this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Well, the sum of "things like travel and industrial output" (which are affected by individual actions) is enormous. Human emissions in total are, shockingly, the sum of all emissions caused by individuals. What I'm really getting at here is that we need to see something like a Gini coefficient, distribution breakdown, etc. of emissions across the entire population (globally would be informative, within more developed countries would also be informative). You look at people driving around megayachts and taking private jets everywhere, obviously as an individual their impact is a thousand times out of whack, but I'd be surprised if that amounts to more than a drop in the bucket unless you start expanding that category as wide as to include "car owners" and such.
I bring it up because it seems like the kind of "I can't do anything as an individual" line of reasoning I see so much seems to be really problematic and preventing these problems from actually being resolved.
It's not to say individuals can't do anything collective action works in most any aspect of life. What the concern becomes is the fact the major populous needs to forgo so much just to make up for the activities of a few people too special to stand in line with the rest.
https://ips-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/High-Flyers-2023-Report.pdf
A recent study here puts private flight as being somewhere around 10X more emissions costly in a per-person basis globally based on and more than 1000X less efficient that train travel where it available on the same distance. That just counting personal flight which may have some buisiness existing, though many could be forgone and done by a web confrence save for the 'drinks amd golf' aspect to those meetings, but large pleasure boats and non-comercial space flights are pure luxury expendatures that the world could do without. Still the larger populous is told we need to cut back while such things continues on.
I get it, but my point is, quick AFK napkin math here - you have a thousand billionaires, each doing 1000x the pollution of your average person (all inclusive) - that still only comes to about 1/8000 of the pollution in the world. They can go to hell and all, but it absolutely doesn't mean the rest of us don't have to do anything to fix the problem.
Direct actions accurate enough, however you should take in account for the assets that these people are in control of as well. The average gas station employee can't do amything about the major operations of the Shell/Exon/BP corporation, but the executives in charge of it can. The government can also compelle action by those executives and in theory should be acting on behalf of the population, but are often too swayed by lobbying efforts and promises that the corporation will provide jobs and prosperity if left to their own devices.
Still not arguing that individuals shouldn't cut down on their own as well, too many people including myself have too much stuff about. George Carlin had a wonderful bit about that years ago, you house is just a place to store stuff. On that front one of my biggest focuses in recent years has been in trying to promote 'better, not more' thinking around me. In short it could be expressed as 'nobody is going to be looking to inherit grandma's particle board table from Walmart'. Stop buying cheap garbage where possible and chose your forever piece, or even better learn to build your own, skills are transferable just as goods are.
That's true in part, but there's also a lot of "collective" decisions - automobile use and agricultural choices come to mind - that have huge environmental impacts but are largely at individual discretion. As well as not consuming endless garbage products, like you say.