my two cents on the climate change mitigation issue:
I completely agree with everything @denny, @ddanielson (and others) are saying and suggesting about individual lifestyle changes to combat climate change.
no one is arguing that only individual efforts are needed to combat climate change so why is anyone bothering to refute this strawman? of course the government has an important role.
but good luck creating any kind of top down sustainable action from the American government unless you can guarantee that only a Democrat will ever be president and only Democrats will hold Congress. for fucks sake, 0 gop candidates have pledged to do anything about the climate emergency. most have pledged to roll back any mitigation initiatives that have already been implemented. yes, America is slowly turning blue but we don’t have the luxury of that kind of time. especially not if even blue America believes in climate change but doesn’t agree with what mitigation looks like.
I think individual actions and a change in the individual mindset are a prerequisite for any kind of government action. we are the ones who elect the government. if Americans can’t or won’t get out of the entitled consumerist “American dream” mindset they’re not going to vote for a government that tells them the “American dream” of excess is dead. no government is ever going to be elected with the platform of shrinking the economy (something I feel is a necessary condition for climate change mitigation). we can wait for the government to fix things but unless there’s a parallel movement to change the consumerist mindset and normalize the necessity of lifestyle changes through a personal plan we will hit a “green backlash” which Nazis are already weaponizing against democracy.
and we can blame corporations and oil companies all we want (and for the most part we should) but blaming only them at this point is like blaming drug dealers instead of their clientele. we are the ones who are living this high carbon lifestyle. we’re the ones addicted to it. the corporations might be killing the planet through pushing the mass adoption of this lifestyle but we’re the foot soldiers actually doing it. let’s not give ourselves a pass.
waiting for the government to do something without actually making any lifestyle changes yourself basically amounts to “no one is doing anything about this so why should I”.
what this is also implying is that you would rather have the next generation deal with this shit or even the current generation in less privileged countries because you can’t be bothered to change your lifestyle in any way.
having said all that I’m pretty complicit and a huge part of the problem because I’ve done my fair share of recreational flying and living an extravagant lifestyle compared to people in developing countries. for me right now it’s the guilt of knowing that I’m contributing to the death and suffering currently occurring everywhere on the planet that’s a direct result of my actions. I’m watching entire forests wither and die here in the northeast through drought. or get annihilated by tornadoes and wind storms. I’m watching fireflies and migratory monarch butterflies go extinct. I’m reading about desperate efforts in the southwest to save baby birds being born during this heat wave. I’m reading about farmers in India who are suffering from heat exhaustion on a daily basis. I can’t change my lifestyle drastically but I can at least try and make high impact changes on a personal level that will help. maybe I’m just doing this for myself to kill the guilt and I won’t make a difference by myself. but if a significant number of people do it, then we have something going. and that is something I feel is a more likely scenario than the government jumping in and saving us in time. the one thing I know for sure, I definitely don’t want to be the asshole who won’t make any lifestyle changes but instead spend their time screaming at climate change protesters who are actually trying to educate and get the public to think about the issue (and they are succeeding, regardless of what anyone thinks).