If you had the power to magically convince one person to do something about climate change, who would it be? Put in a different way, who do you blame for climate change?

The President of the United States? The CEO of Exxon-Mobile? The head of the Federal Reserve? God?

Today (Friday, September 20th), students and employees from around the world are walking out of their schools, offices and homes to protest the growing tide of natural disasters caused by climate change. Here in Dayton Ohio (where I live now!), the protest will gather downtown at a community college and then march along the streets before arriving at the Dayton Federal Building – the thing that perhaps best represents the federal government in this Ohio city.

It seems, then, that the government is to blame, at least according to the organizers of this march. If Donald Trump would just get his act together then he could get us out of this mess, right? A quick glance at the signs of protesters being paraded around the world (most of them students) mostly blame anyone above the age of 18. After all, we were all burning carbon way before they were even born. Alternatively, a recently published scientific article lays the blame at the feet of 90 large corporations, nearly all of them being oil and gas producers ( https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-017-1978-0). It makes sense that the people who dug the carbon out of the ground in the first place are responsible, right?

I honestly wish that there was a single person to blame. One person who, if we protest and petition and write blog posts and generate long social media rants, will change their minds and turn off the climate change switch that they flipped “on” back in 1976. If only the answer were that easy.

But it isn’t that easy, because there isn’t one person to blame – and there isn’t just one climate change switch. As it turns out, there are billions of climate change switches, just like there are billions of people responsible.

Yes, I’m talking about you. And I’m talking about me. I personally am responsible for climate change – I have my hand on the switch right now. Every light switch, every push of the gas pedal, every thumb tap on my phone, every button on this keyboard. Each person at these protests (and the people not attending them), no matter their demographics, pushes climate change buttons every day.

But are we truly responsible? Undoubtedly, there are those who have acted to make this issue worse. Perhaps oil and gas companies have acted with their own interest in mind, and Donald Trump really does seem to be ignoring and disrespecting the very facts. But! That doesn’t mean we have to focus on the bad things these entities have done. Instead, we need to focus on what we can actually do right now and slap the hands of those who get in our way. To sit and wait for others to fix this problem is to give them control of the problem.

I readily acknowledge that it is not that easy. Living in the United States without a car, computer or lights is honestly close to impossible. For decades we have built our lives around these technologies, and the technologies have now been built into our lives. To remove technology is to hinder life as we know it.

But maybe it wouldn’t be all bad. Life as we know it can definitely be improved, and maybe removing some conveniences from our lives would actually make our lives better, not worse.

It always helps to have somewhere to start, so lets review a few talking points:

1. Walk as much as possible. Skip trips if necessary. Use a bike. Avoid your car at all costs.
2. Change your thermostat. Better yet, turn it off. Open the windows. Go outside. Don’t be afraid to sweat.
3. Think twice before buying anything. Every item you purchase comes with a carbon price tag.
4. Shop used.
5. Take faster showers.
6. Do you really need to turn that light on? Would a window give you the light you need? Can you still see if it isn’t on?
7. Buy a smaller house closer to the places you visit often
8. Use a sweater.
9. Talking generates almost no carbon. Turn off the TV and get to know each other.

Yes, fill out a survey. Yes, go to a protest. Yes, write a letter. Do everything that was on the list of the protest I just attended:

But don’t forget about how much this problem depends on you doing something besides getting angry.