Climate Abundant Life Criteria

How We'll Know We Are Meeting the Goal

Photo by Milan Popovic on Unsplash

In the original announcement of the name change for this newsletter, I already had some people express skepticism on the possibly of a climate abundant life. That skepticism is fair, and in fact, it is necessary for us to be rigorous about achieving the goals of living a climate abundant life. If we are going to maintain a rigor to the approach, then we need to consider and settle on criteria for what being climate abundant means. In this post, I am laying out the criteria to be used in assessing any action to see if it achieves the outcomes we seek.

The climate movement has generated many ideas for what we can all do. The range is immense and seems to include everything from self-denial and self-flagellation to colonizing Mars. Some of the ideas are just whacky and we don’t need to spend time on, but most will benefit from a rigorous analysis of their actual benefits to the planet as well as our lives, and that’s what Climate Abundant Life is all about.

So, what would an action have to do to be abundant for both climate and life? Here are the core questions we can ask: of any proposed action:

• Will it save or make money?

• Will it save time?

• Will it make life better in some other way?

• Will it reduce carbon emissions?

• How measurable and certain are we of those outcomes?

Let’s take a look at each of these.

Money

Given that we live in a capitalist-industrialist world, money matters. If you don’t have enough, you will be stressed. If you really don’t have enough, you will be impoverished. Indeed, your very ability to survive may be imperiled. On the flip side, having a small surplus of income tends to provide more ease, decreased desperation, and increased creativity and joy.

Although many people argue that money should not be relevant in the climate fight, I look at it differently. Money still drives our behavior. How many times have I heard, in my years of writing on climate, “That’s good for you but I can’t afford it!” or “The costs of xyz is too high!” Businesses say it, governments say it, and individuals say it. Indeed, I would say that the perceived cost of climate action is the number one reason most people do not undertake effective action. In their minds, it is just too costly.

There are many climate actions that are, indeed, too costly. Others, however, are not. To live a climate abundant life, we must be able to discern the difference. We will be looking for actions that reduce the cost of living at meaningful scale often measured against the return rates of other investments. On average over the long haul, stock market investment grows at 8% a year. Right now, risk free investment in Treasury Bills will get you 5% per year. These become the benchmarks against which we can evaluate climate action investments and costs.

At the same time, investment returns are not always the issue. For those of us with cash flow challenges—by which I mean there just doesn’t seem to be enough money every month, let alone go invest it—the question is reducing costs at the lowest possible input. In this case, you need actions that will reduce your costs to free up cash and improve your life. We will be looking for those, too.

Time

The second question is whether or not what you are doing will save time. Are you more free after taking the action or less so? And does that matter to you? Some people have told me it just doesn’t matter because we are in a crisis. But again, the resistance to action often comes from the effect on people’s lives. If you are a busy young parent, for example, there is a decent chance that while you are worried about the climate crisis, you simply don’t have time to do anything about it. You collapse exhausted after working all day and putting the kids to bed, doing your best to squeeze out a few moments for yourself. The last thing you need is a climate action that now requires more time from you. On the other hand, a retired person might find themselves enjoying the time required for a new activity. It really depends on your situation.

Hence, climate actions need to be considered in light of the time required, the time saved, or whether the action is simply neutral to your current time available and schedule. In most cases, this is pretty easy to see.

Improving Quality of Life

Time and money, of course, are not the only ingredients of a good life. Some things are simply more enjoyable than others. Some are more fun, while others are just more thankless work or energy drains than we want to participate in. Volunteer organizations, for example, can fall on either side of this divide. Some will suck your energy dry, while others energize you.

In many ways, this question offers the chance to include your values. If it is important to you to be independent, that will tend to favor certain actions. If you believe in and favor community connections, that will lead you somewhere else. If personal health is important to you, that should be factored in. We will try to evaluate actions to determine what values they appeal to.

Reduction of Emissions

If we are talking about climate actions, we are talking about the reduction of carbon and GHG emissions. Any action needs to be evaluated to make sure that, in fact, it results in a reduction of emissions because if it doesn’t, it is not a climate abundant life action. There are many actions you can take to solve your money problems, provide you with more time, or enhance your enjoyment of life that do nothing for climate or emissions. In the Climate Abundant Life, we are looking for those actions that both improve life and reduce emissions.

Are they Measurable and Certain?

Across the spectrum of people claiming to help you make money, save time, improve your life, or reduce emissions, there are many wild claims. The only way to sort these out is to insist that the outcomes we claim can be measured, thereby giving us a level of certainty that the promised results will actually materialize. Yet even measurement doesn’t always provide the certainty we would want simply because some actions are so new as to be speculative about their actual impact.

The confusion is accentuated by the fact that we may be able to measure the money but not the carbon, or we can measure the carbon but not the time savings. Improvement in quality of life may be a certainty, but the savings could be unclear and the carbon unmeasurable. Hence, this questions gives us insight into what we can actually know about an action we might take, and help you to choose one action over another because of your confidence in the outcome.

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These five questions are a touchstone in this journey. They will help us separate what matters on carbon emissions from what does not, but also, they will help us see how certain actions are far better at delivering positive results and quality of life improvements while others do not. Ultimately, the choices you make remain deeply personal to you and your life. I assume that if you are reading this you want to make a difference on climate change. Together, we’ll see what makes a real difference.

A final note: The Climate Abundant Life is all about making these assessments of various options individuals have for acting on climate change. If there is an action you would like to see assessed, please let me know in the comments. The goal is to help you make better decisions that enhance your life and help solve climate change. The options are there, and we will be exploring them.

Anthony Signorelli