Playing the Blame Game
Tags: Climate Change, Environment, Activism, Behavior

Playing the Blame Game

Or the merits of lifting a finger rather than pointing it, as it pertains to the climate crisis. Barnhill Follow Dec 17, 2020 · 6 min read

Photo by Iyan Kurnia on Unsplash

Read five articles on the climate crisis and you’ll read about 5 different culprits for our current predicament. From politicians to businesses to the very nature of our economy and everything in between. Who’s right? Truthfully, all of them. Who’s to blame? Simply, all of us. But while there may be some catharsis for a climate writer in pointing their finger, or some absolution for us in reading about it, the honest truth is it doesn’t help.

I saw the movie “Rising Sun” when I was 14, it’s an action crime thriller based on a book by Michael Crichton. And while I have watched it many times, I’ve not seen it in at least 20 years. There is one minor scene in that movie, an exchange between characters played by Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes, that features a quote that’s rattled around in my brain for the past 27 years:

“The Japanese have a saying, ‘Fix the problem, not the blame.’ Find out what’s (messed) up and fix it. Nobody gets blamed. We’re always after who (messed) up. Their way is better.”

That stands in stark contrast to the blame game we play in the climate conversation (and also in most political conversations and, basically, the entirety of Twitter). But I want us to play a new blame game. Let’s find the sources of our many problems, fix them and move on. Rather than making blame rhyme with shame, let’s turn it into a shorthand for troubleshooting the problem. The first step to doing that is understanding that the purpose of blame, in this context, is a desire to absolve us of our own guilt. As long as it’s someone else’s fault we don’t need to change. But if we really want to solve this crisis, the one thing we all need to do is change.

Of course, the degree and extent to which we all must change varies greatly. That’s where confusion and paralysis can set in. Change is not uniform. There is no one easy-ways-to-go-green list for everyone to follow.

No More Taxpayer-Funded Quilting Bees

Think for a moment about quilts. They can appear to be haphazard things, when in fact their patchwork is a painstaking and considered creation. They can be mementos, or keepsakes. They can tell very personal stories, unique to the quilter — a one-of-a-kind creation.

Quilting is the citizens approach to environmental action.

It’s what we can do, when we can do it. We write a letter to a representative here, plant a pollinator garden there, drive less when we can and recycle everything in sight. That’s not bad. The opposite, in fact, because being mindful about what we’re doing (especially before we do it) can help lead to meaningful change. What begins with thinking more carefully about how and what we recycle could very well end up with all our homes on a smart grid that has our appliances operating at peak efficiency and lights turned off the moment we leave a room. That’s the beautiful thing with the quilting approach to environmental action: we start with one little square of fabric, but the creation we weave can be as big as we can dream.

The problem isn’t that quilting is the citizen’s approach. No, the problem is that it seems to be the government’s approach as well. Only their approach truly is piecemeal and haphazard, and that’s no way to solve systemic problems. To do that we don’t need a quilting bee. We need a ship’s captain. Someone who can reverse the engines and begin to turn this massive hauler of human destructiveness around. But in our current system that is, well, extremely difficult.

Currently, despite the best intentions, Senators, Representatives or even Cabinet Secretaries cannot be the ship’s captain. That’s because responsibility for all the things that effect environmental decision-making is so fragmented — the effect of the piecemeal approach our government has previously taken to environmental action. How do I mean? Well, let’s say for example, that you have an innovative way of providing every American with both clean fuel and renewable energy. You want to make sure it’s available to every American. The electricity we all get is provided by local and regional utilities that are regulated by the states (who set the prices). The EPA, however, which oversees things like air and water quality also oversees fuel standards. But the Department of Transportation is in charge of mileage standards and infrastructure. Then there’s the Department of Agriculture, which has a pretty big say in ethanol production. Meanwhile you need money to scale up production and it’s the Department of Energy that holds the biggest source of funds for energy research.* What do you do? Where do you start? A quilt, it turns out, is a poor way to approach systemic reform.

Additionally, the impetus to make changes like incentivizing renewable energy production, making domestic recycling an attractive option, penalizing polluters, rewarding eco-forward companies and making doughnut-level changes to our economic models and approaches require a singular vision. Or, more to the point, a singular decision. Only the President can begin to turn the ship around. It must be their call to reorganize departments and reporting structures. It must be the President who signs off on incentive structures, penalty plans or encourages re-imagining how we approach our economy. Where the buck stops is where ensuring our country is taking meaningful, collective action starts.

The Duality of Action

When it comes to fighting the climate crisis it’s not about determining whether a top-down or bottom-up approach is best. It’s about recognizing the duality that solving this requires, and embracing both. And it’s about all of us — individuals, voters, policy-makers and industry leaders — realizing and accepting that we can’t change the results unless we change the thinking and processes that yield those results.

One thing politicians and business leaders have in common is short sightedness. It’s not completely their fault, it’s how we’ve designed the system. The investments and changes needed to solve the largest challenge we’ve ever faced are impossible to make as long as the people these deciders answer to — voters and shareholders, respectively — aren’t looking further than an earnings report or election cycle ahead. We need to assure them we’re taking the long view, and that what will cost them their jobs isn’t looking ahead but not looking far enough ahead. Tell them if they make those difficult, long-term choices and take significant climate action we won’t hold it against them in the next cycle simply because there’s not a chart of upward economic growth or of downward temperature trend to show as pay off. And also, let them know the inverse is true: if they don’t take bold action — if they continue a business-as-usual, piecemeal approach — then you will.

This is how we, as voters and consumers, have power. It does require effort and diligence. But, again, against an existential threat the likes of which we have never seen, none of us are off the hook. The good news is that’s not an issue when our focus is fixing the problem, not the blame.

ACTIONS

Reach out to your elected officials directly. Call and email to express the expectations you have for them helping bring about systemic change. Tell them you understand it requires an investment that doesn’t yield immediate results. Tell them your vote is contingent on them making the decisions that will benefit the next generation more than yourself. How do you tell business leaders that same thing? By voting with your wallet, and doing a little bit of leg work. For example, buying something because the packaging is recyclable doesn’t really matter if the product is shipped from China. But there are ways to find companies that have real environmental commitments and support them. A helpful shorthand is to look for things like B Corporation, 1% for the Planet or Climate Neutral certifications. Here’s a helpful primer on what those are and some of the gold-standard businesses to start with.

*Source: “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” p.409.