Here is an uncomfortable idea to sit with. The climate crisis is not just a story about oil companies, corrupt politicians, and the occasional billionaire with a superyacht. It is also a story about you. About me. About the completely normal, socially rewarded things we do every single day without a second thought.

Stay with me. I promise this goes somewhere useful.

Let’s start with a quiz. When you hear the word SPAM, what comes to mind?

1. The avalanche of unsolicited emails from someone named “Brad” who really wants to refinance your mortgage.
2. That indestructible tinned meat product that will outlive your grandchildren and possibly the sun.
3. Spamalot. The gloriously unhinged Monty Python musical where grown adults fight a rabbit.
   All three of you are wrong!

A brilliant British ex-advertising executive has quietly redefined the word, and once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

Status. Power. And. Money.

Now FOMO.
Fear Of Missing Out. You already knew that one. Good. Hold onto it.

Together, SPAM and FOMO are the operating system quietly running modern civilization. And it is doing a number on the planet.

Let’s get specific. Be honest. Nobody is watching.

Have you ever casually mentioned, maybe more than once, maybe in the first thirty seconds of meeting someone, that you work for a fairly important person? Not that you do important work. Not that you have accomplishments of your own. Just that you have proximity to someone who does. You have learned to let that sentence do all the heavy lifting while you stand just behind it, basking in the borrowed glow.

That is Status. And it is working on you, not for you.

Have you ever gone over someone’s head? Not because the situation required it, but because you wanted them to feel it? Dropped a senior name into an email, copied in an executive, escalated just enough to make a point? Not to solve a problem. To remind someone of the distance between you.

Or maybe it’s quieter than that. A conversation you shut down mid-sentence. An opportunity you withheld. A reference you gave that was technically accurate and subtly devastating. Nothing dramatic. Just the slow, deliberate use of position to shape outcomes in your favour.

That is Power. And the most insidious thing about it is how completely justified it feels from the inside every single time.

Have you ever stretched your credit for something you absolutely did not need, just to have it? Accepted a job because the number was bigger, even as something in you quietly knew it would cost you in ways that don’t show up on a pay stub? Kept your real opinion to yourself, or smiled through something you knew was wrong, because the alternative might put your income at risk?

That is Money. And it is one of the most socially acceptable addictions we have.

Status. Power. Money. All perfectly normal. All completely human. All being fed, every day, by billions of us at once.

Have you ever chosen a bottle of wine, a restaurant, a car, or an outfit not because you wanted it, but because it was the right thing to be seen with? Have you ever upgraded a home, a handbag, or a holiday not out of genuine desire, but out of a low-grade terror of falling behind?

That is FOMO whispering in your ear. And you listened. Because we ALL listen.

Our SPAM and FOMO are highly addictive.

And that addiction comes with a carbon footprint. Gasp.

The dragon we call climate change did not light itself on fire. Yes, there are powerful lobby groups skewing regulation in favour of certain industries. Yes, governments keep starting and abandoning programs with dizzying inconsistency. Yes, there is an almost religious devotion to infinite growth on a very finite planet.

But the market they are feeding? That is us. Our SPAM addiction and our FOMO anxiety have poured a remarkable amount of fuel onto that fire. One status purchase, one power move, one fear-driven decision at a time. We are not innocent bystanders in this story. We are participants.

The good news, and there is good news, is that participants can change the plot.

I came across these ideas in a book written by Graham Hall (pen name Gramskii). It’s a sharp, funny, and quietly devastating satire called The Dragon and the Hummingbird. I am reaching out to invite him on the podcast, and I genuinely cannot wait for that conversation. He is not wrong, and I suspect somewhere in that list above, you knew it too.

In the meantime, I want to leave you with one question to sit with this week:

Which piece of your SPAM — your status story, your power habit, your money reflex — is costing you more than it’s giving you?

Not the planet in the abstract. You, specifically. What is it buying you, and what is it quietly taking?

Tell me what comes up. I read every reply.