CHAPTER 1
Get to Know the Laws
More than twenty-five years ago, I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro while spending a summer studying international environmental law in Nairobi, Kenya. I boarded a bus to Arusha, Tanzania, then started my trek up the famous 19,341-foot mountain. I wasnât a climber. I was a policy geek, which is my nice way of saying that I wasnât physically fit (I could write killer legal memos though).
Kilimanjaro is a different kind of climb. Itâs basically a walk. The guides told us to go slowly, to acclimate to the lack of oxygen at higher elevations. My classmates and I relished the journey as we enjoyed the views, took pictures, and laughed.
A group of ultrafit British women were making the climb with another tour company. They always asked us how long it took us to get to the next hut, which was our destination each evening after an all-day hike. I remember one hiker laughed at us and said, âI cannot believe how slow you are.â We didnât know these women. And why did they care how long it was taking us? Itâs not as though our pace was impeding their progress.
Eventually we reached the top of the mountain, Uhuru Peak. On our way down we learned that none of the Brits had reached the summit. Altitude sickness overcame them. Theyâd rushed to each hut but didnât let their bodies adapt to the oxygen-starved air.
As my Southern momma would say, bless their hearts.
I remember thinking that some people assume environmentalists have a similar attitude to those British hikers: if youâre not doing it our way, youâre doing it wrong. Or people believe environmentalists think, You donât belong here because you donât care enough, donât know enough, and donât understand the issues the way we do. My colleagues in the environmental movement are nothing like this, but many people have an understandable fear of being judged for âdoing sustainabilityâ wrong.
Then thereâs the enormity of the climate crisis itself. Heat waves in the Pacific Northwest, tragic fires throughout the West, hurricanes and floods in the Southeast, melting glaciers, and rapid species extinction around the world. How do we even begin?
Because of climate change, the snows of Kilimanjaro are much different today than they were twenty-five years ago. Itâs true that we canât take it slow when dealing with this crisis. And the movement needs everyoneâincluding you. If you arenât sure where or how to start, this book aims to help you launch your journey. If youâve been involved for a long time, I hope this book will restore you, invigorate you, and infuse even more creativity and inspiration into your work. Letâs identify your unique talents and gifts and create an action plan to be part of the movement. Start now, but go slowly at first. Then your daily actions will help create the broad support for climate policy and market solutions we need.
The Laws of Change
When I was in law school in the late 1990s, we needed dimes and quarters to make copies at the law library. Yes, we made paper copies of cases and articles by xeroxing them from books. In the lobby of the grand law library, right in front of the librariansâ desk, was a large sign that read: âWe cannot make change.â Canât make change? At a law school? At my beloved law school? Of course, it wasnât a message of the futility of working toward social changeâthe librarians simply meant they couldnât exchange dollar bills for coins to make copies. But the sign cracked me up every time I entered that beautiful space to study. After all, I went there to make change.
Unlike the law librarians at my alma mater, I want to make sure you know that you can make change.
The Laws of Change are the foundation of this book and the blueprint to discovering your Service Superpower and saving the planet. We each have to find our Service Superpowerâour unique way of helping others. Everyone has a different skill set and personality for helping lead the necessary culture change through bold, positive action to support a healthier, greener, more equitable future.
Many argue that individual action doesnât matter in an issue as global and enormous as the climate crisis. They are wrong. Individual actions matter, but perhaps not in the way you think. You alone will not solve the climate crisis. Neither will I. But if you intentionally live a more sustainable life and connect with your community about your daily practice of One Green Thing, you can build momentum for culture change to shift policy. For example, Bret Jenks, president of the international conservation nonprofit RARE, recently told the Atlantic, âIf 5% of Americans bought carbon offsets or changed other [carbon-intensive] behaviors, that would add up to a reduction of 600 million tons of carbon dioxide a year,â and that shift would be âone of the top changes in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions in human history.â1
Taking action can also help reduce anxiety about the future. The compounding power of daily rituals can not only transform your personal relationship to the planet but also create a ripple effect from your life to the lives of people you know. Simply put, the Law of Simplicity & Consistency, the Law of Identity, and the Law of Amplification work together to create culture change.
The Law of Simplicity & Consistency
âThe only goal is to brush your teeth for two minutes in the morning. Thatâs it. For a lot of my troubled, at-risk students, this simple action created a snowball effect. They got out of bed, got dressed, and even went to school. I made sure they didnât keep the water running while brushing. Thought youâd be proud of that,â my retired guidance counselor mom told me in her soothing Southern accent.
I was both proud and inspired. Daily teeth brushing embodies the Law of Simplicity & Consistency, and that act became my unexpected metaphor for addressing the existential threat of climate change.
As previously stated, small actions alone will not solve the climate crisis and neither will the actions of one person. Only one hundred companies are responsible for 71 percent of greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. And only 8 percent of plastics are recycled.2 We need substantial policy and market solutions, but individual action can create culture change so these comprehensive strategies work.
Tiny changes create momentum. You can find a ton of research on this phenomenon in leadership books, but my favorite resource is James Clearâs Atomic Habits. He reminds us that âwe often dismiss small changes because they donât seem to matter very much in the moment.â3 But if we create systems that allow for small changes, their impact compounds over time. Our daily actions make up our lives. If we focus on tiny, consistent actions, we can make time itself a powerful agent for transformation of our individual and collective experiences. Just like my guidance counselor mom telling her at-risk students to set a goal of brushing their teeth for two minutes each morning, micro steps snowball.
To make a habit repeatable, you need it to be obvious, attractive, easy, and fun.4 Another way to think about creating a new habit is focusing on cue, action, and reward, as Charles Duhigg writes about in The Power of Habit. This means that something reminds you to take action (the âcueâ), you take the action, and then your brain is rewarded for that action. Naming the reward is powerful enough to create a new habit.5 In the context of One Green Thing, the feeling of positive contribution to the planet and your community can be the reward.
The Law of Identity
In addition to the cue and reward, we must embrace what I call the Law of Identity to make habitsâsuch as a daily ritual of sustainabilityâstick. If you view the ritual as part of who you are, youâre more likely to sustain it. For example, Clear points out that if you want to be known as someone who is physically fit, youâd ask yourself, What would a healthy person do every day to achieve their goals? Then youâd take small, daily actionsâsuch as adding more steps to your day, skipping your morning venti latte in favor of a mug of green tea, and so forthâand keep checking in until youâve reached your goal. As Clear communicates about the power of identity, âDecide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.â6
With the Service Superpower Assessment, chapter 2 focuses on helping you align your identity with specific actionsâyour unique way to support a healthier, greener, more equitable future. Everyone has a different skill set and personality to help lead the necessary culture change for big, positive action. Through this book, youâll tap into what yo...
