> Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.
it's easier to have this kind of thing voted in a "climate-change-aware" nation, which is easier to have if all your local government are climate-change-ware, which is easier to have if all your neighborhood are climate-change-aware, which is easier if all the familly in it are climate-change-aware which is easier if you are climate change aware.
and once your country, regardless of how small it is, is climate change aware, it's easier to make bigger, more polluting country, to change, as they can't hide anymore behind a "your first"
but yes I agree with you that you can't stop at your individual level, but it has to start there
That's the point: understanding that individual virtue does absolutely, totally, precisely nothing. Only collective actions count. At all.
Understanding orders of magnitude is not something that comes easily to humans but it must be understood to work on large problems.
Collective actions start out as individual actions and like that they set the stage for change that is real and measurable.
By your reading Rosa Parks should have just shut up and sat in the back of the bus because 'individual virtue does absolutely, totally, precisely nothing'.
Understanding orders of magnitude is indeed not something that comes easily to humans but it must be understood to work on large problems, right alongside understanding how social change is engendered.
If you take one less flight this year, you've considerably lowered your carbon footprint. Congrats. If every single person that flies reduced their carbon footprint by one flight this year like you did... it would make absolutely no meaningful difference with respect to climate change. You might as well whistle in the wind. On the other hand, if all of those people had actually taken political action, meaningful change would be practically inevitable.
The narrative that encourages recycling, buying green brands, and generally expressing how much you care about the earth by how you choose to shop (making your environmentalism part of your identity as a consumer rather than as a citizen) serves only the status quo, and dissipates energy that might otherwise be channelled into making an actual difference.
One is forced to wonder why people who think this way bother to get out of bed in the morning. On a global scale you are insignificant approaching nonexistent, so by your own reasoning nothing you do matters and therefor you shouldn't bother doing anything.
Because they get hungry. You are animal, you don't need a noble cause to do things.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallekhana
[1] https://compassionandchoices.org/end-of-life-planning/learn/...
As I said: Not for very long. Besides, I wouldn't call that reason (except for people who do that to die, it's pretty efficient for that purpose).
In fact, even literally throwing up your hands is a waste of energy.
Quite a few philosophers of politics and radicals would agree with that statement; from SEP[0]:
>There is some debate among economists and political scientists over the precise way to calculate the probability that a vote will be decisive. Nevertheless, they generally agree that the probability that the modal individual voter in a typical election will break a tie is small, so small that the expected benefit (i.e., p[V(D)−V(R)]) of the modal vote for a good candidate is worth far less than a millionth of a penny (G. Brennan and Lomasky 1993: 56–7, 119). The most optimistic estimate in the literature claims that in a presidential election, an American voter could have as high as a 1 in 10 million chance of breaking a tie, but only if that voter lives in one of three or four “swing states,” and only if she votes for a major-party candidate (Edlin, Gelman, and Kaplan 2007).
Chances are, you can use the time to do other things, things that gain you more benefit than "a millionth of a penny" (if we must use the economism of time = money).
It's important to do both, but saving the planet will only be accomplished through collective action.
I'd agree if you said enforced collective action. We cannot rely on companies to self-regulate. There needs to be severe consequences for companies that damage the environment like this. As long as profits far exceed penalties, companies will continue to take the easy path.
Any collective, corrective action must include corporate action, or it is futile.
But that got cleaned up precisely because of decisive collective action. Regulations were passed and enforced to clean up the air (some of which are now unfortunately being rolled back)
"Very well, I'd like to complain about carbon emissions"
"Fuck off to China, commie!"
So did the Catalonians, the Americans, the Germans, the French, and the Haitians. It's unwise to paint all revolutions (or even collective action) with the same brush.
And here is the crux of the problem, you'll be long dead before Life gets impacted by climate change. That's why a lot of people simply don't care.
> every 12 years or so people warn us about the end of the world in 12 years
You have to make a distinction between Nostradamus&co and science though, everything isn't equal. It might be blown out of proportion but we don't know how far we fucked up yet because earth climate is complex, duh, and composed of an infinite amount of codependent variables. You might be interested in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_feedback and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climate_...
> If people were serious about pollution, they'd boycott China and India.
You can't do that since the 70s, virtually everything you touch was manufactured or altered abroad. You can't have a globalized capitalist world AND tell people to boycott products from the so called "factory of the world". Reminds me of all these people posting "eh look, all the most polluting rivers are outside of the US, it's not my problem, fuck them" from a made in china iphone, while sipping an Ecuadorian coffee from a made in china starbucks cup, wearing a made in Thailand shirt and a Vietnamese pair of jeans.
> more interested in the anti-capitalist part than they are the pollution part.
It might be hard to swallow but hear me out: what if these two things are correlated ? capitalism/globalism put economical profit above all else with little to no regards for long term side effects. It's an endless and boundless quest for "progress", consumption and growth, there is no notion of limit, the long term plans are for the next 15 years, not the next 1500 years, &c.
> For example, the pollution generated in the United States has been significantly declining without resorting to mob-rule collective action.
What about the pollution generated to produce what Americans consume ? It's easy to delocalize everything to Asia and point the finger. Remember: capitalism -> global economy-> global problems
> Why is it the United States that is in the crosshairs of every environmental group?
I think you're projecting, as far as I know most environmental parties are protesting locally in their home country. If you're and American living in the US I would encourage you to check international news. It really is the same thing in every developed countries.
Also, when will we stop with the "everything I disagree with must be fascism ?" I love how the current quasi-forced consumerism is accepted, and even loved, but being "forced" to better the planet for _ourselves_ is Mao level fascism.
The only thing that will save us is decisive and collective action. Think about that when you think about your vote in the next election in your area.
I particularly like the suggestion in one of the comments on the original article:
>I wonder if it would have taken 20 days to stop if they were being fined by the pound.