[worldsayshi]

"You're a rounding error as a voter."

While it may be very true that any one individual may create more positive impact by putting focus on something else, individual consumption is a part of the problem.

Go after your own low hanging fruit. But don't let it distract you if you think you can make a greater impact somehow.

[WorldMaker]

Collective individual effort is great, but still dwarfed by corporate "industrial" and "non-consumer" greenhouse gas output. Focusing 100% on individuals ignores the real problems. Positive impacts are great, and individual ethics are great, but we can't let individuals be scapegoats for corporate greed (or laziness/ignorance if you prefer to ascribe less malice) and systemic problems that need to be solved by systems and entities that are bigger than individuals.

[worldsayshi]

I'm not disagreeing here. What I'm saying is that we need a cultural shift where ignoring the issue becomes unacceptable. For anyone. Or else we die.

[WorldMaker]

Fair. I'm just saying that while we are rallying the individuals, let's not forget to pass out the pitchforks and torches to go storm some castles.

[eigenstuff]

I don't think anybody is forgetting the role of corporate entities. I think the individual aspect is what's being more forgotten about, or at least it seems that way looking at my Facebook feed. It's deeply distressing to me to see so many otherwise woke, informed liberals stomping their feet and refusing to make any alterations to their lifestyles because they've decided any suggestion for reducing their carbon footprint is some kind of corporate blame-shifting conspiracy when it's... not. The UN climate report said change is gonna have to happen on BOTH the corporate and individual level. Our consumerist Western lifestyles are exactly what created this mess in the first place. How the same people who only a month ago wouldn't stop screaming about how every vote counts can then turn around and decided that no individual effort to combat climate change could ever possibly count is baffling to me.

Ironically, one of the things I uncovered in the process of raising my pitchfork and planning a protest against my local utility was the best evidence I've found of just how much of an impact individual actions can have collectively: power consumption in the US has completely flatlined since 2007, so much so that My Local Utility's 20 year plan put out in 2015 was made completely irrelevant in only 3 years. Why? Turns out it's just a little bit more efficient appliances and then a hell of a lot more efficient lightbulbs. Dead serious, that's all it took to stunt the growth of our national power consumption, even accounting for things like manufacturing moving overseas. And the only reason the appliances haven't made as big an impact as the lightbulbs is their longer replacement cycles delay their impact.

Stuff that small and simple absolutely, 100% makes a difference. Those are the quickest, easiest changes we can make because they are the changes within our power, and to act like people can't focus on both at the same time is absurd and imo completely irresponsible. Yes, raise our pitchforks, but always keep in mind that we're the market and our wallets have the power to fuck their shit up. After reading that 10% of total global power consumption is literally just heating and cooling, I'm dropping $80 on a programmable thermostat because that's an easy, effective thing I can do between now and my protest at the end of the month. (Oh ho, stickin it to ya twice, TVA! ;] )

[melling]

It doesn’t sound like you have a handle on the problem if you think if everyone who reads this will lessen the problem by reducing their consumption.

We really need to make some rather large changes. India, China, and emerging markets need a lot of clean, affordable, clean energy, for example.

[worldsayshi]

> if you think if everyone who reads this will lessen the problem by reducing their consumption.

What? I'm not saying that at all...