The message is everywhere: You (alone) can save the planet.
Choose a veggie burger instead of beef. Book this flight, not that one. Buy thrift over fast fashion. Shrink your “carbon footprint.”
But here’s what most people don’t know: The very concept of a personal carbon footprint originated with oil giant British Petroleum (BP). In 2004, BP launched a carbon calculator to persuade people to measure their personal climate impacts. The campaign worked — shifting our collective gaze from fossil fuel companies, the biggest drivers of the climate crisis, to individuals like you and me.
Two decades later and with climate disasters rapidly intensifying, we’re still caught in this sleight-of-hand. Choices made by corporations and governments continue to shape the speed and scale of climate disruption, while marketing campaigns around climate action try to shift our focus to consumer decisions.
New WRI research tells a different story. Our data shows that pro-climate behavior changes, such as driving less or eating less meat, could theoretically cancel out all the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions an average person produces each year1 — specifically among high-income, high-emitting populations.
But it also reveals that efforts focused exclusively on changing behaviors, and not the overarching systems around them, only achieve about one-tenth of this emissions-reduction potential. The remaining 90% stays locked away, dependent on governments, businesses and our own collective action to make sustainable choices more accessible for everyone. (Case in point: It’s much easier to go carless if your city has good public transit.)
This doesn’t mean personal choices don’t matter. In fact, they matter immensely — but not exactly in the ways we’ve been led to believe.
How Much Do Personal Choices Affect the Climate?
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), comprehensive shifts in human behavior could theoretically reduce global emissions by up to 70% by 2050. This would essentially wipe out emissions from China, the U.S., India, the EU and Russia combined.
But the key word here is “comprehensive.” The IPCC is clear that these massive reductions would result from individual behavior change combined with supporting policy, industry and technological transformations that make those behaviors possible and widely accessible.
Understanding ‘Average’ Emissions
The ‘average’ person produces 6.28 tonnes of GHG emissions annually. But this number varies widely by country and income level. Wealthier, higher-consuming populations may emit up to 110 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) per year. Among lower-income groups, emissions can be as low as 1.6 tonnes of CO2e per year. For populations living in poverty, emissions will actually need to increase to meet critical development goals, such as expanding energy access.
What slice of this can be achieved through individual behavior change alone? WRI’s new research is the first to quantify the gap between projected emissions reductions (what’s theoretically possible) and real-world impacts (what’s proven to be feasible). We calculated how much emissions could fall if everyone adopted key climate-friendly behaviors, then compared this with actual results from programs and interventions that attempted to change these behaviors at an individual level.
We found that, in theory, shifting to 11 pro-climate behaviors we analyzed in the energy, transport and food sectors could reduce individuals’ GHG emissions by about 6.53 tonnes per year. This would more than cancel out what an average person currently emits (about 6.3 tonnes per year). However, our data also shows that when people attempt these changes in the real world, without supportive systems, they typically only reduce emissions by about 0.63 tonnes yearly — just 10% of what’s theoretically possible.
It’s not that individual changes don’t matter; when someone switches to an electric vehicle (EV) or avoids a flight, they make a real impact. The problem is that without supportive infrastructure, policies or incentives (such as public EV chargers or financial subsidies), these programs struggle to drive the broad-based change the world really needs.
How You Can Help Drive Systemic Change
Given that climate change is heavily influenced by government and corporate decisions, our votes and collective consumer power are crucially important.
Voting at both the national and local levels is key, as elections directly determine whether governments enable or hinder pro-climate behaviors. In the U.S., for example, the Trump administration has called to repeal federal tax credits that make sustainable choices, such as EVs and home solar, more financially accessible for Americans.
When national policies shift away from climate action, state and local electoral pressure becomes even more crucial. In California, vehicle emission standards have preserved consumer access to cleaner transportation options amid threats of federal rollbacks.
Likewise, collective consumer pressure can help shift large companies toward more climate- and environmentally friendly practices. This means moving beyond individual purchases toward organizing campaigns that push companies to make sustainable choices the norm. Take Nestlé’s Kit Kat: When Greenpeace exposed that the company was using palm oil linked to deforestation — threatening orangutan habitats in Indonesia as well as the climate — viral campaigns and public outcry forced Nestlé to drop the supplier and commit to sustainable sourcing within five years.
Which Day-to-Day Choices Have the Biggest Climate Impact?
Systemic pressure creates enabling conditions, but individuals need to complete the loop with our daily choices. It’s a two-way street — bike lanes need cyclists, plant-based options need people to consume them. When we adopt these behaviors, we send critical market signals that businesses and governments respond to with more investment.
WRI’s research quantifies the individual actions that matter most. While people worldwide tend to vastly overestimate the impact of some highly visible activities, such as recycling, our analysis reveals four significant changes that deliver meaningful emissions reductions. In order of climate impact, these behaviors are:
1) Shift to sustainable ground travel
Shifting out of gas cars by opting into public or active transit dramatically reduces emissions. Our research shows that living car-free is 78 times more impactful than composting. In other words, one person giving up their car has the same climate impact as 77 people taking up composting. Giving up your car may seem extreme or infeasible, but it doesn’t have to be all or nothing; changes like switching to a hybrid or electric car can also have a significant impact.
2) Shift to air travel alternatives
Whenever possible, replace flying with videoconferencing, train travel or even driving (ideally in an electric or hybrid vehicle). While air travel is not a significant factor for most of the world — 89% of the world’s population has never set foot on a plane — it’s one of the most carbon-intensive activities we can do. Those in higher income brackets who fly more frequently have a greater responsibility to lead in this area. (If you’re an organization wondering what you can do to reduce business travel, WRI has some tools and insights.)
3) Install residential solar and increase home energy efficiency
Investing in rooftop solar and improving home energy efficiency — such as by upgrading insulation, installing heat pumps or moving to a smaller house — can significantly cut emissions. While changing light bulbs or turning off appliances has a minor effect, structural home efficiency improvements and clean energy adoption drive far more significant reductions. Due to their high upfront cost, these actions are often more feasible with supportive government programs like tax credits and incentives.
4) Eat more plant-rich meals
Reducing meat and dairy consumption, particularly beef and lamb, has a massive and underestimated impact on the climate. While shifting to organic food, buying local and reducing processed foods all have benefits, these changes pale in comparison to dietary shifts that move away from animal proteins. Full veganism can save nearly 1 ton of CO2 annually, about a sixth of the average global citizen’s total emissions. But even reducing meat intake captures 40% of that impact.
How Can Governments and Industry Unlock Broader Change?
These individual actions can have a real impact on emissions. But without systemic shifts and support, they will not drive change at the speed and scale the climate crisis demands.
To help people move away from gas-powered vehicles, governments can take steps such as investing in protected bike lanes and expanding electric charging infrastructure. Improved public transit, meanwhile, can drive down car use and make commuting cheaper and more efficient — a win for the climate and for our wallets and well-being.
In Bogotá, Colombia, consistent investment in cycling infrastructure coupled with supportive initiatives (like the popular Ciclovía program, where over 100 km of streets become car-free on Sundays and national holidays) have helped make sustainable transportation both practical and appealing. The share of trips made by bicycle in Bogotá rose from just 0.58% in 1996 to 9% in 2017, showing that when governments create the right conditions, sustainable behaviors can follow.
In the energy sector, governments can offer financial incentives for home solar, energy-efficient renovations and more. Take the Netherlands: Once labeled a “renewable energy laggard,” it has become Europe’s leading per-capita user of solar panels, in part thanks to generous subsidies and a net-metering system that allows homeowners to deduct electricity they feed into the grid from their usage.
When it comes to shifting diets, institutions like governments, public organizations and schools can increase plant-based meal options in cafeterias and canteens (such as by adopting “meatless Monday,” like the Los Angeles Unified School District did in 2012). And businesses can make lower-carbon choices easiest and most affordable — for instance, by highlighting plant-based options on menus and pricing them competitively.
WRI’s Coolfood initiative has demonstrated that simple changes can transform dining behaviors. When Sodexo (a global food service provider operating in schools, hospitals and corporate cafeterias) adopted descriptive dish names like “Sweet and Smoky Tacos,” which centered taste and flavor rather than plant-based ingredients, the probability of consumers purchasing these dishes doubled.
How to Shift Behaviors Most Effectively
Our research shows that how initiatives to change behavior are designed is important. We coded all interventions aimed at driving key pro-climate behaviors into six categories:
We found that “choice architecture” (such as putting more sustainable options front and center) and commitment devices to form longer-lasting habits (such as encouraging pledges to take public transport more often) are the most impactful tools. Meanwhile, information-based approaches (such as carbon footprint calculators) are among the least.
Importantly, sustainability initiatives in industry and policy must be aligned with evidence on effective emissions reductions, instead of adopting visible but minimal-impact measures. Offering recycling bins shows environmental awareness, but providing affordable solar solutions, plant-rich meals or electric transportation goes a longer way toward genuine climate progress.
One powerful tool for government action is countries’ national climate commitments (NDCs). WRI research shows that the world’s top emitters have historically overlooked behaviors with high emissions-reduction potential, such as food choices and air travel, in their NDCs. With new and updated NDCs due in 2025 under the Paris Agreement, countries have an immediate opportunity to address human behavior change in high-emitting sectors, both through deploying behavior change tools and putting supportive policies in place to make these shifts accessible.
Leveraging Our Collective Power
While our choices matter for the climate, the “carbon footprint” narrative has obscured where our true power lies. This individualistic framing fragments our collective strength, keeping us focused on isolated personal behaviors rather than the transformative power of collective action.
WRI’s research suggests a more impactful path forward. Rather than calculating our carbon math, our most meaningful individual action may be expanding our collective civic footprint. This can transform not just what we consume, but what choices exist for everyone.
Our power has always been greater than we’ve been led to believe. It’s time we reclaimed it.
1 Average per capita emissions based on data from WRI’s Climate Watch platform. For more information, see here.
