stabby_cicada

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.

don't be afraid of impossible dreams. a tree will never reach the sun but it grows towards it anyway

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.

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.

You don't need to feel ashamed. The system is so broken that just surviving each day is a victory on its own. If that's all you can do - if every day is a recovery day from the last day - it's still worth celebrating because you're still fucking alive.

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.

Sharing economy! That's pretty cool. And pretty straightforward to open source if your community doesn't speak German 😆

I hope you find your way back, because it's true. Millions of others will.