How Small Changes Become Systemic Change

The challenges and opportunities of climate change are actually one and the same. Because the causes and consequences are everywhere—literally, from shifting allergy seasons to extraordinary wildfires.

But this means that everyone has a role to play. What you eat, how you move from place to place, and who you vote for all matter. And, of course, no one person buying a hybrid car is going to change the world. But it still matters. Often misquoted, Gandhi’s insight was spot on about the connections between individual, community, and global change: “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.”

And if we tell people about our personal change, they change a little too, and then they tell someone else, and so on. “Tendencies” don’t make policy, however. (Neither does posting on LinkedIn make the internet.)

But waiting for policy change to solve the problem is a self-defeating fantasy. Massive, systemic social change never starts with the institutions holding power. If you have power, what’s the incentive to change the system that helped you accumulate it? Einstein nailed this one: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

So where do we start? We start where we are, right now, focusing on what matters to us—what we dream about for our kids, where we feel empowered, and where we feel confident.

Some years back, I created the Nuclear Weapons Discussion Project and published Action for Arms Control—an A-Z listing by profession of what one person could do to help reduce the risk of nuclear war, first acting alone and then acting in community. Like an airplane on the runway, getting rolling is the hardest part.

On climate, if you’re looking for help, guides, and ideas, consider:

- Project Drawdown: https://jointheshift.earth

- Climate Emotional Resilience Institute: https://lnkd.in/e-t6v34f

- Climate Mental Health Network: https://lnkd.in/eVmnaY5s

- Climate Psychology Alliance of North America: https://lnkd.in/eEUHAWmD

- TEVEL: https://www.tevel.earth

- Project InsideOut: https://reneelertzman.com

- Climate Junction: https://lnkd.in/eXw4wiAm

Whether you’re an accountant or a zoologist, you can make a difference.

Project Drawdown • Climate Emotional Resilience Institute • Climate Mental Health Network • Climate Psychology Alliance of North America • TEVEL • Project InsideOut • Ecopsychepedia