--- title: one person can hold an account canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/one-person-can-hold-an-account markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/one-person-can-hold-an-account.md subtitle: the smallest people account is the one already keeping something category: ensurance --- # one person can hold an account *the smallest people account is the one already keeping something* If you searched *individual climate action*, you probably want to know what one person can actually do, and which actions matter most. Researchers have tried to rank them. In 2017, Seth Wynes and Kimberly Nicholas reviewed 39 sources and found four individual actions with the largest effect on a person's emissions: having one fewer child, living car-free, avoiding air travel, and eating a plant-based diet. They also found that the high school textbooks and government resources they examined mostly left those four out, while steps such as recycling and changing light bulbs, which their estimates put far lower, got more attention. The estimates are for people in high-income countries. That ranking is useful, and it is about emissions. This post offers one more action, a different kind, and it does not replace any of those. It is the one this protocol can offer: **name what you already keep, and give it an address.** Most people already keep something. A lemon tree in a backyard. A strip of willows along a creek a neighbor asked you to watch. A school garden that dies every August unless someone waters it. That tree, that creek, and that garden already depend on water, soil, and the living things around them, whether or not anyone writes them down. [**Ensurance**](/?from=guide) is how the thing you name gets funded to keep working. It is not the tree. ## what one person already keeps Start with an inventory, not a pledge. Write down what you look after now, at whatever size it really is: - **A pin.** One tree, one spring, one nest box, one bed of native plants. - **A stretch.** The creek bank you clear, the trail you maintain, the block you plant. - **A cause.** Something you care about wherever it is: pollinators, cold water for trout, shade on a hot street. Each of those is a relationship between one person and a living thing. That relationship is the smallest grain of the people leg. You do not need title, a group, or a budget for it to be real. You already have it. The reason to write it down is that most climate advice asks you to give something up. This asks you to notice something you already give. People act for what is theirs — their creek, their street trees, their fish — far more readily than for a planet in the abstract. [People don't care about nature, they care about theirs](/guide/people-dont-care-about-nature-they-care-about-theirs?from=guide) makes that case in full. ## one person, at more than one size One person is not small in the way it sounds. The same person relates to places and purposes at several sizes at once, and the same account shape holds at each. | size | what one person keeps or depends on | a live account at that size | |---|---|---| | A pin | A garden bed or a single tree | No account for your tree exists today; you can propose one | | A reach | The creek below the garden | For example, [crystal-river.basin](/crystal-river.basin?from=guide) | | A basin | The river the town drinks from | [colorado-river.basin](/colorado-river.basin?from=guide) | | A purpose | Water that keeps arriving | [water-abundance.ensurance](/water-abundance.ensurance?from=guide) | The person's own account sits beside those. [tmo.earth](/tmo.earth?from=guide) is a live account for one person, with a wallet deployed. Inside a group, a person can hold an account too: most of the 114 accounts in [.tgn](/groups/tgn?from=guide) are individual people, and so are 30 of the 33 in [.boulder](/groups/boulder?from=guide). Those are namespaces made in the protocol; the city name in `.boulder` does not mean the city is involved. Each row is an edge. People→place: you keep the garden. People→purpose: you care that water keeps arriving. The account gives the edge an address, so anyone who depends on the same reach can send funding to an address for it that a named person confirms, visible on a public ledger. :::johnson **one person is the smallest whole group.** Anything a crew or a town does with an account, one person can do at the size of one person. How decisions get made is what changes. [see what a named place depends on →](/explore?from=guide) ::: ## a person always confirms An account is a public ledger entry with an address that can hold, receive, and act. It does not act on its own by default. Nothing moves until a person confirms, unless that person has turned on a program for it. That matters for one reason above the others. Your account is yours to sign for, but it does not make you the owner of the creek, the spokesperson for the street, or the only keeper of the tree. Several accounts can serve the same place. Your neighbor can open one for the same willows, and the watershed council that already works on the creek keeps doing that work. The account sits beside local governance; it does not replace it. If other people already keep that creek, talk to them before you open an account. An account you open does not speak for them. Keep your garden private if you want to. A home is never pinned in public. The app stores a precise location and shows only a coarser one ([the home you won't pin](/guide/the-home-you-wont-pin?from=guide)). ## a short ladder, one rung at a time You do not have to do all of this today. Each rung is complete on its own. 1. **Look.** Open [explore](/explore?from=guide) and find the reach, basin, or bioregion your garden sits in. Your watershed may already have an account. 2. **Name it.** Write one sentence: what you keep, where, and what it depends on. "The willows on the east bank of the creek behind the school, which need the spring floods." 3. **Open it.** If the thing you keep has no account, [propose one](/agents/create?from=guide). An account for a single tree is a real request; it is not there until someone asks for it. 4. **Sign.** Confirm what the account is for. From there, anyone who depends on the same creek has an address to fund it. None of this promises income. An account is where a payment can land. On 26 Oct 2026, 86 of 2,085 accounts in the catalog had a wallet deployed. An address with no wallet cannot receive yet. ## why bother, if it is small Because small is where keeping happens. The basin is made of reaches, and the reaches are made of banks that someone walks. A big account with no one at the small end is a name. A small account with one person who shows up every spring is a keeper. The emissions actions in the Wynes and Nicholas ranking still matter, and nothing here asks you to trade them away. This is a different kind of action: not less of something, but an address for something you already do. If you want to do it with others, the next post is about the crew, the club, and the family: [a small group is big enough](/guide/a-small-group-is-big-enough?from=guide). If you want to talk through what you keep and whether it needs its own account, [write to us](/contact?from=guide&topic=ppp-people). ## frequently asked questions ### what is the most effective individual climate action? A 2017 review by Wynes and Nicholas found four high-impact individual actions for emissions: having one fewer child, living car-free, avoiding air travel, and eating a plant-based diet. Which one fits a person's life is their own call. Keeping a living thing near you is a different kind of action and can sit beside any of them. ### can one person open an account for a tree or a creek? Yes. One person can propose an account for a single tree, a garden, or a stretch of creek. It will not exist until someone asks for it, and a person confirms what it does, unless they switch on a program. ### does a personal account earn money? No promise comes with it. An account is an address that can receive. Whether anyone sends anything depends on who else depends on the same place. On 26 Oct 2026, 86 of 2,085 accounts had a wallet deployed; an address with no wallet cannot receive yet. ## sources [Seth Wynes and Kimberly A. Nicholas, "The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions," *Environmental Research Letters* 12, 074024, 2017](https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541) — the four high-impact individual actions and the gap in what textbooks and governments recommend ## the series Six posts on one leg of the triad: people, from one person to a whole town. 1. [who counts as people?](/guide/who-counts-as-people?from=guide) — read first 2. **one person can hold an account** — you are here 3. [a small group is big enough](/guide/a-small-group-is-big-enough?from=guide) 4. [every company depends on places it does not own](/guide/every-company-depends-on-places-it-does-not-own?from=guide) 5. [a town is people who share a place](/guide/a-town-is-people-who-share-a-place?from=guide) 6. [place, purpose, people at any size](/guide/place-purpose-people-at-any-size?from=guide) ## the three series Place, purpose, and people, each walked from the smallest size to the largest, after one question. - [what counts as a place?](/guide/what-counts-as-a-place?from=guide) — the place series - [what counts as a purpose?](/guide/what-counts-as-a-purpose?from=guide) — the purpose series - [who counts as people?](/guide/who-counts-as-people?from=guide) — the people series - [what do you want to ensure?](/guide/what-do-you-want-to-ensure?from=guide) — the question the three series start from