[bamboozled]

You're absolutely right that in the scheme of it all the impact may be small but there is climate change and there is also a huge problem of waste which needs addressing.

I agree that a single individuals actions will have minimal impact, but isn't it the individual that makes up the whole?

"Individuals changing their lifestyle isn’t going to accomplish anything."

Why do you say that?

Does any evidence exist that individuals making changes doesn't do anything?

For example, my partner and I no longer own cars, that's hopefully two whole cars off the road for practically a lifetime. Does this have zero impact ?

Also think of it this way, imagine if all of the people in the world right now who couldn't afford to fly, own cars and consume as much as you, could afford to do so and proceeded to do so without thinking about the consequences, it would be 2050 pretty quickly.

I agree legislation and emissions trading schemes etc are important but i don't see it happening fast enough just yet. So why not take some ownership of your own and do your best in the meantime ?

[hjek]

Thanks for not driving.

An obvious observation: Individual change and collective change are not mutually exclusive, so I think the choice between them is a bit of a false dilemma.

To pick an extreme example: Me not stabbing anyone is not enough to end knife crime in general, but this individual action (of not stabbing anyone) can still be considered an ethical baseline, so it's still good for me to not do that. Similarly, you aren't going to stop climate collapse by not driving, but...

[konschubert]

> For example, my partner and I no longer own cars, that's hopefully two whole cars off the road for practically a lifetime. Does this have zero impact ?

The impact is that you inspire others, which makes political change possible in the long run.

But beyond that... as long as oil is coming out of the wells, and it's legal to burn it, somebody will do it.

[javagram]

In fact by not burning the oil yourself, you reduce the demand for oil which can depress the price, causing others to use more oil since gas prices are lower!

[dTal]

Are there good reasons to think that the rate at which oil is extracted and burned is independent of consumer demand? It's not far-fetched, but it would be surprising.

[konschubert]

The rate might be affected by consumer demand.

But I think that the total amount of oil that will be burnt only depends on the price of extracting the next barrel vs the price of other energy sources.

[wazoox]

The French High Council for Climate published its first report last week. It says that if everyone were doing "heroic" efforts: ditching cars for public transport and biking, never ever flying, going vegetarian, heat less their homes (and no A/C), then emissions would go down only 25 to 40% at most; this is significant, but they must drop much more than that.

Therefore strong, decisive political action is mandatory. Individual actions, personal incentives can't be enough: we need an effort similar to what Great-Britain did when it entered "war economy".