I Don't Know What Tomorrow Holds, But I Know Who Holds Tomorrow

Over 30 years ago, as a college student, I studied the causes of climate change and advancing alpine treelines. Despite attempts by many activists to sound the alarm about global warming over the past three decades, we have not acted because we have lacked a critical renewable resource: will power.

We have known what we should do, but we simply have not done it. And the situation has worsened greatly because of our lack of action.

The consensus of the global scientific community is that we have about a decade to "downwardly adjust" the current trajectory of global warming trends away from a mid-century, worst-case scenario. I was reminded of this again at a recent presentation by Dr. James McCarthy, influential participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Professor of Biological Oceanography at Harvard University. The scientists believe that if we act swiftly and definitively we can potentially induce a leveling of the greenhouse gas production and coincidental temperature increases to more tolerable and survivable levels.

At this point, many often ask "What can I do?" "How do I, a single person, a sole individual in a sea of over 300 million Americans, make a difference?" The answer is that each and every one of us, every day, makes decisions that impact the earth.

Of course, the first decision we make is whether we consume and how much to consume.

Clearly, in our modern world, it's something few of us can avoid entirely. But every time we buy, shop, eat, or travel, we are putting some kind of pressure on the planet. How little we consume or how consciously we consume sets the stage for how light or heavy our footprint actually is. Buying based on need rather than impulse, finding alternatives to driving everywhere and anywhere, and shifting our home energy use habits - these should be the first steps for every person and family committed to changing the future.

After that, each day presents a new opportunity to reconsider the consumer choices we make in our daily lives. And the best part is they're not choices that make our lives harder or less enjoyable - they're simply choices that reflect our growing awareness.

Our actions, individually, may seem inconsequential, but collectively we can be a powerful force for good. Corporations spend enormous sums trying to figure out what pleases their current and potential consumers. This idea of harnessing that power led me to gather a group of colleagues and activists to help start Climate Counts. Every day with the Climate Counts Company Scorecard, almost every purchase you make can be looked at in a new light.

Let's say tonight you head out for a bottle of beer. At Climate Counts, we have looked at three of the largest brewers, and discovered SAB Miller is, in our words, "striding" toward an ever-deepening commitment to climate protection, while Molson, for example, still has some work to do. Right now, Miller's efforts to measure its company-wide greenhouse gas emissions and substantively strive to reduce those emissions makes the company stand out among the largest companies in the sector (although, certainly, smaller and more values-oriented brewers may be the real pacesetters on climate protection, if not market share). So order a Miller instead of a Molson, and you're using your money well. Take an additional step and let both companies know you've made that choice (using links on the Climate Counts website), and you've really made a difference.

And that's just three major companies - we've also looked at 53 other global companies in seven other consumer sectors. And there are more ahead.

As Yogi Berra is credited with saying: "It's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future." But one thing is certain: just as many, many consumers can place a massive footprint on the environment, those same consumers can also come together to turn the marketplace on its head in a positive way. Change is almost always good, especially when our future and our children's future are at stake.

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Please visit www.climatecounts.org and find out more about how your everyday purchases can help the earth and our environmental challenges.

Comments

[jcboston]

Posting this on behalf of Wood Turner, ED of ClimateCounts

Ben Dixon's comment is a fair point. Our first 56 companies are obviously a snapshot of the largest companies in each sector, but our goal is to expand each sector and the overall list significantly to add real dimension to the rankings. Indeed, ultimately the most climate-friendly beer choice for a consumer may prove be from a small micro-brewery that might not currently be selling its products widely today. The purpose of this first snapshot is to bring as many consumers as possible into the conversation and then do two things: (1) urge them to tell others about the tool in order to raise a strong and loud collective voice that many individuals -- in fact a whole marketplace -- cares about this particular issue; and (2) deepen their engagement in the issue but making it clear the full range of consumer actions that need to be taken to move this issue forward (consuming less, consuming better, buying local, etc.)

[jhNY]

If everybody on the planet does just a little bit, one day soon we'll look up and we'll be three feet under water melted off the ice caps. It is evidently and entirely beyond the capacity of people to constrain themselves as a group from the desolation of their immediate environment.

London was founded in the middle of a forest, as was Paris. Nobody's in much danger there of falling branches now, and haven't been for hundreds of years. Ever notice how nearly all the great archeological sites on earth are located in abandoned areas where nothing grows? That's because the inhabitants long ago destroyed the soil, drained off the water, and then left to avoid starvation.

With the world so wildly overpopulated with humans that every resource is being consumed faster than ever before, consumer consciousness will prove an insufficient deterrent, or more exactly, a symbol posturing as a solution to a problem that will be in the end, turn out to be entirely beyond us all, as we in the USA drive our air conditioned humvees to the end of the world while the rest of the population watches, wishing they were cooler and had those big wheels to drive around in themselves.

[CriminallySane]

Individual actions, no matter how admirable for their intent, will never, repeat, NEVER, have the impact required. That will require massive changes at the national policy level by all industrialized nations.

And don't even think about telling me to order a Miller. Their beers are terrible. Give me a good micro any day, or barring that, a Guinness.

[Ben Dixon]

Good point on the quality of the beer. Maybe Gary should expand his work and list the top 100 beer companies that sell in America, then we can make an informed choice.

[OtayPanky]

Gary Hirshberg: "I Don't Know What Tomorrow Holds, But I Know Who Holds Tomorrow"

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I gotta tell ya, Gary - when I read that headline, I figured this was from CHRISTIANITY TODAY magazine - and frankly I was both puzzled and intrigued.

Anyway, interesting blog, and I went to your website and looked at some of those stats.

I wish I was sanguine (as you are) about the power of consumer choice to move the stone here. Ten years is a very short clock - and what needs to happen is a massive systemic change.

No way (in my view) that consumerism is going to provide the financial incentive to make a REAL difference here.

Let's just take Coke vs Pepsi. People who drink either of those (or their many other sodas and drinks) aren't your greenies. They're kids, joe lunchbuckets, etc. Coke lovers drink Coke, and Pepsi lovers drink Pepsi.

No way environmental consumerism is going to move offending companies in any real measure.

Or take your food category. Who even knows what the hell Unilever or Conagra makes, in terms of brands, when they go shopping?

No - as well intentioned as your work is, it's an exercise in futility. The real work is going to Davos and the UN and convincing both the world's governments and the multi-national business sector that we're about to go over a terrible abyss...but we've still got a bit of time to turn it around.

Or, we could just say, "He's got the whole world in His hands", and have another Miller.

In any case, this ain't gonna work as a bottom up thing. The groundlings really DON'T hold tomorrow.

[doublebind]

Otaypanky, it's obvious that your remarks hit the mark and Gary has sinned - the original meaning defined as "missing the mark."
I believe NYT's "Flat World" Friedman came up with the "Manhattan Project" for energy an conservation of same. Such a project would & should be a fine starting-over-point from our "dependence on oil" (an irritating phrase especially when Bush says it).
The artificial separation of "us" from nature is the real problem that a society based on the giddy expectations of a continuous,ever expanding "product line" is simply NOT GOING TO FIX until a dramatic "environmental" tragedy is experienced by a significant number of Americans. (I hope beyond measure I am wrong but little seems in place to preclude it. That is the sad and profoundly disturbing part, e.g., if it doesn't bother us as a nation that nearly all our rivers are so polluted that fish are disappearing and/or uneatable due to their toxicity, then our biological underpinnings are, and have been in deep trouble. as these "underpinnings" have taken a couple of billion years to form. If they are not seen as the incredibly complex and magical materials they are, then "the environment" is going to continue to get uglier and more toxic faster.
Governmental Policy matters and unregulated capital markets with their over-the-top top-heavy corporate players simply do not have a real incentive to do anything other than what interests them and being curious about the "environmental" reactions of their actions is not interesting them, and never really will interest them. If unregulated free-market proponents in business and government don't get it by now, and they don't, then they aren't going to without some heavy-duty policy shifts from sanctioned and powerful entities be they governmental or something yet to be created with the ability to talk softly but carry a BIG stick if the "environment" is to sustain its integrity into the future.
Larry Fowler
Elkhart, KS 67950

[OtayPanky]

I wish I was wrong, Larry.

The goal of this dialogue isn't to see who's smarter, it's to figure out what actually has a REAL chance of creating a livable and sustainable future for our children - yours, mine and everyone else's.

Muddle-headed idealism isn't the answer to the approaching climate tsunami. And you and I, as average people with no particular Archimedes levers to pull, simply don't have any way to move the earth.

But a coalition of the world's governments and multi-nationals do.

We don't have to like any of these people. We don't have to approve of their values or their lifestyles or their goals - for themselves, their businesses, or their countries.

But if we're gonna have even a shot at saving our planet from irreversible and rapid degradation, we've got to CO-OPT them - and I use that word in the best possible sense.

Change that CAN make a difference must come from the top down, in the form of laws and regulations, along with HUGE financial incentives AND disincentives. That's the only thing that will move us from a drunken, out of control consumerist society, to a sober one.

These piddly measures we're implementing right now, and talking about in our blogs, are like the guy who's about to stroke out, so he orders a Diet Coke with his triple bacon cheese McFatBurger.

We're just kidding ourselves.

Nobody - including our eco-celebrities - is going to like having their lifestyle restricted by fiat.

No one - including Al Gore - is going to like being forced to downsize into a home that is sensibly sized rather than outsized.

No company is going to want to take the hit of going on a severely restricted carbon footprint "diet".

No government is going to want its soverignty fucked with - whether it's a free market one like the US, or economically regulated one like China's.

Tough noogies. It's change or die time.