Why do I do this?

Yet another paper was published this week—this one by the National Centre for Climate Restoration in Australia—warning that our species could have far less time than we thought to save our civilization from climate change apocalypse. The paper outlines a worst-case scenario in which greenhouse gas emissions peak in 2030, resulting in warming of 3°C by 2050. Sea levels rise by half a meter, with another meter or more expected by 2100; over a billion people are displaced from the tropics, where it's now too hot to survive; water becomes scarce across much of the globe; food production drops and food prices skyrocket; and all in all, there's a "high likelihood of human civilization coming to an end."

The authors concede that this isn't the most likely outcome of global warming, but it's a possible outcome. The only sure way to avert it, they argue, is (with Australian spellings) "a near-term, society-wide, emergency mobilisation of labour and resources, of a scale unprecedented in peacetime, to build a zero-emissions industrial system and draw down carbon to protect human civilisation." In other words, my decision to switch from dairy to almond milk just isn't going to cut it.

So why do I bother? Why, in the face of planet-wide disaster, do I persist in sweating the small stuff—patching pants, carrying my own takeout containers, trying to minimize the water used for dishwashing? Why don't I stop wasting my time whipping up homemade conditioner, and instead focus my energies on lobbying my legislators, who are actually in a position to do something about it—as this article in Quartz recommends?

Well, for one thing, I do lobby my legislators. I've been doing it for decades, in fact; signing petitions, sending letters and e-mails, attending protests, and of course, voting for the candidates who promise to do something about this problem. And so far, at least as far as I can tell, it hasn't made a hell of a lot of difference. Sure, I can urge my particular House and Senate members to vote for a carbon tax or a ban on harmful chemicals, but what good will that do when the White House is occupied by a man who insists climate change is no big deal and the Senate is controlled by a party that bows to that leader's every whim? Even if one of these bills passed the Democrat-controlled House, it would never so much as come up for a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate, and even if somehow it managed to get through both houses, it would surely be vetoed.

In short, I can't control my government's actions, but I can control my own. And when every week brings another news story about how this administration is going to extreme lengths to boost fossil fuel consumption by any means necessary, even if it means hurting our own auto industry, small efforts like growing my own vegetables and hanging my clothes on a line—even if they're essentially meaningless in the grand scheme of things—help me keep myself sane. I may not be able to make a real difference to my country, but I can at least make a difference in my own little corner of it.

But more than that, I don't truly believe my actions as a consumer are meaningless. Indeed, classical economics teaches that the choices of individual consumers, like myself, are the main driving force behind big changes in how "business as usual" works.

Let's take that almond milk as an example. My individual decision to switch from dairy milk to almond milk makes very little difference to the amount of dairy milk or almond milk that gets produced in our country. But add it to all the individual decisions made by other consumers all over the country, and you start to see a significant change—to be exact, a 61% growth in non-dairy milk consumption. And over time, this shift in demand leads farmers to raise fewer methane-belching cows and plant more carbon-absorbing almond trees. (Of course, they also absorb a lot of water, but overall, all the plant-based "schmilks" are much, much better for the earth than cow's milk.)

So, basically, the reason I bother with all the piddling little ecofrugal steps I write about here on the blog is that I really feel like they're my best chance to make a difference, however small. Even if each individual action I take, from using cloth rags to recycling whipped cream cans, is only a drop in the bucket, with enough drops, you can fill up a whole bucket eventually. And by sharing these strategies with you here, I can hope to spread these ideas to a community of like-minded people, and start adding their drops to the bucket as well.