I'm actually pretty progressive and do sometimes leave my sweater on after taking walk and turn the thermostat down.

However I have a bunch of other "personal comfort issues", related to health. so often leave the heat at seventy while I deal with these.

But even more, I do think the "liberal spirit" of trying to solve or pretending you can solve social or environmental issues with exhortations to individual action is reactionary in the end. The only solution to global warming or pollution or etc is action by the state involving the regulation of private enterprises. These "if we all consumed less" positions are kind of the flip side of telling people who make minimum wage they're poor 'cause they drink a soda at lunch or have netflix etc.

Edit: TL;DR; Exploring what you're comfortable with is a good, even suggesting other explore this good. But the spirit of "the problem is you-all consumer too much" is problematic.

It's another strawperson argument. It's not all one or the other. Reducing your energy consumption is not sufficient, and I don't know anyone who says it is.

The idea that individuals are powerless is antithetical to democracy, which IMHO is why the reactionaries push it. They say the same thing about protests (despite a long history of success) and any other individual/collective action. Democratic government is a form of collective action, and so they decry that too. They want you dependent on strongpersons and corporations, and IMHO by buying into it, you are surrendering your power and (unwittingly for most) doing nothing less than fighting agaist freedom and democracy. Collective action is quite powerful - ironically, the reactionary movement uses it heavily, and is the foundation of a free society, as is individual responsibility. (It's also the foundation of a free market and SV-style entrepenurialism - individuals doing something in their garage and changing the world.)

Communities, society, depend on everyone doing their part as individuals. You can't prevent trash on the streets in your community by obstaining from littering yourself, but we do keep the streets clean in large part by each person not littering (and we also obey the law, help people in need, etc. etc.).

Reality is quite the opposite of reactionary propaganda: Individuals acting works incredibly well. The Minutemen in the American Revolution were volunteers, who defeated the subjects of the British King. After centuries of unprecendeted success in human history, it's incredible that people abandon it simply because of propaganda.

> I'm actually pretty progressive

I don't know you, of course, and it's just one comment in one moment in your life, but the parent comment is clearly anti-progressive.

But we all do consume too much for it to be sustainable. While I agree that we primarily need regulation, mostly on industries and the production of goods and services, our collective individual choices do matter. And I can’t credibly fight for regulations while driving a huge SUV or crisscrossing the world with jet planes.

Pretending these little moments do anything to help is not a liberal idea. It’s just as stupid as avoiding exercise and eating less to reduce your carbon dioxide output. It demonstrates a complete disconnect from the ability to contextualize real issues from things that actually help.

Stopping climate change is not a “liberal idea”, at least not in the mainstream liberal sense. Airplanes are still filled with liberals even quite far left on the spectrum in the US (even AOC flies all over the east coast because her time is “too important” to be disrupted by climate change).

It is liberals that do try to do something about climate change, while the right in the US still question if it even exists.

Some do, but doing something stupid and patting yourself on the back is worse than doing nothing at all. At least someone who intentionally doesn’t do anything knows they aren’t doing something and might vote for real change.

In my experience, those that don't take any individual action rarely take any meaningful action on any other plane either. Either you get it and care, which means you do whatever little you can do yourself and work for changing the society, or you don't get it and you don't care.

Those that criticise individual action are most often the ones that can't bring themselves to sacrifice even the smallest pleasure or convenience, but still feel a small pang of guilt whenever they see other people doing their best to do their part.