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.
Which, as I said, is exactly why we should stop giving them our money. Divestment is a key thing people can will hurt these companies massively.
“We” as in consumers don’t use enough to hurt companies by divesting.
By all means do anything you can to reduce your individual carbon footprint. But do so knowing it is just a drop in the ocean. Such a small difference that it might as well be nothing.
But if you convince the public that our individual choices can fix climate change then we end up with paper straws instead of systemic change.
I think you’re confused by what divesting is. That’s us as business owners, not as customers (obviously we as customers can hit them simultaneously from the other side too).
Yes, individually it doesn’t hurt them much, but it becomes the death of a thousand cuts.
If you can put pressure on your pension provider, local government, church, favourite charity or any other organisation you care about to drop funds with them in entirely then all the better.
Divesting is not to do with that, it’s about hitting these companies right in the share price.
Here is the definition of divesting.
You seem to be confused about what individual carbon footprint is because you’re talking about business choices as if they are an individuals choices.
Business owners divesting has nothing to do with an individuals carbon footprint.
This is accomplished by group action and legal/political pressure which is the opposite of reducing your individual carbon footprint. That is the systemic change I am saying we need.
Not telling people they need to walk to work so they don’t burn fuel. Or get solar panels to stop funding coal, when they live in an apartment.