Mindy Hernandez is director of the Living Lab for Equitable Climate Action at the World Resources Institute.
We’ve all heard it: Eat less beef. Fly less. Buy secondhand. Track your carbon footprint.
But what’s less known is that the very idea of a ‘personal carbon footprint’ was popularized by oil giant BP, which, in a 2004 campaign, encouraged people to measure their own emissions – diverting attention from the fossil fuel industry and toward individual consumers.
Two decades later, that sleight of hand still shapes much of the public discourse, overshadowing the policies, infrastructure, and market leadership needed for faster, broader climate action.
New research from the World Resources Institute shows that adopting 11 pro-climate behaviors in energy, transport, and food could reduce an individual’s greenhouse gas emissions by about 6.53 tonnes per year, more than offsetting the average person’s current emissions (about 6.3 tonnes per year).
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However, the study also reveals a stark gap between what’s theoretically possible and what’s achievable under current conditions. When efforts focus solely on changing individual behaviors – without transforming the overarching systems – they deliver only about one-tenth of their potential (about 0.63 tonnes annually), a fraction of the broad-based change the world truly needs.
The remaining 90% of emissions savings stay locked away, dependent on governments, businesses and collective action to make sustainable choices more accessible for all, not just the green-minded few.
How much do personal choices affect the climate?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says comprehensive shifts in human behavior could theoretically reduce global emissions by up to 70% by 2050 – essentially wiping out emissions from China, the US, India, the EU, and Russia combined.
But it is also clear that these massive reductions would result from individual behavior change combined with supporting policy, industry and technological transformations.
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This doesn’t mean individual action doesn’t matter. It means we need to focus on the systems that shape what’s possible for everyone in order to exponentially increase the potential impact.
While choices like flying less or switching to EVs make a difference, they only scale when supported by policies and infrastructure that make them easier, more affordable and accessible – which is where public and private-sector decisions play a crucial role.
Which behavior shifts make the biggest difference?
Our research also identifies which individual actions have the greatest climate impact – and therefore should be prioritized in decision-making. In order of climate impact, they are:
1) Shift to sustainable ground travel
Shifting from gas cars to public or active transit dramatically reduces emissions. Going car-free is 78 times more impactful than composting. Ditching your car may seem extreme, but even switching to a hybrid or electric car can have a significant impact.
2) Shift to air travel alternatives
When possible, replace flying with videoconferencing, train travel or even driving (ideally electric or hybrid). Air travel is among the most carbon-intensive activities. Since 89% of the world’s population has never flown, frequent flyers, especially in high-income groups, have a greater responsibility to lead on this.
3) Install residential solar and increase home energy efficiency
Rooftop solar and upgrades like better insulation, heat pumps or moving to a smaller house can significantly cut emissions. Unlike small changes (like switching light bulbs), these structural home improvements have a deeper impact – but often require government support, such as tax credits or incentives, to be widely accessible.
4) Eat more plant-rich meals
Cutting back on meat and dairy, particularly beef and lamb, has a massive, underestimated climate impact. While buying organic or local and reducing processed foods helps, shifting away from animal proteins matters far more. Full veganism can save nearly 1 ton of CO2 annually, but even reducing meat consumption achieves 40% of that.
How to change behaviors most effectively
These behaviors are only feasible at scale when systems support them. For example, Bogotá’s long-term investment in bike infrastructure helped increase cycling from less than 1% of trips in 1996 to 9% in 2017.
In the Netherlands, subsidies and net-metering for solar panels made renewable energy accessible, turning the country into a European leader in rooftop solar adoption. On the dietary front, public institutions and businesses can make plant-rich options more appealing and accessible (such as by adopting “meatless Monday,” like the Los Angeles Unified School District did in 2012).
How behavior change interventions are designed also matters. WRI reviewed numerous real-world programs and found that “choice architecture” (e.g. making sustainable options more visible or the default) and commitment devices (like pledges) are the most effective tools. Traditional information campaigns – like carbon calculators – are among the least.
System change is our only way out of the climate and biodiversity crises
Leveraging our collective power
The personal carbon footprint narrative has dominated the climate conversation for two decades, but it’s time to update it.
While personal choices do matter, this narrative has obscured where individuals’ real power lies: in voting, advocating for systemic change and pushing for the policies, infrastructure, and supportive environments that maximize the impact of individual climate action so it can be truly transformative.
To meet this moment, we must stop treating behavior change as a distraction from systems change – and start treating it as a force multiplier.
A version of this article originally appeared on WRI.org.
The post Individual action won’t save the climate – unless governments and businesses back it appeared first on Climate Home News.
Individual action won’t save the climate – unless governments and businesses back it
Next week, diplomats from around the world will descend on Yerevan, Armenia, to negotiate a series of decisions under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Between 19 and 30 October, 196 parties will gather to hammer out the precise wording of the dozens of legal texts that make up the decisions under the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD.
This year’s summit is particularly significant, as it marks the halfway point between the agreement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the deadline for achieving its targets.
The CBD has found that countries are currently not on track to meet 22 out of the framework’s 23 targets.
During the fortnight, delegates will also be negotiating decisions relating to the two supplemental protocols to the CBD: the Cartagena Protocol, which covers biosafety; and the Nagoya Protocol, which covers access and benefit-sharing for the use of genetic resources.
(The Cartagena and Nagoya Protocols, which are each governed by a “meeting of the parties”, or “MOP”, have fewer parties than the CBD as a whole, with 173 and 141, respectively.)
Carbon Brief is tracking the progress of countries towards consensus on dozens of negotiating texts using the interactive table below.
The tracker includes texts from the COP, as well as the MOPs for the Cartagena and Nagoya protocols. It also includes draft decisions from the most recent subsidiary body meetings, as these form the starting point for the negotiations in Yerevan.
The CBD has three subsidiary bodies: the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA), the subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) and the subsidiary body on article 8(j) and other provisions (SB8J).
SB8J focuses on issues related to the Indigenous peoples and local communities. It was established at COP16 in Cali, Colombia, in 2024.
The first two columns of the interactive tracker list the topic of each agenda item and the relevant body, with subsequent columns including dates, page counts and links to the original documents.
The table is searchable and can be sorted using the arrows in the header.
Areas of disagreement in UN draft texts are denoted by square brackets. Counting the brackets in a particular iteration of a text therefore gives a sense of how far parties are from reaching consensus.
The bracket column is colour-coded, with dark green indicating a low number of brackets and red indicating a high number of brackets remaining.
Texts can also present parties with choices using “options” or alternatives (“alt”), which are counted together in the sixth column of the table.
The key discussions in Yerevan will centre around two agenda items in particular. The first is the global review, which will assess progress towards the GBF and make recommendations for accelerating action.
The second is finance, which can be separated into two parts: resource mobilisation and the financial mechanism. On resource mobilisation, biodiverse global south countries are likely to push for an increased amount of international finance for conservation.
Disagreement over the creation of the financial mechanism led to the suspension of COP16 in Cali in October 2024, as parties failed to find agreement on the mobilisation of finance before the end of the summit.
Global south countries want the establishment of a separate financial mechanism under the control of the CBD; global north countries largely prefer to maintain the existing mechanism, which sits under the Global Environment Facility.
At the resumed session of COP16 in Rome in early 2025, countries agreed on a roadmap that would lead to the establishment of a permanent mechanism.
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The post Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit
A beacon of love
On an outer island of Fiji, two thousand nautical miles from Sydney, is a shining light of hope and resilience for our troubled world.
The island of Kioa is home to a Tuvaluan community who migrated from their atoll of Vaitupu in the late 1940s. It is a land of warm hearts, big smiles, and deep cultural roots; a place where the sound of a conch still summons the island together, where islanders paddle out to fish in carved outrigger canoes, and healthy happy children walk barefoot to school.
Here, culture is life. Kioans live sustainably through their traditional knowledge and practices. The island is alive with song, dance and the rhythms of a life tied to the tides, the winds, and the seasons.
Facing the future
Greenpeace has been lucky to have a relationship with Kioa for a number of years now, and we are continually learning from this remarkable community.
Last week, as part of our Voyaging Oceania project, we returned to the island. Our purpose was twofold —- to carry messages from the island to leaders gathering in Nadi this week for the Pacific Pre-COP, and to support the Kioa community in their efforts to improve water security for the island.
Unlike Tuvalu itself, with its eight atolls, Kioa is a mountainous, forested and richly fertile island. It will remain habitable far into the future. Kioans did not initially migrate from Vaitupu due to climate change, but the move was prophetic. They now have a lifeboat.
However, even Kioa faces challenges on our rapidly warming planet, in particular when it comes to water. Climate change is shifting once reliable rainfall patterns. On top of this, the island is already feeling the effect of this year’s intensifying El Niño event, which for Fiji means reduced rainfall and prolonged dry spells.
Right now, fresh water has to be carefully rationed, and is only available for a few hours a day. During last week’s visit aboard our campaigning ship Oceania, Greenpeace was privileged to work with the Kioa community on a new solar-powered water distribution project for the island.
Designed and led by the island, the project involves using a solar pump to move water from a reliable source to a storage tank and then using gravity to distribute the water around the village.
It was a lesson in how local knowledge and ingenuity can be the backbone of today’s climate solutions. To build a dam around the source, the local community knew the exact spot where they could gather gravel at low tide to mix with the cement. They took only what was needed, knowing that all resources must be carefully conserved. Kioa has no roads and no machinery, and it was an all-of-island effort to carry the materials up to the project site, including many heavy bags of sand and rock.
Such projects truly bring to life the vision of a resilient, locally-led, fossil fuel free Pacific.
Gallery photos taken by Raeed Ali, Pacific Community Mobiliser at Greenpeace Australia Pacific