Cost of Climate Change

Turning Down the Heat Part 2: Change Your Life Bulb

By Carrie Saxifrage and the Climate Action Network

In early July of 2024, a small group of Cortes Islanders, supported by Friends Of Cortes Island (FOCI), screened the film “How to Boil a Frog” for the community. You can watch the film here. The film is about the five-pronged problem life on Earth is currently facing — overpopulation, a war on nature, wealth disparity, peak oil (hee hee), and climate change—and offers five actions that can help—boycott Exxon, change your “life bulb” (reduce consumption), a change of heart, one kid per couple, and kick some ass. 

This article is the second in a series focused on each of these five solutions. You can read Maureen Williams great first article on a change of heart here. This second article is about changing your “life bulb.” The term refers to the end of Al Gore’s 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth in which minor suggestions, including a switch to LED bulbs, float across the screen. The disconnect between the size of the problem and the size of the suggested solutions was so very obvious. It still is. Whether or not you change your “life bulb,” it is still important to “Kick Some Ass.” That will be the next article in the series.  

First, Some Context: How Super Emitters Discourage the Rest of Us

During the time I was working on this article, I bumped into friends on Raven Road. As we chatted, a private plane flew low over our heads, blasting the quiet with its roar. A Tesla, I was told, awaited the owner at the hanger.

Private planes make me wonder why I would put time into my little article about the little changes available to neighbours while the super-rich regularly emit as many greenhouse gases in an hour as most people emit in their lifetime…. Or when the top 1% emit 16% of the global emissions, as much as the poorest 66% combined. 

The top 1% emitters are people with a yearly income of more than $80,000 CAD or a net worth $1,183,000 CAD. Their emissions are the result of: 

  1. yachts, private jets and lavish lifestyles; 
  2. investments and shareholdings in heavily-polluting industries and their vested financial interest in the economic status quo; and 
  3. undue influence over the media, the economy and politics and policymaking. 

In this way, financial inequality and climate change are deeply linked.

The easiest climate fixes go to the super- rich: recycle the plane, recycle the yacht, divest from fossil fuels, and support climate-serious politicians and publications. Also, stop kidding yourselves about sustainable aviation fuels, carbon capture and net zero. It isn’t too much to ask from people who have garnered the majority of Earth’s physical resources. 

If the wealthiest one percent did these things, it wouldn’t take everyone else off the hook. The wealthiest 10% are responsible for 50% of global emissions. This calculator can tell you where you stand relative to the rest of the world. Toggling around, it revealed that those who earn more than $26,000 CAD/year (or have assets worth more than $126,000 CAD according to Credit Suisse) are in the top 10%.  

In addition to the emissions-wealth correlation, there are other ways to cut the GHG pie that make individual action seem very small  – 57 companies responsible for 80% of GHGs. China has the most emissions. Agriculture, deforestation, and shipping. The US election. On it goes. 

Given everything, including the private plane on Raven Road which introduced the question, “is this article even worth my time?” Or yours? My answer is ‘yes.’ I wish I could adequately explain why, even to myself. One answer might be that, in a world careening toward even more unnecessary suffering and extinction, resisting this trajectory with my small morsel of agency feels like the most meaningful thing I can do. The Earth is beautiful and rare. Onward.  

Change Your Life Bulb

The movie’s “life bulb” suggestions are to not eat beef and stop buying new stuff. In the case against eating beef, the movie states that cows: 

  • use 1/3 of available land
  • cause 10% of global warming 
  • burp 500 quarts of methane/cow/day, which is 1/3 of all methane emissions
  • emit more than anything else but driving
  • require 5,000 gallons of water to produce a 16-ounce steak

Eat chicken or fish instead, or no meat, because on the current trajectory, the 1.5 billion cows of 2018 will turn into 3 billion by 2050, with all their deadly methane. Right now, the methane threat is much worse than in 2018. 

For me, avoiding beef is simple. When it is served to me, I enjoy it. But growing up I ate so much beef that I’m sort of full. We ate Hamburger Helper, Salisbury Steak, tacos, spaghetti and meat balls, meat loaf, hamburgers and every other form of ground beef you might think of. I still desire lamb and goat which, unfortunately, are no better in terms of methane. I buy these meats locally, opportunistically, and mostly save them for special occasions. I haven’t shaken my yogurt and butter habit, but I source goat milk for cheese from some local (and very happy) goats. 

The movie’s suggestion to stop buying new things looks to how we have been reduced to our role as consumers. In it, Tammy Simmons describes “The Compact,” a worldwide movement in which members can buy new things one day a year. She attests to how it gives her a sense of connection with others who have the same goal. 

Not buying new things! My consumer identity runs deep, thanks to growing up in the shopping malls of Orange County, California (yeah, that’s right, the OC). Also, my parents believed that God rewards hard work with wealth, so being rich displayed God’s favour. Nature’s meaning was subservience to humans. It’s not clear how I ended up living on Cortes and trying to grow food, given that start.  

What We Find Gratifying Can Change with Our Choices

This thought helps me to buy less: I can change my gratifications. At about an hour into the Frog movie, a man states, “We have to rethink where we get our gratifications from. Rather than getting them from acquisitions and social status, they have to come from working together and forming the kinds of bonds that this economy militates against.” For me, this is a deep and necessary truth. 

Two regular climate gatherings can help. The Cortes Community Resilience group, which enjoys regular potlucks together, focuses on building community. (cortescommunityresilience@gmail.com).   The FOCI Climate Action Committee (climate.foci@gmail.com) looks for ways to build awareness and influence the climate trajectory. Both groups welcome you!

It also helps, when my ever-resilient sense of entitlement gets hardened, to use gratitude to loosen me up. No, I am not body-surfing in Hawaii. Yes, I live in what is to me the best place in the world. Thirty years ago, my husband and I moved to Canada inspired by ideas of sustainability and universal health care. Thank goodness. 

“Shopping” for non-consumer items can help. A friend of mine taught me how to shop for beach rocks. At the end of her walk, she arranges them for others to view. I often see intriguing rocks nicely placed on the shoreline, a kind of folk art. Admittedly, there are more than a few rocks on our deck and in our house. One can be overly acquisitive, even with rocks.   

I get to acquire mushrooms and clams! This is so satisfying that I think shopping itself arose from foraging. 

Gardening is a key strategy. Pay a seed and time in the sun to receive a whole lot of food. Wow. Plus, it’s so intimate with the sources of life, how photosynthesis is the starting point for nearly everything alive, and everyone. See plants grow! 

I don’t buy a lot of clothes anymore. On Cortes, comfortable sturdy clothes feel appropriate. These tend to get better with age, up to a point. When I go to a city, I overdress a bit because I own some nice things and its fun. There’s no reason to buy more things I won’t wear on a daily basis and, mostly, I don’t. Unless it has an animal image on it.  

Expressing myself helps, too – trying to become a creator of interesting things rather than a consumer of them. As my friends retire, I ask what they hoped to create when they were young and if they have plans to work on that now that they have more time. I find this more revealing than their travel plans.

It’s Time to Consider More Facts

Which leads me to what is perhaps the most challenging consumer choice: to decline air travel. Like beef, I’ve had more than my share. My upper middle-class parents took their five kids all over the world: South Africa, Europe, Turkey. They considered it edifying and they were right. Travel completely recalibrated my understanding of the world and of my own sense of privilege. I can only feel grateful for my opportunities. 

Yet, how odd that the Frog movie suggests not buying anything for a year but doesn’t suggest forgoing air travel, given that it is one of the most destructive consumer choices available. 

Have a look at the carbon costs of flights from Vancouver to various locations, keeping in mind that a person’s fair share of emissions each year is 1.5 to 2 tons for everything we do (heat, drive, take a ferry) if we are to stabilize the climate: 

  • Puerto Vallarta 1.6 tons
  • Honolulu 2.5 tons 
  • London 4 tons
  • Hong Kong 5.8 tons 
  • Rio de Janeiro 7.8 tons
  • Melbourne 9.8 tons
  • Dar es Salam 11.6 tons

But maybe it isn’t so odd that the movie omitted air travel – people really don’t like to think about its impacts. Air travel seems baked in as an unquestionable cultural good. It contributes more status than, say, shopping for beach rocks. And it is pretty darn amazing to get dropped half-way around the world in a few hours. Those educational benefits are real. For some of us, the people we love most live very far away. 

Still, if one is trying to make fact-based decisions about their “life bulb,” one should let all the applicable facts exert their influence.  This website might help. (Use the offset/donate tab to get to the calculator. Offsets are no substitute for actual zero emissions, but the flight calculator is great). 

We All Participate, But We Can Still Change

A big obstacle to climate action is how implicated we all feel. Nearly everyone has some ambivalence about their choices, including me. It makes us argue with ourselves about things we need or even just want. We all do things in spite of the facts. Accepting our own hypocrisy seems to be the price of engaging with the need for rapid change. It’s the starting point. It doesn’t have to stop us. 

As the Frog movie makes clear, we don’t have to give up on gratification. Our mutable minds can change what gratifies us. We can even expect deeper gratification through the meaning and connection we create as we go. Gabor Mate notes that the opposite of addiction is connection. It feels great to connect with others on the deeper basis of caring about life on Earth. I’m inspired by the FOCI Climate Action Committee meetings, which are open to all. The Cortes Community Resiliency group is another place to meet up and build community. Join us!

Even small changes build momentum that spur us on, strengthen our demand for transition and ready us for the challenges to come. Every change we make to lower our emissions is necessary because there is no answer that doesn’t include ending the use of fossil fuels. 

Astronomical Thought Exercises to Help Change the Bulb

For now, the Sun and Moon are both apparently the same size when viewed from Earth – I find the coincidence amazing! But these two celestial bodies are very different from each other. The huge and distant Sun, which you cannot look at directly without burning your eyes, gives life. The smaller and closer Moon, which invites long gazing, has a stronger immediate pull. I think in terms of Sun choices and Moon choices. 

Moon choices result from feeling pulled toward certain immediate things. They feel bigger than they are because they are so close. Often they hurt no one but sometimes their cumulative effect makes life difficult or impossible for people and animals in other parts of the world. 

Sun choices respond to far away realities which I can’t look at constantly but know quite well. These choices align with the knowledge of what gives life and what takes it away. Sun choices embrace life.  

Sun and moon appear same size, approximately, as seen from Earth. Image © solarseven/Dreamstime.com. 

Links of Interest: