Climate action spans every level of society, from the United Nations to individual households. This article examines each actor’s role and constraints in emissions reduction, then explores how systemic change applies to consumption, electric vehicles, home heating, and flying.
Governments set policy direction, levy taxes, build infrastructure, and regulate business activity and consumers. But they have conflicting demands to juggle and are generally risk-averse. The environment is not the principal factor on voters’ minds, and therefore, it is not surprising that government inaction constantly disappoints environmentalists.
Businesses can choose to invest in resource efficiency and determine which services and products they offer consumers. But they need to keep their shareholders and investors on board and provide products that the public wants to buy. Most consumers are price-conscious and, despite what they might say, will not pay much more for environmentally friendly products.
Meanwhile, the oil and tobacco companies say that they only produce products that consumers want to buy. They are happy to promote consumer choice, then falsely suggest that electric vehicles do not significantly reduce overall emissions. This is a deliberate strategy to create uncertainty, doubt, and delay among decision-makers and the public. And the media thrives on reporting on these disagreements. These campaigns can successfully reinforce consumers’ in-built preference to buy what they are familiar with and comfortable with.
Community and voluntary groups can make a significant difference at a local level. Individuals, within certain constraints, choose how to live their lives and what products and services to buy. They can therefore make significant decisions related to climate. But the required infrastructure may not be in place; they may have to overcome societal norms, and, in some cases, may require a degree of self-sacrifice that the majority are not willing to make.
So, systemic change is required. Ideally, change should be a positive choice, with millions of consumers choosing environmentally friendly products and services because they are the default, of higher quality, and affordable. These choices can be made easier if the supporting infrastructure and economics are in place to enable the rollout of better products and services.
Deposit return schemes reduce litter, provide better segregated material for recycling, reduce environmental impact, and can be fun for consumers to participate in. They operate successfully in Norway, Germany, Latvia, and Lithuania, achieving over 90% recycling for bottles and cans. But companies cannot introduce a deposit return scheme on their own. It requires systemic change, cooperation, and economies of scale, led by the government in consultation with manufacturers, retailers, and consumers. Regulation creates a ‘level playing field’ for businesses. Consumers will notice that these products are more expensive to purchase, but they can then claim the deposit back.
Electric cars provide many benefits for individuals and society, including quieter streets, improved air quality, smoother acceleration, no fuel spills, and fewer mechanical breakdowns. City-centre cyclists will immediately notice the benefit of avoiding road traffic fumes. But, for decades, buying a petrol or diesel car has been the default choice, so we need to overcome tradition and inertia if we want a mass change to electric vehicles.
The UK Government is creating the conditions for systemic change. There are now 87,000 public chargers in the UK; an electric car grant provides up to £3,750 off the price of a new electric vehicle; company car drivers receive generous tax benefits; and manufacturers have an increasing quota of electric vehicles to sell each year.
Replacing combustion with electric heating would improve indoor air quality and help prevent occasional but deadly gas explosions. Homes heated by heat pumps tend to be kept at a more constant, comfortable temperature, and, if installed with better insulation, are cheaper to run. Warmth and tackling ‘fuel poverty’ have huge health benefits. As a society, our overall energy consumption will fall because heat pumps are three times more efficient than gas boilers, and the UK will be able to rely on domestic electricity rather than gas imported from Norway and the Middle East.
I have installed an electric heat pump to replace my gas boiler. I have published blogs, delivered talks, and invited people into my home to see how it operates. However, most people in the UK are content with their existing heating, predominantly natural gas.
Individual actions and government grants will not transform our heating choices because of the cost of installing individual heat pumps and the high cost of electricity. A systemic, organised and planned change is needed where whole streets and neighbourhoods are offered the opportunity to transition to an electric heating system together, like the way the gas network was installed. In cities, this could be district heating with insulated pipes carrying hot water from a central energy plant to buildings. In suburbs and rural areas, it would be predominantly individual heat pumps.
Flying is always a difficult topic for an environmentalist, particularly one who enjoys travel, culture, and exploring. The flight shame movement (flygskam) was popularised by Greta Thunberg. This led to a 4% drop in flights in Sweden from 2017 to 2019. Unfortunately, flight numbers have now bounced back. The New Economics Foundation proposes a frequent-flyer levy to tax frequent flyers more heavily. On the face of it, this seems appealing and fair, as generally the wealthiest travel more. Despite this, I am not sure that voters will endorse it as it would be an easy policy to criticise and could be seen as an ‘attack on growth and ambition’.
For a significant, long-lasting impact, systemic change is required. High taxes should raise money to invest in innovation and permanently bury an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide underground from each flight. The UK’s Air Passenger Duty is one (imperfect) instrument for this in the absence of international kerosene taxes. In the EU, a recent mandate requires airlines to use an increasing proportion of sustainable aviation fuel. Airlines also need to be incentivised to invest in the most fuel-efficient aircraft.
A final thought is that ‘guilting’ people to change and give up flying or eating meat or to spend more than they can easily afford has some effect, but this is limited and rather transitory. Only a minority of people will choose to change, so the overall effect on emissions is limited. Systemic change is required if we are to reach the majority and significantly cut our total carbon emissions.
This is a complex topic that spans psychology, economics, and politics. Regulations can be effective, but trying to force people to buy products and services that are not clearly better is likely to be unpopular and divisive.
Ideally, individual solutions should be a positive choice, aligned with our beliefs and aspirations. Our actions can then catalyse others. A good example is solar panels on a roof, where neighbors often copy one another because solar power is seen as aspirational. It is likely that this will happen with electric vehicles, but progress is slow, so a system change is required to accelerate it.
This is not to say that individual and community-led action is not worthwhile. Individuals can trailblaze solutions, show a good example, and can lobby businesses and politicians to make systemic changes. Meanwhile, community groups play an important role in improving the quality of life at the local level.
