You and I can’t save the world, and the myth that we can is a dangerous distraction from what urgently needs to be done and by whom, argues 16 year-old Izzy Barrett

Use paper straws! Turn out your lights! Don’t run the tap while brushing your teeth! So I have such an impact on the environment? If I died tomorrow I wouldn’t even save the equivalent CO₂ emissions across my lifetime that the private jets flown into the latest COP conference produced – but god forbid I don’t recycle my cereal box. I would really be the bad guy then. The average carbon footprint per person is seven tonnes of CO₂ per year, multiplying to 560 tonnes if I live to 80. When my entire life is not even pocket change to any corporation (Starbucks produces more CO₂ every two weeks), it’s laughable to even suggest I could ‘make a difference’ by, as the UN suggests, riding my bike to school instead of driving. The myth of individual responsibility for climate action is not only untrue, it’s a dangerous distraction from the urgent necessity of companies and governments to act while they can still save us.

It’s obvious how tiny we are compared to industries, countries, governments, companies, billionaires – 10 per cent of the population with the highest income account for nearly half of all emissions. If I was a fan of conspiracy theories, I would suggest the diversion from intercontinental oil trades to the fine print of palm oil on the back of biscuits was intentional, but clearly I believe in the goodwill of politicians too much to propose that. I grew up with the naive passion to make a difference (I’m suitably enlightened and crushed now) and, as unfortunately not part of the 10 per cent, struggled to rationalise spending twice as much to buy sustainable products, yet I was privileged to even have the choice. How can we even imagine that a struggling single mother or a small business owner could ‘choose’ to be more conscientious of their environmental impact when they’re choosing between heating and eating, breaking even or bankruptcy? Can we demand that they vote for the trees when they must consider the cost of gas tomorrow?

We are fed a rhetoric that there are pandas and polar bears dropping dead when we leave on the lights by the very same corporations that pay millions to greenwash their brands. I remember feeling incomprehensibly selfish prioritising eating my favourite chocolate after school over the baby orangutans I had just murdered. I wrote speeches imploring my 11 year old classmates to stop eating Oreos. We are being sold a false fairy tale, our peers and fellow people made into enemies of the environment where we, the hero, must sacrifice our personal lives for the greater good, masking the true villains of the story behind our induced climate anxiety.

Climate change is not a crisis that deserves to rest on the shoulders of the individual; this is a global epidemic involving every country and industry that requires governments’ and corporations’ action to solve, not the tiny choices of the many.

However, before you’re paralysed by cynicism and hopelessness, there are still impactful things one can do. Your vote and your voice can make a far greater difference than your driving habits. Just as the voting public would never allow a government into power whose policies promised to raise unemployment, therefore forcing strategists to plan accordingly for better job opportunities, so we can use our voices and votes to incentivise governments to take meaningful climate action. If we, the nation, were to decide that stopping climate change was so important to us that any government that failed to demonstrate a commitment to deliver on climate action could never hope to get elected, policy makers would, magically, begin to deliver positive change. If we were all to lobby and campaign and write placards and hold hands and throw biodegradable glitter, instead of watching it on the TV. If the climate crisis was always a key consideration in polling stations, we could force people in power to make large scale change. By combining our voices, we could become something big: not enough to save the world ourselves, but enough to motivate those with the power to do so.

So, if you can, raise our collective volume – write to your MP, hold a protest or petition, share knowledge and compassion; but still don’t go declaring it the duty of we ordinary citizens to bear the weight of decisions made by presidents and prime ministers nor, if we can’t, blame us for not shouting back at the powerful loud enough.

At a Q&A with George Monbiot, following a film about veganism in which he featured, I asked (something along the lines of) “How we can hold hope to affect the future with our tiny actions, and our films that are only watched by people who already care, when corporations dwarf our efforts every day?” His reply was (something along the lines of), that we can affect concentric circles of people around us to change, and by spreading information to people who are close to changing their minds and actions, we can incite wider change. He probably said it more eloquently.

Whilst I found this inspiring and felt more hopeful that, over time, the mindset of the average person will become more conscientious about the fate of our planet, I fear our concentric ripples will be too late. Eventually, when the climate crisis is so bad that no government can ignore it whilst maintaining trust, the environment will be everyone’s problem and we will be a case study of the shortcomings of democracy in addressing long term, global issues.

But when my children grow up not knowing what an orangutan was, I pray the history books hold those in power accountable, and don’t blame individuals just trying to make everyday choices. It was never our job to save the world, but we can still vote for those who can.