Regardless of how doomed you think we are, you may still think individual actions are pointless. You’re one of seven billion people in the world; your decisions are a drop in the ocean that won’t make a difference. I agree that policy change is the most important tool when it comes to climate action. But where does that leave individual actions? Do they also make a difference?...
The bottom line: when you take individual actions on climate change you are contributing to a global public good, which benefits 7 billion people now and many more in the future. And done right, you are encouraging others to change too, by helping to shift social norms. So don’t let anyone tell you your individual actions on climate change are not making a difference.Zack's argument rests on three points: (1) global public goods; (2) the social cost of carbon; and (3) establishing new social norms. However, I think there is a stronger case to be made for individual climate action, based on social preferences (such as altruism).
I wrote a related post back in 2016, about the Paris agreement on climate change. Traditional game theoretical approaches would suggest that action on climate change is an example of the prisoners' dilemma - while every decision-maker would be better off if everyone works together, each decision-maker individually is better off if they act in their own best interests (and not with everyone else). So, in the case of individual actions to reduce climate change, we would all be better off if we drove our cars a bit less, none of us individually has a strong enough incentive to do so. Unless, as I pointed out in relation to the Paris agreement:
...the prisoners' dilemma looks quite different if the players have social preferences. For example, if players care not only about their own payoff, but also about the payoff of the other player...
The game now changes substantially, and reducing emissions becomes a dominant strategy for both players!These points don't just apply to countries deciding whether to reduce carbon emissions. They also apply to individuals deciding whether to take individual action on climate change. If we care about other people, whether that be people living right now or people living in the future, then it starts to make sense to take individual action on climate change right now. As I discussed in the earlier post, it doesn't take much in the way of altruistic preferences for taking climate action to become the dominant strategy (this is a point I used to make in my old ECON100 class, which was unfortunately cut out when we made the transition to ECONS101 and needed to include more macroeconomics content instead).
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