Edit: I wanted to apologize after reading some of the comments. You raise some legitimate points, I realize that there is a subtle malthusian element to this chart and some of you feel like a burden already. Furthermore, you raise a good point about corporate pollution, oil companies, and how their footprint is much greater than average plebs like us.
That’s 100% valid and I don’t disagree with you at all. My “compromise” I guess would be that continue to apply pressure and protest against large corporations, but in terms of ourselves, just pick a few things you can cut down on yourself, it does not have to be everything on this list.
For example, I really prefer having animal products in my diet, but I am willing to live in a small apartment , car-free, and not go on vacation much in my adulthood. In the same way, you guys can pick what you are comfortable with in reducing and what you do not want to compromise on.
All of us have different standards of living and we are flexible on some things, and some things we are not flexible. That is alright, just consider changing what you are comfortable with, but please do not think you are a burden. Your presence and your life is valuable to me. I don’t like to demoralize people.
Yes, but making changes in my own life (as small as they may be in the grand scheme of things) helps me feel a little less depressed about the whole thing. So many of the most impactful changes are outside of my control. Yes, i can, to some extent, make my voice heard and push for policy changes, and I can refuse, to some extent, to purchase from or invest in companies that are the biggest polluters and carbon-users. But I’m not a CEO of a multinational oil and gas conglomerate, nor am I in charge of making policy decisions for the country (hell, I live in a very red state, so my vote essentially doesn’t count, outside of local elections).
But I do have the power to set an example. It is always good to make changes that you can, even if it’s comparitively negligible. I think if everyone made the effort to live more sustainably, the people that actually have the power to make big changes may feel more pressure to do something (people asking “if i can do it, why can’t they” when voting or making purchases or investments could have a big effect if we all did it together). It would also help show the greenwashing that a lot of companies engage in as a facade (people that actually know what it takes to reduce their carbon footprint would be more aware of what does and doesn’t have an impact). Possibly… Maybe we’re all screwed and there’s nothing we can do about it and civilization as we know it will come crashing down around us. But I think hope is a good thing to hold on to in the meantime, and doing what I can in my own life gives me hope.
A better method would be to organize protests. Like billionaires know that their companies are responsible for like 90% of global warming, otherwise we wouldn’t get ads aimed at making normal people feel responsible for this. Carbon capture is a similar incentive, it is absolutely useless but it let’s companies continue with the status quo instead of making an actual change, it’s just a distraction.
I hold out hope that people will get out of their homes and join protests. I’ll continue participating in protest held in my country but it’s a country of like 1.3 million with more forest and bears than people. What is needed is that the people of the US, China, India, Russia etc start organising.
Absolutely. I did not mean to imply that small daily-life changes are all that is necessary, just that we shouldn’t count them as useless just because they are small impact. At the very least, it is a tool i use to keep climate-change-induced depression and anxiety at bay enough to make “real action” something i’m mentally capable of.
Then feel free, but for most of us, making those same changes would remove what little joy there still is in being alive.