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The Associated Press asked what would happen if personal choices add up at scale: what if one in every 10 Americans changed small, routine habits that contribute to climate pollution—how they eat, drive, heat their homes and shop for clothes. The analysis draws on data the AP said it gathered from federal agencies and other sources and then calculated how much emissions would be reduced if those switches were made by roughly one out of every 10 users of each habit.
In its look at food, the AP focused on beef as an especially carbon-intensive choice in the global food system, citing reasons tied to cattle methane and the land and feed needed to raise beef. The American Heart Association’s recommended meat serving size in the U.S. is 3 ounces (85 grams). The AP calculated that swapping one such serving of beef for chicken once a week would cut about 10 pounds (4.54 kilograms) of carbon dioxide per person each year, based on 52 weeks. The AP also said a 2023 survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found about 74% of Americans eat beef at least once a week. Using that baseline, the AP estimated that if one in 10 of those people—about 25 million—swapped just one weekly beef meal for chicken, emissions would fall by about 13 billion pounds (roughly 6 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide each year.
On transportation, the AP said the Environmental Protection Agency identifies transportation as one of the largest sources of direct greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., and that personal vehicles account for a major share. The AP reported that the EPA says the average U.S. motorist drives 11,500 miles (18,507 kilometers) per year. The AP estimated that an average gas-powered car emits 400 grams (14 ounces) of carbon dioxide per mile, compared with about 110 grams (3.9 ounces) per mile for an electric vehicle. Using those figures, it calculated that driving an electric vehicle instead of a gas car would cut roughly 7,400 pounds (3,357 kilograms) of carbon dioxide per person annually, even after accounting for emissions from electricity generation. The AP then estimated that if 1 in 10 licensed drivers—about 23.77 million people—made that change, the savings would add up to roughly 175 billion pounds (roughly 79 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide every year, nearly 1.25% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
For home energy, the AP said heating can be an “invisible” source of fossil-fuel use because it happens inside households. It reported that about 60 million U.S. households rely on utility natural gas furnaces, citing the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. The AP calculated that replacing a gas furnace with an electric heat pump, which moves heat instead of generating it through combustion, cuts about 1,830 pounds (830 kilograms) of carbon dioxide per household per year. It estimated that if one in 10 households that heat with natural gas switched to heat pumps, the countrywide result would be about 11 billion pounds (roughly 5 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide avoided annually.
Leah Stokes, an associate professor of environment politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said in the AP analysis that the fossil-fuel link is partly hidden because people tend not to view their homes as part of the energy system. “People’s homes are kind of like little fossil fuel power plants that people operate, and they just don’t realize that’s what they’re doing,” Stokes said. She added that “That’s really the collective action thing is for people to understand that there is fossil fuel infrastructure right under their noses in their own homes.”
In clothing, the AP argued that apparel can be a significant source of emissions even though it can feel smaller than cars or furnaces. The AP said a life cycle assessment by Levi Strauss & Co. estimates that producing a single pair of Levi’s 501 jeans can emit more than 44 pounds (20 kilograms) of carbon dioxide across manufacturing, packaging, transportation and retail. The AP then estimated that if 34.2 million people—equivalent to 1 in 10 Americans—bought a pair of secondhand jeans instead of buying new that year, the change would avoid roughly 1.5 billion pounds (roughly 0.7 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide, comparable to emissions from about 150,000 gasoline cars.
Constance Ulasewicz, a consumer and family studies emeritus faculty member and lecturer at San Francisco State University, said the behavior involves keeping clothing in use rather than discarding it. “What you can do is not throw in the trash,” Ulasewicz said. “So it’s repairing your clothing so you can extend the life, and buying from a secondhand store.”
Across each of the four areas—food, transportation, heating and apparel—the AP said the same point holds: no single action can solve climate change alone, but many small shifts can quickly affect emissions when they spread through everyday life. The AP also included quotations from researchers and experts in its calculations, including Dave Gustafson, project director at Agriculture & Food Systems Institute, who said beef is “a commonly consumed item that has one of the largest carbon footprints per pound.” And the AP quoted Dillon Fitch-Polse, a professional researcher and co-director of Bicycling Plus Research Collaborative at the University of California, Davis, who said, “If a large percentage of people changed a little bit of their travel, then all of a sudden the benefits are huge.”
The AP’s analysis framed these everyday choices as practical levers, suggesting that the emissions impact depends not only on what each person does, but on how many people do it.