Demand-side environmentalism
It’s no good trying to strangle unsustainable supply in a free economy. Addressing demand is a slower but surer path to success.
There’s an idea going around that just 100 companies are responsible for more than 70% of global emissions.
First published in 2017, this statistic remains a meme among climate activists, along with the implication that those companies are to blame for the unfolding environmental catastrophe. At the extreme end of this narrative, even talking about personal responsibility is a sign that you’re under the influence of a sinister corporate blame-shifting campaign.
The idea is that consumers are mere passengers on the fossil fuel bus, which is being driven by a small group of business leaders and their political allies. Powerless are we before the insidious forces of global capitalism!
There is a grain of truth to this, at the margins. Producers and advertisers of consumer goods can indeed influence – but not dictate – the desires and behaviour of consumers. And oil companies have occasionally done more sinister things, such as covering up climate science.
Mostly, though, they’re just responding to consumer demand. The reason advertising is such big business is that, in a capitalist economy, the consumer is king. An economy driven by suppliers is by all accounts miserable.
Which leads us to the uncomfortable conclusion that we, as consumers, are ultimately responsible for the emissions that these companies cause, because they’re doing it to meet the demand signals that we give them. Your own individual part in it is tiny, but that’s also true of voting and paying taxes, and we accept our responsibility for those acts.
Of course, wealthy people have far higher emissions than ordinary folk – vastly so once you get into the realm of private jets and yachts. But that’s nothing to do with them controlling the economy; they’re just really big consumers.
No magic supply lever
Climate change is so hard to process because individual actions have no bearing on its consequences. You could go net-zero tomorrow but the floods won’t spare your house. Despair or denial are common responses to this juggernaut, while other people pin the blame on a favourite scapegoat – which on the left is often big business.
Like other easy answers to climate change, such as technological solutionism, blaming capitalists is morally comforting but wrong. Short of dismantling capitalism altogether or forming a global cartel, there’s very little that elites can do to curb consumption in a free market.
Here’s a thought experiment: take any individual in the fossil fuel economy, and think about what you’d do differently in his or her position. Then think about what difference that would make.
Let’s say you swap places with the CEO of Shell and you decide to stop drilling for new oil. If by some miracle the board agrees to this, congratulations! Shell isn’t producing oil any more. But you haven’t done anything to reduce the demand for it, so all you’ve done is give away market share to Exxon, Total and the rest of them.
The same is true of carbon-intensive consumer goods. The CEO of Inditex can decarbonise to his heart’s content but that won’t stop consumers flocking to Shein, a carbon-belching purveyor of clothing so cheap it’s practically disposable.
Or let’s say you’re the president of a major European country and you decide to raise petrol tax. Will people reduce their car use accordingly, or will they rage against your high-handed attempt to change their consumption habits and force you into a humiliating climbdown?
It is politicians who are helpless in the face of consumers, not the other way around. As Jean-Claude Juncker once said of economic reforms: “We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.”
Social demand signals
On the demand side, by contrast, individuals can make a modest but real difference because there’s much less substitution. If you cycle somewhere instead of driving, the fuel you would have used is simply not consumed. If a couple of hundred people (or one private jet owner) take the train instead of flying, a whole flight’s worth of emissions is saved.
What’s more, your actions can have a knock-on effect because humans are social creatures who imitate each other. If you cook someone a delicious meal without meat, or go on an envy-inducing holiday without taking a flight, you’ll show people that it can be done and maybe inspire them to try something similar.
Five years ago I decided to dramatically cut back my flying, which is the single worst thing a typical Westerner does to the climate. Since October 2019 I have taken just one return flight. Besides the direct reduction in emissions, I like to think I’ve influenced friends, family and strangers on the internet to fly a little bit less.
What I’ve learned in this process is that deprivation doesn’t sell. Nobody wants to be told that they should consume less on account of the climate – why should they, when it won’t protect them from the consequences? It’s sacrifice without the eventual reward, and there’s always a richer person emitting more.
But if you can demonstrate that sustainable options can also be enjoyable, you might start to nudge people.
There’s evidence for this social transmission of sustainable habits. Steve Westlake, a researcher at Cardiff University, has found that half of people reduced their flying habits if they knew somebody who had gone flight-free. Living by example is the best form of persuasion.
A bit rich
As for the rich and powerful, their impact on the demand side is much more harmful than anything they might do on the supply side. Besides their enormous individual emissions, their high status influences the rest of society to aspire to a similarly unsustainable lifestyle.
It’s especially galling when elites take private jets – the most egregious form of overconsumption – to climate summits, or when habitual private jet users lecture the rest of us on climate change. This is exactly what drives the sense of elite hypocrisy that inspires popular backlash against climate policies, as Dr Westlake has also found.
By contrast, when people at the top of society adopt a sustainable lifestyle, they can have an outsized influence on others to do the same. If a powerful person wants to do something meaningful for the climate they should exploit their social clout to live by example; anything else is condescension.
So don’t blame politicians and the super-rich for providing the services you demand – but do hold them to account for their own irresponsible consumption.