I love that analogy. No, you’re not going to personally save the world by reducing your carbon footprint. But you know what you are going to be? One leaf on a tree in a forest, making that little bit more oxygen that helps collectively make the world a better place.
And that’s worth doing. Especially if you can encourage other people to be leaves too.
As much as possible I chose to be a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem.
Most modern day problems are mainly systemic, which is why I ALSO end up involved in Politics in most countries I live in.
“Don’t be part of the problem” isn’t a solution for systemic problems, it’s just living according to one’s principles but won’t actually shift the entire system in any meaningful way unless one is a billionaire or a famous personality.
It’s not that I can’t do anything, I do all I can
It’s that one dickhead billionaire asshole ruins all the good intentions of millions.
Why try to get more millions when we should go after those ones…
This exactly. It’s a room full of people wiping the floor with single tissue papers while one guy is spraying the floor with a fire hose. But hey, at least they get to feel good about themselves because they can tell themselves “I did my part”. What else could they do?
That’s all well and good, but relying on individual action to solve systemic problems still doesn’t work. Systemic problems require system-level solutions. We didn’t get rid of the hole in the ozon layer because everyone individually did their part; we got there through regulations, laws, and action on the level of governments.
You’re correct, but your analysis is incomplete.
It took global, coordinated, governmental action to ban CFCs worldwide.
But governments were motivated to ban CFCs because so many individual people, ordinary citizens and voters, learned that CFCs were destroying the ozone layer. Those individuals called on their governments to act. They funded the NGOs that studied and lobbied and suggested alternatives to CFCs. And they bought those alternatives instead of using CFCs themselves, which helped build the consensus to eliminate CFCs.
And individual action was part of building that consensus. Individual people, spreading awareness about the damage CFCs did, and choosing alternatives to CFCs in their own individual purchases, helped build consensus for system-level change.
Here’s a couple thought experiments. A new train or bus line is a system-level solution to improving public transit. So is a bike lane. But what individuals are more likely to vote for a new train line? People who drive to work, or people who rely on public transit? Who’s more likely to support a new bike lane, people who drive or people who bicycle?
Factory farming of animals is one of the greatest atrocities in modern society. But it provides cheap meat. Who’s more likely to support the system-level change necessary to ban factory farming? Someone who eats meat or someone who doesn’t? Someone who eats meat everyday or someone who eats meat once a week? Someone who knows how to cook without meat, or someone who doesn’t know how to cook without it?
And who’s going to be more passionate about banning factory farming - someone who consumes the products of factory farming daily and is necessarily going to feel conflicted about it? Or someone who has already rejected those products, in their own life, through individual action, and who will not lose anything in their own life if every feedlot and slaughterhouse is shut down?
Systemic change transforms the individual actions of entire communities. But it also works the other way around. Individual action builds consensus for systemic change. And we need to encourage and celebrate both.
It happened because we pushed the limits and world leaders were more competent.
I feel we need inverse buddhism: instead of “compassion to the world”, which required a huge imagination effort in the times of Buddha, we are now overflowed with the vision of the world’s suffering and we need re-align our compassion with the other fields that matter: the portion of the world we can act upon and that can act upon us.
You are not going to stop the bombs that are right now flying towards people. But you are going to receive the news of the suffering they cause, and if you are even slightly empathic, you will feel the pain of the people these bomb will make grieve.
What matters is that you can make good where you are. Don’t be ignorant of the world’s pain, but protect yourself.
The world just grew its nervous system and it fires its pain receptors like crazy. Do what you need to stay sane.
One snowflake doesn’t make an avalanche, but if enough snowflakes fall, the mountainside is wiped away.
i think the overall sentiment of doing your bit is good, but I think this misses some nuance.
When people talk about not focusing on individual action that might not have an effect, often they mean: don’t guilt others for not doing one particular action, or don’t spend all your limited energy litigating actions with small impact.
We all have different constraints, needs and energy levels. Focusing on what the other is doing instead of the systems that cause these problems means that people with disabilities, economic disadvantage, etc. are often scolded for stuff that frankly doesn’t matter.
Oppose systems, support people.
You lost me at “faith that millions of others will do their best as well…”
I hope you find your way back, because it’s true. Millions of others will.
Are plastic recycling and “what’s your carbon footprint?” scams to shift blame away from Big Oil? Yes.
Should you try to recycle and reduce your carbon footprint anyway, despite that? Also yes!
just don’t think too hard about how %s work
While true in theory, you only have so much effort to give. The capitalist/bureaucratic system is designed to exhaust us, to make free time feel like a waste so we have no time to reconsider our economic position and restructure our lives to benefit each other. Avoiding capitalist middlemen that can upcharge us and shape our cultural/material reality into something that gets us to contribute to the current oppressive structure.
The propaganda-cultivated sense of moral obligation to laboriously do some tiny individualist good by reducing your carbon footprint through consumer choice is meant to exhaust you and distract you. It doesn’t just shift blame, it expends your willingness to put effort into saving the planet in a way that doesn’t harm BP’s bottom line.
There are so many ways to benefit the planet that benefit you: saving money eating delicious vegan meals at a community kitchen (prepared with care by some of the best cooks in your community), getting access to better quality tools and appliances because your community has a well-stocked tool library and you can just borrow what you need for a fraction of the cost, decreasing medical waste by unionizing/protesting/rioting/revolting until you get high quality preventative healthcare, building/rebuilding neighborhoods to be walkable with high quality public transit to increase your physical and emotional wellbeing while decreasing emissions, or countless other options.
I’d argue that the concept of a carbon footprint is not, inherently, a scam. You do have an impact on the world. Your carbon footprint is a real and genuine measure of that impact. And taking actions to reduce your carbon footprint is a way to mindfully track, measure, and reduce that impact.
Oil company propagandists may have used this real thing - your carbon footprint - to shift blame away from the oil companies and redirect people’s efforts to reducing individual consumption instead of working for political change. Which is bad. But the carbon footprint, itself, is not a scam - just the uses to which big oil put it.
Plastic recycling, on the other hand, is fake industry propaganda from start to finish.
And honestly, if I’m on my soapbox, I’ll remind everybody that “reduce, reuse, recycle” is in order of preference. Recyclable paper bags may be better for the environment than single use plastic bags, but bringing your own reusable cloth bag to the grocery store is even better. Just because a single-use product is recyclable doesn’t make it environmentally friendly.
British Petroleum, the second largest non-state owned oil company in the world, with 18,700 gas and service stations worldwide, hired the public relations professionals Ogilvy & Mather to promote the slant that climate change is not the fault of an oil giant, but that of individuals. It’s here that British Petroleum, or BP, first promoted and soon successfully popularized the term “carbon footprint” in the early aughts. The company unveiled its “carbon footprint calculator” in 2004 so one could assess how their normal daily life – going to work, buying food, and (gasp) traveling – is largely responsible for heating the globe.
The term would literally not exist in the public consciousness were it not for BP using it to shift blame. But yes, the concept itself is valid.
I will add that I grew up with rich kids, like kids of CEOs of corporations you would know well, and we also learned about carbon footprints from an early age. Most of the class did not score well, obviously. But every time a neglectful powerful person births a baby leftist educated by the greater community, we win.
It might’ve been invented by Big Oil, but if you keep giving money to Big Oil to buy fossil fuel you’re at least partially responsible for the carbon emissions released by burning that fuel.
Well yeah, but I don’t have enough belief in others to assume they are doing their part, even in my own small limited community. Much less in rest of the world. Neither do i have social skills to convince anyone either.
So any positive action i do is just for my own good, fully knowing it’s completely meaningless on almost any scale. So just out of a selfish desire to not feel like shit.
You’ve taken the biggest and most important first step: changing yourself. You have become the change you want to see in the world.
Others will follow. Thank you for doing your share.
@Shellofbiomatter@lemmus.org I am likely many miles away, but I am here with you.
Today I’m going to plant some seedlings in the earth and say your name. When you next have the opportunity, please do similar for me.
We are not selfish, we are taking care of each other, little bit by bit. You are not alone. We are never alone.
@Shellofbiomatter @stabby_cicada - “I don’t have enough belief in others to assume they are doing their part”
what do you mean assume? Wouldn’t you know or not know? If you are in your community doing work you would know what others are doing and what others are not doing.
I just got out of a community meeting. Neighbor A and B continue to maintain the decentralized food distribution apparatus of free fridges. They reported that they have three more neighbors that have volunteered to take on cleaning shifts. Fridge B has an issue with one of the fridges tripping the circuit breaker and they’re fixing it. Fridge A’s community bulletin board is now accessible because they found the lost key for it.
Me and Neighbor C are working on the Food Rescue side as one input into our local food apparatus. We just brought in a new contributor. A gluten free bakery that will be feeding into Fridge B.
Spoke to a neighbor who just lost their job and needs food but has celiac. Pointed her towards fridge B and let her know the dropoff times of the GF Bakery. She is now utilizing the local communities food system and is further supported.
Next month I’m meeting with the greater town’s Hunger Action Coalition and comparing notes and collaborating with them to fill in gaps. We also just got plugged into the Food Rescue Alliance which is national and connects our town to other towns for support and education.
I know exactly who is doing their part.
Because I’m doing my part.
If you get out and do something with others you won’t have to assume one way or another. You won’t have to believe (or not believe).
You’ll know.
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(Note to others reading this: this is directed at someone who has claimed initiative failure via vibes without demonstrating any actual experience.
We do what part we can as and when we can. Interestingly, if you can’t contribute - even receiving aid and support without currently putting back in helps the entire system of mutual aid. Drawing on the support of your neighbors is everything.)
Fair point, I’m not part of any organized community with the aim of helping those in need, which likely plays a role in not actually seeing others doing something.
And on any local community meeting most of the people are just complaining and yelling at each other so we never reach to any agreements and later i just go fix and clean any shared spaces myself and oddly have become the first person to be called when any elderly person needs some help.
Same at work, oddly I’ve become the first person when someone needs some aid even though it’s not part of my job, while the people whos job description actually forces them to help others aren’t doing it.
Though I’m not that sure how well that fits into here. I apologize if i completely missed the mark.
Oh it fits in perfectly. A solarpunk future implies a balanced approach to individual rights and community responsibilities. Things are very out of whack under late industrial capitalism.
So your story reads like a community burdened with individualism. Trust is low because selfishness is seen as natural and expected. The culture doesn’t support mutual respect much. Me first. This is widely seen as uncivilized behaviour in modern literature.
So there you are, showing community minded acts, being a quiet leader. You are on the front lines. Be proud and oil your feathers and keep going.
You have an affinity community here, outside your region. Maybe find other like minded folks in your area by looking into the Transition movement.
@Shellofbiomatter - It’s alright and I can understand your frustration.
If you have experienced this, then I dont understand why you used words like faith or assume. Why didn’t you respond with actual examples of how things arent working out and asking for guidance on fixing them? Or at the very least pointing out the problems in your lived experiences and lamenting at feeling discouraged and beaten down without having a solution?
Your kind of reply, while it may be cathartic to you, only serves to hurt and discourage others.
If you would, and if you are able, either seek comfort in a way that doesn’t hurt or discourage others, or seek solutions to those problems you are encountering.
Problems within group dynamics and collaboration are known issues with known solutions - lots of books in the library addressed to it, lots of threads devoting to discussion and application of solutions, lots of mutual aid networks that serve as support for these sort of things.
So. I hear you. And that is frustrating what you’re going through. I hope are able to fix whats happening in your group activities, or join a new healthier group, or start a new group from the ground up, or contribute individually and on your own terms.
Good point.
As i said my social and people skills are kinda bad. i didn’t think that through enough and assumed it just gets buried in new, bad habit from Reddit. Lemmy has smaller userbase. I’ll refrain from just venting in the future.
@Shellofbiomatter - Cheers and no worries. This has been a wonderful conversation and has highlighted key things that need to be considered in community groups and movements.
I wish you well and hope your weekend is going great!
You and I are both part of the same slrpnk community, and I’m doing my part, so that’s at least one person you can believe in. Why not try believing in more of us?
Doomerism is capitalist propaganda. They couldn’t convince us that climate change was a hoax, so now they’re trying to convince us that climate change is inevitable. And the point of both propaganda campaigns is the same: protect the status quo.
Because if we really were doomed and climate change was really inevitable, they wouldn’t be fighting so hard to convince you that it was.
They want you to believe what you do is meaningless. But it’s not.
For those who read this and aren’t sure what to do, living vegan and planting fruit trees are very effective steps toward upending the capitalist system that’s wreaking havoc in the world.
As anecdotal evidence, I live in a Brazilian region that produces a lot of cattle. About 10 years ago, beef production went down due to economic reasons, and this was noticeable in land cover studies, The mere reduction in cattle numbers, grazing intensity and pasture management was enough for the forest vegetation to advance and take back some border areas.
So, this is very true, and not just “vegan propaganda”. Reducing demand for meat can have a significant environmental impact!
Or if you don’t have land, set up a community network for borrowing appliances and gifting stuff people are no longer using.
Or all of the above.
Thank you. This is what I scrolled through all the shit news to read today.
@stabby_cicada and this is why I make art and tell stories in the way only I know how to. At age 4, I learned it was my gift. At age 60, I have finally learned that
• self belief is powerful
• individual creativity feeds the collective engineTogether, we can generate the energy needed to move from the old world of exploitation and division to the new world of community coherence and equitability.
