The Power of Individual Action (aggregated)
Believe what you want about climate change, but the science is hard to refute. Changes are happening and while the connection between human activity and changes has not been proven, it is hard to not acknowledge that we are having an impact.
Sort of like the cigarette-is-bad-for-your-health debate of decades ago…Boy, were we ever wrong about smoking.
In any case, what brings me to the arduous task of transferring fuzzy thoughts into actual readable text that my scarce audience can read, has to do with individual actions and the inherent value they possess to drive collective action and from there power to effect change.
You see, I believe that the sooner we can aggregate these individual actions into a cohesive whole, the sooner we will get started in achieving change. Easy, right? Well, no, very difficult indeed. Changing people’s behavior has to be up there with managing the universe in terms of difficulty.
I have been thinking about this for awhile because I have taken it upon myself to do what I can to reduce my CO2 load. This means a lot of things from cycling to work, driving less, driving less aggressively and slower, walking to the local eatery to get lunch, turning off lights and computers when not in use, dumping the SUV, keeping the same house and not “upsizing”, etc…
The turning-off-the-lights-at-work bit is the activity that inspired this piece.As most of you know, lights at work stay on all the time; night and day, in fact. I find this to be really dense, especially when we are taking about lights- such as in copy rooms and kitchens – that are sporadically used. I mean, really, what is the purpose of having them on to light up copier machines? So, in response I turn them off after I use the room. Moreover, I turn them off as I walk by these rooms on my way to the bathroom during the work day. And, given that I drink lots of liquids during the work day, these walks can be quiet often. The interesting and sad thing is that 90% of the times that I walk by these rooms, the lights are on.
I simply find it criminal to leave these lights on for no purpose whatsoever and more so because they are left on by people that are unwilling to adapt themselves to perform the simple task of lifting an arm to flip a light switch. (In Europe this is done for you, as most lights have sensors that turn on when there is movement, actions that have caused Europe to consume 1/2 of what we consume on a per capita basis)
Talk about a new (old) innovation that is good for the soul: let’s do something for the common good and turn the lights off when not in use. It makes total sense, doesn’t it?
I do not have a source for this fact this very minute, but I have read multiple articles on ways to save energy via conservation and the savings that we are able to achieve in terms of Co2 reductions, are simply astonishing. But, here is the catch: we all have to aggregate our individual actions into a powerful conservation force.
So, go ahead, dare prove the sociologist, ethnographers and human behavior researchers wrong. Let’s build the force via each one of us acting on our individual, local and prescient power to change the World.
Sort of like the cigarette-is-bad-for-your-health debate of decades ago…Boy, were we ever wrong about smoking.
In any case, what brings me to the arduous task of transferring fuzzy thoughts into actual readable text that my scarce audience can read, has to do with individual actions and the inherent value they possess to drive collective action and from there power to effect change.
You see, I believe that the sooner we can aggregate these individual actions into a cohesive whole, the sooner we will get started in achieving change. Easy, right? Well, no, very difficult indeed. Changing people’s behavior has to be up there with managing the universe in terms of difficulty.
I have been thinking about this for awhile because I have taken it upon myself to do what I can to reduce my CO2 load. This means a lot of things from cycling to work, driving less, driving less aggressively and slower, walking to the local eatery to get lunch, turning off lights and computers when not in use, dumping the SUV, keeping the same house and not “upsizing”, etc…
The turning-off-the-lights-at-work bit is the activity that inspired this piece.As most of you know, lights at work stay on all the time; night and day, in fact. I find this to be really dense, especially when we are taking about lights- such as in copy rooms and kitchens – that are sporadically used. I mean, really, what is the purpose of having them on to light up copier machines? So, in response I turn them off after I use the room. Moreover, I turn them off as I walk by these rooms on my way to the bathroom during the work day. And, given that I drink lots of liquids during the work day, these walks can be quiet often. The interesting and sad thing is that 90% of the times that I walk by these rooms, the lights are on.
I simply find it criminal to leave these lights on for no purpose whatsoever and more so because they are left on by people that are unwilling to adapt themselves to perform the simple task of lifting an arm to flip a light switch. (In Europe this is done for you, as most lights have sensors that turn on when there is movement, actions that have caused Europe to consume 1/2 of what we consume on a per capita basis)
Talk about a new (old) innovation that is good for the soul: let’s do something for the common good and turn the lights off when not in use. It makes total sense, doesn’t it?
I do not have a source for this fact this very minute, but I have read multiple articles on ways to save energy via conservation and the savings that we are able to achieve in terms of Co2 reductions, are simply astonishing. But, here is the catch: we all have to aggregate our individual actions into a powerful conservation force.
So, go ahead, dare prove the sociologist, ethnographers and human behavior researchers wrong. Let’s build the force via each one of us acting on our individual, local and prescient power to change the World.
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