We need urgency and agency. Urgency, sure, but what the heck is climate agency?

Belief, hope, and optimism will not solve our climate crisis. What truly matters is human agency, a vague and often misunderstood concept. Exercising our agency toward successful climate management includes realizing that we have all that we need (knowledge, technologies, and skills) and that making smarter, action-based decisions will deliver far more livable futures than the path we now travel.

We really can slow global heating. Knowing this could quickly become the most powerful driver of progress against our most pressing local and global challenges, including climate change.

“Urgency and agency” is the crucial climate action mindset urged by Dr. Michael Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth & Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania. People intuitively understand what urgency is, but what is human agency, a complex concept explored in philosophy, psychology, and other social sciences? Understanding fully that our agency is key to managing climate change can help mobilize stronger and more effective climate action.

Human agency can operate at personal, group, organizational, community, country, and species levels. It combines thinking and acting to achieve desired results—here, to take more meaningful and high-impact climate actions.

Meaningful impact and constant progress require knowing what to do and then doing it. We already know what we need to do and how to do it: reduce fossil fuel use as much and as soon as possible and replace it with renewable energy sources to slow and eventually stop global heating. We also recognize the need to adapt and prepare, but mitigation is the primary focus here.

Whether we take sufficient action on the climate crisis to regain control of our lives and futures is a matter of choice—choices we are fully capable of making wisely. Exerting strong political will—a crucial, ongoing series of choices—is part of human agency, but full-fledged agency is much broader. Full agency encompasses everything we think and do that helps create progress toward the goals we want and especially need to accomplish.

Start your quest for higher climate impact by embracing the possibility that you have many options that can make a difference. You only need to initiate a few that suit you best based on experience, knowledge, or interests. Examples include more active political involvement at the state, national, and community levels, as well as greater engagement in your workplaces, clubs, places of worship, neighborhoods, and beyond. For greater impact, invite others to join and keep inviting more.

Consider the many options available in all agency categories: personal, collective, and proxy. Only one—personal agency—concerns a single person, for example, recycling, buying a hybrid or electric car, and reducing meat consumption and air travel.

But climate agency is less about what you can do alone than about what all of us rowing in the same direction can accomplish. It’s about the strength of unity, the power of collective action. Researchers believe that the world can reach drawdown—the point when levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases stop climbing and start declining—by mid-century if we wisely apply the climate solutions that already exist.

Collaborating with others leverages the power of numbers, including protests, boycotts, community participation in actions, and inter-organizational, cross-sector, and international collaborations. With this collective agency, you can feel the strength of unity and the impact of your actions more deeply.

The crucial third option, proxy agency, includes influencing powerful others to address your causes, for instance by electing new representatives, working to change the opinions and votes of current office holders, and engaging employers in helping our climate.

Certain core processes support agency and help overcome business-as-usual habits, routines, and passivity. Exercising forethought involves thinking ahead more than most of us usually do, accepting a share of responsibility for our climate future, and forming a thoughtful strategic plan. Executing effective strategies requires taking first steps and proceeding smartly. Managing yourself requires keeping your eyes on the prize of a livable climate and monitoring your actions, thoughts, progress, and health to sustain your efforts over time.

An essential agency activity is learning and adapting along the way, making tactical changes as needed and periodically re-strategizing. We need to avoid plateauing, taking backward steps, and making big, avoidable mistakes. It’s a long road to a better climate future than where we’re now heading, where two steps forward and one step back won’t suffice. Committing to learning and adapting helps us navigate the most direct route.

You can use urgency and agency to prompt the next crucial mindset: strategic proaction. This thoughtful and action-oriented mindset is not just about forethought and optimism but about intentionally forging our best possible futures. It’s a mindset that leaves passivity behind and inspires us to achieve what we want and need. We will deserve a more livable climate, too, if we choose and act wisely.

Exercising our climate agency is the only way to regain control of our future after losing it for too many years. Every fractional degree of warming we avoid will dramatically reduce the dangers, bringing enormous benefits of every kind.