Drawdown Science Profile: Tina Swanson

When it comes to climate change, does individual action matter? Emphatically, yes.  While it’s true that eating less meat, biking instead of driving, or planting a tree only does so much to reduce emissions, actions like these are just the beginning when it comes to the impact that you as an individual can have. Personal climate action looks a lot like ripples expanding out from a pebble dropped in a pond. It starts with what you can do in your own home. But as you expand beyond your own personal space, your sphere of influence and impact grows, too.  If you’re feeling climate insignificant, check out the five circles of climate action below. Start with the innermost circle and work your way out. Notice how, as you move from learning and doing to sharing and advocating, the collective impact of you, your friends, neighbors, and colleagues expands. Soon, what started as a few isolated ripples can coalesce into a wave of change. Together, we can create the future we want at the speed we need. But it starts with individual action. So let’s get to work.   1: LEARN Familiarize yourself with climate solutions and how you can help deploy them. Check out the 93 technologies and practices that together can stop climate change. Watch the Drawdown Roadmap, Climate Solutions 101, and Drawdown’s Neighborhood video series for a comprehensive look at how humanity can halt climate disruption through concerted action.  2: DO Alter your own activities to reduce your personal contribution to climate change. Apply what you learn to become more climate friendly at home, at work, in your volunteer activities and hobbies, as you travel—in every aspect of your life! The opportunities are endless, and every action matters. Consider the climate impact of your consumer choices, and alter them accordingly. Check out other suggestions for mobilizing around climate solutions, including those from our partners Drawdown Ecochallenge, Rare, and Don’t Look Up, as well as from Science Moms, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the David Suzuki Foundation. 3: SHARE Communicate the opportunity to make a difference with others. Bring up the subject of climate change with individuals in your various spheres of influence: family, friends, neighbors, fellow faith community members, etc. Do so in a nonthreatening, nonjudgmental way. For example, you might start by mentioning unusual weather you’re having or a disaster in the news, and wondering if it’s related to climate change. Before you broach the topic, think about what the other person cares about. Tailor your conversation to connect climate change to what’s most important to them—their hobbies, their family, their health, their values. Listen to their thoughts. Then let them know the climate actions you’re taking and why. Explain how every person has a unique and important role to play in halting climate change. If they would like to learn more, share the link to this page.  Engage with people from all walks of life, not just those who think as you do. Like identity theft or the global economy, climate change affects everyone, not just environmentalists or those of particular political persuasions.  4: ADVOCATE Urge change makers to go all in on halting climate change. Think of three people in your sphere of influence who have exceptional impact: lawmakers, CEOs, community leaders, popular artists, social media influencers, journalists, consumer liaisons for brands you buy. Share with each, in language that resonates with them and what they care about, the importance of stopping climate change—and the evidence we have that it’s possible. If appropriate, start with the five basic facts about climate change): 1) it’s real, 2) It’s us, 3) It’s bad, 4) scientists agree, 5) there’s hope. Encourage them to check out the Drawdown Roadmap, which details strategies for strategically deploying solutions at the right time and in the right place, reaping multiple benefits, and overcoming barriers. Point out that climate solutions are not just about climate. They also offer numerous benefits for alleviating poverty, protecting biodiversity, advancing justice, reducing conflict, and more. Suggest one specific way in which the change maker can exert their influence to contribute to halting climate change. 5: AMPLIFY Enhance your impact by spreading the word. Let us know what you’re doing to help stop climate change. If you have additional resources to suggest or strategies to recommend, please pass them along so we can share with others.

Conversations about climate change and climate solutions often include traditional leaders while overlooking everyday people trying to effect change. But people – both individually and collectively – have a pivotal role to play in stopping climate change. So how can individuals take action to integrate climate solutions into their own lives? And how can they leverage that action to increase their understanding of and connection with the broader systemic changes our world needs? While Project Drawdown has created a number of resources to help people discover solutions and take action – including our Climate Solutions at Work report, Job Function Action Guides, Drawdown’s Neighborhood series, and the Solutions Library – our partnership with Ecochallenge.org serves as another entry point for individuals and communities to help stop climate change.  This October advocates and changemakers from around the world (including you!) are invited to register and participate in Drawdown Ecochallenge, a digital platform that gamifies behavior change, providing fun challenges that encourage new habits and help communities, corporations, students, and everyday people contribute to a more sustainable world.

The United States recently observed Labor Day, a celebration of the contributions of the American worker. It’s a time to acknowledge the people who build and maintain the foundation our country rests on—the people who, often without being noticed, enable us to power our lives, move from place to place, access food and shelter, and much more.  Today, for a world in the throes of an increasingly unstable climate and with a vanishing window of time to slash the greenhouse gas pollution that is causing it, the holiday is particularly meaningful. Because to solve climate change, we need to dramatically scale up climate solutions, and fast. That will take massive numbers of skilled workers building a future replete with heat pumps, mass transit, electric vehicles and chargers, solar panels, and much more, all aimed at permanently and comprehensively displacing the polluting industries of the past.  In other words, Labor Day celebrates the power of the worker to transform the world. We also need people in desk jobs transforming the existing system from the inside. Businesses, especially large, multinational corporations, are disproportionately responsible for the planet-warming emissions that cause climate change, and they have a grave responsibility—as well as the resources—to address it. Employees across every business and every department can apply a climate lens to their job to help their company advance their climate work more expediently and expansively, and hold their employer accountable to their climate promises. The phrase “every job is a climate job” is not hyperbole. We need all people engaged from wherever they stand. Within every sector, every trade, and every business, workers must be protected, equipped, and supported in building the world of the future and transitioning us away from the polluting businesses and industries of the past. Worker power—whether it’s security to ask for safer, more sustainable working conditions, tools to take climate action at work, or solidarity in holding employers accountable—is core to the work of Drawdown Labs.  This Labor Day, we’re taking a moment to celebrate those who are bringing climate solutions into the world and their work, transforming the existing system from the inside. Last week, we asked Project Drawdown newsletter subscribers to share how they are taking climate action at work. We were inspired by what we heard, and reminded that it is workers themselves who are best positioned to lead us into the future because they are closest to the issues and they know best how to implement solutions.  Here are some highlights from what you all have shared: Theme #1: You are making your everyday work—and that of your team members—more efficient and sustainable.  Some anesthesiologists are averting tons of greenhouse gas emissions by switching the anesthetic they use away from a potent greenhouse gas toward a more sustainable product. These anesthesiologists are also spreading the word with the goal of getting others to make the switch.  Concerned for their respiratory health, a fleet manager at a large tech company convinced their employer to switch to an all-electric fleet. Community workers pledged to use cargo bicycle services instead of diesel vans to transport equipment to local schools for scientific outreach events. Leadership at a top law firm decided to offer pro bono legal counsel to climate organizations and worker protection initiatives. Theme #2: You are integrating climate action or reduced emissions into the product or service you or your business provides. Product designers are sharing ways they have successfully integrated “sustainable nudges” into digital products. (For more specifically on the gaming sector, please see here.) Consultants are integrating climate action into their work by translating climate solutions into “business speak” for clients. Event caterers have transitioned their business model to offer fully vegetarian menus for events and meetings. A senior manager at a large multinational corporation established a task force to review and revise the organization’s procurement policy to include preferences and requirements for sustainable products, services, and suppliers. At a university, faculty and student services are working together to host green travel workshops for visiting students. The workshops provide practical support and encourage students to use public transit rather than flying for leisure travel. A field scientist pledged to work with their IT and procurement departments to clean the data from 200 mobile phones left over from one research project in order to reuse and/or recycle them. A mathematics professor decided to pause their research and instead invest their time organizing other professors and academic resources to support local climate projects in need of their expertise.  A retiree is using their skills to perform energy audits for households that can't normally afford them, not only helping them make their homes more energy-efficient, but also helping stop climate change. Theme #3: You are pushing your company to use its influence to affect climate change in the broader world.  An executive in the treasurer’s office for a private company is exploring how the company can decarbonize its banking and bring other businesses along with them on their journey. An advertising sales manager helped launch and acquire executive sponsorship for their company’s first employee green group and is helping others do the same within their own companies. Employees in the healthcare sector are encouraging low-carbon travel policies and calculating the carbon footprint of scientific research conferences. Solving climate change will require that each of us chooses, day after day, shift after shift, to work toward a healthier, more vibrant, more resilient future. We can’t just sit back and wait for our leaders to take us there. Every one of us must bring our unique talents and skills to bear on the task of shaping a better future together. The climate solutions that we know can do the job are the result of the work of countless farmers, builders, Indigenous people, engineers, educators, foresters, healthcare workers, and others who have brought these actions to light. Whether they will be applied at the scope and scale needed to stop climate change depends on what we choose to do next. Labor Day celebrates the power of the worker to transform the world. This year it matters more than ever. Because ultimately, our future rests on each and every one of us.