This is not to suggest that purely individual efforts will stop the climate from changing. But, if millions of people take these and many other actions, their impact can be sizable. It also can buy us more time, a factor that is running out, until a globally comprehensive solution can be designed and implemented.
My last blog, on food production, featured Tatiana Schlossberg’s Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have. I have brought her back for an encore focusing on a different section of her book – technology. For Schlossberg, many things we do or make have environmental consequences. They may not be obvious, but a reasonable person can intuit them.
In her section on technology and the Internet, Schlossberg notes that we surely know we are using electricity when we power up our computers. Yet, for our access to the Internet, electricity that supports our browsing powers server farms and other electrical resources. We use electrical power to run our modem, WIFI router, printer and other devices. Because these items are on all the time, we might tend to overlook their power consumption. Beyond our home, power also runs the servers we access. Another link in the chain is the electricity used to cool the server farm. In short, electrical usages for computing far exceeds what is in our immediate range of vision.
Our food choices, technology choices, life choices involve trade-offs; some are not yet known and many are only partially understood. If I learned anything from Tatiana Schlossberg's work, it is that much more research is needed. Viable and reasoned alternatives must be energetically investigated and widely disseminated.
Until then, concentrating efforts on reducing carbon-dioxide seems to have the best chance of success in countering climate change. So, what do we do while we wait for answers to the larger questions and factors? We can reduce individual electric consumption:
- Turn off the power strip that powers the printer
- Substitute LED for filament light bulbs
- Reduce automobile usage by combining driving trips and carpooling
- Purchase vehicles with high mpg ratings or even go with an electric vehicle (although electric vehicles do not entirely eliminate our carbon footprint)
- Reduce plastic use – even simply substituting cloth bags at the grocery store for plastic ones is helpful
Individual acts, consciously performed, can serve as vital reminders of the danger presented by climate change. Without individual efforts, it is unlikely that other institutions will find the motivation to act. Politicians respond to issues that reach critical mass within their constituencies.
Moreover, individual advocacy acts can influence our legislators and lead to the political will for movement on broader efforts to counter climate change.