“The power of the consumer has never been more important… every single thing that you do counts.” A clear statement from Tessa Clarke, CEO and Co-Founder of food-sharing app Olio, speaking on the Food & Agriculture panel at the inaugural Decarbonisation Summit in Glasgow.

She and many other panellists throughout the event emphasised the impact that our individual actions can have in the fight against climate change.

Many of us will feel like we’ve been in this position before. Companies telling us that it is our responsibility to overcome the climate crisis, presenting us with a convenient new - and often pricier - product that will be our ticket to a more sustainable life. Yet, all the while, just 20 companies are responsible for 35% of global carbon emissions (as of 2019).

But our choices extend far beyond just the products we buy or the lifestyle we lead and, while it doesn’t always seem that way, we as citizens have far greater influence than we think. As Greenbackers Investment Partner, Mark Hannigan, explained to Tuesday’s Investment panel, “I think consumers and citizens have three massive levers they can pull today in terms of their choices, who they vote for, and where their pension is invested”.

Let’s start with the most obvious and regular choice we have: what goes in the shopping basket.

Those of us in the privileged position to be able to buy sustainable products certainly should. You can drink sustainably sourced coffee, fill up reusable containers of pasta and cereal or cut down your meat and dairy consumption. Some might even shop at farmer’s markets to reduce the delivery miles of their food.

It doesn’t end with groceries either. There are plenty of sustainable fashion brands out there which don’t use microplastics or petrochemical dyes, or you can buy from second-hand marketplaces like Vestiaire Collective.

And these choices do make a difference. Over the past decade our consumption of meat has fallen 17% as awareness of it’s negative impacts, both environmentally and on our health, has grown. Georgia-Rae Taylor, Head of Sustainability Strategy at EcoAge, predicts a similar trend in the fashion industry over the next few years, as more and more people wake up to the fact that their favourite budget brands rely upon systems of exploitation.

Rather than wondering, for instance, why so many Westerners eat unsustainably, we should instead be questioning why meat and dairy - which require far more natural resources to produce than plant-based foods - remain so cheap?

Tim Christophersen, who leads the Nature for Climate Branch at the UN Environment Programme, explained why to our Food and Agriculture panel: “Global governments pay $540 billion in subsidies for the food sector per year. Of that, $470 billion are contributing to processes which are directly harmful to our environments, health and climate.”

Subsidies for fossil fuels are even more staggering, sitting at around $5.9 trillion globally in 2020 according to the IMF.

All the public money pumped into these polluting industries distorts the market in their favour and keeps their prices artificially low. So you can wear sustainably sourced clothes, switch to a renewable energy provider (like SSE, Good Energy or Rebel Energy) and eat plant-based but, with these policies in place, acrylic jumpers, petrol cars, gas boilers and beef will remain the cheaper and therefore more viable options for the majority of people.

How, then, can we disrupt this status quo? Fortunately, spending power isn’t the only thing we can wield in the fight against climate change.

You’d be forgiven for thinking our politicians don’t always have our best interests at heart, particularly when it comes to decarbonisation. For example, in the same week that he tweeted his praise for the progress made at COP26, it was revealed that UK Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi had received more than £1 million from oil firm Gulf Keystone between 2015 and 2018, whilst he served as an MP.

But, in spite of the vast lobbying power that polluting companies hold, politicians are only as influential as their election cycle permits.

Policymakers like Mr Zahawi must be made to feel like, if they don’t turn their backs on the lobbyists and support ambitious green policies, they will be voted out of office in favour of a candidate who will. Former Vienna Vice-Mayor Maria Vassilakou articulated this during our Policy panel discussion, reminding us that “We have to stop voting for people who only think about the next elections”.

Above all else, it is our political choices that can bring about the massive systemic changes that are needed to overcome the climate crisis. And our influence isn’t restricted to the ballot box.

Re-insulating homes and replacing gas boilers with electric heat pumps, for instance, could create 80,000 new jobs in Greater Manchester alone. That’s according to the region’s mayor Andy Burnham, who we also heard from on our Policy panel. Brazilian climate activist Paloma Costa Oliveira, who sits on the UN’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change, echoed this sentiment, pointing out that “the Amazon can give us everything that we want for a healthy life, but also it can create jobs by working with the products of the forest.”

Similar gains can be made by improving our public transport networks to reduce our reliance on cars and vastly expanding global renewable energy networks.

How, though, do we make people aware that such measures are achievable, something they can realistically be demanding from their MPs and councillors?

Understandably, many people around the world who are struggling to get by set their political priorities a lot closer to home than a big-picture issue like climate change. Those politicians and executives who benefit from the current unsustainable system play on their fears deliberately. They present routes towards decarbonisation as unattainable, unrealistic, economically unviable.

By communicating the tangible benefits it can bring to local communities, we can make decarbonisation a top political priority and spur those in positions of power into urgent action. That’s why those of us with the privilege of a platform have a responsibility to encourage people to realise how impactful they can be.

So our choices do matter. What we eat, what we wear, how we travel, how we manage our waste - these things do make a difference. However, the most important choice we have is between informing people about decarbonisation or holding our silence. This is the most important thing we have taken away from the Decarbonisation Summit.

Our main enemy in the fight against climate change is not greedy corporations or corrupt politicians but the apathy which enables them.