Today is Blog Action Day 2009, a day for bloggers all over the world to focus their collective work on a single topic. This year: climate change. Here at Anonymous Cowgirl, we’re continuing an examination of individual and institutional action, the Baha’i Faith, and how it all relates to climate change.

Training institute held at the Baha’i Centre in Funafuti, Tuvalu (Copyright 2006, Baha’i International Community)

Still mulling over yesterday’s post on the connection between individual and social transformation and a post from almost two years ago, “WorldChanging and the End of Earth Day.” In that older post, we examined WorldChanging’s concept of “the myth of individual responsibility.” The basic argument was that we’ve become so focused on what individuals can do – recycle, drive less, eat less meat, use less water, and so on – that we’ve forgotten the concerted institutional change that drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions will require. The unrelenting focus on personal responsibility clouded our minds to the structural changes that were needed, according to the good folk at WorldChanging.

Wary as always of dichotomous thinking, we now have to ask whether the way forward on climate change won’t require some synthesis of individual action and institutional change. If reality is one, how do these two spheres of action fit together into a coherent whole?

If the only action I take is to reduce my own greenhouse emissions through eating less meat or driving less, then small island nations like Tuvalu (some Tuvalan residents pictured above) will still be subsumed by rising sea levels. But can our existing social institutions really rise to the challenge of climate change? I suspect a way forward lies in the concept of “walking a path of service.” From the Ruhi Institute:

According to this vision of social change, the Ruhi Institute directs its present efforts to develop human resources within a set of activities that conduce to spiritual and intellectual growth, but are carried out in the context of each individual’s contribution to the establishment of new structures, whether in villages and rural regions or in large urban centers.

At this moment in history, Baha’i social action is largely focused at the neighborhood scale. Visiting neighbors in each others’ homes to share stories, caring for the intellectual and spiritual development of children, empowering young people to contribute to the betterment of the community. But within these efforts are the seeds of new social structures.

I guess my conclusion is that we’re going to see more bad times before it gets better. Drought is real; rising sea levels are real; 7 billion of us are spewing CO₂ and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Until we develop both the individual discipline and the institutional cooperation needed to address climate change, we won’t see many improvements there. But if we want our social institutions to function better, we need to start walking a path of service today that lays the foundation for new social structures.

Related Links

• Presented at the UN Climate Change conference in Poznan, Poland December 2008: Seizing the Opportunity: Redefining the Challenge of Climate Change (pdf)
• Ethics are ‘missing dimension’ in climate debate, says IPCC head
• Presented at the UN Summit on Climate Change September 2009: Moral and Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change: Appeal to World Leaders (pdf)
• Therese over at Interns@BIC blogs on Global Civil Society and Climate Change
• Make this Earth Day your last! (WorldChanging)