In my decade plus of engagement with environmental movements on social media and otherwise, I have to confess that at one time I reached a point where I concluded I would be better off dead. I know that sounds extreme, but I am serious – that is where I landed intellectually. Specifically, I decided that being alive, especially as a consumer in the U.S., has such negative environmental (and social) impacts that the most responsible action would be to just stop living. Perhaps, this is an example of my neurodivergence taking things too literally, but this was the message I internalized from some corners of certain environmental movements. It is ultimately not a productive one.

No human being has zero environmental impact. Being alive incurs an environmental footprint. Whether individuals or collective bodies (i.e., governments, policymakers, institutions, or society as a whole) are responsible for these environmental impacts and which perspective is a better pressure point for change is ultimately a subjective political point of view. Whether guilting and shaming is an effective tool for reducing environmental impact is also an issue of human behavioral change techniques. Personally, it has become my belief, based on numerous other public health issues, that this is one of the least effective tools for long-term behavior change.

I make various efforts to reduce my environmental footprint. However, some impact is unavoidable, and some impact is justified. What impact you have and what choices you choose to justify is once again a subjective political perspective and a matter of personal values, life situation, and whether you are in a place where it is possible for you to pay attention to your environmental footprint.

I have personally become increasingly frustrated with the combination of shaming and guilt-driven tactics around individual choices present in many environmental movements, most especially when it is not combined with an analysis of scale. If your concern is greenhouse gas emissions, for example, some choices matter a lot more than others, and this is rarely communicated. Taking a single flight or driving a vehicle is on an entirely different magnitude (orders of magnitude larger) of greenhouse gas emissions than other choices you might make like leaving the lights on, turning the heat up a few degrees, eating meat occasionally, or using AI on a daily basis. So should we all stop flying? What if you have family who live elsewhere? Where do we draw the line? Because, in fact, if your concern is reducing greenhouse gas emissions, one of the single greatest actions you can take is to not have a child. So obviously, we cannot place environmental impact before all choices we make.

While it is great if someone has time and energy to consider the environmental footprint of every little choice they make in their lives, the vast majority of people don’t have the privilege of time and energy to be doing that or simply do not think it is worthwhile. By asking people to make (relatively) unimportant changes, there is an important opportunity cost that results in people becoming less ready to pay attention to the (relatively) bigger ones they we can make. It can also lead people to understand environmental problems as individual rather than as institutional or societal problems that require collective actions through policy and regulation rather than voluntarily asking individuals to change their behavior.

I decided to calculate my carbon footprint using the EPA’s Carbon Footprint calculator, which accounts for carbon emissions from home energy, transportation, and waste. The U.S. average is 4,305 lbs per year. Mine was 3,081 lbs per year because I live in a micro-studio apartment and almost entirely walk for my transportation.

Two additional items that I wanted to add to my carbon footprint calculation were AI use and flights.

While the exact environmental impact of AI use varies by the product used and how it is used, estimates have put a single AI query at 2.2 grams of carbon for training and operation. Even at 100 queries per day (a heavy user), this equals around 180 lbs per year. In contrast, each of the two round trip flights I am taking / have taken this year (from Seattle to Minneapolis) involved 1,841 lbs of carbon.

In total, my CO2 emissions for this year are estimated at around 7,000 lbs. To be highly conservative, I will round up to 10,000 lbs, which is equivalent to 4.5 tonnes (rounded to 5 tonnes).

As a restorative action for my carbon emissions, I have purchased carbon offsets certified by Gold Standard for 5 tonnes of carbon. Offsetting one tonne of carbon ranges from about $10 to $50. In 2027, I plan to purchase carbon offsets for the first 31 years of my life (estimated at the U.S. average of ~2 tonnes per year plus an estimate of all flights taken).

In conclusion, I want to recognize that as a human, I have an environmental footprint. Everyone does. Cutting out “unjustified” impacts on the environment ultimately involves subjective choices, many of which don’t make a very large environmental impact. The ones that do, like flight in my case, warrant the most attention. Offseting is one way to reduce my impact as a human.

I would argue the most important action, however, is voting and contributing to policy change that will reduce emissions on a large scale in a way that no one person can accomplish alone. Also, technology has advanced enormously over recent years, including clean energy technology. It will continue to advance, and supporting it and other solutions to the climate crisis and approaches for climate impact mitigation are concrete ways people can respond to a climate crisis that it appears very unlikely we will proactively avert (even if we all turn off our lights, turn the heat down, or stop using AI).

Purist actions and solutions sound great, but if they never happen or are unsustainable or are only realistic for or adopted by a small group of people, then they achieve very little. It would be meaningful if everyone stopped using electricity and technology; however, they are useful, and people want to use them. Unless an external world-altering event occurs, the “going offline” that some in the environmental movement advocate as the pathway forward is simply not going to happen on a large scale.

Lastly, environmental nihilism is real and common among younger people, but it is also a subjective view. I understand why people feel that way, and I felt that way for a long time. For me, however, it was not productive.

And I wanted to talk about it here.