Fair point. It’s a fact that we, as individuals, are embedded in systems that affect how much greenhouse gas we emit. And, changing those systems is tougher than changing our own behavior. It’s hard to ride a bike to work, for example, if your community doesn’t have bike lanes.

That raises a question: In addition to our individual actions, what levers can we use to shift these systems so they’re less carbon intensive?

Over the past few years, Ilona M. Otto, a resource economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and her colleagues have worked to understand those mechanisms. This week, they published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that identifies some possible levers, or social tipping interventions, that could put the planet on track to halve global emissions by 2030 and tip the scales to net zero emissions by 2050.

You can think of some of the interventions as variations on the theme “when you know better, you do better.” These include: Highlighting the moral implications of fossil fuels, strengthening climate education and engagement, and disclosing information on greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr. Otto points to movements like Fridays for Future as having put a spotlight on the morality of fossil fuels. “You have a new generation of young people and the majority of them have a completely different understanding of politics and of what has to be done,” she said.