While many recommendations for climate lifestyle change focus on your own consumption and environment, there is one thing that these guides often miss: systems change. Climate action requires better policies, technological advancements, and more funding from governments and companies.

This is why we primarily recommend lifestyle changes that can reduce carbon emissions widely, rather than just your personal emissions. Think, for example, donating to high-impact charities and contributing your time and skills to the climate problem.

Donate to high-impact charities

Some climate charities are doing a phenomenal job at creating systems change by advocating for policy change, accelerating research, and pushing for more funding. Unsurprisingly, supporting the work of these charities is one of the easiest and most impactful ways you can contribute to climate action. While we admit that it’s hard to precisely compare the impacts of different actions, research by Founders Pledge suggests that donating just about $80 per month to high-impact climate charities dwarfs all other forms of lifestyle changes.

The intuition behind this isn’t surprising: supporting groups that are pushing for ambitious and effective climate action can lead to emissions reductions in the entire world—while changes to your own consumption habits are limited to your personal carbon footprint.

Your best bet is to focus on climate charities that have been rigorously vetted by independent charity evaluators such as Giving Green and Founders Pledge. We make picking a climate charity easy on our page about the most cost-effective climate charities.

Further reading:

• How your donations can support the world's most effective climate charities (on this website)

• Want to fight climate change effectively? Here’s where to donate your money. (on Vox)

• How to donate effectively for climate action (on Effektiv Spenden)

  
  

Contribute your time

Your time can be a valuable asset to contribute to the climate problem. While we’ve already written about pivoting your career to high-impact climate work (a recommended read), you can also contribute your time and skills through volunteering, advocacy, and campaigning. Just like donating, this lifestyle change can yield much larger emissions reductions because you can affect the emissions of your entire community, your country, or even the world. 

As a volunteer, you can help organisations working on important climate problems using your own skills and knowledge. Consider reaching out to high-impact climate organisations whether you can help with, for example, research, communications, or any other tasks.

As a climate advocate, you can help other people engage in effective climate action by inspiring them to donate or contribute their time. You can talk about effective giving with your friends and family, or help people in your professional network pivot to high-impact climate roles. You can also mobilize people to reach a critical mass on an important issue that is being overlooked by society or government.

You can also advocate for better government policies by engaging with your own representatives, or by responding to public consultations for upcoming policies.

Further reading:

• Social Change Lab studies how people-powered social movements achieve impact, which can help you become an effective activist.

• The Global Policy Research Group organises collaborative responses to public consultations in Europe

• Find high-impact internships and volunteering opportunities on the EA Opportunities Board (this link filters by ‘Climate change’)

• Our article on career advice might be helpful

• Sign up for the Effective Environmentalism Talent Directory to be approached for opportunities

• An article by Giving What We Can about how to talk to others about effective altruism and donating to charity

Your own emissions

We think that making changes to your own emissions (your carbon footprint) is not the most important lifestyle change that you can take. This is because—at best—the biggest difference that you’ll achieve is as if you never would have existed at all. Not only does your carbon footprint ignore that climate action requires better policies, markets, and technologies, it’s also just simply unambitious. (Did you know that the term ‘carbon footprint’ was invented by the fossil fuel industry to shift responsibility from the big polluters to individuals?)

Nonetheless, we list some good bets for reducing your personal emissions, because:

1. You might be motivated to reduce your own emissions regardless. And that’s still a good idea: reducing your own emissions doesn’t need to come at the expense of larger systemic changes.

2. It helps build a critical mass: it’s easier for other people to drive less, use clean energy, or eat less meat if other people do so too.

3. It helps build your credibility as a climate advocate.

Which actions matter most will depend on where you live and what your current lifestyle is. But for an average person in the Global North, where emissions per person are highest, the actions with the biggest impact are likely:

• Live without a car. Take a bike, walk, or use public transport to go to work, to school, or to the store. (That is assuming that your city is safe to walk or bike in.)

• Avoid flying when possible. Take the train, bus, or carpool to further destinations. (Or just schedule a video call.)

• Buy green energy for your house. 

• Eat a plant-based (or plant-rich) diet. Animal products cause much more environmental impact than plant-based foods.

Actions that we don’t recommend

• Offsetting your carbon footprint. Many carbon offsets are worthless: they can’t credibly claim that they actually reduce or avoid emissions. Forest-related carbon offsets are also associated with human rights abuses, land-grabbing, and armed conflict. Offsets also don’t contribute to systems change, such as better policies, that we need to tackle climate change. Instead, we recommend donating to high-impact charities. Not to offset your emissions, but to halt climate change altogether. That’s a better use of your money than offsets.

• Buying local food. Contrary to popular belief, transport makes up only a very small share of food-related carbon emissions. It’s much more important to think about what we eat than where it comes from. (We recommend eating less or no meat and fish as the most important diet change.)

• Eating more chicken. While replacing beef with chicken will reduce the emissions from your diet, it’s still not a good idea. Because chickens are smaller than cows, eating more chickens will result in much more animals being farmed, which leads to more animal suffering. It’s better to reduce your meat consumption altogether.

• Paper straws. This goes without saying, and a picture says more than a thousand words.

Conclusion

The most important lifestyle changes to tackle climate change are ones that reach beyond your own carbon emissions. Donate to high-impact charities and contribute your time to make progress. You can reduce your personal emissions by driving and flying less, using green energy, and eating more plant-based diets.

We’re grateful to Jessie Barker and Emily Thai for contributions to this article.