The Ethics of Your Fruitless Actions on Climate Change

Why Do Genuinely Fruitless Action?

About the Author

Bryan Frances is the world’s only intellectual wisdom coach. He’s a former professor of philosophy & logic, doing research & teaching at universities in the US, UK, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. He teaches you how to become the wisest thinker in the room—which is different from being the most knowledgeable or having the highest IQ. Contact for a free session.

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1: Scientific Facts

Nothing you do will have any effect on climate change. Your effect will be infinitesimal at best.

“But every little bit helps!”

No, it doesn’t. What you do has no effect on the climate or weather, long-term or short-term. It’s just math, folks.

“We all can make a difference!”

No again. You can die tomorrow, thereby keeping your future carbon footprint pretty small. Alternatively, you can take international flights in your private jet every couple weeks and ride around the oceans in your enormous yachts. The carbon difference in those two lives won’t make even a slight difference to climate change.

If you know anything about science, you know that all that’s true. Reducing your carbon footprint is like spitting on raging forest fire. It’s fruitless when judged by its consequences for climate change.

2: Bad Objections

When I lived in the Caribbean a year ago, I occasionally got together with some others to listen to what we called lightning talks, which were five-minute lectures we presented to each other, just for fun (“lightning”: because they were so brief). One participant was climate scientist, who talked about her research in Puerto Rico. During her talk, she mindlessly repeated some of the platitudes quoted in the previous section. In the Q&A I pointed out that none of the actions of any of us in that room would have any effect on climate change. At first she (and everyone else) disagreed with me, which showed how her politics was warping her scientific knowledge. I repeated my point, saying that it was a mathematical one. Eventually she stopped with the silly platitudes, shifted gears to approach the issue intelligently, and almost immediately admitted that I was right.

For fuck sake, of course I was right. I was NOT making any momentous claim. This wasn’t some genius insight on my part. Total global carbon output was about 38 billion metric tons in 2024. The average US citizen had very roughly about 13 tons. So, you produced about 1/3,000,000,000 of the global output. If your output was a colossal 1000 times that, it would be a “massive” 1/3,000,000. Come on.

Another person in the Q&A at the lightning talk objected to me by saying, in a loud voice,

“So you’re saying we should just do whatever the hell we want??”

I replied that I’m not saying that at all. I went on to (try to) explain that the ethical question,

• Do I have any moral obligation to do anything about climate change? If so, what?

is separate from the scientific question,

• Will anything I do have anything other than an infinitesimal influence on climate change?

The answer to the latter question is perfectly obvious.

“But through my actions I can influence others!”

So? How many people are you going to influence? Suppose you convince 100 people to cut their carbon footprints by 50% for the rest of their lives. Congratulations; I’m sure it took a lot of work to not only get people to listen to you but actually do something significant in their lives. Even so, you’ve done fuck all about climate change. Just do the math.

3: Ways You Actually Can Make a Difference

If you’re a member of the few people who effectively rule the US, Russia, India, China, or Japan, then yes: you can make a difference to climate change that’s not infinitesimal. On my view, all those leaders should pretty much rot in hell, precisely because they have been educated on the issue, they have real power on the issue but they don’t do nearly enough.

Even if you’re not a member of those groups, you still could make a difference. For instance, you could manufacture a deadly virus and use it to kill a hundred million or so people. That would make a difference. Or you could start a nuclear war. Or you could invent something wildly better, when it comes to combating climate change, than anything that the many thousands of scientists and engineers have come up with.

Those people aren’t reading this post.

4: Global Poverty vs. Climate Change

Global poverty is wildly different from climate change. They’re both colossal issues, of course. But you can make a real difference to poverty: you can support some single family, giving them an amazingly better life. Sure, you’re making only an infinitesimal difference to the global problem. But you’re making a huge difference to that family. That’s part of the reason I got rid of most of my possessions a couple years ago. Unlike most people who love to talk and write about ethics, which leads to next to nothing except more chatter, I actually did something significant that was difficult. Talk is so cheap when it comes to moral action. I’m frequently amazed at how so many intellectuals talk and write endlessly about our large moral duties to help others who are destitute and yet they live in really nice houses, have two cars, send their kids to expensive schools, and so on.

In contrast, by radically reducing your carbon footprint, you don’t do anything for anyone. Literally no individual person’s climate or weather will change in the slightest. Combating climate change is wildly different from combating poverty in that particular—and important—respect.

So, what’s the point of doing anything about climate change, provided you’re not amongst the leaders of the US, India, China, Russia, or Japan—or have similar power? More generally:

• When there’s a huge moral problem, you’re acutely aware of it, but you know there’s nothing you can do that will have any effect on it, do you have any moral obligation to do anything about it?

That’s a problem I definitely don’t know how to respond to. I’m not an expert in ethics (and no, this isn’t false modesty). So, I’ll make just a few probably simple-minded comments.

5: Express Yourself Morally

“Look, I just have to express myself, okay? Climate catastrophe is going to happen and I just have to express how insane this is”.

That’s perfectly fine. I completely agree. But I don’t pretend that it will have any effect on climate change. Also, I take it that you aren’t saying, at least in that remark, that you have a moral obligation to express yourself. All you’re saying is that you have a psychological need to do so. I have that need too.

6: One’s Moral Status

“If I just proceed as usual, not doing a damn thing about climate change, then I’m at fault, morally. That’s bad. If I do something about climate change, then I’m not at fault, morally. So that’s a big difference”.

First, you’re assuming you’re morally at fault if you don’t do anything about climate change. Given what we’ve already covered, I’m not sure that that’s true. We have moral obligations, sure, but it’s not clear we have them with regard to climate change. It’s not clear to me anyway.

But let’s suppose your assumption is true. Unless I miss my guess, all it says is that whether you act on climate change makes a difference to your moral life alone, not to the climate or weather. You’re still having no impact on your issue, climate change. Well, should we give two shits about whether you have a clean moral status, given that your actions are doing fuck all about the issue in question?

“You’ve been implicitly assuming some consequentialist or utilitarian view of morality”.

No, I haven’t. I have said the following primary things:

1. Your actions won’t have any effect on climate change, one way or the other.

2. Even though that’s true, it doesn’t mean, at least not obviously, that you don’t have any moral obligations to do something about climate change. The scientific fact’s moral consequences aren’t obvious.

3. If you are morally at fault for not doing anything about climate change, that means you’re morally at fault for not doing something about an issue that you can’t do anything about. Even if consequentialism is false, that’s at least a little weird, right?

“But what if everyone did nothing about climate change?”

I’m certainly not saying no one should do anything about climate change!

“Okay, but you’re at least vaguely suggesting, perhaps indirectly, that those of us not in positions of power with respect to climate change have no moral obligation to do anything about it. But if all of us powerless people did nothing, then the people with power wouldn’t feel pressure to do anything. That would be a disaster”.

I hate the “What if everyone did that?” move. I’ve never understood its grip on people, such as Kant with his universalizability stuff. I won’t say anything about that issue here.

In any case, scientists have been screaming about climate change for over forty years (and talking about it for over a century), so even if almost all powerless people shut up, the scientists certainly wouldn’t.

7: Ethical Action that Has a Different Target

“Well, it’s the principle of the thing”.

Hmmm. What is the point of doing something about issue X “on principle” when it will be utterly fruitless regarding X? Are we back to the previous point about your personal moral status?

“Well, there’s always a slim chance that . . . “.

No, there’s not. It can’t be repeated enough:

• Nothing you do, either in a concrete fashion or through public outcry, will make even the smallest dent in climate change.

You might as well fantasize about trying to do something about the storm that makes up the giant red spot on the planet Jupiter.

If life were a movie, then the hero would bravely and defiantly act in such a way as to attempt to save the day even though we all knew full well that it was hopeless. Think of the inspiring monologue he would give. Our hero!

Yeah, but this isn’t a movie.

“Well, I can point out to others how important this issue is”.

First, what good will that do regarding climate change? The people who listen to you are just as powerless as you are. Now, if you’re going to change Trump’s mind on this issue, that’s great. But if we know anything, we know that ain’t gonna happen. I already covered all this above.

“Maybe it’s this: by showing concern on this issue, I assert my moral values and try to get others to adopt a more moral lifestyle. Sure, I won’t have any effect on climate change, either direct or indirect. I get it; I really do. It’s just math. But by repeatedly showing the world, through my actions, that morality counts, I can encourage and support others to do things that do have real consequences—even though those consequences won’t matter to climate change.

“More specifically, I assert my values regarding the environment. That assertion, through my actions, won’t help the environment when it comes to climate change. But it could help it in other ways, like encourage others—and myself—to do small things that make my local environment a little cleaner and healthier”.

Okay, so ONE point of individual action on climate change isn’t to positively effect climate change but to encourage moral action in general, or perhaps on the environment (even though those very actions won’t have any impact on climate change). I think I can get on board with that idea. Maybe.

But why focus on climate change at all then? If actions on climate change are morally valuable not because they effect climate change but because they effect issues X and Y, then why not just move to working on behalf of X and Y? Genuine question.

“Also, by taking action on climate change I offer spiritual or psychological assistance to others who worry about the issue”.

That sounds good, as you are genuinely benefiting someone by giving them a kind of psychological comfort. But I wonder if it’s deceptive in most cases. After all, they will probably think that the two of you are having an impact on the issue, which is completely false.

However, the goodness of offering comfort to others might outweigh the badness of encouraging false views about moral actions. I don’t know.

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In any case, I still find it weird that so many of us think we have a moral obligation to do something about issue X even though at least some of us know that nothing we do will have the slightest effect on X. For instance, I see all these people nowadays saying that we shouldn’t use ChatGPT or other LLMs unless we really need to, since they use a lot more resources than just Googling. But . . . is this going to make even the slightest difference to climate change? No.

For something like climate change, we who are powerless on it—and that’s everyone who reads this—have a choice: work on it, or work on something else. It seems that in virtually every case, the morally better choice is the latter one. I find the whole issue confusing.