You read the headline correctly. To some people, those two facts seem contradictory. But I think they point toward a better path forward.
For decades, climate advocacy has focused heavily on individual behavior: what we drive, what we eat, how often we fly. Personal responsibility matters. It shapes how we vote, how we engage in our communities, and how we live our values. But somewhere along the way, we lost sight of a larger reality: Climate change is driven primarily by systems, institutions, and public policy.
The “individual carbon footprint” became popular after a public relations campaign paid for by the oil industry helped deflect attention from institutional polluters onto us, as consumers. The result was a climate conversation increasingly centered on guilt, shame, and personal virtue — perpetuated by climate deniers and well-intentioned climate activists alike. Meanwhile, emissions continue to rise.
We’re overdue for a Climate Activism 2.0. This begins with a simple premise: meet people where they are. Americans have different lifestyles, values, occupations, and economic realities. Climate advocacy should spend less time judging personal decisions and more time building support for the policies, investments, technologies, and infrastructure capable of reducing emissions at scale.
My truck illustrates the point. Like millions of Americans, I needed a dependable vehicle that fit my family’s needs. I would have considered an electric truck, but affordability remains a major obstacle. That’s not an individual failure. It’s a policy and market failure. If climate-friendly choices aren’t practical or affordable, no amount of personal virtue can solve the problem.
Transportation is the largest source of temperature-warming carbon pollution in the United States. Decisions made in state capitals and Washington have far greater climate consequences than the purchasing choices of any single family. One policy change can add or remove millions of tons of emissions.
That’s not to say individual action isn’t important. This new activism seeks to build a stronger base of empowered individuals ready to find solutions to the very human problems warming temperatures bring. It provides tools to engage in the process by which we hold our elected officials, corporations, and major economic actors accountable for the decisions that shape our collective future. It seeks to rebuild our connections with one another by freeing up the blame, shame, and self-imposed divides. And it rejects the doomist, world-on-fire narratives that leave people feeling powerless, paralyzed, and disengaged.
After I bought my truck, it sparked conversations with neighbors I might never otherwise have met. Those conversations reminded me of something often overlooked by some climate advocates (rightly) angry at the status quo: Most Americans care about their communities, their families, and the places they love. We don’t break down into neatly divided binary groups of Democrat vs Republican, urban vs rural, or climate activist vs climate denier.
America has a long bipartisan conservation tradition built upon shared values of natural heritage. As we celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary, we rightly honor our national parks as one of America’s greatest achievements. Those victories were fiercely contested, yet Americans ultimately chose to protect extraordinary places for future generations. That same spirit can guide climate action today.
Instead of drawing cultural battle lines, we should build coalitions around goals that resonate across political identities: cleaner air, lower energy costs, American innovation, stronger local economies, energy independence, and safer communities better prepared for floods, fires, hurricanes, and extreme heat.
Everyone has an unsustainable carbon footprint in a fossil-fuel-powered society. The challenge is not finding someone to blame. It is changing the systems that make high emissions the only choice.
WHEN THE WORLD CUP IS A CLIMATE STORY, JOURNALISM LOSES THE PLOT
An abundant, prosperous, and sustainable future remains within reach. If we stop treating climate action as a test of personal purity and start treating it as a shared project of systemic economic and civic renewal, we can build the broad coalition needed to meet this challenge.
It’s time to replace the vague slogan of “saving the planet” with the more practical mission of saving ourselves.
Will Hackman has worked in U.S. political campaigns, public policy process, strategic communications, coalition building, climate activism, and global environmental conservation advocacy. His 2022 TEDx “The Future of Climate Change is Personal,” and his 2026 book, Radically Reframing Climate Change: A Guide To Saving Ourselves, reframe our climate conversations to overcome polarization and partisanship.