Examining net environmental impact
Matthews, who saw Horen Greenford present his initial research with colleague Crownshaw a few years ago, immediately recognized the potential for an important paper.
“This is a bit of a new angle in our lab, though it does relate to how we understand different actors in society to be responsible for climate and other environmental damages,” he says.
The resulting article was published in Environmental Research Letters in June.
“Previously, we have looked at questions related to how different countries are responsible for climate changes, and the conclusion has always been that richer countries have had a disproportionately high impact on emissions and climate change,” Matthews says.
“In a sense, what our current paper is showing is that ‘richer’ economic sectors have a similarly high environmental impact. To understand the full impact of these sectors, you have to include the wealth of the labour force in the calculation.”
What you can do
So how can people lower their environmental impact? Horen Greenford says the time to act is now, but that personal choices fall short of the collective action needed.
“To be clear, the individual, if vigilant, can do a lot to lower their personal impact. But, ultimately, the sum of individual consumer choices will likely not reduce impacts enough to avoid ecological and climate catastrophe,” he says.
Horen Greenford suggests people take grassroots action, like joining up with likeminded people in groups looking for solutions to the climate crisis or raising awareness of the issue. Small civic gestures like writing your Member of Parliament is a good place to start as well.
“There are many ways to get involved, and everyone privileged enough to have time to think about it shouldn’t sit around feeling guilty, ashamed, scared or alone,” he says. “No individual is to blame, and no single person has the means to take this on alone. It’s important to not get bogged down in individualism.”
“If you’re willing to examine the situation with a sober mind, I’d say we have a pretty good grasp of the problem and its solutions. Getting active is the only way forward. There’s always hope, and even if we don’t fix everything, the more we do, the more lives can be spared from unconscionable suffering.”
Read the cited paper: “Shifting economic activity to services has limited potential to reduce global environmental impacts due to the household consumption of labour.”