The Three Levers of Climate Mitigation
By: Tim Victor
Tags: Carbon Emissions, Sustainability, Energy, Clean Energy, Climate Change

Part 3: Ownership and Individual Action

Written By: Kimberly Schlaepfer

20% of the world’s population is responsible for 80% of the world’s carbon emissions. Since the industrial revolution the Global North has extracted carbon resources from our planet and burned them to create the robust modernized societies we are a part of today. Over the last 300 years that carbon has been building in our atmosphere until we reached a point where the natural balancing act the planet performed to store carbon was disrupted, and excessive amounts of carbon began to slowly warm our planet. Now, as the Global South attempts to modernize their societies to reach the level that the Global North has enjoyed for decades we are running out of our global carbon budget. We, the Global North cannot continue to operate the societal systems we have put in place, while the rest of the world looks to catch up. We don’t have enough capacity in our atmosphere to deal with the carbon without causing global catastrophe.

Warming Stripes by Edward Hawkins

So who should be responsible for keeping that carbon out of the air? The Global South who have lived within the Earth’s means for centuries, or the Global North who are extracting resources from the planet at an exorbitant rate, approximately 3x what the planet can support?

The answer is clear to me. The countries who are responsible for the climate disaster that’s upon us are also responsible for cleaning it up. If everyone on the planet consumed resources at the rate of the United States, we would need 3–5 Earths to support the entire planet’s population. But the crux is, we only have 1 and we will only ever have 1 planet.

So we need to look away from China, India, and all the countries we love to point fingers at for amplifying the problem, because they are not the problem. We in the Global North have far exceeded our allotment of atmospheric pollution and continue to live our lives expecting that the rest of the planet should adapt so we can be comfortable in the systems we’ve created. It is the systems we’ve created and spread across the planet that are the problem. The largest and most impactful, being capitalism and a free-market system. A system, where-in you are rewarded for being the first person to extract the most, sell it, and dispose of it so you can start the process over again. A system that has instant rewards and no consequences for scars that quick profit leaves on the planet, human health, and our ecosystems.

But the problem in our current climate fight is that the focus of the climate problem thus far as been on individual action in the Global North. We’ve been told that if we use one less straw, or bring a reusable mug, those actions are making a difference. But are they? Not to discount the importance of individual action, because it is necessary, but it will not bring about the radical systems change that we need to realize in order to address this problem in a real and concerted way. We need to overthrow the systems that we have in place to and replace them with systems that will be regenerative. We need to change the idea that growth and extraction are the only things that ensure a healthy economy, and move towards a completely circular economy. We need to force those responsible for emitting the incredible amounts of carbon into the atmosphere to stop through market signals.

Carbon pollution = global human catastrophe. Can we continue to allow 20% of the planet to choose the path of an unadaptable planet in the next 50 years? Absolutely not. We need to hold those entities responsible and demand that our governments change the systems that have allowed them to thrive for the last 300 years. Enough is enough. It is our planet, our livelihood, and our future that is in the hands of a select few. We need to rip that responsibility out from under those individuals and rise up and a nation, a world, and create the systems we know we need to survive and thrive on this planet into the future. And the responsibility is on us, those of us who live in the Global North that have the power to change the systems we’ve created. It won’t be easy, but it’s a fight that the entire world depends on. We need to change the idea that this shift in our societal system is radical, because it is absolutely necessary to save our species on this planet. What’s radical is knowing what we are headed for, and not doing anything to change our course.