this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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It won't matter if the world is ending. In the mean time since you're also contributing, start the blame there.
Yeah, that's the spirit! Let's all just blame ourselves for being born into a system which actively prevents you from choosing not to be a part of it! ^/s
But seriously though, individual action can be a little helpful and it's worth doing the parts that aren't an excessive cognitive load, but it's much, much more effective to have government regulate environmental action. Choosing to compost your vegetable scraps is helpful, but it pales in comparison to the industrial yard 30 miles over burning guzzoline by the kiloliter like they're in some sort of Mad Maxian hellscape.
That's always been happening and its always been futile. We have major problems yet the focus is on everything but. We focus on hatred over insignificant bullshit and how we're victimized because people don't agree with every aspect of more mundane things. This presidential election we'll put a senial old man, who we aren't even sure runs the government, up against a sociopath who cares primarily about winning and little else, because we don't want to admit that we might have been wrong about guns, sexuality, etc. Meanwhile the candidate that cares most about the environment doesn't stand a chance because of one or two things we nitpick andsayy he's wrong about, that he doesn't fall into line with our collective and mutually shared toxic justifications for hatred of "the bad guys from the other party". There's a lot of various reasons, that are too many to mention, which arrived us to where we are with climate change and those reasons go back at least half a century. I think today, however, as a mob or a society or a community or whatever you want to call it, we're the dumbest we've ever been and that's what we are when the stakes are the highest and the problem is VERY immediate. We got here through a cult mentality of hate and justification of that by choosing to be victims. With respect to inaction on climate change, if it weren't the political case, we would gave been using mostly nuclear power for the past 40 years. It wasn't politicians or lobbyist that resisted when it was on the table, it was people influenced by pop culture, musicians, actors.. the same shit as today, same sing being sung for the sane reason but withdifferent lyrics that fit the narrative at the time. There's people here complaining that the people responsible for the end of the world aren't held accountable and at the same time voting for what public bathrooms people use is more relevant than our literal survival. If that doesn't imply that we are a collective pack of idiots, then I'm a 10 foot tall wizard with a 16 inch penis.
I agree with you in some ways, but I think there's a communication barrier here. In short, yes, we need to be united in our approach and we need to focus our efforts in the areas that matter most, but individual action is not a united front; it's the opposite.
We've solved other problems through collective action. The climate accords resulted in the Montreal Protocol, which resulted in bans on freely releasing ozone-depleting chemicals like CFCs. This ban resulted in a resounding success--the hole in the ozone over Antarctica, which had been growing rapidly and threatened to leave us with much less protection from solar radiation, has now basically recovered to pre-industrial levels.
We need government action, and we as a people need to hold our governments accountable to these demands. That means demanding that corporations must implement effective strategies to reduce emissions and resource usage in general. It also means individuals must be pressured towards these changes, but that can only work if it's economically feasible for the average person. I'm in my mid-20s working full time and I can't even afford housing for myself, nor could I find a modest, truly eco-friendly home if I wanted to. How am I supposed to dedicate the energy to find more eco-friendly options when they're sparse, poorly supported or actively resisted by the structure of society, and most of my energy is already taken up just fighting to survive at all?
Are you really going to use the line that we can accomplish much as individual contributors? While everyone can change habits to make very minor differences, the real issues like with governments and large corporations.
No. I have an issue with people feeling victimized and placing blame on others as if the shit sandwich we're all going to eat can be reasonably blamed on an entity as if a moment existed in the history of human behavior and politics where we weren't already screwed long ago.