“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. Translation in The Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday. 2016)

We often confuse two questions related to addressing climate change. First, what collective actions and laws will limit the magnitude of the upcoming change? And second, what individual actions should I take once I understand climate change? People often conflate the two and focus their personal actions on global or national policy solutions where they have some influence but little control - solutions like passing laws to provide EV and solar tax credits, a carbon tax, a cap-and-trade system, payments for clean energy production, or prohibitions on using polluting technologies.

Epictetus taught that a first step when approaching an issue is to determine which actions I control and which actions are external to my control.

The actions I control are the actions I take. And many of the actions I take cause greenhouse gas emissions. Today, with no new laws, I can drastically cut my emissions. I can avoid flying on airplanes and either use virtual meetings, choose vacation destinations closer to home, or find alternative methods of travel which cause lower emissions. I can make a plan to convert my car to an EV and convert my space heating and water heating to heat pumps if I own my home. I can stop eating beef and significantly cut back on eating meat in favor of more vegetarian options. I can buy fewer consumer goods if I have a lifestyle matching a higher income household. These are “choices I actually control.” I do not need anyone to write and pass new legislation directing me to make these choices. And I do not need to wait - I can act today.

I can also directly control a second tier of choices to further support reductions in our collective emissions. I can stop allowing my savings to be used to fund fossil fuel exploration, extraction and processing. I can vote in every election - an extremely meaningful action - and I can consider candidates’ positions on climate change when I vote.

I can also use my voice to advocate for policies I support by speaking up, making sure all of my elected officials understand my opinion and my views on upcoming legislation, and by joining with others who share my concern. I control my voice, and I can train and practice speaking constructively.

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A stoic response starts with recognizing which actions are in my control - and accepting responsibility for my own actions. In my life this has involved changing habits I clung to as if addicted - like eating cheese on almost every sandwich and taking an annual airplane based trip to visit another National Park in the mountains out west.

52% of Americans are alarmed or concerned about climate change. Yet only 8% of new car sales in the US are electric vehicles (EVs) and another 14% are Hybrids. And only 5% of Americans report following vegetarian or vegan diets. The choices we make do not always align with our words and our concerns about climate change.

The most predictable way to change these behaviors is to make a habit out of them. Habits have a profound impact on our choices.

I have had more than one friend tell me that global climate change is too big for their individual actions to make a difference. But that is a fallacy. Climate change is a complex problem specifically because it is the result of the actions of billions of individuals. All of the petroleum refined into gasoline would still be gasoline (or maybe just petroleum buried underground) if consumers did not buy the gasoline and burn it in internal combustion engines.

It is not about blaming myself, simply accepting my contribution. If I won’t accept responsibility for my actions, why should others accept constraints I lobby to put on their actions?

We need collective action to slow our global rate of greenhouse gas emissions. And today, right now, we can accept responsibility for the choices that are our own and act and reduce our emissions. If the 52% of Americans concerned or alarmed about climate change would act accordingly, we would collectively reshape our economy. We control what we purchases. We control our diet. We control our vote. We direct our investments. And we choose how we use our voice to speak in favor of change.

Jim

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Want a bit more on stoicism and climate change, check out Ryan Holiday’s post A Stoic Guide to Climate Change.

In this post I share my experience converting two natural gas furnaces into two dual-fuel heat pumps. Let’s walk through the path I took and then explore the changes in energy used based on energy bills from the first winter season after the installation.

If you want to read more on heat pumps, I recommend reviewing the content that Rewiring America has posted. I will not try to re-create these educational resources here when Rewiring America provides a solid, current overview.

My journey to install heat pumps

There are only a few ways to cut a ton of CO2e emissions per year from my household’s emissions. Optimizing how I heat my home is one of those target actions. For me, it was one that took a few years to plan, gain comfortable with the swap, and finally make the change, especially as this change involved a capital investment in my home.

Celeste and I took a number of other actions first: actions that either had quicker pay back periods or did not even require any additional capital investment. Early in our commitment to lower our emission, Celeste and I installed solar panels on our roof. We oversized the system to account for additional loads as we planned to electrify other energy uses. A year later we bought an EV which uses some of the surplus from the solar panels. But we still had two natural gas furnaces we used for heat: one in the crawl space for the first floor and one in the attic for the second floor.

We talked to contractors and received quotes for heat pumps about five years ago. Living in Asheville, where winter with temperatures are often over 30° F, and also where we have cold spells with low temperature below 10° F, we explored dual fuel heat pump options. In a dual fuel system, we retain our existing natural gas furnace and replace our air conditioner unit with a high efficiency variable speed heat pump. If temperatures outside are above a specific temperature we can adjust, the heat pumps warm the house; and when temperatures drop below the set temperature, the system switches and uses the natural gas furnaces to heat the house. The first time we got quotes, we did not authorize the work. The capital required simply was larger than we anticipated.

In 2024 we decided to make the transition to dual fuel heat pumps.

Our first step was to improve the heat envelope on our home so we were not simply improving how we heat a leaky bucket. The main areas needing improved insulation were in the knee walls, as well as some work in the attic and improving the insulation on the access points for the attic and the knee walls. This insulation work was completed in December of 2024. We also lined our crawl space in February 2025 for moisture and air quality issues as well as improved insulation of the space under our floors.

Next we updated our bid list of contractors with recommendations and refreshed our quotes for installing two dual-fuel heat pumps.

The bid site walks were informative. I am not an HVAC specialist, and I appreciated walking with the representatives of the firms that bid and asking questions and listening to their suggestions and advice. One local contractor tried to talk me out of installing heat pumps and indicated that he had never provided a quote for a dual-fuel heat pump. If someone does not support the product they are bidding for me, it is a major red flag that they may not understand or have experience with the products I want installed. I had a significantly different conversation with the two contractors that I knew were experienced installing heat pumps. They talked about the benefits of both options of high efficiency heat pumps without the alternate fuel option and dual fuel heat pumps retaining my existing natural gas furnace for the coldest nights.

We ended up choosing a family-owned contractor that has serviced my area for four generations: Bolton Services. Our two heat pump units were installed in August of 2025, before the 2025-26 heating season. Now that it’s spring of 2026, I can run the numbers to evaluate our natural gas and electricity use during the winter season of 2025-26 and see how they compare to earlier seasons.

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During the winter of 2025-26, we had our dual-fuel systems switch to natural gas when it was 35° F outside. Our indoor temperatures were comfortable and next year we will try more of the year with the transition at 30° F or 25° F.

Our arrangement with our utility (Duke Energy Progress) provides us with meter readings for the electricity we produce with our solar panels and separately all of the electricity that we use from the grid. The electricity from our solar panels is simply put back on the grid, and the energy used minus energy generated is what we are billed for. In most months, we have an excess that carries forward as a growing credit until it is zeroed out each June.

After a full heating season with the new system, it’s time to see if the investment paid off—both environmentally and financially

Change in Energy Used

To evaluate the impacts of our dual fuel heat pump systems along with the improved insulation (mentioned earlier), I run the numbers as if I do not have solar panels, which may be more relevant for many home owners. It is then a simple shift to explain the impact with the solar generation.

I tracked the kWh of electricity and the therms of natural gas I used each month from September through April for three seasons before installing the heat pumps (2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25) and took an average of these three winter seasons as a baseline for how much energy I used during a season heating with natural gas. I tracked my total energy use for the most recent winter season with the heat pumps installed (2025-26).

During the baseline winter seasons, when our heat was coming from natural gas furnaces, we used a Vornado space heater to keep one particular room we occupied a bit warmer. We had excess electric credits from our solar system, so the heat from the Vornado resistance space heater was “free” for cost, and zeroed out on our annual emission inventory. That said, resistance heat is one of the least efficient ways to heat a room - causing more emissions than burning natural gas. To eliminate the large draw from the resistance heater, this winter season we also stopped using the Vornado space heater. This past winter season we simply turned the thermostat up a degree or two and kept the first floor warm enough to assure that the room of concern was comfortable.

Overall, we used more electricity and less natural gas during the most recent winter.

Heating with dual fuel heat pumps last winter, we used 1,504 kWh more electricity and 318 therms less natural gas. In these units, it is hard to compare the increased electric use and the decreased natural gas use. So I’ll convert them to the same units: first to dollars (USD) and second to tons of CO2e emissions.

Change in my bills

The marginal cost on my utility bills of an additional kWh of electricity is 12.32¢ and an additional therm of natural gas is $1.64. These values include the North Carolina 6% sales tax. Using these conversion rates, the following change occurred for the winter of 2025-26:

+$185 electricity bill charges

-$522 natural gas bill charges

-$337 total bill change over the winter season

So, over the seven month winter season in 2025-26 I saved $337 on the combination of my electric and natural gas bills.

Emissions shift

To convert the changes in electricity use to tons of CO2e emissions, I used the conversion factors for North Carolina’s electric grid from the Energy Information Agency. The conversion is 670 lbs CO2e/MWh which is equivalent to 0.0003039 tons/kWh.

To convert the changes in natural gas use to tons of CO2e emissions, I used the conversion factor from the USEPA. The conversion is 0.0053 tons CO2e/therm. It is important to point out that this is a simple conversion based on changing all of the carbon in the natural gas (CH4) into carbon dioxide (CO2). This number is NOT a life-cycle analysis of all of the releases and energy used to provide that extra therm of natural gas. Adding in the whole life cycle for releases of methane at leaks and the energy used to generate the natural gas would add 20% to 40% to the emissions for natural gas.

Using these conversions, the following change in emissions occurred for the winter of 2025-26:

+0.46 tons CO2e from electricity

-1.69 tons CO2e from natural gas use

-1.23 tons CO2e change over the winter season

Over the seven month winter season in 2025-26 my greenhouse gas emissions were 1.23 tons CO2e less than during a typical winter season heating with natural gas. Here is a graphic showing the emissions during the three baseline winter seasons and last year (2025-26) when the dual fuel heat pumps were used.

Below is a graph of the CO2e emissions for my total energy use by month providing a more detailed view.

I calculated the change in cost and emissions as an illustration for houses that do not have solar panels. However, since my home has solar panels which are oversized, my emissions changes were a decrease of the full 1.69 tons CO2e from the natural gas. If you add on 30% to better approximate the life-cycle emissions from that natural gas which includes production and transportation, the emissions reduction was over 2 tons CO2e.

Also, since I generated the additional electricity, the savings last year was also estimated at $522, not just $337.

Also, the three baseline winter seasons (2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25) were all a bit warmer than average. In contrast, last winter (2025-26) was cooler than normal. So this comparison underestimates the actual amount of emissions reductions and cost savings.

It is difficult to find many actions that can reduce over a ton of emissions from our carbon footprint. Celeste & I remain pleased with the performance of Bolton Servicers installing our heat pumps, pleased with the comfort in our home, and thrilled with the reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions.

As mentioned earlier, changing to heat pumps was not our first action to bring down our emissions. Before taking this step, we added solar panels, bought an EV, changed our diet to mostly vegan, and insulated our home. All of these previous steps either saved us money or had a reasonable pay-back period. The two heat pumps cost around $8,000 to $10,000 more than simply replacing our older AC units with new, traditional AC units and continuing on with natural gas heating. Saving $522 per year just gets us to covering the replacement cost of these units over a 15 to 20 year expected life cycle. But not by a lot and not with a cost of money factored in.

But installing the heat pumps was not about saving money. It was about continuing a commitment to lower our emissions. Heat pumps are available today. They heat homes adequately to maintain comfort. There was nothing stopping us from doing this earlier other than budget concerns and stacking changes in a sequence to work through.

For Celeste and I, cost is a real factor but it is not the anchoring criteria for right actions or for following our faith and convictions.

I encourage you to talk with local contractors well before you need a new furnace or air conditioning unit, explore your budget options, and plan for a future with lower emissions. And find local contractors that are known for installing heat pumps. If you go to a contractor that does not install heat pumps, they will sell you what they know - a natural gas furnace.

I hope this overview of the actual impact of heat pumps on our household energy use and energy bills can help in your planning.

Jim

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• reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the amount of energy used to heat and cool your house,

• reduce your monthly bills to heat and cool the home, and

• improve your comfort in your home by maintaining even temperatures inside the house.

The Heat Envelope

When it’s cold out, your home loses heat to the outdoors. The layer that surrounds the inside of your house where temperature is controlled is called the heat envelope - typically exterior walls, the ceiling, the doors and windows, the floor.

Heat still escapes the heat envelope, the goal is to minimize heat loss while maintaining some infiltration of fresh air. An initial step in making a home use less energy (and emit less greenhouse gas) is improving the heat envelope to optimize the amount of heat retained in the house.

You probably know where there are issues in your heat envelope: You know which rooms get cold or feel drafty; you know the rooms where you won’t sit and read a book because the space is too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. (Note that this uneven heating can also be related to how your heating system is distributing heat.)

Some heat is lost through the direct movement of air between the inside and outside of the heat envelope through cracks and gaps in the heat envelope. Heat also escapes through the sealed portion of the heat envelope like through poorly insulated walls, windows, floors, or ceilings.

A good first step in evaluating how to (or if to) improve your heat envelope is to have a home energy audit. During the home energy audit, a trained individual will examine your energy use compared to similar houses and complete at least two elements during an on-site inspection: perform a blower door test and take infrared images to look for heat loss.

Blower Door Test

During a blower door test, a powerful fan is set in an exterior doorway with a covering to block the rest of the door. The fan blows air out of the house, lowering the air pressure inside the house. In a calibrated blower door test, the technician uses the differences in air pressure at a given fan rating along with information on your house to estimate air leakage in the house prior to any improvements. The leakage can be compared to comparable houses and even to building codes to evaluate the need to make improvements and the potential benefits.

There are situations where initial conditions show too many areas for leakage and some remediation may be warranted before a blower door test - like fixing holes, open gaps, or significantly large breaks in door and window seals.

All houses leak air. It is important that homes have some transfer of air to maintain healthy indoor air. The goal is not to eliminate all leakage, just to minimize the leakage. Building codes define the minimum allowable leakage, and a house that is too tight may even require mechanical ventilation to assure air turnover. So the goal is to reduce leakage, but not hermetically seal our home.

The US Energy Department provides more information on blower door tests.

Infrared Imagery

Infrared imagery can help show you where you are losing heat in the winter.

The method converts measurements of infrared electromagnetic waves into the temperature of my walls and ceilings. Infrared imagery should be captured when there is at least a 20° F difference between inside and outside temperatures (warmer or colder). Make sure that the assessor agrees to provide you with the paired infrared and visual light images so you can use them later and refer back to them if you decide to talk to contractors about insulation improvement options or perform the work yourself.

Home Energy Audit Request

When you request a home energy audit, be sure that the following elements are addressed in the scope of work any contractor provides with their scope:

• Perform a calibrated blower door test.

• Collect thermal images of any unusual areas in the heat envelope collected with paired visual light images. All images will be provided with the final report. The images will be collected when outside temperatures are at least 20° F colder or 15° F warmer than inside temperatures.

A first step in finding a contractor for a home energy audit is to check in with your electric utility. Some utilities offer discounts or credits for home energy audits - like Duke Energy which services parts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Florida. There are also programs in many parts of the United States offering help to income qualified households (see listing).

Infrared Images and My Home Heat Envelope

The two most valuable elements of our energy audit process were the infrared imagery and also having a contractor included in the process that defined scopes of work for suggested improvements that included firm costs. We had a number of issues, especially with the ways our knee walls were insulated when the house was built 25 years ago. I’ll walk through one area as an example to show you how the infrared images helped us understand and evaluate the issue and also to evaluate the area again after the contractor fixed the insulation.

Our house has a small overhang above the front porch that is outside the heat envelope. This overhang abuts a small storage closet and a bathroom shower on the second floor which are inside the heat envelope. The wall that separates the back of the shower and the storage closet was constructed poorly and had significant gaps in the insulation. I didn’t understand this fully until we were well into this project and were accessing this small area over the front porch that I had never opened up.

I used an infrared camera to capture both infrared and visual images around our home in 2023 during a hot summer day when our house was cooled by our air conditioner. The images documented the areas where our walls, ceilings and floors were exceptionally warm and allowed heat to enter our house when the air conditioner was on. In the storage room, the plastic sheeting at the back of the storage room was 103° F where the insulation had either settled or never been present. And the back and side of the shower walls were above 80° F. Here are two pairs of images from this area. The hotter portions of the wall show up as yellow or even white with the temperature scale provided in each infrared image.

The first pair shows the storage room with adequately insulated ceiling joists on the right, and showing a significant gap in the insulation in the back wall. This insulation gap was so significant, it even allowed visible light to enter the storage room through the plastic sheeting which can be seen in the visual light image.

The image pair from the bathroom shows how hot the back of the shower wall was and how this heat extended to the walls of the bathroom.

We discussed the project with and then hired a local contractor (Conservation Pros) who gave us a quote to improve our heat envelop for this wall, our knee walls, all of our knee wall and attic access points, and some areas where the blown-in insulation was missing between some joists in the sloped ceilings. When we accessed the area over our porch (outside the heat envelope), the picture below shows an area where insulation was missing from the wall behind the shower.

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In this area, the contractor removed the poorly constructed blown-in insulation and placed fiberglass insulation between each of the studs. The image below also shows the newly insulated wall (before a cover insulated board was installed) with the small access port to the area over the porch which the contractor also filled with insulation.

To finish, the contractor put insulating rigid foam boards over the insulated stud walls and sealed the gaps.

Infrared images taken after the project was complete document how effective this project was at eliminating heat loss (winter) or gain (summer). The following image pairs were taken during a particularly cold period in the winter after the project - so heat leakage would show up as exceptionally cold areas of the walls. The colder portions of the wall show up as purple. In these infrared images there is a temperature scale on the images, and the warmest and coldest spots in the photos are labeled as well as the temperature in the center of the photo. And the walls have a much more even heat profile than during the pre-project image pairs which were taken during a hot summer day.

The image pair from the storage room shows a drastic shift in the range of temperatures on the inside walls of this space.

And the image pair in the bathroom also shows how the back of the shower is no longer leaking heat and the walls no longer show major intrusion of the outdoor temperature.

This project led to a noticeable difference in the temperatures in our house. We also appreciated and gained trust in the contractor’s staff, so we eventually had them encapsulate our crawl space also, improving both the humidity and temperature of the first floor.

I took all of these infrared and visual light image pairs. For the initial 2023 images I was able to borrow a FLIR brand thermal camera from a home energy audit contractor. The device was a bit older, and the images have a low resolution and you can see the lower resolution in the images.

The second, post project images in 2025 were taken with a TOPDON thermal camera attachment for my Pixel and my Pixel phone’s camera for the visual light images. TOPDON offers infrared camera attachments that connect to Pixels or iPhones and sell for under $300. Photography has been a hobby of mine since I was in middle school (my dad was an aerial photographer during World War II, and got me interested in photography.) So I was rather excited to get one and try it out. I have taken similar thermal images to examine heat envelopes at our church and at some neighbor’s homes - it is rather easy and informative.

While I took these images, any good energy audit contractor will provide similar image pairs as long as you stipulate that you want them.

Fireplace: a simple fix

Not all improvements are complicated or expensive.

We could feel cold air in the winter and warm air in the summer entering our house from our unvented natural gas fireplace, and the thermal images confirmed the problem. The space behind the fireplace is apparently not insulated. Removing this or insulating this properly had a significant cost, so we choose to simply order a black insulated draft guard cover which is held in place with magnets. This rather inexpensive fix also created a noticeable difference in the cold drafts during winter days in our living room. It’s not the perfect solution, but it is simple, inexpensive and the room is now more comfortable.

Sealing up the drafts in my own home didn’t require an act of Congress or a sweeping federal mandate. It just took a bit of curiosity and a willingness to look closely at the “leaky bucket” I was paying to keep warm.

Once you have optimized your home’s heat envelope—ensuring you actually keep the heat you pay for inside the house—you’ll be ready to evaluate how you generate that heat in the first place. Next week, we will explore heat pumps and options available to maintain a comfortable home while lowering emissions.

Jim

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Each of us does not cause the same amount of emissions. People in the top 10% of personal income globally cause almost half of our global greenhouse gas emissions.

People with higher incomes cause more emissions. I say income, though in developing economies it’s difficult to accurately measure income so economists often measure expenditures (or consumption) as a more reliable proxy for welfare. I will talk about “income” as it is a term we use in America, but recognize that this actually translates to how much a person is able to consume for over four-fifths of the global population that live in undeveloped or developing economies.

The bar chart below divides global greenhouse gas emissions by global income deciles. Each decile represents 10% of the population. So decile 1 shows the emissions of the bottom 10% of people ranked by income, decile 2 shows the emissions from people making more than 10% of people up to 20% of people, on up to decile 10 which shows the emissions from people making more than 90% of other people in the world (data from IEA where they have engaging interactive graphics worth exploring).

• The top 10% making the highest incomes globally (decile 10) cause almost half of the greenhouse gas emissions. These are people with incomes over $54.60 per day or $19,929 per year.

• The top 20% (deciles 9 and 10) emit two-thirds of the global emissions. These are people with incomes over $29.20 per day or $10,658 per year.

• The poorest half of the people in the world, with incomes below the median income (Deciles 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 combined), emit less than 10% of the greenhouse gas emissions. These are people with incomes less than $9.35 per day or $3,413 per year.

In the United States, over 80% of people have an income greater than $29.20 per day or $10,658 per year. So over 80% of Americans are in the top 10% by global income - the category responsible for almost half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

(You can explore income decile data globally and by country at Our World in Data based on World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform, 2025)

This same relationship holds within countries also: People who have higher incomes cause more greenhouse gas emissions. This is true in developed economies (e.g. United States, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia) as well as developing economies (e.g. China, India, all of the middle east except Israel, all of Central and South America except French Guiana). The following graphic shows the average per capita greenhouse gas emissions (tons of CO2e on the y-axis) for each income decile in the United States, European Union, China and India (source IEA):

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The International Energy Agency (IEA) discussed this further in their 2023 overview titled The world’s top 1% of emitters produce over 1000 times more CO2 than the bottom 1%.

“The richest group often has the largest financial means to adopt energy-efficient and low-emissions solutions that involve high upfront costs. In doing so, they form the initial customer base that can help enable the manufacturing of these technologies to be brought to scale. For example, a large share of electric vehicles were purchased by high-income individuals at first, but as sales increase with models at varied price points, EVs are becoming more ubiquitous.”

The IEA further explored the need for behavior change in their 2021 post Do we need to change our behaviour to reach net zero by 2050?:

“But technology alone is not enough: net zero emissions in 2050 cannot happen without the consent and active support of people. In part, this involves one-off events that are not counted as behavioural changes but involve a mixture of low carbon technologies and people’s engagement, such as buying an electric vehicle (EV) or insulating a loft. However, behavioural changes – meaning adjustments in everyday life that reduce wasteful or excessive energy consumption – are also needed. They are especially important in richer parts of the world where energy intensive lifestyles are the norm. Behavioural changes include cycling or walking instead of driving, turning down heating, and going on holiday nearer to home. In addition, efforts by manufacturers to use materials more efficiently and encourage consumers to recycle can reduce energy use in industry.

Behavioural changes can and do happen. From diet to smoking to throw-away plastic packaging, past experience shows that people’s attitudes and habits are not set in stone.”

Having a higher income allows us to take more actions that reduce our emissions.

Some actions to reduce emissions require an upfront outlay of capital that takes years to recover the cost—like installing solar panels or upgrading insulation. Other choices might carry an upfront cost higher than the expected cost reductions in your monthly bills, like adding a heat pump to your HVAC system.

You might anticipate that people who make more money will then actively drive their emissions lower than people who make less money. People making more money simply have more resources to make these changes, more capital to invest.

For some people, this is the case.

But for the vast majority, this is simply not the case. Instead, people who make more money cause more greenhouse gas emissions through their purchase decisions.

“But I…” My reasons not to change

Talking to people about changing their behavior to lower their emissions, I hear a lot of reasons why people haven’t made—or feel they can’t make—specific changes. Some of these constraints are very real. Others sound like rationalizations I have used myself. They are often justifications constructed to explain our existing behavior when our behavior conflicts with with our values:

• “I worked my entire career to be able to travel more when I retired. I’ll fly on lower emission planes when airlines fly them.”

• “I can’t afford to upgrade the electric plugs in my garage to support an EV.”

• “I really love cheese (or milk, or beef…) and I’ve always eaten it.”

• “My spouse isn’t going to change, and it’s hard to change alone.”

• “My actions really don’t matter if 8 billion other people don’t change.”

• “I think this is a systems issue, and I’m waiting for the system to change.” (see previous post for this one)

Changing my actions is climate action

If you live in the United States and earn more than $20,000 a year, your personal emissions are likely in the top 10% globally.

The paradox is that people with the most resources available to reduce our emissions are, generally, the ones causing the most greenhouse gases.

The entire premise of CO2mmit is asking people to commit to reducing the greenhouse gases they cause. The technology and the behavioral roadmap already exist to significantly reduce our emissions. The remaining question is: will we act?

When we do change our actions and lower our emissions, we cause a real reduction in emissions, a shift in markets enhancing lower emission goods and services, and a shift in social norms regarding what those around us see people in their peer group doing. And we find that we are acting in alignment with our values.

Jim

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Electric Vehicles are affordable.

In December of 2025, car shoppers paid an average of $50,326 for new cars according to Kelley Blue Book. Of the top ten EVs sold last year in the United States, eight have base models in 2026 priced below the average cost of a new internal combustion engine vehicle. This is a significant shift from previous years. For many models, prices dropped after the EV tax credits were removed and manufacturers adjusted prices to assure their vehicles were competitive in the United States.

Data for the top 10 EVs in the US based on units sold in 2025 from caranddriver.com

And the cost to charge an EV is significantly less than (roughly half) the cost to fill-up the tank on an internal gasoline powered car (Forbes and CNET).

EV range is now typically over 300 miles on a charge

The range of an EV on a full charge now matches the range of a typical internal combustion engine vehicle on a full tank of gas. 2026 EV models sold in the United States typically have over a 300 mile range on a full charge.

Charging at home is convenient and easy.

No more stops at a gas station. With an EV you can charge at home. If you own your home, a level 2 charger costs around $1,000 to install and will charge an EV to 80% over a couple hours while you sleep. You can also trickle charge an EV using a standard 120-volt household outlet in your garage (Level 1 charging). Trickle charging adds about 3–5 miles of range per hour, or roughly 30–40 miles overnight, which is suitable for short daily commutes. It is recommended to use a circuit that does not have other active loads to avoid tripping breakers.

The charging station network near freeways is robust and growing.

The network of charging stations has grown. There are now charging stations along freeway routes across the United States for long-distance travel. It does take a bit longer to charge an EV than to fill-up a gas tank while traveling, which balances against the time saved never stopping at a gas station around town. Personally, I take a short walk during the 20-minute recharge stops on long-distance trips - sitting for multiple hours straight has health risks.

EV lithium-ion batteries are capable of lasting over a decade.

The sale of EVs (or battery electric vehicles on the chart below) has increased over the last 6 years. We do not have 20-year old EVs that use today’s technology to gather a robust data set on how long EV batteries last.

With this limitation, the current data suggests 10 to 20 years is a reasonable expectation for the life of an EV battery. There is some drop-off in range as the battery ages, but the car keeps functioning unlike when a timing belt breaks or a head gasket fails in an internal combustion engine. While there are only a limited number of EVs older than 10 years old, and the battery technology has advanced since these cars were produced, they do offer a window into what to expect. Based on data from the research firm Recurrent, “among EVs that are 10 years old or older, only 8.5% have ever had a battery replacement. More than 90% of them are still on their original battery.” (NPR, March 2 2026)

And EVs require less maintenance than internal combustion engine or hybrid vehicles. Tires on an EV may wear out faster due to vehicle weight, but this cost is offset by the lack of oil changes and the lack of wear caused by exploding gasoline in tightly engineered cylinders in an internal combustion engine.

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Is my choice of vehicle important?

The transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States (in 2022 - USEPA). And within the Transportation Sector, light-duty vehicles (cars and pickups most people drive) account for over half of the transportation related greenhouse gas emissions.

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States requires that individual driving habits change. And we have the technology, infrastructure and available automobile models today that enables this change.

And, yes, EVs have lower emissions than internal combustion engines.

It may appear that changing from an internal combustion engine to a battery electric vehicle simply changes the fuel you are using to power the vehicle - gasoline to electricity. But this shift also significantly reduces the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from your travel.

A life cycle assessment is a method to evaluate the impact of a good or service over the entire lifetime of a car (or any good or service) - including production, transportation, sales, use, and disposal or reuse. When we look at the life cycle assessment of EVs, we observe higher emissions during production of the battery in the EV in comparison to the production of an internal combustion car. However, in a short period of time the lower emissions from driving the EV lead to an overall lower emission from the EV. This is true across different mixes of electric generation across the United States. Electric vehicles cause less greenhouse gas emissions.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) provides a tool that compares the life cycle assessment for comparable internal combustion engine vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles, and full battery electric vehicles (EVs). Here is the IEA output for a medium-sized car used for city commuting (e.g. a Hyundai Ionic5 EV or a Honda Accord). Note that within two years the internal combustion engine option creates the most emissions of greenhouse gases (tCO2e or “tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions”).

Ranking our options to reduce our emissions

1. Live without a car

2. Drive an electric vehicle

3. Drive a hybrid ranked by highest fuel efficiency

4. Drive an internal combustion engine vehicle again ranked by fuel efficiency

What to do now?

It is important to understand the cues and the process that impact your actions when you buy a car. Each person is different, so this does take some exploration of your own behavior. Typically, when your existing car hits the end of its useful life (at least partially unexpectedly) or when you land that new job that requires that you buy reliable transportation, you need to have some homework already completed. For me, the cue to buy my next car has been when I unexpectedly have a repair bill on my existing car and the estimate comes in well over the value of the car itself. At that point, I shop and buy over a rather short period of time.

To assure your next car purchase aligns with your values, complete some homework before your cue to buy a new car.

• Ask friends how they like their EV and what they’d recommend; ask friends about any concerns you have

• Test drive a few EVs, either a friend’s or through a dealership

• Explore charging options where you live; if you own a home, examine the cost of upgrading electric infrastructure in your garage.

Currently 52% of Americans are concerned or alarmed about climate change. But only 8% of new car sales in the United States are EVs and another 14% hybrids or plug-in hybrids. Any policy change to shift this ratio will be focused on requiring or coercing people to buy an EV (or a hybrid as an alternative). We can already make the change over to drive an EV today without waiting for policies that require or incentivize this choice.

Buying another new internal combustion engine car impacts our collective emissions trajectory for years to come. A review of 50,000 junked cars in 2023 provided an average lifespan of a vehicle in the US of 16.6 years. So a new internal combustion engine vehicle bought in 2026 in the US will probably burn gasoline through 2042.

Today EVs are affordable, practical, and cleaner than traditional internal combustion engine vehicles. We don’t need to wait for a new law, a new technology or a new incentive. Our actions can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Jim

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Their conclusion? Personal change is nice, but just not that important.

Almost all of the same climate-active friends have made personal behavior changes to reduce their emissions. They are more likely to have installed solar panels, bought an EV or hybrid, or reduced their meat consumption. Some conveniently skip some high-impact changes they don’t want to make—like giving up beef or flying less.

Let’s start this discussion with a point of agreement: We absolutely do need systemic change. We need better laws, regulations, zoning ordinances, and policies.

But this is not an either/or conversation. We must advocate for better policy and reduce our personal emissions. Taking action to reduce our greenhouse gas footprint doesn’t require a new law or a change to the local zoning ordinance. Our purchase decisions are completely in our control. There are real options available to us that emit less. And while some actions require upfront capital, others save money—like eating a vegetarian diet or choosing to avoid flying.

We can not continue waiting

It has been over 40 years since Dr. Carl Sagan testified before Congress in 1985, and 38 years since Dr. James Hansen warned the US Senate in 1988. Scientists have put forward compelling and digestible overviews of the science and the projected impacts. Yet in the United States we have failed to pass a legal framework limiting greenhouse gas emissions. It is not as simple as waiting for Democrats to control the US House, Senate and White House. During the first two years of every Democratic President since the 1980s—the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations—Democrats controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House and there was no legal structure put in place to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Instead Democrat administrations relied on the endangerment finding to use the Clean Air Act to attempt limited regulation of power plants or fuel efficiency standards.

We absolutely need to continue to advocate for better laws and policy, but we should not wait to cut our emissions. If the 52% of Americans who are concerned or alarmed about climate change acted to reduce the emissions our purchases cause, we would make a significant difference. We would shift US markets for goods and services, and fundamentally change the political will in Congress. We don’t need to wait for a federal law or tax rebate.

Who takes actions based on moral choices?

Let’s examine who we expect to act:

1. The government (to pass laws)

2. Corporations (to reduce emissions and sell lower emission products)

3. People (to avoid spending money on choices that cause emissions)

Which of these actors have the agency to make moral choices beyond financial concerns?

Corporations are not moral actors. Corporations shield individual owners from the consequences of the actions of the company - this is the antithesis of establishing a moral actor. Even when corporations commit to green or sustainable goals, they readily drop these commitments when it is beneficial to grow earnings or shareholder value. Take for example GM: as recently as 2024, GM said “GM has committed to electrifying 50% of its fleet by 2030. By 2035, 100% of our automotive fleet, for passenger and light-duty vehicles, will be electric.” But then in 2026 GM announced a $6 billion charge against earnings to reduce its planned EV production. GM’s reversal is sometimes linked to shifting government incentives for EVs, but it seems more logical that the shift is ultimately linked to the lack of growth of EV new car sales in the United States. Ford has a similar trajectory.

We cannot expect corporations to lead; their positions depend on the purchases of their customers and on creating shareholder value (profit). Maximizing shareholder value is not a bad thing, but frequently it does not align with climate goals.

The Government rarely leads. In a democracy, politicians follow the public or the donors to their Political Action Committees (PACs). Relying on the government to make energy more expensive, tell us what to eat, or restrict air travel can create a populist pushback against the “solution” if we are not already taking these actions. (Take Australia as an example.)

You and I Are the Moral Actors

You and I have moral agency. We have the freedom to make choices and act according to our values.

When more people voluntarily act we will reduce emissions, boost markets for low-emissions goods, and change the calculation politicians make when evaluating support for climate requirements. This is not the only change we need - but it is the only action completely in our control. And it is an important wedge in the broad range of emissions reductions we need. A wedge completely in our control, today.

We must stop rationalizing our high-emission choices.

A climate-active friend told me that his flight oversees will take off whether or not he bought a ticket, so his personal choice to fly overseas simply does not matter. But the decrease in commercial aircraft operations during and after the COVID-19 shutdown proves otherwise: when people stopped buying tickets, airlines responded by reducing flights. And as people started buying tickets again, airlines resumed their flights. The following graph covers the response of airlines to the reduced number of tickets sold in response to COVID.

This demand side argument holds across many markets: airline flights, EV car sales, restaurants offering vegetarian menu options. We, the consumers, have more agency than we understand.

“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)

While we advocate for better policy, it is essential that we also focus attention on climate mitigation in our direct control - reducing the emissions caused by our actions.

Jim

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While this sounds like something you do - an action you take - it is more of an aspiration. It is a statement describing a desired outcome. The specific actions you take to get there are much more detailed and define specific actions that fit into your day.

Exactly how do we stop eating hamburgers, and eat less pulled pork, and eat more vegetarian options? This begins the conversation of how to convert aspirations into actions - and how to convert our habits into climate actions.

For a few years in a row I committed to my doctor to switch to a “Mediterranean Diet” as my cholesterol levels were at the upper end of the target range. I would change for a meal, or a day, but as a week or a month went by and I was surrounded by the same cues I had before, I reverted mostly back to my previous diet. Changing a deeply ingrained habitual behavior, such as what I eat for lunch and dinner or where I get a meal out is a challenge. And it is virtually impossible if I do not change the cues that trigger my food choices.

Behavior change is not as simple as reading a post I agree with and then my behavior changes.

I have years or decades of training on my current behaviors. Simply committing to reduce my emissions won’t get me to stop eating two sticks of cheese a week, stop me from ordering a burger or chicken sandwich the next time I’m at a fast-food restaurant, or stop me from ordering chorizo on my huevos rancheros at my favorite diner. Not if these behaviors were actions I had repeated for the last decade.

To change my diet, I need to understand my current habits related to my diet — the actions I do with minimal thought as if automatic. Most of the time, these habits are healthy — they save me time and mental energy. If I had to actually think through every choice I make in a day, I’d be frozen in indecision: evaluation paralysis. The goal is not to eliminate our habits, but to be aware of them and find ways to adjust the habitual behavior we want to change.

In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear coherently summarizes decades of work on our habit loops.

When a cue happens in our environment, we develop a craving. The craving leads us to act or respond with a behavior or response that gains some type of reward. And the reward reinforces the link between the cue and the craving which starts the cycle again the next time we are confronted with the cue.

For me, the cravings often go unnoticed. When I see my phone sitting on a table, I don’t consciously feel a craving - I just pick it up, check the weather, then the news, maybe a new text message and subsequently move on to skimming emails and then checking how my latest Substack post is being received…. An entire sequence that is triggered by seeing my phone (or maybe cued by finishing a task and thinking “I want a quick break”). A perfect example of cue, craving, response, reward.

Similarly, the reward can be below my level of consciousness. It is not a reward like a payment - it is a psychological reward. I might get to relax, or just tune out for a few minutes. I give myself a mental break even if I might, on a conscious level, understand that a short walk is a much better way to take a break than checking Google News (again).

Cues that impact what we eat

We constantly receive a myriad of cues related to eating, and these help us make our way through the broad suite of options available to us.

Seeing that it’s 11:55 AM is a cue for lunch; simply walking by my kitchen can be a cue to grab a snack; driving by the Dunkin Donuts on the corner can be a cue for desiring a cup of coffee (and maybe a donut while I am there).

One strategy for eating no beef and less meat is in managing our cues. James Clear recommends that we “reduce exposure. Remove the cues of your bad habits from your environment.” To eat no beef and less meat, this might include any or all of the following “actions”:

• Have no beef and less meat in your refrigerator. Begin by not buying beef and buying less meat at the grocery store. At the same time, buy alternatives you like - for me that’s spicy jalapeño hummus & avocado as a base for lunch sandwiches.

• Don’t walk into a restaurant where you always get a hamburger. Instead, take a minute and list out a suite of local restaurants you will eat at, and another list of restaurants that do not support the diet you are trying to eat. Then suggest a restaurant the next time you are going out with friends - or suggest an alternative when they pick a place that just serves steaks or burgers. The menu and ordering process at a steak house is a clear cue for a craving for a good cut of beef. Simply not walking into the steak house, or not entering a drive-through for your favorite fast-food burger stop is a meaningful strategy. And it takes having alternatives.

• When eating out, pick what you want to eat from the on-line menu before entering the restaurant so that ordering is less influenced by the picture of the dishes the restaurant puts in their menu, the smells of the food or the conversation at the table.

• Have desirable alternate food items in your refrigerator and food pantry. Create a new cue that supports the diet you choose.

Another path is to work on the “reward” - make sure that eating vegetarian meals is enjoyable and take a moment to appreciate the choice you have made - even if this feels mechanical at times. When we focus on a positive reward for an action we want to repeat, we reinforce the “desire” the next time we are exposed to the cues that were present.

• Get a meatless meal with friends at a restaurant that offers good vegetarian meals.

• Anticipate ordering your favorite vegetarian meal - like Pad Thai with vegetables or vegetable fajitas.

• Enjoy a dairy free treat like So Delicious cashew-based ice cream.

• After you cook a new vegetarian meal, take a minute to linger on how good it tasted even if it was as simple as Rotel, black beans and rice.

Lingering on your own satisfaction can help build a cue to cook that meal again. (“Make it satisfying” in Atomic Habits.)

And make it easy to eat vegetarian (and eat no beef) with a few simple steps:

• Buy a vegetarian cookbook - one that looks like you’d cook the meals, not one where each recipe sounds like it will take a full day to cook. And list out the ingredients for a meal on your shopping list. Power Plates by Gena Hamshaw helped me learn to be a better vegetarian cook.

• Pre-plan your meatless meals and make a grocery list to assure you buy what you need while in the store.

• Control what you have in your kitchen. Just having almond milk in the refrigerator and no cow’s milk makes it almost a certainty that you’ll at least try the almond milk in your coffee - if, as I do, drink coffee with creamer.

• Create a list of vegetarian restaurants near you to try. Reduce the barrier to finding the restaurant to eat at when you are hungry and in a hurry. Find and try all of the Indian and Thai restaurants in your area - explore the different dishes. For a quick meal, I enjoy build-your-own burrito places like Chipotle or Moe’s. Walking into an appropriate restaurant is the most certain way to make sure there are multiple meatless options available that taste great.

• Load the Happy Cow app on your phone so you can find vegetarian friendly restaurants when on the road (or at home).

Not practicing is practicing

Don’t try to change everything at once.

And accept that you will regress on occasion. Examine the cues leading up to biting into that hamburger. By examining what cues triggered the behaviors you are trying to avoid can help you find ways to minimize or eliminate those cues.

“Habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition. The more you repeat an activity, the more the structure of your brain changes to become efficient at that activity. Neuroscientists call this long-term potentiation, which refers to the strengthening of connections between neurons in the brain based on recent patterns of activity. With each repetition, cell-to-cell signaling improves and the neural connections tighten...

“Each time you repeat an action, you are activating a particular neural circuit associated with that habit. This means that simply putting in your reps is one of the most critical steps you can take to encoding a new habit.”

James Clear. 2018. Atomic Habits. Chapter 11; p143-144

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Suggestions for this week

Take time to break down the habits and routines that impact your diet - especially those that appear to get in the way of eating no beef and less meat.

Take the time to explore Atomic Habits by James Clear as if it were a climate change book - you may find it valuable for both how you address climate change and how you address other areas in your life.

Now go explore what it means to hold an aspiration to eat no beef and less meat.

Jim

This blog will explore personal actions that make a tangible difference in addressing climate change. And this week the focus is on a choice we make every day: what we eat. The good news is that one of the most immediate and impactful steps we can take is also simple, cost-effective, and comes with personal health benefits.

This isn’t about total sacrifice; it’s about smart substitution and powerful change. There are very few individual actions that immediately cut a half-ton or more of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emissions each year. Eating no beef and less meat is one of those changes. For me, this shift has saved money and aligned with my doctor’s suggestion to reduce my cholesterol intake. It’s a triple-win: planet, wallet, and health. And honestly, I enjoy the new variety of foods I eat.

Have you ever calculated the emissions that your dietary choices cause? HERE is a spreadsheet to calculate the annual emissions (tons CO2e/year) from your diet with instructions on the first tab. In this spreadsheet you account for your daily calorie intake to improve accuracy. Many other tools I have seen calculate dietary emissions without letting you understand the total calories of your choices - with the other tools it is impossible to tell if you are actually matching your food intake, and it is impossible to accurately compare different diets with the same caloric intake.

Why less meat?

Our appetite for meat, particularly in the West, raises our greenhouse gas emissions. The average American consumes about 220 pounds of meat annually, typically split as roughly ¼ beef, ¼ pork, and ½ poultry. This habit of centering every meal around a meat protein contributes to our emissions.

In general, a serving of meat – pork, chicken, beef, fish — causes more greenhouse gas emissions than a serving of high-protein vegetarian options like nuts, seeds, beans or lentils. Reducing meat intake significantly reduces emissions. The goal is not to punish ourselves for an occasional pulled pork or chicken sandwich, but to transition toward sustainable habits and meals. Simply cutting 90% of the meat out of your diet provides an enormous reduction in emissions. Substituting dairy products with alternate products like almond milk or cashew ice cream further reduces emissions. The point is not total, immediate perfection, but intentional, consistent change. By making this shift, we reduce our contribution to the global issue and signal to the food system that demand is shifting.

Why no beef?

While eating less meat is important, eliminating beef is paramount.

Cows are biologically different from pigs, chickens or fish. Cows (and sheep) are ruminants and have a more complex stomach with a rumen, where they pre-digest food. When cows swallow grasses and other foods we can not eat, specialized bacteria begin breaking the food down, creating methane as a waste product. They belch the methane back out into the air. This methane is a much more potent gas than carbon dioxide.

Ruminants include deer and other animals living naturally in many areas of the world. The problem with cattle is one of scale. We are currently raising a massive number of cattle to supply grocery stores and fast-food chains with the immense quantities of beef and dairy we purchase. Today, there are an estimated 1.57 billion head of cattle globally, while there are under 100 million deer worldwide. This difference in scale, driven by consumer demand, is why beef production is a major climate issue.

The immediate impact of choosing “no beef” is dramatic. When you stop eating beef - even if you simply substitute fish, chicken and pork in for the beef - you can cut over a half a ton of CO2e from your annual emissions of greenhouse gases.

To illustrate the impact, I estimated the annual CO2e emissions from four different diets all consuming 2,400 calories per day.

• Standard American: A diet with typical meat consumption of 220 pounds per day and 1/4 of that being beef causes an annual emission of 2.13 tons CO2e/year.

• High Beef: This same diet with 3/4 of the meat being consumed as beef causes an annual emission of 3.12 tons CO2e/year - a full ton per year higher.

• No Beef: This same diet again except all of the meat is consumed as chicken, pork, fish causes 1.42 tons CO2e/year — even with the exact same amount of meat – 220 pounds of meat consumed per year.

• Vegetarian: And if the calories from meat are shifted over to nuts, beans and lentils for a vegetarian diet with the same caloric intake, the emissions drop to 1.03 tons CO2e/year.

The jump in emissions between the Standard American Diet and the High Beef Diet (a full ton of CO2e) is startling and highlights the disproportionate impact of eating beef. Eliminating beef reduces emissions more than removing the rest of the meat (fish, chicken, pork) from your diet. But the additional shift removing (or significantly reducing) the remaining meats & dairy is also important.

An action for this week

Eat no beef and less meat.

For those of us concerned about climate change, the need to act is clear. Global emissions are the result of a series of choices by billions of people. We can choose to act differently and reduce the emissions we cause. It doesn’t take new laws or government mandates to change our behavior, but it absolutely does require intentional action on our part.

Changing our diet takes effort, discipline and a solid commitment. Next week we’ll use our diet to explore how to change behaviors. I can personally attest to multiple times when I tried to adjust my diet and within a few weeks found myself following my original patterns and behaviors instead of the new diet. Understanding some behavioral psychology will help us change and keep our new diet (and return to it when we falter).

If you are a quantitative thinker, a good first step is to understand your current diet. Use the spreadsheet presented earlier to calculate the emissions from your diet.

And if you are not into measurement and quantification - the rule of thumb is easy: Eat less meat and no beef. (And, yes, this extends into eliminating or significantly reducing dairy also.)

Jim

Every time you spend money, you’re casting a vote for the kind of world you want.

Anna Lappé

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Want more information on emissions and diet?

If you want to find estimates of the emissions caused by specific food choices, a good source is the database of Food Impacts on the Environment for Linking to Diets (FIELD) compiled by food type, and assigned to the food commodities in the Food Commodity Intake Database (FCID) available at https://css.umich.edu/page/datafield.

A good metadata study on source of emissions for food can be found in Poore, J. and T. Nemecek. 2018. “Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science. 1 June 2018 Vol 360, issue 6392; pp 987-992. The paper is behind paywall at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216, and a pre publication PDF not behind a paywall is available at https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Accepted%20Manuscript.pdf

Household consumption directly and indirectly accounts for 70% of global emissions. Our daily decisions—what we buy, how we travel, what we eat, and how we heat and cool our homes—are levers with direct power to create change.

To better understand these emissions, the University of Michigan breaks down the carbon footprint of a typical US household into five primary categories:

1. Transportation: Emissions from our vehicles and other travel.

2. Home: Emissions from heating, cooling, and electricity use.

3. Goods: Emissions associated with the production and disposal of physical items we purchase.

4. Services: Emissions caused by services we use — from healthcare to finance to education.

5. Food: Emissions from our diet — from farm to table.

I recommend estimating your own carbon footprint at a household level. A good tool for your use is the University of California, Berkeley Cool Climate calculator. For air travel, a specialized tool from MyClimate is appropriate. I will be presenting a custom application to estimate the emissions from your diet when we discuss food choices in the next post.

My Household Emissions

Over the last eight years, my wife Celeste and I have worked to cut our own emissions. For the sake of simplicity and method limitations, I do not include the goods and services we use beyond our diet, our car manufacture (life cycle), and our home construction. I have calculated our emissions as accurately as I can for six of those eight years. The overall picture shows a reduction from 2018 on the right to 2025 on the left.

Our journey demonstrates that personal actions can cause real, measurable reductions. Here are some of the specific actions we’ve taken:

• Solar Panel Installation (2020): This required a significant upfront capital investment and drastically reduced the emissions from our electricity use. The panels generate clean power, and the monthly savings provided a payback period of about 11 years, making it a financial win also.

• Dietary Shift (2020 & 2025): We shifted to a mostly vegetarian diet in 2020 and eliminated most of the remaining meat and dairy in 2025— and we no longer consume any beef. This change requires a commitment but is less expensive than our previous eating habits, providing a substantial cut in our food-related carbon footprint with a modest reduction in cost.

• Electric Vehicle (EV) Purchase (2020): Buying an EV meant a cleaner choice for our transportation. We now use it as our primary car and for longer road trips, significantly reducing the gasoline we burn.

• Home Envelope Improvements (2024-2025): We improved the insulation in our home’s knee walls and crawl space. Addressing air leaks and poorly insulated areas is a foundational, yet often overlooked, step that immediately makes our home more energy efficient and cheaper to heat and cool — reducing our emission.

• Heat Pump HVAC System (fall 2025): We installed a dual fuel heat-pump with natural gas as backup for the coldest days. Before this we relied on a furnace burning natural gas with two resistance space heaters for two rooms that had poor insulation. With the insulation upgrades, we also eliminated using the two resistance space heaters for the colder rooms since resistance heating is extremely inefficient. Installing a heat pump HVAC system required more capital than simply replacing our old HVAC system in-kind, and I do not anticipate that the reduction in our natural gas bill will pay off the additional cost.

Each of these steps required planning, a commitment to make a different choice, and for one change a financial commitment to act according to our values even when it cost more. There is no single, one-size-fits-all recommendation here. Some changes save money, some changes cost more. Each change depends on your current living situation and practices. Every decision is personal, requiring personal change and resources.

In the following weeks, I’ll initially focus in on four areas where are actions are clearly in our control and significantly impact our emissions:

• Diet

• Car travel

• Air travel

• Home Energy Use

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Let’s discuss in the comments.

• Have you calculated your household or personal greenhouse gas emissions? If you have, what was your greatest insight from the results?

• What actions have you taken to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions? Did they cost more or less? What were your largest challenges to taking the action?

I hope you’ll continue with this dialogue as we dig into our own personal choices and the emissions we cause—and which actions can meaningfully reduce our emissions.

Jim

“Efforts by households to reduce pollution and waste, and to consume with prudence, are creating a new culture. The mere fact that personal, family and community habits are changing is contributing to greater concern about the unfulfilled responsibilities of the political sectors and indignation at the lack of interest shown by the powerful. Let us realize, then, that even though this does not immediately produce a notable effect from the quantitative standpoint, we are helping to bring about large processes of transformation rising from deep within society.”

Pope Francis. 2023. Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum.

My path to reduce my own carbon footprint spans years – across my education, my career, and my post-career. After getting a Masters of Science in environmental geochemistry, I spent 29 years investigating and cleaning up contamination from past industrial operations. In almost all of these cleanup projects, the corporations I counseled had stopped discharging waste to the environment years earlier and my involvement was determining where the contaminants had gotten to and how to clean them up. These contaminants included previously common industrial cleaners like trichloroethene (TCE), chlorinated industrial products and pesticide intermediaries, chlorinated dioxins and furans as well as petroleum products and metals. We now understand that these chemicals are toxic to humans and negatively impact wildlife. And we started managing these chemicals more carefully decades ago after new laws were signed into law.

Climate change is fundamentally a different problem.

Both the industrial cleanup operations and climate change are caused by the discharge of waste into the environment. The two main waste products that cause climate change are emissions into the atmosphere of

• carbon dioxide (CO₂) from burning fossil fuels like gasoline, jet fuel, natural gas and coal and

• methane (CH₄) from natural gas leaks, landfill vents, and cow burps.

Yet even now, decades after understanding the risk from climate change, the United States continues to discharge both carbon dioxide and methane at even greater rates. We did not stop the discharge, we increased it. And, unlike the industrial spills I worked on, emissions of carbon dioxide and methane are clearly linked to our household purchase decisions – my decisions and your decisions.

So thirteen years ago, after cleaning up contaminated groundwater, soils and sediments for three decades, I changed my focus to attempt to have an impact on our greenhouse gas emissions. I have not been very successful. Total US emissions have not decreased, and global emissions continue to rise. When I started, I did not understand the critical importance of my own actions - to reduce emissions, send a market signal and set social norms for acceptable behavior. I will continue to advocate for improved laws and regulations that nudge or require businesses to lower the emissions from their operations and require different actions by you and me. But I have realized that climate change is also a problem of individual will – a problem caused by the decisions that you and I make. A critical step is to understand that each of us can change our behavior now, without any new law. And it is hard to pass laws to demand behaviors we are not willing to change on our own.

Household purchase decisions provide the market demand for 70% of greenhouse gas emissions. Changing our purchase decisions can change our emissions. Our choices matter, and our current collective choices are not aligned with the reality of the issue we face in climate change.

Subscribe to this blog (at no cost) to join a dialogue exploring how our actions can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Personal action will not replace the need for good laws and regulations. But one lesson I’ve learned is that getting laws passed through Congress can take lifetimes - time we do not have to reduce emissions. After a decade exploring better laws and regulations, and seeing some laws passed and then weakened, I am convinced that those of us who are concerned about climate change need to both continue pushing for good laws while simultaneously controlling the one area fully in our control - our own actions.

According to Yale and George Mason University, over half of the U.S. population is alarmed or concerned about climate change, yet our collective actions don’t reflect this understanding. Assuming that our individual choices don’t matter, or that governments and corporations must act first ignores our own agency and the power of individual actions.

Switching to a diet that eliminates beef and reduces other meats can cut over 1 ton of CO₂e per year from an individual’s emissions—a massive, meaningful reduction. Yet while 54% of Americans are alarmed or concerned about climate change, only 5% of Americans identify as vegetarian or vegan. Similarly, personal transportation is a major contributor to our carbon footprints, but the sales of electric vehicles (EVs) have only reached 8% of new car sales with hybrid vehicles representing another 10% to 12%. The gap between our belief about climate change and our actions is significant.

This is an invitation to explore our agency.

This blog will be a dialogue to address the root causes of climate change by exploring one question: How can we meaningfully cut the emissions we cause through our energy use and our purchases? How can we work with the only one area we fully control - our own actions? And why is this so important beyond the emissions I reduce?

What to Expect From This Dialogue

• Focus on Impactful Action: The average U.S. household has a carbon footprint of around 48 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO₂e) per year. Future posts will not overwhelm you with a long list of minor adjustments. Instead, they will focus on a handful of high-impact areas where our actions can cut fractions of or whole tons of CO₂e per year —the changes that truly matter and that are required to lower the US per capita emissions.

• Real-World Insights: The blog will talk with friends and readers who have already taken these steps. You will learn what they’ve learned, how the transition went for them, and how they overcame obstacles.

• A Deep Dive into the ‘Why’: Along the way, I’ll dive into the details—including numbers, graphs, and the occasional bit of chemistry—to understand the science behind our choices. For example, early on we’ll explore why shifting your diet is so impactful, and the importance of the difference between the digestive systems in cows as compared to pigs or chickens.

• Behavior Change: Changing our behavior takes effort. Our dialogue will cover what it takes to form new habits and successfully integrate these intentional changes into your daily routines. I will include concrete suggestions to help make these behavior changes stick and feel comfortable.

• Secondary Outcomes: Aside from simply reducing my emissions, our individual actions also influence markets for lower emissions options and also shift social norms that are linked to other people’s actions.

It is time to align our actions with our beliefs and reclaim our power to effect change.

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Engage in the dialogue in the comments as we explore how to act consistent with our values and our concern about climate change.

Jim Tolbert

Good people will do what they find honorable to do, even if it requires hard work; they’ll do it even if it causes them injury; they’ll do it even if it will bring danger. Again, they won’t do what they find base, even if it brings wealth, pleasure, or power. Nothing will deter them from what is honorable, and nothing will lure them into what is base.

Seneca, Moral Letters. 76.18