Shift from Blame to Contribution

Who’s responsible for climate change? Who caused the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere to increase from 280 ppm over the last few thousand years to 420 ppm? If we can agree on who to blame, then maybe we can tell them to change.

Logical sounding arguments blame China, or blame the developed economic countries like the USA, or blame people in the top 1% of income levels, or blame 100 large companies, or blame FOX News. Pick your target. 

I suggest that we set down the focus on blame and take a more constructive approach developed by the Harvard Law School’s Project On Negotiation for difficult conversations – shift our focus to understanding all of the ways people (and companies and governments) contribute to the issue. Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen describe the difference between a focus on blame or contribution in Difficult Conversations (quotes from first edition): 

“Focusing on blame is a bad idea because it inhibits our ability to learn what’s really causing the problem and to do anything meaningful to correct it.”

“Blame is a prominent issue in many difficult conversations. Whether on the surface or below, the conversation revolves around the question of who is to blame. Who is the bad person in this relationship? Who made the mistake? Who should apologize? Who gets to be righteously indignant?”

“Contribution asks… ‘How did we each contribute to bringing about the current situation?’ Or put another way: ‘What did we each do or not do to get ourselves into this mess?’ The second question is ‘Having identified the contribution system, how can we change it? What can we do about it as we go forward?’ In short, contribution is useful when our goal is to understand what actually happened so that we can improve how we work together in the future. In the world of {climate change}, too often we deal in blame when our real goals are understanding and change.”

The subtle difference between discussing how we contribute to climate change instead of who to blame does not reduce our need to take actions nor restrict our actions on how to move forward. Instead the subtle change shifts the conversations we have toward understanding and exploration. 

When we talk to others who may not share all of our views, contribution can open avenues for constructive conversations that allow the other person to express their opinion without triggering a response that stifles further conversations. Again from Stone, Patton and Heen:

“Raising contribution during the conversation itself can be surprisingly easy. Getting the other person to shift from blame to contribution can be more difficult. One of the best ways to signal that you want to leave behind the question of who’s to blame is to acknowledge your own contribution early in the conversation.”

I’ll start. My actions and choices directly cause emissions of greenhouse gasses. Even after taking a series of intentional actions, my emissions are still around 5 tons of CO2 per person per year. And that doesn’t include the emissions caused by my consumer purchases that are hard to quantify – like the purchase of the laptop I am writing on, the coffee cup I am drinking out of, the chair I am sitting on, or the clothes I’m wearing. So, in reality, my personal emissions are probably well above 7 tons per person per year. This puts my emissions still significantly above the average emissions of people in the European Union (5.5 tons/person/year), and above the average global per capita emissions of around 4.5 tons/person/year. And I suspect that my emissions were more than double that through much of the last 30 years as I drove a minivan raising my 3 children, took air travel for business and occasionally for vacations, and relied on a grid powered mostly by coal and natural gas.  Decisions I made contributed to greenhouse gas emissions even while I was aware of climate change and the impacts of my greenhouse gas emissions. 

Acknowledging my contribution does not eliminate my ability to take actions. Instead, it focuses my attention, allows me to have empathy for people at other mile markers on their path to lower emissions, and opens a dialogue with people that is less defensive and more focused on fact finding and solutions.

An initial step in any path is to control the matters I have control over - my own actions. 

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own . . .”  (Epictetus, Discourses. 2.5.4-5)

And even the best policy changes need simultaneous personal change. While I strongly support a price on greenhouse gas emissions (often called a carbon tax) to remove the current subsidy of free disposal of the waste carbon dioxide into the air, I also firmly believe these price signals are insufficient to solve climate change. A good friend confessed that one reason they support a carbon price is because they can afford to pay the premium and continue to fly as often as they want, even if it is more expensive. As Robert Frank stated in Under the Influence, “...price remedies are often more likely to be effective when reinforced by social forces. Energy use patterns are in fact powerfully shaped not just by prices, but also by behavioral contagion, and typically in ways that reinforce one another.”

When I accept responsibility for my contribution, I shift the social norm. When I ignore my contribution, I give others permission to ignore their contribution and the problem persists and grows. Continuing from Robert Frank, “Keeping warming at bay is indeed unlikely in the absence of a massive social movement, one that culminates in climate obstructionists being defeated resoundingly at the polls. But mounting such a movement becomes much easier when people's personal consumption choices become more heavily shaped by climate concerns.”

It is time that we step back from trying to determine who to blame for climate change. Conversations about climate change are truly difficult conversations and shifting to a framework of contribution allows us to explore the complexity, nuance and interconnections in overlapping areas of energy, agriculture, diet, transportation, and economics. It is valuable to understand that both 100 companies produced the fuels that were responsible for 71% of global emissions (Carbon Disclosure Project) and also that 72% of greenhouse gas emissions are relate to household consumption (Edgar Hertwitch & Glen Peters). These are not either-or positions. 

Arguing over who is to blame - households or corporations - does not move us toward a solution. 

Understanding the interconnected web of contribution - including our own contribution - allows us to discuss actions we can take today to both reduce our emissions and also change the systems and social norms that provide the social contract for free unlimited CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.