No amount of peasants separating cans and bottles or using cloth diapers would have changed the temperature of today, that was just a way to shift blame from the perpetrator with the bully pulpit to powerless individuals like us.
The idea of the powerless consumer is a lie the consumer class tells itself to feel better about its impending, largely self-inflicted, doom. Individually, consumers are certainly less to blame for climate change than billionaires, but they are neither powerless nor blameless.
Individual action is every bit as meaningless as voting in elections, or participating in any other large scale social movement. By repeating to ourselves the comforting lie that my own contribution to the problem is both negligible and inevitable, we play right into the hands of the billionaires.
Responsibility for the climate disaster does not divide cleanly into perpetrators and victims. Many, many people fall into both groups, or will eventually. The climate disaster has already claimed many victims, but the global consumer class is not among them, yet. But their time will come.
The idea of the powerless consumer is a lie the consumer class tells itself to feel better about its impending, largely self-inflicted, doom. Individually, consumers are certainly less to blame for climate change than billionaires, but they are neither powerless nor blameless.
Individual action is every bit as meaningless as voting in elections, or participating in any other large scale social movement. By repeating to ourselves the comforting lie that my own contribution to the problem is both negligible and inevitable, we play right into the hands of the billionaires.
Responsibility for the climate disaster does not divide cleanly into perpetrators and victims. Many, many people fall into both groups, or will eventually. The climate disaster has already claimed many victims, but the global consumer class is not among them, yet. But their time will come.