At a recent high school reunion, I organized a panel discussion on sustainability with several of my classmates. One classmate asked: What can we, as individuals, do about sustainability?
This is a question that many of us wrestle with, but not always systematically. We often end up focusing on what makes us feel better rather than on what is most effective. We can, though, work systematically to reduce not just our own carbon footprints but that of our society. Bear in mind that the carbon reducing strategies that get the most attention aren’t necessarily the most effective ones. It is important to look carefully at all the factors driving our carbon emissions and not just jump at the most obvious solutions. The following is by no means a comprehensive list.
Socrates described the individual’s dual identity as a human being and as a citizen. As human beings we have our personal lives, our families, and our households. As citizens we have rights and responsibilities as part of a larger society. We sometimes forget this second part.
I. Sustainable Human Beings
In our role as human beings, we consume energy and emit carbon both directly and indirectly in our homes, our transportation and the things we buy.
Insulate Your House.
Our homes need to be heated and cooled and the typical American house is not built for energy efficiency. Many people’s first thought when it comes to reducing the carbon footprint of their homes is to put solar panels on the roof. The cost of solar panels has plummeted in recent years - and federal, state, and other incentives reduce the cost further - so this is an attractive option. But not every house is appropriate for solar panels and there are other steps you can take.
The single most cost-effective measure you can take to improve your home’s energy efficiency, whether it is a free-standing house or an apartment, whether you live in a hot or a cold climate, is to insulate it better. When it comes to reducing your carbon footprint this is perhaps the most cost-effective thing you can do. This means not just adding insulation to the walls and roof but also installing tight fitting windows that are double or even triple glazed. The harder it is for heat to escape from your house or apartment in the winter or enter it in the summer, the less energy you will consume. And you will be more comfortable in your home, so far from having to make a sacrifice to reduce your carbon footprint you will actually benefit from having done so.
Replacing gas and oil fuel boilers with electric powered heat pumps (which can also cool) and hot water heaters is another key step even if you don’t install solar panels (if you do it will make an investment in solar panels much more worthwhile). You can also participate in a utility’s green power program or a community solar scheme, plant trees or bushes that shade your house in summer and protect it from the wind in winter, use recycled building materials, replace any remaining incandescent bulbs, or even switch to cooking with an electric stove (they’re better than they used to be). Apartment living is a very good way to reduce your carbon footprint because of all the shared infrastructure, but that doesn’t work for everyone.
Drive Less.
The transportation we use to get around is the second important way we contribute to climate change. Electric vehicles are getting a lot of attention as a growing variety of models is being introduced. Their increased availability will allow for a more painless transition away from fossil fuels, but they are not the only solution.
Even better than buying an electric car is simply to drive less. Think about all the places you go in your daily life. It’s possible that you can get to many of them easily by walking, bicycling, or riding public transportation. If you do so you will not only reduce your carbon footprint, but you will be healthier. It’s a win-win, just like improving the insulation of your house. And – if possible - try living in a more densely populated neighborhood where you can easily do without a car.
As for flying, the pandemic showed that often a Zoom call can be just as good as an in-person meeting with someone far away. We don’t need to fly places as often as we used to pre-pandemic. Still, there are times when you simply have to be there physically to build a connection, to get a better sense of what is happening or just to be with someone you care about. It would be a sad world if we all just stayed home. In Europe environmentally conscious travelers seeking to fly less are leading to a revival of overnight trains and between cities that are relatively close together – such as the Boston -Washington corridor – traveling by train is more energy efficient and more convenient than flying. Giving up air travel altogether is a step too far for many of us. Unfortunately. the carbon offsets that some airlines offer as an add-on to plane tickets don’t seem to accomplish much, if anything. Carbon neutral airplanes are still a long way off too. Think hard before you book your plane ticket.
If you like taking cruises, though, I have bad news: There is nothing sustainable about a cruise, and not just because the fuel ships use (“bunker”) is much dirtier than jet fuel, gasoline, or diesel. Besides, taking a cruise is almost never a necessity. Electric ferries and small cruise ships are beginning to be introduced but it is better to avoid cruises altogether.
Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle.
Our shopping is the third major way in which we contribute to climate change. We buy more than we need and it comes in ridiculous amounts of packaging. We make ourselves feel better by recycling, composting, and buying local or even becoming vegans but it is far better to reduce waste at the source by just buying less of just about everything.
Recycling does help but it’s not good enough. Some materials – such as newsprint and aluminum cans (aluminum smelting uses a lot of electricity) – are easily recycled. Others – such as plastics – are less so. Already US consumers recycle more than readily be processed and reused and sloppy recycling often unintentionally makes much recycled material unusable. Try to buy less or at least to re-use as much packaging as possible before recycling it. Plastic straws – though widely condemned - are just a small part of the problem. You can make a bigger difference by getting your coffee in a reusable mug.
Composting has become more and more popular now that a range of places to drop it off and even services that will pick it up from your home are available. Composting is less problematic than recycling, although there have been hiccups when local supply outpaces demand. Still, it is estimated that 40% of the food sold in the US is wasted. Even if all of that wasted food were composted, it still required transportation, packaging etc. to get it to your refrigerator where you allowed it to go bad before sticking it in the compost bin to assuage your conscience. Don’t buy food without a plan to prepare it and eat it.
Eating local food has become a major cultural trend for a host of laudable reasons, one of which is the belief that is less carbon intensive. This isn’t necessarily the case. The New Englander who chooses tomatoes from Maine over Mexican tomatoes may not realize that hothouse grown local tomatoes actually require more energy than tomatoes that ripen in fields under the Mexican sun, despite the cost of transportation. The Mexican tomatoes taste better too. There is also a social justice component here: the Mexican tomatoes, Peruvian asparagus and Guatemalan green beans are all providing jobs for people who might otherwise be forced to leave home for work. Besides, if those of us in cold climates were truly to consume locally, we would have to live on turnips and cabbages all winter like our ancestors used to.
As a native of Wisconsin (“America’s Dairyland”), I am unable to recommend saving the planet by becoming a vegan. Our species has always been omnivorous and most of us prefer to focus on pleasure over virtue when we eat. That doesn’t mean we need to eat meat and dairy at every meal. In particular we should be reducing our consumption of beef, the most carbon intensive meat by far. A focus on quality over quantity enables us to continue taking pleasure from food while reducing our carbon footprints at the same time.
By all means keep recycling and composting and thinking about your diet. But above all, Reduce.
II. Sustainable Citizens
It’s important to improve the sustainability of our households but real change needs to come at a society-wide level. As citizens it is our responsibility to work to make our society more sustainable.
How do we do that? By making our voices heard, by becoming engaged voters and activists. The most effective social movements have mobilized both on the street and in the halls of government. In our political system if our elected representatives are constantly hearing demands to address climate change, they will be more likely to do something about it. And we need to vote them out if they don’t.
All levels of government have a part to play in addressing climate change, not just the federal government. When the former administration pulled out of the Paris Accord and tried to reverse the limited progress then made on the issue, many states and municipalities continued to move forward. Even though the current administration has rejoined the Accord and is committed to combating climate change, many key decisions that affect sustainability will still be taken at the local or state level.
Don’t just demand action. Propose specific measures, support actual bills. The most effective social movements are also very clear about what they want accomplished. Simply venting your frustration does not usually accomplish much. Ask your elected officials to take concrete steps.
Advocate for Carbon Pricing
The single most important tool for combating climate change is to set a price on carbon. Right now, it costs nothing for companies and individuals to spew carbon into the air in the United States. Without a price for carbon, those who emit will continue to do so at no cost. After all, if it’s not a line item on their income statement, it might as well not exist (economists call this an “externality”). A carbon price also provides a clear incentive for companies and the economy as a whole to find the most cost-effective way to reduce carbon emissions. The ingenuity of the market – which got us into this mess in the first place – can then be harnessed to fix the problem it created. If we truly are to get to zero emissions by 2050 – a widely accepted target adopted by the Biden administration - we must have a price for carbon. We cannot get there through regulations alone.
This is why the much-discussed Green New Deal is such a disappointment to many of us. It does not include a proposal for setting a price on carbon. The ambitious targets and spending proposals it calls for would be considerably more achievable if it did.
There are two main ways of pricing carbon. The most straightforward way would be to tax it. The rate would initially be set at a relatively low level that rises over time to pressure carbon emitters into continuously reducing their emissions, even as it gets harder to do. This kind of tax would hit lower income consumers hardest so a “carbon dividend” would need to be created, rebating a portion of the proceeds to individual taxpayers (just like the oil dividend Alaska pays its citizens). The remaining proceeds could fund climate change mitigation.
Taxes are politically sensitive. A potentially more palatable alternative – though more complicated – would be to set up a cap-and-trade mechanism for permits to emit carbon. A cap on total carbon emissions is set for the economy as a whole and for individual companies. Polluters that need to emit more than the cap can buy permits from others who have been able to reduce their emissions below the cap. Year by year the caps fall in line with overall emissions goals. As permits get scarcer it becomes more and more expensive to emit carbon and the incentive to reduce emissions grows. As with a carbon tax, proceeds can be used to mitigate climate change, or rebated to lower income taxpayers. In the 1980s a cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide successfully reduced the then serious problem of acid rain in the US. Frustratingly, legislation to establish a similar system for carbon emissions failed to pass the Senate after being approved by the House in 2009.
The EU has had a carbon market in place for several years. It was not very effective at first because the initial permits to emit carbon were given out for free in large numbers, so the prices at which they were traded were nominal. The market has since matured and carbon prices are now serving as an effective incentive to reduce emissions. In fact, the UK – which has done particularly well at cutting its carbon emissions - immediately set up its own carbon market on leaving the EU.
A common criticism of carbon pricing is that it gives a competitive advantage to goods produced in countries that do not have it. For this reason, the EU is looking at a carbon tariff to be imposed on imports from countries without a carbon pricing system.
Become a YIMBY
One of the biggest obstacles to sustainability has been the NIMBY (“Not in My Backyard”) resistance to climate friendly projects such as wind farms, denser housing development or improved public transportation. As a consequence, the US has lagged well behind its peers in clean energy production and we continue to foster car dependent housing patterns. NIMBYism predominates across the political spectrum, even among many who care about sustainability in their own lives.
If we are going to make meaningful progress in the fight against climate change, citizens who care about sustainability (and we all should care about it now) need to instead adopt a YIMBY (“Yes in My Backyard”) attitude. The alternative to change is not for everything to stay exactly as it is. That is not possible. We need to embrace change if we are to preserve what we most care about: a livable planet for future generations.
Windmill projects are often opposed with the argument that they make noise and spoil the view, especially if they are offshore. The fishing industry also worries that offshore windmills will hurt fishing grounds. And there is the frequent complaint that windmills kill birds. None of these arguments have proven strong enough to stop Europe from lining its coasts with windmills, to the extent that Denmark and the UK regularly have days in which ALL their power is green. Those who object to having windmills near them would surely object even more fiercely to having a power plant fueled by coal, gas or oil nearby, with the consequent damage to the air and the groundwater and the higher incidence of respiratory diseases and cancer. Minority and other marginalized communities have long suffered these effects because they lacked the political clout to keep fossil fuel generating plants away. Replacing fossil fuels with clean power generation is a matter of social justice as well. The alternative to having windmills in your view of the ocean may very well be a viewpoint that is under water. The politically powerful European fishing industry has been able to co-exist with offshore wind power while adaptations can be made to protect migrating birds (which are in any case more endangered by brightly lit skyscrapers).
Housing is another key area where necessary changes to both combat climate change and redress social injustices have too often been blocked by NIMBYism (usually justified by concerns over “traffic” and “preserving the character of the community”). Dense housing near public transportation is the most climate friendly way of living, as noted above. It reduces car dependency, helping to keep emissions down, and apartment building are more energy-efficient than stand-alone houses. Equally important, the US continues to face a housing affordability crisis, with new home buyers forced to live farther and farther from their workplaces or keep renting indefinitely while renters face a similar choice between moving to another city or paying an ever-increasing proportion of their income in rent. This affects people of color in particular as they have less family wealth to help them with a down payment. Building denser housing near public transportation therefore addresses two pressing issues at once. Policies in California and Massachusetts – among other places – to encourage or even mandate this kind of development, have been controversial but are necessary.
NIMBY voices can be very loud. YIMBYs need to drown them out if we are to move toward a sustainable future.
Push For Mitigation and Adaptation
Too often planning, policy making and disaster recovery ignore the reality of climate change. In some states (Florida and North Carolina) planners have even been forbidden to consider rising sea levels and other effects of climate change. Federal flood insurance continues to enable building on vulnerable barrier islands when the risk is too high for private sector insurance companies. The rules governing FEMA often require that infrastructure destroyed by hurricanes or other natural disasters be rebuilt exactly as it was, not with improvements to make it more resilient. As a result, we are trapped in a vicious cycle of ever more expensive destruction and rebuilding while long-term risks from climate change are ignored.
Some improvements are already happening, especially at the local level. Nashville has bought out homeowners who lived in a flood prone area and turned their properties into a riverfront park. New York and Boston are building barriers to keep subway tunnels from flooding and are starting to plan for the effect of higher sea levels on their lower lying neighborhoods, as is Miami. In many places, waterfront parks are being designed with flooding in mind. Even at the federal level things are beginning to change. The Army Corps of Engineers is incorporating climate change into its proposals, FEMA is working on making its rules more flexible and the federal flood insurance program is looking at raising premiums.
All of this is a start – and certainly more progress than we are seeing on carbon pricing – but your elected representatives need to hear from their constituents that more is needed.
Conclusion
The foregoing is more of a framework and a review of the key areas to focus on if we want to do our parts to make our own lives and our society more sustainable. It is by no means an exhaustive list, nor is it intended as one. A key topic that I have not mentioned here is sustainable investing, to be discussed in an upcoming piece.
I would like to thank my high school classmates Pamela Chu, Ned Hoyt and Brian Hurd for their ideas and insights and – especially – Luanne Gunderson Wilczynski for asking the question that inspired this piece.
Urban Larson
Principal
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