My personal role in accelerating the climate crisis
When I was learning to drive, a guy once hit my car from behind at a stop light. Outraged and expecting sympathy, I told my Mom. Instead, I received a withering mouthful of sarcasm. “It’s always the other guy’s fault,” she said dismissively. I got the message. No matter who was at fault, I was responsible.
We live in an era where admitting blame for anything is a “triggering” moment, or a lawsuit. In fact, it’s a cardinal rule of the climate movement not to blame individuals for the crisis for fear of distracting public attention from the true villain, the fossil fuel industry.
That strategy worked. Perhaps too well. A 2024 poll by Data for Progress found that Americans broadly believe big corporations and oil and gas companies are most responsible for causing climate change. However, only 13% blame individual consumers for the climate crisis, even though U.S. household consumption accounts for about 20% of global emissions. “It would seem that the [climate] problem essentially is us,” Geoffrey Beattie and Laura McGuire wrote in a 2015 study.
I am a climate problem
Take me. I blew through my daily carbon budget recently re as I downed a Starbucks latte writing this column. It was served in the comforting sameness of that paper and plastic composite cup with a familiar green logo and the plastic sippy cover we love.
Yes, there is no bible on how to be an ideal net-zero citizen. Yet we all know something terrible is going on – and sneakers are just a tiny piece of the problem.
That momentary, mindless pleasure is good for me, but not so great for the victims of Helene and Milton. That same cup has a useful life of about 10 minutes. It is one of 8,000 disposable paper cups used every minute in America, adding up to more than four billion cups annually. About 1.6 million trees are harvested yearly to produce Starbucks’ single-use cups. Toss in the emissions released for the production, transportation, and disposal of all these billions of cups, and, well, that is a climate problem I can’t bring myself to blame on Exxon and Starbucks. It’s me.
Clean new shoes and dirty old subways
I am not the only clueless consumer. On my way home, I noticed almost everyone in my subway car was wearing brand new white sneakers. That was odd, I thought. The U.S. Tennis Open was last month. My son informed me that the fad for white sneakers is now hotter than the Gulf of Mexico.
Am I crazy to wear them into the NYC subway? Source: The New York Times
Making it fashionable to wear crisp, white sneakers on the streets of New York is the height of fast fashion cynicism. It’s one reason Americans buy on average, seven pairs of shoes a year. Think about that. In ten years, you have collected 70 pairs of shoes in your closet. You are now Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines who made a habit of purchasing crazy amounts over shoes from the $10 billion she and her husband, Ferdinand, looted from the Philippine people.
Shopping for shoes like Imelda is not normal. It’s even worse now that most shoes are made from plastic. I grew up in affluence half a century ago, when sneakers were made of canvas or leather, not plastic. You wore them until you outgrew them, or they were so disgusting that your friends demanded you throw away your Jack “Pewcells.” Today, sneakers account for approximately 1.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. If the sneaker industry were a country, it would be the 17th largest polluter globally.
With what we know about climate change, is it really fair for me to have the opportunity to buy a new pair seven times a year just because I can? What gives me ‘agency’ to do that when an estimated 1 billion people worldwide don’t even own a pair of shoes?
Yes, this is guilt shaming. Yes, thinking of others is an impediment to my freedom. And yes, there is no bible on how to be an ideal net-zero citizen. Yet we all know something terrible is going on – and sneakers are just a tiny piece of the problem.
Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs
So when did consumption go from a perk of the privileged to downright crazy? It may have started the night former President Jimmy Carter told America in 1977 that we should wear sweaters instead of turning up the heat. Shortly later, he was mocked out of office for his frugal ways by an emerging generation of Baby Boomers who opted for Ronald Reagan’s sunnier vision of morning in America – and with it, full-on Ayn Rand economic gluttony.
Should I cower in guilt, despair and embarrassment? Of course not (well, maybe a little). What I can do is start to acknowledge we are both the problem – and the solution.
I, too, was one of millions of FOMO-fueled Americans who turned the formally sinful Old Testament acts of envy, temptation, into the American Way.
Jimmy Carter and his infamous cardigan. Source: The New York Times
Mother Nature’s chickens are now coming home to roost. My lifetime of conspicuous consumption is fueling Helene and Milton’s savage affair with the South. And that is mere foreplay to the orgy of climate violence in store for all of us.
So, what should I do? Throw my lot with the Unabomber and give it all up? Should I cower in guilt, despair and embarrassment? Of course not (well, maybe a little). What I can do is start to acknowledge we are both the problem – and the solution.
That is a big ask in a nation allergic to personal accountability—much less lifestyle changes. And it will take more, a lot more than reckoning with my affluent ways to drive systemic change. For example, would you agree to accept the personal inconvenience of limiting the use of plastics, like steel in World War II, to mostly strategic purposes such as medical devices, mass transportation, or renewable power transmission? How willing are you to risk your pension fund or 401K for the sake of a safer world?
The answer may surprise you. A new survey says half of U.S. respondents are willing to abide by the vast majority of changes needed to restore our planet. That’s an insight that Exxon, J.P. Morgan and every stock exchange listed company hopes you will never discover – or act on.
