How might someone save the world?

This one gets a little philosophical – it’s not a new direction I’m going, so feel free to just skip this one today, or bare with me for a few paragraphs.

It came to me as I was discussing the environmental considerations we have to make at our apartment complex for a couple of hours (relatively small physical space), then emailing an oceanographer 10 minutes later who aims to grow an Amazon-sized kelp forest in the ocean (somewhat bigger space). The difference in the two scales just made me stop and think.

Like a lot of people I know, I like to think my work will “make the world a better place” or something.

I know that whatever I manage to pull off, it wont single-handedly fix the climate crisis. I’m not so deluded that to think that any one person could do that.

I also know I’m not a personality type who could CEO a unicorn the size of Patagonia or Tesla. No matter what luck or funding or aligned planets happened, I’m just not the type. Many of us will never hit that level, and while I think it’s healthy to shoot for that, I don’t think it’s healthy to just blindly tell people they should shoot for it.

So I’ll occupy my little corner of the world and try to make whatever positive difference here that I can.

We all have an obligation to do whatever good we can at least to the space immediately around us… your home, your family, your street, or whatever that looks like for you. That’s the minimum.

Some of us will try to impact a space a little bigger than that – maybe our local communities, our city, or even our country. Some impact will jump borders and oceans.

The Patagonia-sized climate champion unicorn organisations will raise the bar again, and be the examples we use when we talk about our goals.

If we all do the minimum, some do a bit more, and the unicorns do their thing – we fix the planet together.

And that’s how it has to be. Us smaller operators should feel absolutely zero guilt about “only” wanting to impact our local community. You’ll still be busy. The CEO of Patagonia has the same hours in their day as you do.

It’s not healthy to think you need to do everything. Do your thing, and do it as well as possible.

Back to usual programming tomorrow 🙂