What Can One Person Do to Improve Climate Conditions

A single person has two things they can offer the world: time and money.

Here’s how people spend their time:

  1. Working
  2. Hobbies
  3. Working out
  4. Driving
  5. Eating
  6. Shopping
  7. Going to the doctor

Here’s how people spend their money:

  1. Investments
  2. Housing
  3. Food
  4. Car fees
  5. Vacations
  6. Clothing
  7. Subscription services

It’s clear that we spend the most time working. So for a single person to have the biggest impact, they should get a job that maximizes the impact they have on preventing climate change.

For spent money, people spend the most money on investments. Many people in low and middle income levels don’t have any investments, so they can focus on housing instead. If you own stock in a fossil fuel company, you should sell it and put it in an industry with a future. Check your mutual funds and ETFs too which could have shares of fossil fuel company stock. There are lots of profitable and green choices available.

For housing, I looked around for a sustainable apartment to live, but they’re mostly new, luxury developments. Real estate developers need to do a better job of adding passive cooling, smart thermostats, etc. to help the transition to renewable energy.

This is a good start, but it’s a simplistic way of maximizing your impact. We could create systems that run while we’re doing other things. For example, by planting trees, the trees will continuously pull carbon out of the air while we’re sleeping or at work. Or we could work with others and spark an idea that ends up creating a much bigger impact than we ever could alone.

  1. Write to Congress
  2. Get a job that helps change policy or educates people or shifts markets favorably
  3. Live somewhere with a carbon-negative footprint
  4. Sell your car and live the car-free lifestyle

Here are other things I wrote down:

  • Choose plants over meat $200/month
  • Drink water instead of some manufactured beverage
  • Only take electric plane flights $200/month
  • Use green electricity $50/month
  • Drive electric car
  • Put solar panels on your roof
  • Recycle, minimize waste
  • Educate
  • Green gym
  • Green tires
  • Green hobbies
  • Green clothing
  • Green taxes?
  • Green church?
  • Green healthcare?
  • Donate to renewable energy projects