Giving can (and should) be easy: being a contributist in a time of climate crisis
The LA wildfires have brought climate disasters front of mind for many people in the US, and following from this, many are wondering how they might be able to live to contribute to a more sustainable future. As we consider how small we are in the wake of a devastating fire, it can be overwhelming to consider what we might do. Contributism gives us a framework to think about how to live as interconnected individuals in a society that has problems beyond what any of us individually can solve, but that we can all make a contribution to. As individuals, we should feel more eager and less guilty about finding ways where it is "easy" and natural for us to give, and as society, we should break down barriers that make it "hard" to give.
I am a vegetarian who takes public transit almost everywhere. Since both of these things are a bit unusual in the US, people who are very into climate or pollution reduction or animal ethics are often impressed by this; or when they find out, they immediately start apologizing for eating meat or driving a car.
However, I don’t make these decisions based on climate or any noble goal; I make them because they are actually what I prefer in life.
I am someone who does not like the taste of meat and does not like driving. I would legitimately rather eat falafel than gyros and wait for a bus over getting behind a wheel.
Being a train-taking vegetarian to me, to quote, “isn’t a bug, it’s a feature!” It also just happens to have the happy byproduct of being good for the climate.
In fact, I don’t really make all that many decisions based on giving back to the climate, although I am trying to make more. I’m writing this from a plane from the US West to East Coast – it’s estimated that me taking this trip alone would emit almost 1.5 times the carbon as a journey of equivalent distance in a car – the carbon footprint of my round-trip flight is roughly 1.4 metric tons of CO2 emissions. This suddenly makes me feel much less ethical. I take this trip multiple times a year. I also take long showers, don’t compost, and do many other things that are suboptimal for the climate and in which I should do better.
Vox’s Sigal Samuel, in “Should I go 100% flight-free for the climate?”, addresses just this in terms of balancing different ethical concerns: “Yes, protecting our planet is a crucial value. So is, say, nurturing relationships with beloved family members and friends who live abroad. Or developing a career. Or learning about other cultures. Or making art. So, even though minimizing how much we fly is a virtuous thing to do, some thinkers would caution you against treating that as the only relevant value.”
For most people in the US, this complexity goes beyond philosophical commitments: under a capitalist system, they must own cars to make money to survive.
Having grown up in the Northeast U.S. a 10 minute walk from a train, I experienced a bit of this while trying to take public transit in Northern California. To get to my office in the city center from one location, I had to take an infrequent bus to an infrequent subway; the entire journey took about two hours, when it would’ve been one hour by car. From a second location, I had to walk 300 meters along the shoulder of a highway to a bus stop to catch a bus that came once every hour. As I sat on an eerily empty subway for hours and waited in the middle of nowhere for an infrequent bus, it was no mystery to me why most Americans prefer cars.
I am sometimes too hard on myself, tending to take the stance that virtue only really counts if it’s hard for you. It’s not really virtuous, I think sometimes, for me to be a vegetarian or to avoid driving if it’s easy — if that’s actually the state of being I enjoy more. However, it’s undeniable that eating lots of meat or taking lots of planes has negative effects on our climate. We are now witnessing this most directly in the unpredictable weather patterns that are currently affecting people in LA, but we should remember that the devastation is global — fires, floods, typhoons, and hurricanes are all becoming more intense, and their global impact falls primarily on people who never take planes and who do not have the savings to cover their devastating losses.
So despite my misgivings, easy giving still matters, because all giving matters. And the types of giving that come naturally to us as individuals have some advantages over those that don’t:
Because they are easy, we are more likely to engage in them — and to keep doing them — than harder forms of giving, so they may end up resulting in more practical value.
They often feel natural to us because they are more in line with our other important ethical commitments. Harder forms of giving are often hard because they are costly to our other values, like those quoted from Samuel above.
Giving that comes natural to us is more contributist, because it is more free. We are better givers when we give freely, rather than out of coercion. And if we get into the practice of giving freely — where it comes naturally to our unique selves — rather than giving out of guilt — only giving when it's "hard" — we set ourselves up for joy and dignity, rather than generosity-burnout and its accompanying shame.
Finally, by giving where it is easy, we train ourselves to live in an orientation of giving, which makes us better prepared to give in more difficult circumstances as well.
The fact that some forms of giving feel easy does not mean that they are necessarily worse. Although giving must be oriented towards the other — it cannot be primarily about personal benefit — it also can, and should, be joyful. So how can we make living a different lifestyle to benefit the climate (or any other goal beyond oneself) easy, natural, and perhaps even better than life otherwise might’ve been?
I think there’s both an individual angle here and a societal/policy one.
On the individual level, people can think through the ways that might be easiest and most enjoyable for them personally to give in any given way. Maybe you really like gardening and can collect compost to use for this. Maybe you can look up good recipes made out of chickpeas or tofu and make it part of your routine; or if you’re already plant-based, make some delicious food for your friends. Maybe you can take up sewing and repair or tailor old clothes rather than throwing them away. Maybe you can take the train instead of fly.
Sometimes these things will come very easily: maybe sewing is something you always wanted to learn, and being more climate-friendly meshes perfectly with these goals. And sometimes these things may come with more of a sacrifice or change to a slower lifestyle at first, but it will ultimately be more rewarding because you are better exercising your right to give. What is important is that you give where you can — where it is most accessible, ethical, and perhaps even liberating — rather than wasting your effort beating yourself up about not giving where it is sufficiently hard.
On the policy level, we need to figure out ways to set up society to allow people to give better. I know plenty of Americans who would love to not have to drive, but can’t afford to live in the 5-10 expensive metro areas in the U.S. where you don’t need to own a car.
For many Americans, the only option to get to work outside of a car is a bus that comes every hour and you have to walk through a death trap to get to. If you could take a frequent and pleasant and cheap 30-minute train to work, I’m sure many Americans would choose that.
For this, we need policy that is friendly to both the climate broadly and people’s acute needs, solutions that give people the freedom to give. While this isn’t going to be a comprehensive policy piece, and I do believe that technology won’t fix everything and people will need to give things up and make lifestyle changes to reverse climate damage, there are a number of things that really are win-win solutions. Bus rapid transit systems, which give buses a dedicated lane, are much cheaper than rail, and mean buses that carry a lot more people than cars with the same space can bypass traffic and become a more viable commuter option. Many more people would take buses, I think, if it got them to work 20 minutes faster than being stuck in commuter traffic. Electric buses in particular are very pleasant to ride: I used to commute to work on a zero-emissions trolley bus, and whenever I brought visitors they would comment on how quiet and nice the bus was. Plus you can nap on it which you can’t while driving!
Targeted government subsidies, either to producers or consumers, in some areas can also start to deal with some of the negative externalities to climate of daily life and allow people to be directly part of the solutions. A well-known example is solar panel subsidies. The US government and private sector invested to spur R&D in solar technology, and states provided subsidies/rebates to consumers who might want to purchase them and both lower their monthly electricity bills and be more environmentally friendly. Now in many places, solar is even cheaper than fossil fuels.
It is central to contributism that we are not an island; that it is both necessary and fulfilling to live in community, to make decisions based on others and not just for ourselves. Sometimes this will be hard, but other times, it will be easy – and it is a key, contributist role of society to work to break down the barriers that make it unnecessarily difficult for people to give.