Solve Climate Change with Collective Power

Trying to solve climate change single-handedly can feel like a dead-end road. Working collaboratively to harness financial and social power might just be the solution we have all been waiting for!

No one person or entity has the ability to solve climate change on their own, we all know that. Even if we each did our best effort individually, it would not be enough. It is indispensable that we do it together leveraging our collective financial and social power to solve climate change. Because Collective Power is so critical, we at The Carbon Co focus all of our attention on making it really easy for everyday people to be part of a collective solution.

Collective power emerges when individuals collaborate, pool their resources, and coordinate their efforts; it allows people to achieve outcomes exceeding what could be accomplished through individual, uncoordinated efforts.

There is no silver bullet for solving climate change. Our planet needs solutions across many sectors to decarbonize our global economy (see chart). In order to mobilize the economic agents in all these sectors and to increase the speed of implementation, we need to exert a lot more pressure. Collectively, we can influence decision makers, whereas it would be very difficult to do so individually.

73% of Americans are worried about the quality of our environment (Source: Gallup 2023 survey) and most people feel we all need to do more to solve climate change. But most people struggle to find a path of action and often ask: “What can I do?”. This is where our collective power comes into play.

First, our collective financial power: we can aggregate our individual financial strength to fund real climate solutions we would not be able to fund on our own. And second, our collective social power: we can collaborate on initiatives or raise our collective voice to influence business decision makers and lawmakers who would not listen to individual voices.

Collective financial power

Our collective financial power can definitely move economic agents: it’s very straightforward math. Our global GDP is $100 trillion annually and 60% of that is consumer spending. We, all the individuals around the world, decide where we spend $60 trillion every year. Our purchasing decisions can move the largest corporations towards the right path for our planet.  We at The Carbon Co are developing tools to convert that purchasing capacity into our collective financial power to solve climate change. 

The first product - one we've designed with input from people like you - is The Carbon Card: a credit card that at no extra cost to the consumer channels 1% of the collective purchases to fund climate projects. $16 Trillion of the $60 trillion in consumer spending is paid on a credit card already. So if we send 1% of that existing spend to climate solutions, we could invest $160 billion per year - every year - in meaningful climate projects that meet critical Speed, Scale, and Inclusion criteria. By leveraging everyday purchases that we already do, we can start funding real solutions to solve climate change: installing solar panels in all public schools or removing carbon through accelerated natural processes. The Carbon Card is just the beginning, imagine all we can do with our collective financial muscle.

Let’s use an example to illustrate collective financial power. An average family in the US spends $1,300 per month on groceries, or $15,600 per year. 1% of that annual spend would be $156. While one family could contribute $156 to fund a climate project, they would need to individually find the right projects and keep track of them. Ten thousand families could contribute $1.56 million and  a million families, $156 million to fund many projects, every year. Instead, if we leveraged our collective capacity and got organized to have a climate investor find the right projects and report back results, we could find the best projects to fund with those $156 million. And that's just groceries. If we considered the average US family monthly spend of $5,100, one million families using The Carbon Card would amount to $600 million in funds flowing to climate projects, every year and at no extra cost to them! Two million families would make us one of the largest climate investors in the world and we would grow every year with the contributions of everyone with no additional cost to them.

Collective social power

Collective power emerges from our ability to pool voices and votes together to accelerate meaningful climate solutions faster than they are currently progressing. When it comes to climate change, most people feel lonely, isolated, and powerless. Our community -The Carbon Crew- will be a space for like-minded people to come together and support each other’s efforts to solve climate change.

A key component of our strategy is exciting people about all the things we can do -and are already doing- to create a positive impact. The Carbon Co brings a very different perspective that departs from the doom and gloom that pervades the global conversation today. We believe exciting and inspiring people about what is already being done and what can be done is the most effective approach to energizing and engaging individuals who often feel disconnected and overwhelmed by the existing narrative.

By harnessing the world’s collective will, we would also have a louder voice than just a single voice demanding accountability from governments and corporations. Imagine what an increased sense of urgency in our representatives could do to mobilize central resources or adjust legislation with the ultimate goal to enable decarbonization investments. Focusing the voices of millions to help lawmakers be stewards of our planet, we - as a group - can make a dramatic impact.

Finally, our collective social power is critical to making all of this possible. Certainly once our community has millions of people in it, we will be able to exert this collective strength. But how do we get there? To start, we need to leverage our individual social force to grow our community. Millions of people are looking for ways to act on climate change, The Carbon Co provides those ways and needs YOU to bring people you love to our shared community.

We at The Carbon Co see untapped potential in harnessing our collective financial and social power. This is why we are building easy and meaningful ways for everyone to join, get involved, and act on climate. Together we can solve climate change. Join us now and tell people you love about us!