A recent opinion piece in The Washington Post urged Americans to “stop going green.” Author Mike Tidwell’s reasoning? We need to stop emphasizing small, voluntary action and instead work toward more large-scale solutions.

Tidwell says America is overrun with “green gestures,” but not political action. He says that adopting clean-energy policies is a moral imperative. This, I agree with.

But are all the things people can do at home that he cites — switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs, properly insulating your house, driving a hybrid car or eating a vegetarian diet — distracting us from making the big-picture changes that we need?

I don’t think they are. And research backs me up.

According to Professor Michael Vandenbergh of Vanderbilt University, co-author of “Household Actions Can Provide a Behavioral Wedge to Rapidly Reduce U.S. Carbon Emissions” (published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), there is no research to support the assumption that if someone does one good thing (say, bike to work) they would be less likely to do another good thing (support climate change legislation).

In fact, Professor Vandenbergh told NPR that behavior change is contagious:

There are a number of psychological phenomena that suggest that we might actually induce more support for behavior change. When someone becomes committed to a certain behavior, they’re more likely to follow through in other areas as well.

So, those already concerned about conservation might become even more concerned about it as time goes on.

But maybe it’s not the conservation-concerned “us” Tidwell is worried about getting distracted from the big picture; maybe it’s just everyone else. As he says:

All who appreciate the enormity of the climate crisis still have a responsibility to make every change possible in their personal lives … [but] those of us who [make significant voluntary changes] create the false impression of mass progress as the media hypes our actions.

Really? Mass progress? I’d say nine out of every 10 things I read about climate change just scare the crap out of me and have me clawing for anything I can do to make it better.

Tidwell also seems to be missing a key point about the power of collective action. First of all, as Tidwell knows, if we ALL took on different behaviors (drove less, ate differently, recycled) it would have an enormous impact. But according to Professor Vandenbergh’s research, even with only modest levels of participation, the United States could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent, or the equivalent of the total emissions of France, with basic behavioral changes.

The United States is facing an enormous challenge. We need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by between 50 percent and 80 percent in the next 40 years. We certainly aren’t going to get there by cutting out a solution that would account for at least 7 percent of that.

So, while I agree with Tidwell that the conservation-concerned should turn up the heat on Congress and other decision-makers on creating real climate change policies, we don’t have to set aside our green habits — even temporarily — to do so. I don’t think that setting a good example for personal changes that people can make (that collectively would make a huge difference) is confusing people that either don’t know how to change or don’t care to change.

Those aren’t the people that are going to be pushing their lawmakers to make changes. We are. And those lawmakers aren’t going to make changes until we push them, both through what we say and what we do.

Tidwell cites both the passage of civil rights legislation and the election of Barack Obama — both of which are great examples of a time when the mood of the entire nation shifted and led to political action. The passage of civil rights legislation wouldn’t have happened without politicians seeing a dramatic change in public sentiment, and President Obama’s campaign relied on hundreds of thousands of tiny actions that turned into a tidal wave of support.

So let’s all, as Tidwell suggests, open up our laptops and write to our representatives. And then let’s unplug our laptops when we’re done.

(Image: A new look at a compact fluorescent light bulb. Photo credit: fangleman/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

Tags: Climate Change, collective action, Margaret Southern, Michael Vandenbergh, Mike Tidwell, PNAS, stop going green, The Washington Post