Reader responses to the Climate Shadow

A couple of months ago, I published an article on the “Climate Shadow”, a coin I had termed to describe the full impact of an individual’s life on climate change. A way to look beyond your thermostat and reusable grocery bag and see what actually matters: your attention, your choices, and your consumption.

The morning that the article went live, I was so nervous that I thought I was gonna throw up. I kept reading it and re-reading it, wondering what I’d missed. Was it too simple? Too complex? Did it even make any sense?

I write a lot of climate journalism, but this wasn’t journalism. This wasn’t something that could be researched or fact-checked or investigated. This was my big idea. Something that I thought could really help people think about their impact on climate change in a new way. But what if I was wrong?

I couldn’t decide what I was more afraid of — that nobody would read it, or that a bunch of people would read it.

Well, a bunch of people read it…