Module 6 Learning Activity

This has been an important module. The issue of individual action and collective impact, and how the two get linked together, turns out to be one of the most complicated topics in trying to tackle climate change. That's why there tends to be a great deal of discussion of what individual can do and limiting that discussion to things that individuals actually have direct control over, like their carbon footprint.

But in terms of achieving collective impacts, that's not really where individuals matter most, and that's what we've tried to explore in this module -- that we have to come at the question of individuals and climate change from the perspective of how to deliver a collective impact.

That's what we're going to be zeroing in on in the coming modules.

In the PDF for this module and in the online ebook, you can access quite a bit more information on this topic if you want to dig more deeply into it.

Additional Materials

If you haven’t looked at it yet, I would recommend that you start your digging for this Module via our Systems Thinking Ebook right here in the Climate Web.

This Module is also quite relevant to a topic we’ve covered before, “Is It Our Fault?,” and it’s worth pointing you to a few relevant resources:

• 2018/10 The big lie we're told about climate change is that its our own fault
• 2016/2 Consumerism plays a huge role in climate change
• 2017/7 Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals
• 2019/1 Focusing on how individuals can stop climate change is very convenient for corporations
• 2020/3 The Rich Are to Blame for the Climate Crisis, International Study Finds
• 2019/12 Climate change: focusing on how individuals can help is very convenient for corporations

But there is also a substantial literature specific to the questions covered in this Module, “Do Individual Actions Matter?” To begin digging deeper into the question, here are some suggestions via Climate Web Insights Pages:

• Buyer Beware When it Comes to Individual Actions

• Individual vs. Collective Action

As well as other sources:

• 2013/11 New Report Finds Climate Change Caused By 7 Billion Key Individuals

• 2015/12 What You Can Do About Climate Change

• 2015/8 4 Simple Things You Can do to Fight Climate Change

• 2018/X 8 ways you can actually make a difference to climate change

• 2017/8 Tipping Points: Global Climate Change, Made Local

• 2018/10 Can your actions really save the planet? 'Planetary accounting' has the answer

• 2018/4 Climate change: 101 ways you can make a difference

• 2019/11 Study Shows Individual Lifestyle Change Boosts Systemic Climate Action

Here’s a link to the How to Save a Planet podcast you’ve seen me refer to a couple of times:

• 2021/3 Is Your Carbon Footprint BS?