While I don't disagree with the facts you presented, I do disagree with the sentiment. Your argument is akin to passing the buck, yet the issue of climate change affects us all. Maybe let's ignore the GP's examples of flying and instead discuss industry. How many of us by pre-packaged foods or have Amazon Prime accounts and use it to order stuff we could just as easily get from our local shops? How many of us support wasteful industries because they sell our products cheaper or manufacture more desirable products? How many of us with access to clean water still buy bottled? Or buy fruits out of season and other import produce?

Most of us westerners have a pretty decent standard of living. Yet we blame industry for the environmental costs of our standard of living while simultaneously paying industry for their services. So I think we are just as much to blame. And by "we" I am completely blaming myself too.

No, you're promoting the same fallacy: if something as a whole is bad then you're bad for doing it personally.

You can't solve these problems by peer pressuring people into not supporting exploitative systems. Your argument is akin to people saying 'so much for being socialist, you own an iphone, capitalism made your iphone!'.

Now I don't use amazon prime to get things that I could just as easily get from local shops, except for things that already come from overseas anyway. I live in NZ, I don't have much choice. What little carbon budget the world does have should be used to ensure that people living in places like NZ can still have access to global commerce.

I don't buy fruits out of season. And I certainly don't buy 'pre-packaged foods'. What does that even mean? Do people actually buy plastic-wrapped boxes of lettuce from the supermarket? Really? Do people really buy bottled water? Why would they do that?

But I shouldn't have to say that. That I do those things is irrelevant. I do them for many reasons, but you are passing the buck when you act like it's my personal responsibility to fix the ills of the world. It isn't. It's society's responsibility as a whole. It should be a global push.

Otherwise we're just taxing conscience.

In Ireland, at least, it's really hard to come by things in the store that aren't wrapped in plastic. It's obscene, and I haven't found a lot of alternatives. Very high end stores sometimes sell items without plastic, but at much greater cost. I mean, who the hell needs individually-plastic-wrapped cucumbers?

I have started growing my own tomatoes, so hopefully that helps, but it's only one item out of many.

Flying is a relatively small contributor. But as spodek pointed out, a flight can take a year's worth of CO2 emissions for one person if we're aiming for a 2-degree change. That just shows how far over that limit we are going. We're going to have to do all the big things you alluded to, but if we don't also tackle smaller things like flying less, we're still going to be over the limit.

Unfortunately, admitting that you are right would require accepting that the entire neo-liberal edifice of free market fundamentalism ("the free market can solve every problem") is wrong.

We are societally unable to do that currently. It's our modern religion. Otherwise incredibly smart people (I include everyone on this website) are unable to see that only government intervention (pushed for by us) can solve this problem.

> I don't buy fruits out of season. And I certainly don't buy 'pre-packaged foods'. What does that even mean? Do people actually buy plastic-wrapped boxes of lettuce from the supermarket? Really? Do people really buy bottled water? Why would they do that?

Sadly that happens a lot in the UK :(

> you are passing the buck when you act like it's my personal responsibility to fix the ills of the world

Where did I say it was your responsibility _alone_ to "fix the ills of the world"? What I said was we are all, collectively, responsible. Myself included. I also said industry exists to serve our consumption. This is me accepting my responsibility not me passing the buck.

> No, you're promoting the same fallacy: if something as a whole is bad then you're bad for doing it personally.

That's not a fallacy. There's a direct and causal relationship between that "something as a whole" and you doing it personally. No one is saying that you alone are responsible for this systemic issue, but at least cop to your role in it.

I don't like it because it's a cop-out. It's no different from 'oh yeah, you think taxes should be higher? why don't you voluntarily pay more taxes then?'

That's not quite the same — there's no relationship between you voluntarily paying more on your taxes and tax rates. If we agree that tax revenue is too low, then yeah, you're doing a bad thing by not paying more.

Here's a better analogy still. Candidate X won a recent election, and you voted for them. If we agree that we knew that candidate was bad before the election, then you, individually, did a bad thing! No one person's vote decides an election, but the fact that millions of other people voted for the same candidate doesn't absolve you of your role in electing them.

> That's not quite the same — there's no relationship between you voluntarily paying more on your taxes and tax rates. If we agree that tax revenue is too low, then yeah, you're doing a bad thing by not paying more.

Wanting to raise taxes and wanting higher tax revenue is the same thing. And that does not mean I should pay more in tax voluntarily. I want tax rates to be higher across the board in a way that is fair to everyone.

Of course it's not reasonable to 'just pay more tax voluntarily'. That's ridiculous. That's just taxing the people that want tax rates on everyone to be higher. By that logic we should all just pay however much we want. That's stupid.

>Here's a better analogy still. Candidate X won a recent election, and you voted for them. If we agree that we knew that candidate was bad before the election, then you, individually, did a bad thing! No one person's vote decides an election, but the fact that millions of other people voted for the same candidate doesn't absolve you of your role in electing them.

No, that's a terrible analogy, that's not at all the same thing. I want fair government policy affecting all carbon producers to fight global warming. I don't want to never eat meat, I want meat to be priced taking into account the negative externalities of meat production. If a steak costs $20 because that's how much all the water costs and repairing the environmental damage costs, then that's fair.

I don't want just the people that care about the environment to volunteer to do tiny, irrelevant amounts to help. I want the people that are actually causing significant environmental damage to be held responsible. I'm sick of hearing about how to fight climate change. Climate change isn't a person, the people we should be fighting are the people CAUSING climate change, and that isn't me or you.

> Climate change isn't a person, the people we should be fighting are the people CAUSING climate change, and that isn't me or you.

Yes, it is.

This isn't really controversial or even an arguable position; the tragedy of the commons is a well known and accepted economic theory. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Rubbish.

Big businesses cause almost all environmental damage, worldwide.

Nobody is suggesting that climate change should be tackled by _only_ those who volunteer to help. We are saying climate change is _everyone's_ responsibility. There definitely needs to be legislation in place as an "incentive" for those who can't be bothered or simply don't care (businesses and individuals alike) but that doesn't absolve your own responsibility either.

Offensive!? You're of course free to get offended, but pointing out that flying pollutes a lot relative to the proposed limits is certainly valid.

I think the point is that there is an opportunity to take personal responsibility here. Why wait for government? Using a couple of your examples, buying less stuff made in China would go a long way.

Because collective action is the only way to make a dent in multinational corporations that poison the environment?

While changing the agreement and raising awareness is good, its basically rearranging the deck chairs on the titantic.

Do you know how many "upright citizens" I know who dont shop at wallmart? All my friends, family, and people I work with. And how's wallmart doing economically right now?

Even a decently large group of citizens taking action has minimal impact on the global scale.

Either convince the governments of the world or expect the slide to continue at an ever increasing pace.

Do you accept that even if governments do take action every person will still need to live within a carbon allowance or else global warming will still happen? If so even if you convince governments you'll still have to fly less and live in smaller houses and eat more locally sourced food.

Please stop violating the guidelines. We've already asked you not to comment uncivilly or spark flamewars.

Tackling the problem from the top-down (regulation) and bottom-up (personal responsibility) is the most effective path forward. The first step is education, actually understanding what contributes to our carbon footprint and more importantly radiative forcing. This gets complicated fast (here's an article on aviation: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/sep/09/car...), but reasonable ballpark estimates can be made.

Transportation accounts for about 14% of emissions, compared to 24% for agriculture and 21% for industry. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

The reality is that nobody acknowledges the impact of agriculture. Remember that a very large amount of those transportation costs are associated with agriculture as well, so really it's more like 30% of agriculture. 30% of emissions, basically all for dairy.

That's disgusting.