Creating Your Personal Carbon Reduction Plan, Part 1 of 3

Don't worry, your life is going to get better!

Apr 12, 2022

Intertwine: Creating Your Personal Carbon Reduction Plan, Part 1 of 3

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of three pieces for Intertwine on handling your personal carbon emissions. It is a guide to how to make a difference.

If you are awake on this earth, you know there is a climate disaster brewing. Either you believe it and you are concerned, or you deny it and try to ignore it. Either way, you know it is there. And either way, you probably are not taking much effective action.

Why? Because you are a rational human being. The solutions don’t look good. Life is tough enough, and you don’t care to make your life worse.

Let’s fix that.

The reality is that your life can be better, not worse, as you contribute to a climate change solution. I want to lay out a specific set of ideas for how you can do that. Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell you to shrink your life and live like a hobbit. I’m also not going to tell you to wait for a techno-utopia to save us. I’m not going to say just ignore it and it will go away. It won’t, and ignoring it is a disservice to ourselves, our children, and future generations.

In this series, we’ll be addressing better decisions for work, transportation, home and business operations, diet, and advocacy.

The impact we each have and the opportunities to address them depend largely on our station in life, so you cannot have one plan that fits everyone. For example, apartment building landlords can have a big impact that their renters cannot. Forty-five-year-old parents face very different realities from 20-year-old college students. Retired people have different options from corporate managers or union workers. But what we can do is assess our opportunities in key areas that can really help change our impact.

One more thing I am not going to do here—cutting back to reduce carbon. The climate movement has an almost myopic view of carbon footprint—which is generally defined as the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere based on your use of energy. The problem is that this is a zero-sum game that doesn't take into account the impact an individual may have and how important that contribution might be for creating a solution. Critics of Al Gore, for example, focused on his carbon footprint as he promoted his message for An Inconvenient Truth. They criticized him for flying around to get the message out. Whether you like Gore or not, there is little doubt that his project changed the climate debate, and I would consider every ounce of carbon emitted for his work to be well invested. On the other hand, carbon spent on weekend jaunts to Las Vegas or to support passive gaming are much more frivolous, though even there, such an activity in the context of a specific life may make more sense than immediately meets the eye.

A Better Question

Rather than starting with everything each person can cut back on, let’s start on the positive side—what can you, in your unique role or position, with your unique abilities and talents, contribute to the climate change solutions we need? What can you add? How can you bring those talents to have the maximum impact on a solution? How can you use your current situation to have an impact, or how can you change your situation to make a bigger difference?

Job—Apply Your Best Work to a Solution

Other than sleeping, nothing in our lives rivals the time we spend at our jobs. We need our jobs and most of us bring our best energy all day to work. We contribute, we solve problems, and we work hard. The stress often goes home with us. Our job gets our very best energy.

What if we all directed more of our very best energy—our work at our jobs—to climate change solutions? For some, this might mean joining a committee. For others, it might be changing a policy. For others, it might mean changing your job altogether so you can contribute with the full force of your full-time work.

More importantly, what is your key skill that you could contribute? Are you an engineer? Maybe you can direct your efforts toward the technologies that will change the world—solar energy, battery technology, digitalization, automation, robotics, blockchain, AI, 3D printing, and cultured foods. All of these technologies can play a part in creating an abundant future. Are you a marketer? Perhaps your role is to look for these technologies and help bring them to market. Are you a communicator? Perhaps you spread the word in the areas and with the audiences that are available to you. Are you a teacher? You can teach people how to make their own climate mitigation plan. Are you an activist? Maybe the political impact is your unique contribution—trying to change policies that will help avert the disaster. And if you are retired, the need for your expertise and energy dedicated to this problem is enormous.

What I am suggesting is that you seize the opportunity to unleash your most creative and forceful work, i.e., your best energy, to climate change solutions. Most of us don't do that. No job is perfect on climate, and all organizations we work for can take additional initiatives. You could lead those initiatives or participate in them. You could also change jobs to dedicate your energies better and more effectively.

Why focus on your job? Because it is where you can leverage your impact and make a bigger difference. It is far more effective than shrinking your sphere of influence to reduce your carbon footprint. You can make a much bigger difference by helping create new technology or bringing it to market than you can by trading your car for a bike. So, brainstorm the places where you can be effective. If there are opportunities and you otherwise like your job, stay with it and leverage those opportunities. If there are none or you hate the job, consider a new one. One year ago, I did this when I left sales consulting to become a sales leader in rooftop solar. I became very pleased with my contribution after selling 20MW of rooftop solar in a few years. Those sales stop close to 10,000 tons of greenhouse gases every year for years to come. I did it by redeploying my skills. You can make a similar difference by the thoughtful redeployment of your career energy.

Next week: How your decisions on transportation, home function, and business operations can make a positive difference both for the climate and for your life.

Please share this with others…

Share Intertwine

For more of my articles on climate and the postcapitalist future, click here.

You can find my newsletter Intertwine: Living Better in a Worsening World here.

In Case You Missed Them

Note: Use the links below to access my current articles published on Medium.com or other platforms.

Can Bitcoin Solve Climate Change?

Italy and Exxon think so.

“A Ghost Is Driving the Car!”

…and more ghosts could change everything

Degrowth Needs Capitalism: Could There Be Another Way?

How to get off the socialist-capitalist continuum

Bruce Willis and Why I Will Not Wait to Write

Live now!

Water Wars Could Derail Your Retirement Plans

…and you thought the climate crisis wasn’t going to affect you.

Beyond Renewables — The Battery That Could Power Everything

Goodbye solar, wind, and hydropower

Anthony Signorelli

Ideas, insights, and imagination to help you live better in a worsening world. Topics include Men, #MeToo, and Masculinity; Postcapitalism; Climate Change; Digitalization and Cryptocurrency; Green Energy; Retirement and financial planning… basically everything that addresses making life better in this challenging time of history.

To help me continue this work and find other insightful writing, join Medium here. It’s only 5 bucks and Medium pays me half to keep this work going. Much appreciated.