Climate Change: Individuals and Responsibility

Hope and Justice Series Post #3.4

We’ve been discussing climate accountability and responsibility and individuals. As an individual you cannot cause a systemic aggregate problem like climate change. So you are not accountable for it. You don’t have to feel guilty that you aren’t participating in the individual carbon footprint scam put forward by the Big Producers of Polluting Products to divert you away from the real culprits.

But if a few of you absolutely have to feel guilty about something, feel guilty if you are not committed to and involved in collective action over time, i.e., that you are not a part of the Climate Movement, that you are not participating on your Olympian Fields of Action.

Bottom line: you are not accountable.

But are you responsible? Yes.

We are responsible for playing our part.

Individuals are responsible when they choose to remain in ignorance, or understand that they should support and participate in collective action, but don’t.

Remember that sustained collective actions over time — the defining characteristic of the Climate Movement — is not just about working with others to influence government policy on pollution, as vital and strategic as that is. We must not let how we see our contribution be constrained in this way. Collective actions can also include such things as:

• addressing tree equity/fairness in your area by working with others to plant and maintain trees, and helping to form a nation-wide tree-fairness campaign;

• creating a solar cooperative and helping others do the same through a solar cooperative campaign;

• creating art and songs and videos and memes that help generate support for climate action;

• working with others to create new technologies or products that help overcome climate and create prosperous sustainability.

Individuals are responsible for participating in government policies designed to encourage collective action by individuals, such as influencing consumer behavior to buy climate-friendly products like electric vehicles and energy efficient appliances as the Inflation Reduction Act did.

Finally, as individuals we are also responsible for becoming all we can be, to develop our gifts and abilities to their fullest so we can creatively make our unique contribution to:

• growing the Climate Movement and support for climate action more broadly and making both of them better;

• making all kinds of beauty along the way, remembering that giving who we are is beautiful, and;

• applying our gifts, abilities, and knowledge in all our relationships as we help others make their unique contribution.

We must be intentional about leaning into our creative powers to come up with new ideas to catalyze the opportunities before us, to invent new ways of doing things, and improve existing ways through innovation. Such new and improved ways can be social and relational in nature, like better ways to use social media with grassroots organizing. Or they can be new or improved products and business processes, or improved ways to offer finance that catalyzes speed and scale, or innovative government programs that make climate action streamlined, simple, and scaleable, cutting through red tape and old, maladaptive regulations (e.g. Utah’s plug-in solar law).

What are you good at? What are you passionate about? You are responsible for bringing your passion and your best to our cause, for being creative with who you are on your Olympian Fields of Action, on how you can participate through the work of The Catalytic-4.

Finally, you are responsible for playing your part in stopping bad stuff, setting wrong right, and making things better. We are not all accountable to justice when we haven’t caused a particular injustice, but we are all responsible for playing our part in creating, maintaining, and strengthening justice.

We may not be accountable to justice, but we are responsible for justice.

You are responsible for you and to you, because no one else can make your contribution. You are responsible for showing up. You are responsible for what you can do.

When all is said and done you will want to look back and know you did all you could, that working together with your team you left everything on the field, that you brought your whole self to overcoming climate change and creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything as we make our future come faster and our world more beautiful.

“Well done, good and faithful servant.” You want that to be true for you. You want that to describe your legacy.

Remember, though, that as you are being true to you, you are never alone. The opposition wants us to see ourselves as all alone with the heavy, guilt-laden burden of our individual carbon footprint, alone and ineffectual and dispirited.

The good news is that by committing to collective action you have joined what is becoming the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world.

By becoming a part of the Climate Movement your individual responsibility becomes an opportunity to work with others in establishing justice and thereby fostering hope as we stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better. You are responsible for becoming a justice-seeker, a hope-maker, and a beauty-creator.

This is how individual responsibility leads to hope as we work together on our Olympian Fields of Action to make the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful and our future come faster. We are the hope we’ve been waiting for. We are making hope happen. Join us!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in this Hope & Justice Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.