Personal Climate Choices for Introverts

As I put on my name tag, I saw that I didn’t recognize anyone in the room; I was tempted to leave. It was a new local group, gathering to do more about climate change and I regretted following the widespread advice to join with others to make my choices count. It seems my preference for online climate work and avoiding meetings had made me an introvert in regard to climate change.

Who is an Introvert

Introverts tend to be the ones doing private self-reflection, taking time alone to digest their time out in the world. Much of this is to reduce the stress of overstimulation, especially from the short fast bursts of interaction or information that provide little context. Most introverts are not a fan of speed dating for example.

The Activist Introvert  

  The introvert who wants to take climate action faces a paradox. Action on the environment requires connecting with the physical world and knowing something about how climate works.

 One of my favorite Boston (U.S) landmarks is a walk-through map of our world, viewing our earth from the inside. Like introverts, it works from the inside out rather than the outside in.

 Introverts lean toward sources of information and opinion in ways that don’t overwhelm. One of their tools is to leave time for sorting their own preferences before joining a group with its own goals. Setting aside time with no interruptions to consider what you bring to climate change can be second nature. Habits, like personal reading and writing, work to take stock of where you’re starting from. A kind of inventory (perhaps a fearless one) can include quite personal thinking and feeling about climate, your physical environment, and being in nature.

An Introvert Action to Take Now (Today)

I realize now that most of my blogging has already been urging folks to base their climate choices on their unique personal wiring and situations. By suggesting we each start with ourselves, I was inviting the use of tools that introverts naturally use for gathering information and making climate choices.

It seems I’ve been speaking as an introvert without really being aware of it. The clincher was when I reviewed my specific blogposts and saw how they fit an introvert’s approach. In fact, I’d already invited my readers to “face the cloud of climate uncertainty” with a personal check-in last October.

I urge the introverts out there to try this exercise; it shouldn’t take more than five minutes and will create a record of an action you’re taking today to help refocus your climate approach.

An Introvert’s Actions

Back to the local climate group I was tempted to leave: I did choose to stay. Now that it’s clearer to me how much of an introvert I am about climate, I’m a bit more ready to step out again, briefly, into my community. I will show up at the next meeting as an introvert.

A bit of internet surfing brought me this t-shirt evidence that I’m apparently not alone in this.

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