What Can *You* Do About the Climate Crisis? Learn How to Map Your Power to Make Systemic Change

The climate emergency is a big, hairy, and pernicious problem. At a certain point, most people wonder what they, a mere individual, can do about something so ... well, global. Having gone through the very same conundrum, my partner and I came up with a framework, MyPentagon, designed to help people identify the most impactful actions they can take in their lives, with their unique set of skills and interests. 

Before we dive deeper into this framework, it’s fair to ask why we’re focused on individual action when 100 companies are responsible for 71 percent of global emissions, and fossil fuel companies invented the concept of personal carbon footprints to shift the blame away from them and onto individuals. I believe that systems change is more important than individual action—but it only emerges as a result of millions of individual acts. After all, every system, government, company, and organization is made up of individuals just like you. If every individual (or at least enough to cause a social tipping point) did the work exactly where they are at, the whole system would change as a result. 

Maybe you remember those fish stuck in a net in Finding Nemo. When enough of the otherwise “insignificant” individuals exert a force in a common direction, the system holding them back breaks, changes. 

We created MyPentagon to help people know where to point their power, and to explore whether they had power in areas they hadn’t previously considered. At the center of the pentagon is your agency, which depends on your knowledge of the problem (knowing), and your capacity to care about solving it (caring). As the MyPentagon framework shows, knowing and caring are at the core of your ability to act. 

Knowing: 

Knowing is about self-education, or putting yourself in the way of learning. 

1. Read, watch, or listen to educational resources on climate solutions. Drawdown’s Climate Solutions 101, Katharine Hayhoe’s Global Weirding series, Gimlet’s How to Save a Planet, and Drilled News’s Hot Take are some of my favorites. 

2. Follow thought leaders on Instagram, Twitter, or subscribe to their newsletters (Emily Atkin’s HEATED and Eric Holthaus’s The Phoenix are great). 

3. Try to get first-hand experiential knowledge of your local food and waste management systems. Visit a local farm, landfill, or recycling center. Seeing the often-invisible systems that sustain our lives can be a transformational experience. The more you know, the less you will have to ask what needs doing, and the easier it will be to care. 

Caring:

Caring is about how you sustain your commitment to the Earth and its people. It often involves rewiring our brains. In her book Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown explains that she can use her life,“to leverage a shift in the system by how I am, as much as with the things I do.” If you can learn to put the health of people and the planet  at the center of what you value, the rest emerges naturally. 

1. Fall in love with humanity and the Earth. Antiracist educator Chloé S. Valdary tweeted that, “The purpose of diversity training should be to get you to fall in love with humanity.” I love that wholeheartedly. I think that the purpose of climate education should be to get you to fall in love with humanity and the ecosystems that sustain it. Seek out and share that feeling. 

2. Read books that encourage an expansive love and empathy for the world. I suggest Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and the anthology All We Can Save for starters. 

3. Get into nature as much as you can, and strengthen your relationship with it by learning the names of plants and animals around you (try out the Seek app). 

4. Learn about the Indigenous Nations of your area and how they served as guardians of native biodiversity (the Native Land App is a good place to start).

5. Follow people from around the world who share stories about how the climate crisis is affecting their communities, like Vanessa Nakate.

6. Caring can also take the form of self-care and community care. It can mean sitting with your climate anxiety and learning to move past it into action. Listen to Rebecca Solnit on Outrage + Optimism. 

From the core of your agency radiates your different domains of power. Every person has a different level of power, access, and interest in these areas. You don’t have to be blasting on all cylinders in all five domains; you are more likely to enjoy and be good at one. MyPentagon is meant to serve as a guide to explore power you may not have known you had. Remember, this is about how you can change systems, not about what you’re doing wrong as an individual. 

In her essay “A Field Guide for Transformation,” climate policy professor Leah Stokes suggests undertaking climate action in widening circles. If you want to start with your individual actions, that's great. Then you can move onto your indirect actions (where you spend, bank, and invest). When you are ready, you can move on to your social circles, your workplace, and finally your city, county, state, and nation. 

With that in mind, let’s discuss our different realms of power.  

Behavioral:

The behavioral domain encompasses your power over your own choices. It’s talked about in terms of personal carbon footprints, which can be co-opted by corporations to shift focus away from their oversized share of responsibility for the climate crisis.  However, some people really want to start with their own actions and move outward, and I think that’s great as long as the long-term goal is systems change. Here’s a list of the most impactful individual actions you can take: 

• Fly less, or not at all

• Avoid gas-powered cars by biking, walking, or taking public transit

• Eat a plant-rich diet 

• Create less demand and less waste. Buy only what you need. Repair, reuse, and buy second-hand. Recycle and compost. 

• Save energy (wash clothes in cold water, hang dry clothes, turn off lights and switch to LED lightbulbs)

Those are the big ones! The key is not to get stuck on personal choice, or the choices of others unless it includes an analysis of which choices are not available in the first place. Identifying which choices aren’t available, why they’re not available, and who might be responsible will help you channel your activism toward systems instead of individuals. More impactful than all of these behavioral choices is demanding a system where the best options available to you are all ecofriendly. 

Financial:

The financial domain is about wielding the power of your money and voting with your dollar.

• Consume conscientiously. Support ecofriendly companies, but watch out for greenwashing!

• Change who you bank with. Banks like Chase and WellsFargo funnel billions of dollars toward fossil fuels. Change to a B-corp bank or a local credit union.

• Don’t let your investment and retirement portfolio fund fossil fuels. Use Fossil Free Funds, or 350.org and Green Century Funds’ Guide to Sustainable Investing to ensure your investments fund a sustainable future. 

• Donate to impactful organizations in the climate solutions space. 

Professional:

You have power in the professional realm in two senses: choosing where you work and/or pressuring (or inspiring) your workplace to adopt more climate friendly practices. 

• If you are lucky enough to have the option, change where you work. Use your labor power for a company working for climate solutions. Check the sustainable job board at climatebase.org—there are a lot of amazing companies out there looking for passionate people. 

• Pressure your workplace to use clean energy to power their offices, incentivize employees to commute via low-carbon transit, and reduce emissions created by whatever it is your company might do. 

Social:

You have some level of influence over everyone in your life. That’s power, use it for good. Spread knowledge and compassion and galvanize your communities around climate action. 

• Talk about climate change and its solutions constantly! Seriously, it might be the most important thing we can do for the climate. 

• Normalize climate-positive actions without shaming or turning anyone away. 

• Organize a workshop on climate solutions for your friends; make it fun. 

• Attend climate social events, meet people like you, and grow your network. 

• Talk to the businesses you frequent about how they can become more sustainable. 

• Offer to help anyone in your community become more sustainable. It can take a lot of energy to take those first steps. It helps to have some help. 

Civic:

You can think of your civic power as working at your widest circle of influence. Cultural and market forces have huge power, but policy is the meat and potatoes of how systems change. 

• Vote and organize for candidates who are strong environmental leaders. 

• Attend a climate protest.

• Join a climate organization like the Sunrise Movement, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, 350.org, or the Sierra Club! 

• Speaking of which, check out the Sierra Club’s Ready for 100 campaign to learn how you can get your community to run on 100 percent renewable energy. 

• Lobby your representatives to get money out of politics. 

• Volunteer your time to serve your community.

I hope this framework helps you feel empowered to make change. Wishing you a Happy Earth Week. 

To learn more about MyPentagon, join Spencer Scott, Gen Padalecki, Isaias Hernandez, and Jenny Willford on an IG Live on Monday, 4/19 at 9am PT / 12pm ET. Find more details here.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Sierra Club.