“But I’m only one person – what difference can I make?”

 

Similar to other disciplines, social sciences is not short of big words, but one which deserves a special place is ‘externalities’.  Allow me to define this through a short example; whenever I go about doing what I do as part of my life, I inadvertently affect you as a side effect of my actions.  In most cases I don’t even realise I have any effect on you, and nor do I have to compensate you for any harms or inconveniences I may have caused you.  Equally, you don’t have to pay me for any benefits you may have reaped from my actions.  The trail of effects, both positive and negative, amount to what is known as externalities.

 

I am typing this as I am travelling on train heading towards Edinburgh; the coffee I purchased at the train station with milk and a tiny hint of sugar has, in a very small way, paid for the barista’s wage and the dairy farmer’s income who supplied the milk. the same purchase will have sustained the income of the coffee bean farmer and the sugar plantation owner somewhere half a world away.  The paper cup manufacturer has one more sale and the tax office has collected some revenue to keep the economy ticking. All these externalities were made possible because of my purchase.

 

Whilst I am not claiming to have single-handedly sustained a global beverage industry by succumbing to my caffeine crave but what I can claim is every action counts just in the same way as every pixel counts when we look at a digital image. Millions of pixels placed together make an image and that is what leads to externalities.

 

It isn’t necessary (or desirable) to cover this whole article about the potential externalities caused by a drink I purchased whilst on my travels, but I feel the point has been made and so will save you the effort of having to read about C02 emitted through transporting coffee beans across the globe or the impact on my savings by paying for an expensive cuppa which I could have easily made at home and carried in a flask.  The point to note here is externalities matter and if I can leave such trail of externalities through a simple transaction then a question arises – what trail of externalities are we leaving in our local neighbourhoods when we are going about our everyday lives? 

 

To answer this question I could examine many behaviours  and include anything from recycling household waste, gardening, reporting neighbourhood crime, late night fireworks, feeding wildlife, volunteering, voting and travelling in the local area.  If we place the last of these under the spotlight, then we know from an established body of evidence that when we choose to drive instead of actively travel then we contribute to both the pollution and congestion in the local neighbourhood.  Research has shown air pollution is up to 12 times more concentrated inside a car on a busy road compared to the side of the road where people are walking or cycling.  This is particularly detrimental to children who are passengers inside the car who are yet still developing their lungs and hearts.  If we add more cars to the equation, say for example on a school run, then moving these along and finding parking spots adds to the congestion and pollution. As a consequence we have slower moving queues of cars which cause more health problems which then has an adverse impact on health services and the quality of life in the area.  This point was well made by one campaign which evocatively led with the slogan – ‘you are not stuck in traffic, you are the traffic’.

 

Externalities, when seen this way, are essentially a trail of consequences that collectively have a profound impact on neighbourhoods, workspaces, the economy, political systems and on health and well-being.  Anyone who says, “but I am only one person, what difference do I make?”  should heed the words of the Persian Poet Rumi, who once famously said ‘you are not a drop in the ocean but you are instead the ocean in the drop’.  Basically, when we examine our lives through the lens of externalities then it should show we are each much more responsible for the state of the world and our communities than we believe or feel comfortable believing. You are both the pixel and the image. 

– Shahid Islam