Government policy can limit climate change — but so can changing your shopping habits, say experts

Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This story is part of a CBC News initiative entitled Our Changing Planet to show and explain the effects of climate change and what is being done about it.

While advocates call on governments to make stronger commitments to fight climate change, living a low-carbon lifestyle can help reduce individual impact on the planet, according to experts. 

It's often said that personal choices have little effect on reducing carbon emissions because emissions from global corporations, like fossil fuel producers, make up the majority of CO2 output. Lloyd Alter calls that thinking a "fantasy."

"What are the fossil fuel companies doing? They're making stuff that we buy to put in our cars. We're buying what they're selling," said Alter, a professor and author of Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle.

"I believe that in all kinds of these exercises that it really comes down to our personal choices."

Almost 200 countries accepted a proposed climate agreement at COP26 on Saturday, despite concerns over last-minute amendments by India on coal emissions that some say will make it harder to reach goals set out in the Paris Agreement in 2015. 

Many have argued that the scale of climate change requires systemic change, rather than simply a focus on individual decisions.

Alter argues that while governments play a role in certain policies, such as transit and urban planning, consumers can shop their way out of a warming climate.

"You can buy a low-carbon diet, you can buy a low-carbon house and you can buy low-carbon transportation — and it's absolutely, fundamentally a matter of the choices that we make," said the Ryerson University sustainable design professor. 

J.B. MacKinnon, a journalist and author of the book The Day the World Stops Shopping, says there's an urgent need to not only "green consumption", but reduce it.

"The planet really clearly needs us to stop consuming so much, and yet the economy seems to need us to consume more and more," he said. 

Producing goods leaves a significant footprint. According to figures from Apple, 84 per cent of total carbon emissions for an iPhone 13 Pro occur in its production. Over its lifetime, using that same iPhone accounts for 12 per cent of overall emissions.

"Climate change is really a clear example, historically, of how effective it can be to reduce consumption and how difficult it has proven to be to reduce emissions without reducing consumption."

Since the Second World War, global carbon emissions have only dropped during periods of reduced consumption, such as during economic recessions and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, he says.