[wahnfrieden]

Individual purchasing habits are not the solution at scale. Why does our industry love systemic analysis of tech failure and systemic mitigation, but then blames the individually powerless masses on an individual level for our biggest problems. Your stance that individuals need to do their daily shopping better is just a way to make yourself feel good and to spread division amongst workers and the poor.

[zahma]

Since when did eating meat and flying concern only the working class and poor? How is collectively cutting back on carbon-intensive activities going to create these rifts?

Also, and more to the point, if these sectors have such a large carbon footprint, then where did that demand come from? I don’t buy that cutting back on animal products or flying aren’t scaleable. Our global culture isn’t inexorably evolving to flying helicopters to work and eating meat 4x a day with a tall glass of milk, so why aren’t we talking about behavior change more in the West? We’ve always had a choice, and we know better now that these choices and path dependencies are destructive.

Furthermore, companies that produce these products are simply providing for demand. It’s silly to lay the blame at their feet when they’ve no incentive to stop.

[wahnfrieden]

>Furthermore, companies that produce these products are simply providing for demand. It’s silly to lay the blame at their feet when they’ve no incentive to stop.

you're not thinking systemically enough - the incentive system is also a choice

there's a reason big oil were the original champions of plastics recycling as a marketable non-solution that focuses on individual/peer consumer habits over anything that would challenge their position. this neoliberal approach ultimately ensures their power remains.

these replies are saying to take the solutions available to us individually, but you're promoting individual actor conscientiousness over organizing to effect systemic change at scale. I'm not saying only corps/govs have the power to fix this, I'm saying that by taking an individualist consumer solution perspective, we let corps/govs off their leash because individuals can't stand up to their level of organized power.

[zahma]

I cede your point on plastics and powerful corporate organization. But waving a magic wand and regulating away oil and plastics (amongst others) is your solution? Don’t you think end-users have a role in this?

[wahnfrieden]

i think it's marginal at best and that "end-users" need to organize to make sweeping structural changes rather than only looking out for their own personal impact (or scolding their neighbors/family over it) as the powers that be would prefer us to. regulations are also not the only option and represent a narrow political perspective.

[wilsongoode]

Individual purchasing habits are not the _only_ solution at scale. Individuals and the collective are in fact, not powerless.

While the whole “carbon footprint” thing was clever misdirection by the fossil fuel industry, there is still value in examining what aspects of your life are causing problems for the planet and trying to rectify them.

To say that the solutions to climate change are only large scale and available to massive corporations and governments is as foolish as to say that they are only small scale and available to individuals.

Whatever solutions are available to you, wherever you are in life, do the work to see them through. We need all the help we can get.