By Jeremy Williams

There’s a lot of confusion over which climate actions make the biggest difference – or even whether personal actions make any difference at all.

They do – about a quarter of climate emissions can be dealt with through personal actions. The rest is beyond our control as individuals, though of course we can campaign and advocate for it. In other words, other things matter much more, but we don’t get to a sustainable world without individual action.

So where should we focus?

Here’s a list that’s been compiled by Drawdown:

You can look up more about their methodology on their website, with lots more detail about each of those solutions.

If you’re familiar with these sorts of lists, you’ll have noticed that they don’t always match. Some people include things like having one less child, for example. Drawdown hasn’t included aviation, because they’re not done quantifying it yet. And of course, different solutions are more relevant and meaningful in different parts of the world. This list is tilted towards those in richer countries, where people are likely to eat more meat and own their own cars. So there is no single definitive list. I’d take this and any similar attempt at creating one as informative.

What can you do? What haven’t you thought about yet? Is there anything on that list that surprises you?

First published in the Earthbound Report.