We're in the process of moving home and putting everything into boxes makes one realize how much crap one has bought unnecessarily.
We're on a relatively special case in that we've only recently moved (18 months ago) so we actually have stuff that has never been used in our current house. A lot of this stuff has been donated to charity and some tossed but still my gf wants to take some stuff that hasn't been used in at least 18 months to the new house.
I am excluding Tools and camping gear from the list. The former for obvious reasons, the latter due to having recently had a baby we've not been camping for a bit, YMMV
There is no way out of this that doesn't involve a "lot of people doing" something. Our lifestyles are just not sustainable.
Essentially, you're never going to drive car use down (and, thereby, fossil fuel use), if there are no viable alternatives than using a car and the poorest areas can't afford to "catch-up" to the electic vehicle trend[s].
Yes, the effect might be miniscule, compared to the output of CO^2 by businesses, but every little bit helps - when deforestation continues in the Amazon (e.g.: "the world's lungs") and we're not planting enough trees (anywhere) to counter-act that.
Globally it looks like we're not doing that bad. There are areas doing worse (Africa, Latin America), but the trend seems ok even for them.
>However, deforestation is the second-leading cause of climate change after burning fossil fuels and accounts for nearly 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions — more than the world’s entire transport sector.
How can we be doing "not that bad" and it be the second-leading cause? These do not equate.
[0] - https://web.archive.org/web/20190627040941/http://www.fao.or...
I know that a lot of people feel helpless because it's the big corporations that are emitting, but companies only emit CO2 if consumers pay them to do so.
Buying everything consciously, whether its food, appliances, housing, or a ticket to some performance, will make the world better.