour. I do believe changing consumer behaviour is useful, but I don’t think in the long term it will be enough to make significant changes to our environment."

Lucy continues: "Many companies will use the words ‘sustainable’ and 'plastic-free' with their products to make people more likely to buy them. But in reality, it's all just greenwashing. It only needs to be sustainable under one definition to be labelled as that and sustainable is a multi-dimensional term."

Greenwashing can happen in a multitude of ways. For example, plastic bottles labelled '100% recyclable' are usually made of PET. Whilst this is recyclable, most of them won't actually be recycled into new plastic bottles because there’s not enough demand for recycled plastic. For instance, Coca Cola only uses 20% recycled content in their packaging globally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr6RqGg6ExE

This complexity extends to things like recycling, where according to Greenpeace thousands of tonnes of household plastic packaging put out for recycling, actually ends up in waste incinerators in the UK. Additionally, well over half of the household plastic packaging the UK Government claims is recycled is sent abroad, with little knowledge over what is then done with it.

So, is individual action worth the effort?

Graphic by Emily Latimer

Lucy says: "If every single individual changed their behaviour like eating less meat then behaviour change would have a monumental impact regarding battling climate change. But that is not really realistic, especially when the biggest polluters are the large companies themselves."

Lucy continues: "For us to see significant improvements within our environment, governments need to be stricter with environmental laws and regulations. It simply is not enough to just allow billion-dollar companies to offset their emissions and degradation. But that does bring up the debate of consumer desires fuelling these companies in the first place."

Due to this focus on individualism, the label of 'environmental acitivst' can be an intimidating one.

For example, Rich Lafford, a member of Extinction Rebellion and a retired music teacher tells me: "When you label yourself an activist, often society judges or inspects your behaviour more closely, expecting you to be perfect and calling you a hypocrite for things like driving. But we’re all hypocrites, it’s not individuals that we should be having a go at, it's big cooperations who often don’t give us alternatives."

Nigel Harvey, the Chief Executive of a recycling business and member of XR adds: “There’s too much focus on the individual and actually that’s a way of shifting the moral responsibility. People live within the systems and rules that are created by the government and it’s the government’s job to change those to make it easier for people to do the right thing. “

The Instagram page @chicksforclimatechange instead redefines individual action as turning up to a climate strike, taking part in a climate rally or lobbying your government.

Why systematic change is needed-

As climate scientist Michael Mann commented: "We know that the fossil-fuel industry has funded deflection campaigns, which are aimed to divert attention from big polluters and place the burden on individuals." Instead, Mann argues: "we need systemic changes that will reduce everyone’s carbon footprint, whether or not they care".

Understanding environmental destruction as a systemic problem of capitalism is a starting point for a different way to deal with the climate crisis.

Zoë Nicole Skinner, a Geography student and member of XR explains: "There needs to be more emphasis on the fact that this is a deeply complex, systemic issue intertwined with capitalism and therefore ingrained into all areas of society and there is no magic bullet. This is why it's important to go beyond just talking about small things, like buying different straws or consuming less meat."

She continues: "The problem is present in all industries; fast fashion, supermarkets, pretty much everything we do, and because we don’t talk about this aspect of it enough, so much of it has become normalised and accepted."

Not an excuse to forsake personal responsibility-

However, whilst it's important we broaden our perspective beyond individual behaviour, this also doesn't mean we should forsake all personal responsibility.

If we want governments and companies to change, then we surely have to show them?

As Sue, a retired teacher and member of XR points out:"If we continue with a consumer mentality, believing that is our right to exploit the world's natural resources, then we have no hope.”

Ultimately, it seems we need change at every level; starting with ourselves, up to the governments and companies making the decisions.

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