Overcoming Barriers to Action
How to build resilience, motivation, and optimism to overcome inaction
To move forward with courage, realism, and optimism, we need to overcome some common barriers to action and build resilience against the forces that cause or reinforce inaction.
Nine common reasons for inaction and how to overcome them.
How many can you relate to?
Feelings of hopelessness, and/or anxiety about climate change that cause people to tune out and ignore the problem
Many people are working hard to address climate change. Some have been pulling for a very long time.
More recently, there has been a massive swing towards waking up, standing up and taking action, even in North America — though we are behind many other countries.
If you are already taking action: keep going and push harder!
If you have turned away from the problem, it’s time to face it again, with courage, realism, and optimism.
To review an overview of what we are facing — please see Why So Urgent?
Feelings of guilt about our own carbon footprints that can cause us to avoid talking or thinking about climate change
Few of us are childless, vegan, “living off the grid”, hermits. We all have footprints.
We are in this together and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a process. We need to try to get to the other side of this transition with patience, open discussion, and mutual encouragement rather than judgement — for ourselves and others.
Making and implementing a credible, personalized plan that works for you, and has realistic goals is a good way to start moving forward without guilt.
For example, you may not stop eating cheese altogether or give up driving, but you can commit to making x,y,z shifts in your dietary and personal transportation habits. You may not be able to change your space heating today but you can commit to looking into options and considering it within the next x years.
See Areas of Action and Your Personal Action Plan.
Annoyance toward the alarmists and doomists who we feel exaggerate the problem causing us to differentiate ourselves with “level-headed” inaction
Some people react to what they see as alarmism by doing nothing — thinking this is a calm and rational response, that stands in contrast to extreme views. They may conclude that we still have lots of time and that we can take a ‘balanced’ approach.
However, the response to climate change needs to be based on the facts and scientific projections — which does suggest absolute urgency in making deep and rapid cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.
It is a little surreal to think about what we are facing.
Taking the problem seriously is NOT alarmist. It is a rational, morally, and fiscally responsible reaction to prevent an outcome none of us want and to ensure that we protect the earth — to the extent possible — for the next generation.
Being lulled into inaction by doing what everyone else seems to be doing or not doing
Many people don’t like change. If change seems like a hassle by being uncomfortable, constraining, or expensive, we will avoid it — especially if we look around and see that others aren’t changing either.
Even those that embrace change may not want to be the ‘first on the block’ to shift to something new and different.
If you don’t like change, try to remember that a lot of climate action just requires
a) shifts in consumption and behaviour — not qualitatively radical change, and
b) swapping one energy source for another — not living in a yurt and travelling by horse-cart.
It is also helpful to realize that there is a natural adoption curve for new technologies and behaviours and some people need more time to change for many valid reasons. The closer to the left you are on the curve below, the faster others will get on board and the better off we will all be.
Worry about loss of freedom and control because of imposed changes or being told what to do or not do
Some people perceive government policy as a threat to their freedoms rather than guardrails that protect their rights and freedom. People may also feel that being told they need to change is an affront to their well-meaning way of life.
Most change is through voluntary action and forms of leverage that countries have always used to control pollution and other harms to health and well-being, and to support economic development.
A difference is that, unlike the regulations used to reverse acid rain and ozone-depletion, phaseout leaded gasoline and coal, protect endangered species, ensure our food and water are safe, and even increase fuel efficiency, addressing climate change requires all of us to change and change as quickly as possible.
Most people don’t really have a problem with addressing harmful pollution and protecting the earth — we just don’t want to pay for it or be forced to do something about it. While we stall and argue, the costs are piling up and other countries are transitioning more quickly and benefiting from the economic opportunity.
There is a lot of freedom to choose a personal climate action journey that works for you. Many changes can save you money. And we don’t have to all agree on the details of how we solve this. Advocating for industry or the wealthy or whomever to fund the upfront costs or the just transition of fossil fuel sector workers to other jobs, is climate action.
Inaction, delayed action, and backtracking on mitigation serves no one and only makes things worse.
Hopefully Our Climate Journey can help you stand up and take the action that makes sense for you, while aligning as closely as possible to a 1.5°C world. Choosing to take action and realizing that the best outcome involves individuals working with governments and businesses to effect change will help to pre-empt feeling threatened or judged.
Feeling a disconnect between the global urgency and the calm most of us experience in our day-to-day lives now
If you are paying attention, you will see the impacts of climate change all over the globe today (see Why So Urgent) — including in Canada. If you pay attention to the physics and math projections you will realize that urgent action is needed.
Again, ignoring this reality only makes it worse. But the solutions we need to get on track with the science-based trajectory the world has agreed to aspire to, are here. We just need to adopt them. See The world agrees we need to decarbonize.
Competition with other priorities and concerns that may feel more pressing / closer to home
Climate change is not the only issue to address and climate action is not the only positive social action we may want to prioritize.
However, climate change is the most overarching and consequential problem we face and it intersects with most other issues.
Climate change is not just an environmental issue. It threatens lives, health, livelihoods, mental health, communities, business operations, food and water security, energy security, a reasonable cost of living, Biodiversity, specific economic sectors, whole economies, whole species, and whole island nations.
To create space for climate action without compromising your focus on other priorities:
a) Identify the intersection between climate change and the other things you care about and look for opportunities to address them concurrently.
b) Make a concrete personalized climate action plan so that the work is done upfront and consumes minimal time and energy on an ongoing basis.
Concerns about the solutions currently available
Some people want to take action but delay because the solutions don’t quite fit their circumstances. For example, some people would buy an electric vehicle (EV) but want to wait until there is a better charging infrastructure, more affordable options, a cleaner supply chain, etc.
First, it is important to take a hard look at the barriers and determine if they are real or if they are influenced by misinformation or outdated information, or information that doesn’t apply where you live.
Second, it is helpful to think through the circumstances under which you would take action — for example, I would buy an EV if I knew that I could drive X kms or if I could finance a home charger or have a purchasing subsidy of X amount or knew that the battery metals were ethically mined…
Third, either a) determine whether there are other ways to address your concern — e.g. sources of financing, using an EV most of the time but your household’s second gas car on occasion as needed;
b) take a look at the systemic changes that are happening and see whether they can help you make this change in the near future or;
c) advocate for the systemic changes you need to make it work for you. Please see more in Areas of Action and Your Personal Action Plan.
Feeling you have a lack of time, money, knowledge about, and/or access to solutions
The resources in Our Climate Journey will help you identify and overcome the real and perceived barrier to climate action and help you to make a meaningful climate action plan that fits your lifestyle and circumstances. YOU can then iterate the plan along the way to strengthen it or adjust for changes in your life.
See Areas of Action and Your Personal Action Plan.
How to stay positive and motivated in light of all the noise, confusion, and lack of action by others
Feeling doubtful, demotivated, or anxious in response to conversations, news and other sources of information that cast climate action and the world’s response to climate change in a negative, pointless, or questionable light is understandable.
The key is to remember that the energy transition is unstoppable at this point; it is only a matter of time. Above all of the debate, denial, doubts and delays, there is a clear directional push towards a clean energy future.
Don’t be swayed. Stay the course. Build your plan. Join those that are working to stop additional global warming.
Here are just a few examples of how unhelpful information can lead to inaction and an alternative way of looking at it to stay on course.
“The footprint of Canada and its fossil fuel sector is very small.”
e.g. “Canada produces less than 1.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Of that, Canada’s oil and natural gas industry produces about 28% of our 1.5% of world emissions.” — Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
Fuels inaction because:
This statement might make you think that we shouldn’t have to make big changes, especially if those that are much bigger contributors don’t seem as though they are making changes. We really aren’t a big part of the problem.
Why action matters:
This statement misrepresents the problem.
on a per capita basis Canada is one of the highest emitting countries in the world (top 5-6.)
even on an absolute basis, Canada is one of the highest emitting countries in the world (top 10-12.)
the 28% referenced above only accounts for the extraction/processing/storage and transmission of oil and gas, not the use of it. Fossil fuel emissions cause 80% of global warming and Canada is one of the worst emitters.
Stay the course — reduce your fossil fuel footprint.
“But what about China?”
e.g. “…if you want to go and really change the environment, then we need to start telling China and India that they have to lower their emissions. That’s what our problem is.” — Nikki Haley, 2023
“About 69.5 gigawatts (GW) of coal plant capacity came online last year, of which two-thirds were built in China…”
Fuels inaction because:
It makes us feel that it is pointless to take action when other countries, that we have no control over, are burning more coal, dwarfing any impact we could make and making the problem worse. One of the key problems with this position is that it sets up impossible conditions for action where no one will act if others aren’t.
Overcoming inaction:
Burning coal and opening more coal plants is obviously a problem that countries need to address. But if anything, it is a reason for more action — not less action.
Paradoxically, one of the reasons that coal is being used is that climate change is threatening clean sources of energy and increasing the demand for energy.
But more to the point, everyone needs to lower their emissions and every country is a ‘mixed bag’ of positive action and harmful action.
China, though the world leader in coal burning, is also the world leader in solar — installed capacity and global supply chain (see The World is Doing More Than You May Know), a leader in EV manufacturing, supply chain and adoption, and leads the world in reforestation — increasing our carbon sinks. They also have a relatively low per capita footprint.
By many measures they are far further along than Canada is in their climate action journey.
Stay the course—help Canada reduce its emissions.
“Technology and innovation will save us.”
e.g. “Carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) will spearhead energy transformation” — Canadian Energy Centre, 2023
Fuels inaction because:
We may feel that innovations will come along that will solve our problems without us having to change very much or that will make deep and rapid changes today unnecessary, when in fact, even if those changes do come — and as cool and exciting as they may be, they will not replace the need to phase-down fossil fuel use as much as possible today.
There is just no way around that. Serious progress needs to be made before 2030.
Overcoming inaction:
Allow yourself to feel encouraged by innovation and future solutions and leverage them as reasons for hope. Recognize that there is a huge gulf between identifying a potential solution and having a commercially viable, widely adopted, proven solution in place and that getting there will mean overcoming many barriers and, likely, a large amount of financing.
As for the CCS example, despite decades of work on CCS, it is not commercially viable at scale yet. We will likely require it for the residual carbon emissions that we cannot avoid even after we transition to clean energy but this does not in any way reduce the efforts we need to make now.
As for the article quoted above, even by the Canadian Energy Centre’s own optimistic projections, with significant investment and assumptions about overcoming barriers to scaling, with a 100% success rate for hundreds of nascent projects around the globe, at best CCS will be able to capture 1–2% of the reduced level of emissions projected for 2030. It will not help us get to the 2030 goal of a 43% reduction in emissions by 2030 required to meet the global temperature targets.
The reality is that there is no silver bullet and we don’t have time to wait for new technology to save us, even if we agree that we need to invest in new and unproven solutions for the future. We have to decarbonize now with the many good options we have today.
“Be skeptical and wary of the climate mitigation solutions.”
e.g. “Fires caused by lithium-ion batteries are on the rise across Canada, according to the organization that represents the country’s fire chiefs…”
Fuels inaction because:
We don’t want to die in an exploding car. More seriously, people are cautious about change and, in some cases, will use any red flag, vetted or not, to delay change.
We also are bombarded with headlines every day and tend not to read the full-story a lot of the time so it’s easy to be misinformed.
Overcoming inaction:
It is understandable that scary headlines would make people pause and it is generally healthy to have a skeptical mind. However, the problem arises when skepticism is simply a red flag that results in doubt and inaction.
Instead, turn skepticism into an open question (are EVs safe? Do they randomly burst into flames?) and then answer your question with a bit of research.
As per the article above, the issue is primarily related to e-bikes and e-scooters that don’t have certified batteries or that have batteries that have been modified or damaged.
And if you look at the statistics more generally, the chances of an EV passenger vehicle catching fire is far lower than the chances of a gas car catching fire — most people are not deterred from driving the latter in light of this risk.
Don’t let a headline be an excuse not to act. Ask and answer questions. Keep moving forward.
There are a gazillion and one examples we could use to demonstrate the ways information, disinformation, and debate can cause people to delay climate action.
But if your orientation is to be part of the solution, you can understand the information in context, dispel the disinformation, and weigh in on the debates while moving forward with an action plan that works for you.
