This week, residents of Madison are experiencing the continuation of an unseasonably warm fall. The leaves have changed, and some students have ventured out in sweaters while others are still comfortable making their way around campus in shorts and Boston clogs. As October begins, it’s hard to think about bundling up any time soon — it’s even hard to accept summer has ended.
On the other side of the country, Florida residents are bracing for the second devastating hurricane in under two weeks. There, it’s hard to accept this might be the new normal.
What does this have to do with us in Madison? As individuals here and across the country, we’re not doing nearly enough to stop the climate crisis that’s causing more intense natural disasters.
In the last two weeks, the death toll for Hurricane Helene has risen to 227. Small towns in North Carolina, unprepared for flood waters, have been swept away. Critical infrastructure like Tennessee and North Carolina’s I-40 have failed.
This week, students at the University of Tampa are preoccupied with preparing for mandatory evacuations while hospitals in South Florida reinforce flood barriers to protect patients unable to evacuate. Students at UW-Madison are preoccupied with studying for their first round of midterm exams. Students at UW-Madison watch safely from a distance, if they choose to watch at all.
For those with the privilege to opt out of dealing with Helene and Milton, it’s tempting to think that while tragic, these severe weather events are nothing out of the ordinary. While the feeling of safety in this thought might be tempting, don’t lie to yourself.
While current climate change research doesn’t necessarily suggest an increase in annually recorded hurricanes, those that have made landfall have become more powerful.
In the last year, ocean temperatures have risen to record-breaking levels globally, likely caused by a combination of man-made greenhouse gas emissions and naturally occurring weather patterns like El Niño. In the Gulf of Mexico, warmer ocean water serves as fuel for tropical storms like Helene and Milton, allowing them to develop faster and sustain themselves for longer. Subsequently, these storms are likely to deal even more damage with little advance warning, giving those in their path less time to prepare.
But, even if we agree tropical storms are getting worse and climate change is to blame, what can “we” do about it? The answer is rather complicated, but the solution is simple: you better do something, and when you’re done, do more.
When you start to think about it, the climate crisis can be horribly overwhelming. Around ⅘ of global carbon emissions from 2016 to 2022 are the result of actions by a handful of fossil fuel and cement companies. In turn, popular narratives about climate change lose their individual focus, suggesting small-scale actions like reducing meat consumption, avoiding single-use plastics and taking public transportation when possible are futile.
If you’ve taken a political science or philosophy course, this dilemma should sound familiar. If not, you should probably start going to lecture — the climate crisis is a textbook example of a collective action problem.
Collective action problems arise in situations where where multiple people have a common goal or responsibility, ranging from things as simple as roommates keeping an apartment clean to the climate crisis.
To illustrate this point, let’s think of the earth as an apartment with five roommates, all with the common goal of keeping the place tidy, or at least liveable. Some of the roommates never clean up after themselves, and with so many chores to do, the others are starting to feel pretty powerless.
Washing one set of dishes won’t clean “the apartment.” Doing one load of laundry won’t get their security deposit back. One person switching from plastic to paper straws won’t stop hurricanes from forming. One person cutting out meat and dairy products won't make flood waters recede.
No single chore can clean “the apartment” in the same way no one person can solve the climate crisis. But making the choice to ignore the dishes piling up outside of your bedroom door, or turning a blind eye to worsening weather conditions outside of your zip code actively contributes to the problem.
When you think of the climate crisis in the context of individual action alone, you’re helpless to make change. But, that feeling of helplessness is a bad reason to give up.
Change can only be made through the sum of our individual environmentally conscious choices. You need to do more, so we do more. When we do more, together, change is possible. So, start small, do more, and don’t stop — we’re counting on you.
Blake Martin is a senior studying English & Political Science. Do you agree that as individuals we aren't doing enough to stop the climate crisis? Send all comments to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
Blake Martin is the opinions editor for The Daily Cardinal.
