Asking for more, not less

Most campaigns for a better way of living ask people to give something up. Shorter showers, fewer drives, smaller baskets, a little guilt at the till. It is a hard sell, and it places the weight of a very large problem on the smallest shoulders.

Picture a family in an apartment block in Manama asked to sort their rubbish into three bags. The building has one bin, and the truck that collects it tips everything into the same load. They do their part for a few weeks. Nothing changes, and they quietly stop.

The trouble is not that they did not care. It is that they were handed a task that could never add up to the result.

There is another way to frame the climate question, and most others like it. Not less, but more. Cleaner air on the walk to school. Shade along the street. A bus worth waiting for. More good years at the end of a life. More work that people are proud of.

And the request moves away from the household and towards the people who run the systems: the employer, the developer, the municipality, the country. Asking them for more is not selfish. It is the only lever long enough to move the weight.

Personal habits still matter at the edges. But a cause that sells sacrifice to individuals will always stay smaller than one that keeps asking those at the top for more, and does not stop asking.