Recently, my book No Impact Man – about my little family's one-year carbon fast – was released in France. During my many interviews with French journalists, I realised that there
was a bashing of the American people going on. The American people were
being blamed for the failure of the climate treaty talks in Copenhagen
last year.

That American-bashing wasn't fair. People are people and American people, per se, are no less generous and love their children no less than the French, the Germans or the British.

And it is not the American people who have stopped worthwhile climate
legislation from passing through the United States legislature. It is
corporations. The corporations – multi-national corporations – whose
bottom lines would be affected by a higher price put on fossil fuels.

So the problem is not the "American" way of life. It is that the American
way of life has sadly become the corporate way of life. The way of life
in the United States is largely under the control of corporations. Even
our food is grown on industrial mega-farms.

To blame the American people for the failure of meaningful international action
on climate is to miss the point – and dangerous. Because let's not
forget that there is now a Starbucks on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. And
check out the number of American-style fast-food restaurants you can
now find in British city centres.

In other words, the American way of life, if that's what you want to call it, or the
corporate way of life, is moving to Europe. Corporations, sadly, are
unlikely to lead us to meaningful change when it comes to climate or any
other major social issue if it turns out that it will affect payments
to shareholders.

Failing to draw a line in the sand when it comes to corporatisation is not only to lose ground on climate change, but it is also to allow a culture to be run on the basis of what
is best for shareholders instead of what is best for people.

This is why, as part of my No Impact year, I bought from local farmers, who I
knew cared about the land they farmed and the animals they tended. It
is why I always advise people that campaign finance reform (the drive to
get the corporate money out American politics) may be a necessary
precursor to meaningful movement on energy reform.

But the question remains what else "we, the people" (as we say in the
United States) should do, beyond our shopping choices. Waiting for the
politicians to do something is not the answer, because, as my friend
David Korten writes in Agenda for a New Economy, "The leadership for
institutional transformation rarely comes from those who depend on
existing institutions as their base of power." Real change comes from
the grassroots.

So what can be done?

We must counterbalance the corporate/political power axis with citizen
power. For starters, this means not abandoning the political system but
flooding it. Citizens must become civically engaged until voter numbers
outweigh corporate dollars in political decision making.

But citizens must also exercise their power independently of the
politicians. At its simplest, this is a matter of citizens acting to
nurture the cultural institutions that support human rather than
corporate values – local farms, community banks, independent merchants,
renewable energy – and starving institutions that don't, ie Wall Street
and City banks, petrochemical and military industries etc.

Examples of explosive citizen power can be found throughout history. Think of
non-violent independence and civil rights movements. Many of them
started in the same way.

People begin by reflecting their values in how they live their lives, by changing the businesses
they patronise or adapting their lifestyles. They search for people who
share their values and support their choices. Eventually, they realise
that their power increases exponentially when they work together in
groups.

In large numbers, we can starve the cultural cancers and enliven the societal healthy tissues more quickly. So it's also a matter of seeking out, or even starting up, organisations that
network people with shared values together. And then moving beyond
conversation to action.

This may sound onerous but things are not changing fast enough. And we will get much in return,
including the feeling of lives fully lived in a world where we are not
victims of the system but leaders of it.

by Colin Beavan

Colin Beavan's No Impact Man film opened last week in the UK. There are nationwide one-off screenings across the UK today.

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Tom Cotter covers green and sustainability topics in the Fresno area for Green Fresno. He is the co-founder of GreenFresno.org and Sales Manager for Central California with Real Goods Solar. Tom is involved in organizing the Fresno Solar Tour, Fresno Earth Day,
Fresno Green Week and other events with a focus of renewable energy,
ecological responsibility and environmental education. He is also a
frequent speaker around the valley at similarly themed gatherings.