A fixation on system change alone opens the door to a kind of cynical self-absolution that divorces personal commitment from political belief. This is its own kind of false consciousness, one that threatens to create a cheapened climate politics incommensurate with this urgent moment.
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Because here’s the thing: When you choose to eat less meat or take the bus instead of driving or have fewer children, you are making a statement that your actions matter, that it’s not too late to avert climate catastrophe, that you have power. To take a measure of personal responsibility for climate change doesn’t have to distract from your political activism—if anything, it amplifies it.
That includes downstream emissions. So if your car runs on BP oil, those emissions would be part of BPs emissions.
There is a reason BP is not advertising people to drop their cars. BP wants two things in its campaign. First of all to make clear that it is your lifestyles fault and secondly that besides munor changes you do not have to change that at all.
They are responsible for those downstream emissions because they entrenched themselves and made it so the majority of people don’t have a choice. Even going so far as to influence how our cities are built to make us dependent on them.
Most people cannot afford to get a car let alone an EV. The only reason we are seeing EVs in the first place is because of government intervention.
If the individual doesn’t have a choice because of choices made by the fossil fuel industry then the individual isn’t responsible for those emissions.
How do people die from not having a car? It must be a lot of them, given that most can not afford them, but depend on them…
You don’t know that people use cars to get to work? And get food?
If I were to stop using fuel I would have no way to get to work and earn money. Which means no house or food or anything.
Why does that need to be explained to you?
I have both been able to work and get food without using a car.
Congrats. Now get 100% of the worlds population to do the same.
Then you will have reduced less than 14% of the emissions needed.
That’s why BP paid a marketing firm to get the public focused on their individual carbon footprint. So you waste your time trying to get 100% of the worlds population to change their individual carbon footprint.
Instead of focusing on getting the majority of voters to protest and vote.
That is the plan. How else are you going to get to zero, but to change the everybodies carbon footprint.
To do what? Ban combustion engines to force everybody to change their individual carbon footprint? Any sort of actually massive climate legislation is going to impact a lot of peoples life directly.
You’re arguing that we shouldn’t vote for legislation to prevent climate change because it is going to impact people’s lives?
And instead we should just hope that 100% of the worlds population just does the right thing?
Remember when we tried to get people to wear masks during the pandemic?
That appoach doesn’t work. That’s why the fossil fuel industry is paying marketing firms to convince the public to focus on their individual carbon footprint.
What I am trying to say, is that to fight climate change lifestyle changes are required. To get those changes done in a demicratic fashion, you need to convince a majority of people to actually make those changes. Part of that is making them without the actual law, to show that it is possible.
Just take you as an example. You want I presume a combustionengine ban. However that ban would cause you massive problems, as you can not get to work or buy food without a car. I would say that, if true, those would be amazing arguments against such a ban. For me the argument is much easies, as I would do more or less fine with that law, as my lifestyle is already pretty low car.
Remeber the US president refusing to wear a mask in public? Johnsons parties during covid? There was a lot of that bs.