60. MAKING A DIFFERENCE
I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.
- Edward Everett Hale
Some days I struggle to write 100 words. Others, I do a bit more.
Likewise, with climate change. I’ve changed my diet to eat more vegetables and less meat. I bike to work whenever I can. I patch my own clothes, I choose eco-friendly products when I can determine a company isn’t just green-washing, and climate change is one of the filters I apply when deciding which conniving politician will get my vote.
The irony is that none of these actions will make much difference, not when the world is burning around 90 million barrels of oil a day1. I mean, the emissions saved by the thirty minutes a day I don’t drive my car to and from work aren’t exactly going to save the world, right?
So why bother?
Well, for starters, every individual action makes a difference.
The anthropologist, Loren Eiseley, once told a story about a young man on a beach, throwing starfish into the ocean after the tide had gone out to stop them from dying. As he’s working, an older man confronts him with the observation that his efforts can’t possibly make a difference since there are miles and miles of beach and starfish along every mile.
The young man’s response was simple, given as he threw yet another starfish back into the ocean, “It made a difference for that one.”
One person can make a difference. No matter how small, any individual act of service helps make the world a better place.
But our actions and our service do more than that – they also set an example that can inspire others to join us2. Take Greta Thunberg’s Skolstrejk för klimatet. In August, 2018, she staged a one-person protest on the steps of the Swedish parliament. By March 2019, her actions helped inspire a global climate strike of over a million people at thousands of events3. By December 2019, she became the youngest person ever selected as Time magazine’s Person of the Year. Then there’s Malala Yousafzai, whose courage and promotion of the right to education for women and girls led to her being one of Time magazine’s most influential people in 2013, 2014, and 2015.
These stories show the potential difference one person can make. Even more though, is that they also show the awesome change possible when a group of people work together. While our own personal service is meaningful on its own, and makes a difference both in the lives of those we help and in the ability for our communities to face climate change, there is more that we can achieve because the example we set can inspire others to do the same. To do that though, we have to make ourselves vulnerable. We have to take what we’ve learned about service and ourselves, and use that to inspire people to join us.
N. Sonnichsen, ‘Global oil consumption in barrels 1998-2020,’ Statista, Jul 14, 2021, https://www.statista.com/statistics/265239/global-oil-consumption-in-barrels-per-day/, accessed 5 Oct 2021.
Westlake, Steve, A Counter-Narrative to Carbon Supremacy: Do Leaders Who Give Up Flying Because of Climate Change Influence the Attitudes and Behaviour of Others? (October 2, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3283157 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3283157, accessed 5 Oct 2021.
Carrington, Damian. “School climate strikes: 1.4 million people took part, say campaigners,” The Guardian, March 19, 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/19/school-climate-strikes-more-than-1-million-took-part-say-campaigners-greta-thunberg, accessed 5 October 2021.