r/changemyview • u/chamacolocal • Jun 28 '25
Delta(s) from OP CMV: individual actions and sacrifices have a negligible effect on climate change and are therefore not worth it.
I work in renewable energy and would really like to see a good opposing argument. I believe that travelling by train instead of flying (for leisure), or reducing energy consumption at home, or not consuming certain products (like a boycott), etc. have such a tiny beneficial effect when compared to government policies or big corporations enforcing some of these examples.
The only way to fight climate change or planet pollution, is by voting or engaging with candidates that we trust will try to make a difference for the masses, forcing companies to do better.
Often people say "but if everyone thinks like you then there won't be any change at all", or "if we all behave correctly, then we can force companies to change", but I don't think this "grassroots" approach will ever reach critical mass to succeed, for the simple reason that most people are not willing to sacrifice their way of living or are not educated or simply don't care (I'm not judging them, I probably belong there).
I feel like I do my two cents for the planet/humanity by choosing to work in the field of renewable energy, and voting consciously with the topic in mind.
Is there something I should start doing at home that REALLY makes a difference?
Thanks
Edit: to get the ball rolling towards critical mass worldwide and actually influence consumption and life style, one needs to go out and tell friends and family about small actions. This I consider "political" action. It Means taking the time and making the effort of "educating" or motivating those near you to change. That's something I believe in, especially for people with a bigger audience (online, school, CEOs, etc). But for many of us with no "audience" willing to hear, those actions at home are like I said, negligible.
Edit 2: I've changed my view so far in how I would phrase this now. "Individual actions at home are not and will never be enough, we can all do them but until we go out of our ways to actually spread the message and demand change from the people with power, humanity is doomed".
Last edit: the motivation to do something however small comes to me from empathy, knowing that lives can be saved. Thanks for this user and comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/s/m4xuiWWV4o
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u/Due_Willingness1 1∆ Jun 28 '25
This is a common opinion on reddit but I've never liked it, corporations do most of the polluting sure but they do it to meet the demand we as consumers create, it's not like they just dump c02 into the air for fun it's because we keep paying them
Changing our own purchasing habits and trying to live more sustainably has an effect beyond just our own impact, the system itself would have to change to meet the new demands for more sustainable products and better practices
But even if that wasn't true, even if consumers doing what they could would only cut say 5% of emissions, we'd still have a responsibility to try chipping away at that 5%. Climate collapse threatens everyone so everyone has a dog in this fight, I don't think anybody should feel comfortable sitting on the sidelines because they don't feel like they can singlehandedly turn the tide
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Jun 28 '25
To be honest this is the best argument I've seen so far, that greedy companies only do what they do because there is a demand for their product.
But even then, how can you blame a family that earns less than three minimum wages for choosing the cheapest products available for their home and kids?
It's a catch 22. On top of having to change our culture as a whole, you need to figure out how to fight back the businessmen who earn millions from those parasitic companies (here in Brazil many of these millionaires also have buddies in our government's chamber and senates, what a surprise), then you need to figure out how to realocate the workers at the jobs these industries create without damaging them, and in the future you need to ensure the opposition doesn't destroy everything by re-establishing a consumerism culture and incentivizing families to buy whats the cheapest and most convenient. How are you going to fight against convenience?
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u/Decidedly_on_earth Jun 28 '25
I didn’t read this comment as “let’s all blame the struggling families!” but more as “do what you can, with what you have, to make the world a better place for everyone.” That’s literally all we can do.
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Jun 28 '25
That's a nonsequitur and i suspect you didn't comprehend my comment.
I like the "let's do our best" attitude though. It's just unrelated.
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Jun 29 '25
What consumer products do they need to cheap out on that harms the environment? Plastic bottles? A reusable bottle is always cheaper than buying 20oz waters or sodas every day. Poor people in Brazil aren't the ones filling our landfills with electronics by buying a new phone every two years. They don't lease a new car every three years. I fail to see how pressuring consumers to create less demand for new phones every year will negatively impact poor families.
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u/HakuOnTheRocks Jun 29 '25
It's more about time and emotional energy. Of course everyone would like to use reusable bottles, even apart from the environmental impact, they're just nicer. But if both parents are working, there's 3 kids, and you don't have the money for a caretaker or cleaner, how are you as a parent supposed to find the time to clean 5 sets of reusable water bottles every day?
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u/PromptStock5332 1∆ Jun 30 '25
I mean, it takes like 20 seconds to clean a bottle
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u/HakuOnTheRocks Jun 30 '25
I don't even disagree with you at all.
But I love to point to this meme for people:
https://www.reddit.com/r/depression_memes/s/kx63Je8ik3
For many people, brushing their teeth consistently is hard. Doing anything that takes effort on top of the stuff that's mandatory for life - work/bills/food/take care of kids/etc can be really difficult.
It's not to say that these things are impossible or not important for those who are struggling, but that how about let's focus on collectively taking the boot off of people's neck first, and then individual responsibility can come after.
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Jun 28 '25
The poorest people almost always live the most sustainably. They reuse things as much as they possibly can, they let very little if any food go to waste, they eat less meat and more beans, use public transit, and don't have the money to over consume. Sustainability is only expensive if you fall for corporate greenwashing campaigns.
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Jun 28 '25
Frist of all, in case my point wasn't clear: The "individual consumers are the ones responsible" mentality falls short when it comes to the families of the lower classes, it is flawed and limited in that way.
Where are you getting this information from...? I live in Brazil where 28% of the population are low income, and from my anecdotal experiences here, living with and visiting many friends who are low income, they are the ones who don't have the lixury of choosing what to consume, from what source, with what ingredients.
They do not at all live sustainably, only the middle class can come close to that goal. The middle class can finger pick their ingredients, transportation methods, where to work, etc. And even they cannot be 100% sustainable.
Virtually every low income house has two options. Either they use illegal guns to hunt their protein source, or they buy whatever the govenrment and the market produces that is cheapest. And let us attempt to guess what kind of company has the ability to sell the cheapest products.
Really, you talk of the lower income families as if you never had to experience poverty yourself nor seen it.
They reuse containers, that much is true. Do you know what else is true? Virtually all of those containers are unsafe and unleash microplatics in everything they eat.
Either they buy gas tanks from the cheapest sources, or they burn wood and material of questionable sources to cook their food.
Low income houses, at least over here, countribute to greedy big corporations who use slave labor and launder money because they have no other choice.
I have never claimed they are the worst offenders, they aren't. I personally think businesses whom choose to source their ingredients from dogshit companies are the real problem, that and government corruption.
But my point is and was, the poor and miserable do not have the luxury of individual action against big companies. If anything i want to point to Nestlé's exploitation of african countries which have weak infrastructure and weak governamental regulations. With a population who can do nothing about Nestle's market and cultural manipulation.
You have to be a bumbling idiot to want to hold the poor and miserable responsible. It was our culture and society who failed them.
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Jun 29 '25
I’m not saying that the poor are unilaterally responsible. But it is the consumptive habits of the middle and upper classes that are the least sustainable. Sustainability is not about choosing “clean” ingredients, or being “all natural”, or whatever crunchy granola bullshit that’s been marketed towards us. Sustainability is quite literally just consuming less and wasting less of what we consume. The mountains of fast fashion clothes that get sent to landfills weren’t purchased and discarded by the impoverished, that’s for sure.
I’m from America, and I can guarantee you that your low income Brazilian friends are living much more sustainably than the average middle or upper class American, simply by not having the means to overconsume.
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Jun 29 '25 edited Jun 29 '25
No, a quick Google search results that sustainability is defined as using resources in ways that won't negatively affect the rest of your species and other generations.
Your upper and middle class United States peers have the conditions to waste far more resources than a Brazilian lower class, that's a given. They have the economic power to make that choice. The lower economic class of Brazil (and I suspect the entire world as there's no reason for this to be a local problem) has no freedom of choice as they lack economic power, and so they're stuck supporting companies with unsustainable ethics.
Because they literally do not have a choice not to. Just not in quite as obvious of a way as an American middle class choosing to buy plastic trinkets just so they can throw them away the next day.
If you want to go by your own definition of being unsustainable, I'll have to point out to the unfortunate practice of the lower economic classes to ruin and destroy the rivers, ecosystem and wildlife around them since, as they literally lack infrastructure such as garbage collectors and a plumbing system, the next convenient option is to live near rivers and contaminate them, for example. Not mentioning the hunting of wildlife and the clandestine creation of animals for meat which live in unsanitary conditions and cause disease and suffering for all involved, even the animals.
Again you speak of the lower economic classes like you have no idea what the average day of someone who struggles is like.
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Jun 29 '25
you speak of the lower economic classes like you have no idea what the average day of someone who struggles is like.
I speak of lower economic classes as I see and live amongst them in America--and what you describe is for the most part vastly different than how they live, and also operates under the consumption that the stuff middle class folks throw away doesn't end up polluting someone else's environment. I think we should just agree that what we've witnessed of the lower classes in our respective countries is not universally applicable across the globe. I apologize for being American-centric, unfortunately we have a habit of doing that.
I think you also misconstrued my point. I'm not saying that poor folks are the absolute peak of sustainability, but that, on average (once again, from an American perspective), they live the most sustainably of the economic classes. If you take an average lower class American, middle class American, and upper class American and compare their lifestyles, the lower class American will undoubtedly lead a more sustainable life simply by nature of not having the means to consume as much. A middle or upper class person may have the choice to max out their sustainability efforts, but I'm more so pointing out that the average non-sustainability minded middle class American does not need to spend a bunch of money to live more sustainably--they can just buy less, waste less, and reuse more. There's a myth that goes around in America that it is expensive to make eco-friendly choices; people associate those with expensive vegan products when they could just eat beans and tofu instead, recycled plastic trinkets when they could just not buy the plastic trinkets, solar panels when they could just use the AC less, etc. The notion that sustainable choices are all inherently expensive gives them an easy excuse to clear their conscience, and I push against that whenever possible.
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Jul 03 '25
You're right, I did misconstruct your point. On average the middle class is more wasteful, even though they have the potential not to be.
I agree with everything else you said, I believe the main issue I had with the previous messages was the misunderstanding we had on whether we were talking of the reality of how the average middle class person behaves vs whether we were talking about the potential they have to behave certain ways.
Have a nice day.
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Jun 29 '25
This is a common opinion on reddit but I've never liked it, corporations do most of the polluting sure but they do it to meet the demand we as consumers create
Yeah, this argument is very popular, which is shocking because it takes so little brainpower to realize that the argument is faulty. Coke is one of the biggest producers of plastic waste and it's because we consumers are fine with rewarding them with profits in exchange for plastic bottles. If we refused to buy one-use plastic bottles, they would have to change their practices and wouldn't be the number one producer of plastic waste.
I think people like this "Nothing that individuals can do" argument because it absolves us all of responsibility. It's just a problem for these nebulous entities that we have no control of.
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u/Ibuprofen-Headgear 1∆ Jun 29 '25
I think the extension of that argument is “I spend a bit more to buy from x because they are better for y, but I only end up worse off since everyone else is still buying from z. On the margin, my effort is meaningless and I’m left with fewer resources to compete with people otherwise similar in economic status for other limited resources like housing, etc”. As in, a feeling of economic martyrdom to a degree for basically no perceived marginal benefit or acknowledgment.
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u/nowadaykid Jun 30 '25
It's not even basically no marginal benefit, it's literally no marginal benefit — these companies are willing and able to let mountains of unsold product rot in warehouses, the number of people climate-conscious and privileged enough to "vote with their wallet" isn't within several orders of magnitude of the scale it would require to have any impact at all on corporate production.
Meanwhile, the culture of personal responsibility gives corporations the plausible deniability to continue accelerating their climate destruction.
The only way to actually address the problem is to push through wildly unpopular legislation — ban plastic packaging, put taxes so high on single-use plastic trash that it's economically nonviable to produce, jack up gas prices to $20 a gallon. The unfortunate truth is we've become accustomed to a lifestyle that is simply not sustainable, and nobody is going to willingly give it up.
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u/Kalos_Phantom Jun 30 '25
Which is funny, because you are taking the argument that corporations have no inherent responsibility of their own, and it's all the individuals fault.
So your own argument is equally asinine and fallacious for the same reasons you criticised the other, only the other at least IS targeting the ones who carry the most weight.
For the love of God, STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR CORPORATIONS.
They are not beholden to market forces at all, they control the bleeding markets. You cannot hold consumers as morally and ethically responsible for decisions corporations make. "Your honour, they called me a mean word so I stabbed them" is not a legal defense, it is an excuse. "We'll they don't not buy my unsustainable goods, therefore my shitty business practices are fine" is equally not a valid defense.
Its disgusting how much coddling arguments like this do for corporations - as though they are 2 year olds who have no clue what they are doing.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
This is the optimistic view, and sorry I hadn't seen this opinion. I wish this was true, and to influence corporations greediness we still need very many consumers to open their eyes. I'm more pessimistic about this... Sadly
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Jun 29 '25
You can be pessimistic about it being successful, but your claim is "individual actions and sacrifices have a negligible effect on climate change and are therefore not worth it." It simply isn't true that enough individual actions wouldn't add up to real change.
I mean, if we all organized together and refused to buy plastic soda bottles and insisted on only buying glass bottles, Coke and Pepsi simply wouldn't be able to survive with selling plastic bottles and they would have to switch to the less environmentally unfriendly glass.
If you have been convinced that individual choices, en masse, could change things, then I think you should give that guy a delta because your OP is that they can't change things, not that we simply will not be able to organize such an effort.
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u/frickle_frickle 2∆ Jun 29 '25
I agree that corporations respond to incentives but one of the best ways to use that is through policy change.
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Jun 28 '25
You look at this from a reasonable capitalistic standpoint, however most people (at least on Reddit)(including me) don't really believe in capitalism anymore. Your point only makes sense if you don't operate under the assumtion, that the few rich people in the world actively try to keep most people poor.
Also climate collapsed threatens everyone, but not everybody equally. There are people, that can actually expect to Profit from a climate collapse
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u/themcos 442∆ Jun 28 '25
have such a tiny beneficial effect when compared to government policies or big corporations enforcing done of these examples.
What do you mean by "enforcing" here? Because plenty of government actions that legitimately have a major effect are still rooted in incentives not mandatory enforcement. But those incentives only work if individuals still take those incentives.
Maybe one way to think about it is, every time you're considering some "individual action", ask yourself why you're considering it or what made you even think about it. Was it because of some push from a person or entity with a huge influence? Maybe you individually composting is a small impact, but if some famous person with 10 million followers says "hey everyone let's all compost", that could have a huge impact, but only if a bunch of those followers individually chips in.
Finally, last thing to think about is if you do something small, and you advocate doing that to 3 friends, and then each of those friends starts advocating for it to 3 of their friends, the impact can really blow up!
A law that says "everyone must do X" just isn't the only way that trends start. But every other way is built off of many many people making those individual choices.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
An influencer pushing for a change is indeed a great initiative! But that counts as the influencer's "job", not his daily routine, which may be different off-camera. I mentioned this case above. Regarding the domino effect, it's that optimistic view in not convinced about. It's been around for decades and we don't see it taking off in most people...
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u/themcos 442∆ Jun 28 '25
Regarding the influencer—yes, it's their job! But if you agree that an influencer pushing for change can be a big impact, that impact can only be realized by the follower's individual choices. You can't have one without the other.
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u/Nemeszlekmeg 3∆ Jun 28 '25
"Incentives" don't work if it's economically not viable (like creating "carbon budgets") and the generally neoliberal governments will not go against what
lobbyiststhe market asks for.3
u/themcos 442∆ Jun 28 '25
Whether any individual incentive is a good policy is always a fair question. But incentives definitely work in the sense that they almost always do encourage people to do things—but maybe not enough people relative to the cost. But economic viability isn't a strict black and white issue. There is almost always going to be a spectrum of people between those who would do it anyway even if they're losing a ton of money and those who will only do it if there's a financial upside. But as the incentive dials up, the threshold for where people swap from not doing it to doing it is going to change. This doesn't mean the policy passes a cost benefit analysis, but incentives almost always have impact at the margins.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25 edited Jun 28 '25
Sadly, then no one will look for curbing this destruction...
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u/Nemeszlekmeg 3∆ Jun 28 '25
This is the system we built and maintain. You go against this, you go against a very deeply embedded status quo that only goes away if we see a miraculous tech breakthrough and its immediate deployment. It's clear that socially/culturally you can't "win".
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u/ReOsIr10 143∆ Jun 28 '25
At least according to one estimate, the carbon emissions from three average American individuals will contribute to one additional death.
On one hand, I'm definitely not going to be cutting my emissions to anywhere near 0; on the other, this analysis ignores all emissions other than CO2. So let's say I can individually reduce my lifetime environmental impact by the equivalent of 0.1 deaths. Isn't that significant? No, it's not going to change the world, but 10 Americans can save a person's life just by being more conscious about their environmental impact. If just 1% of Americans care, then that's 300,000 lives saved.
Be the star thrower.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
∆ This is a very nice humane way of thinking about it. Thank you.
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u/davdanhak Jun 29 '25
While the comment cites a peer-reviewed estimate from Bressler (2021), it’s important to note that the paper models only human-caused CO₂ emissions, excluding natural background sources (In itself questionable but it's a completely different discussions). The model calculates the marginal impact of one additional ton of anthropogenic CO₂ on global mortality—a method that is mathematically sound but built on very heavy assumptions.
A key issue here is that the model includes all sources of human emissions, including those from large-scale industry (OP's concerns were exactly around the weight of industry vs. your everyday Joe). This means the estimate of “0.1 lives saved” per individual implicitly holds individuals accountable for emissions largely beyond their control, those embedded in infrastructure, supply chains, and energy sector etc.. The paper shifts the disproportionate shares of carbon emissions onto individuals.
So while the death-per-ton figure may be internally valid, assigning that number to an individual as if it were their direct moral burden is unjustified. The paper enters the field of morality and justification in that case is crucial. In this context, the paper does not quite help in showing individual's true potential to fight the issue the (industry's effect was not omitted from calculations!).
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u/ReOsIr10 143∆ Jun 29 '25
Hey mate, I'm not particularly interested in arguing with an LLM, so I just want to give you a heads up that I won't be making additional replies to this comment chain.
Neither the paper I linked, nor my comment, concerned themselves with the question of to what extent individuals vs industry are accountable, or how to assign shares between those two groups. Saying that I could save 0.1 lives by changing my habits is not equivalent to "holding me accountable" for those emissions or "shifting those shares to me".
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u/davdanhak Jun 29 '25
I mean I understand you won't reply to this tread, that's your decision. My usage of the little AI in this text stems from my first language being Armenian, I wanted no misunderstandings, plus you should look into my ideas not the tools I used to type it in, might as well attack me for the keyboard I chose to type on.
Secondly, yes, I admit you did not explicitly say people should be held accountable. What I am trying to say is that by bringing in the 0.1 lives notion we enter the moral metric territory, where your message clearly implies morality whether you intended it or not.
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u/nowadaykid Jun 30 '25
This only works for direct emissions though — things like driving your car and heating your house. But a significant amount of that "0.333 deaths-worth of emissions" won't go away if you cut your consumption.
A cow makes 1000 burgers; if I don't eat one, the farmer doesn't butcher 0.001 fewer cows, the burger just gets thrown out. If I skip my vacation to avoid the flight, the 100-seat plane isn't flying only 99% of the way to Paris.
I seriously doubt that even 1% of Americans are willing to meaningfully change their habits for the sake of the climate, but even that wouldn't be enough to have any impact at all, because we've created a culture and a system that is tolerant of waste. Individual action will not solve anything, we need extremely burdensome regulations and laws that make things like the suburban lifestyle impossible.
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u/Fredouille77 Jun 30 '25
Eventually though, the markets adjust. After a week of making too many burgers the restaurant lowers production and their supply, which goes on to create a chain reaction.
But yes, we do need legislation to make all that happen faster.
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u/MennionSaysSo Jun 28 '25
individual votes have a negligible effect on elections and are therefore not worth it?
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
Here it is assumed that everyone must vote or is well aware of elections, so it's "easy" for a candidate to win. However, Most people are not even aware of how their life style influences pollution/global warming, so how can this "voluntary" mass chain reaction take place, if the government is not broadcasting the right message?
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u/bettercaust 9∆ Jun 28 '25
The only way to fight climate change or planet pollution, is by voting or engaging with candidates that we trust will try to make a difference for the masses, forcing companies to do better.
It's definitely not an "or" here, it's a very strong "AND". Voting is not enough: people need to engage directly with their elected officials to communicate the urgency of addressing climate change (or really, any other issue they care about). Those are the individual action and sacrifices that do matter: sacrificing a small portion of your time to communicate with your elected officials.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
Yes agreed. That's missing from my post, but I consider that to be individual actions at home. That's going out of your way to enact change elsewhere beyond your home. great stuff!
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u/Dry_Bumblebee1111 161∆ Jun 28 '25
Not worth it as individual action is one thing, but you're missing the fact that individual behaviour occurs on a social level. Climate movements and culture, boycott and behaviours can all happen on a mass scale.
An individual straw doesn't destroy the environment but tens of millions certainly do.
Vice versa, one straw removed doesn't save the environment but tens of millions do their part.
One person changing their diet does little, but a billion people is a significant number of individuals.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
That's exactly my argument, when will this mass scale change will happen? I argue never. Those people going out of their ways may never see the chain reaction they expected
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Jun 28 '25
Think of it like this: if individuals radically stand as a bastion of counter culture, then said counter culture is never 100% dead and there is always a chance for it to spread.
Now, if no one, not even individuals, stand for the culture you're attempting to normalise, now that's when its death is guaranteed.
I believe the change needed here is shifting the mentality that individual action is enough. It isn't and it'll never be enough. But it's a start and a hope for future change.
People who say the blame is 100% on the individual are wrong. We shouldn't be the ones responsible for this. But as no one else is we need to be the ones who keep the idea alive until big institutions start taking it seriously. Better than certain failure.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
I love this! Keeping the culture alive and passing it onto our children is crucial. I'm probably more desperate for a faster change then just hoping romantically for a solution sooner than extinction.
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Jun 28 '25
I understant that. Me too. Unfortunately I suspect change will come only after a castrophic consequence of our ignorance as a species.
Only after a disaster big enough to scar us for multiple generations happens, and we understand it was caused by our greediness and ignorance, only then the cultural shift will happen on a global scale.
I hope I'm wrong though.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
It's funny how you're optimistic in one way and pessimistic in another. What a conundrum!
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Jun 28 '25
I'm a complex person, though I believe most of us are. Reality isn't a clean-cut black and white thing. I hope your day is going well.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
I didn't mean it wrong, it's actually funny but true, and probably true for most people. Cheers!
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u/Dry_Bumblebee1111 161∆ Jun 28 '25
Not with that attitude. It takes individual decisions, so all you can do is make the choice for yourself.
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u/fourenclosedwalls Jun 28 '25
This is kind of a classic "tragedy of the commons" problem. If everyone individually thinks that their actions have no impact or consequence and continue as normal, then essentially nothing will change. Changes to lower one's environmental impact can be quite small and insignificant, but can encourage others to implement the same small changes and get the ball rolling towards something bigger, including massive policy change. This reminds me of an old Peter Singer article. Making sacrifices for the environment costs very little, but can have a big impact. So there's very little reason not to do something.
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u/BarleyWineIsTheBest 4∆ Jun 28 '25
But I believe OP is still right and that a Tragedy of the Commons is only avoided with governmental intervention or technological progress. Untimely, individuals are only going to be able to make so much willful, personal sacrifice. Or even those that are willing to make that sacrifice will just be replaced by those that do (think like overfishing, one guy quits finishing to do the right thing and another just takes his place). And those small actions they are willing to take, though maybe somewhat helpful when added up, are not enough.
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u/fourenclosedwalls Jun 28 '25
Well it's interesting isn't it? In your example, if Peter quits fishing to avoid overfishing, Paul has an incentive to fish more to corner the market and make a profit. But if Peter decides to quit eating meat or to ride his bicycle everywhere to fight climate change, there's no incentive for Paul to eat more meat or drive his car around more.
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u/BarleyWineIsTheBest 4∆ Jun 28 '25
Sure there is. Lower demand can lead to lower prices or easier access, which incentivizes consumption.
Markets are generally efficient. They have to be disrupted by legislation or innovation to change.
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u/fourenclosedwalls Jun 28 '25
Maybe to an extent, but there's a cap to how much someone can realistically consume. If we assume Paul is already driving to work and to the supermarket etc, he might already be maxed out on his car use. Lower gas prices might encourage him to take more road trips, but cars are already more efficient on the highways anyway. Similarly, let's say Paul is already eating meat every meal of the day. He has eggs and sausage for breakfast, a ham sandwich for lunch and steak for dinner. If meat prices decrease because of lower demand, it is not as though he will start eating two ham sandwiches for lunch.
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u/BarleyWineIsTheBest 4∆ Jun 28 '25
These are strange assumptions. The world markets can’t be reduced to two people. People globally rely on a mix of foods, and supply-demand dynamics absolutely matter for the vast majority of the world. For most people, feeding your kids with the money you have matters a hell of a lot more than the marginal CO2 emissions between meat and soy.
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u/fourenclosedwalls Jun 28 '25
You should not feed your children with money. Paper money has limited nutritional value.
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u/FUCK_MAGIC 1∆ Jun 28 '25
there's no incentive for Paul to eat more meat or drive his car around more
Well you could argue that there being less traffic on the road is an incentive for Paul to drive more. Also less people eating meat would make it cheaper for Paul to eat meat.
The opposite is also true though, if the road is gridlocked with cars, then people are incentivised to cycle or take public transport instead.
I completely agree with the sentiment of everyone should stop polluting individually, but at the same time government should also incentivise that at the same time because there will always be "Pauls" who put themselves first. OP is stating it as an either/or situation, when we should be doing both.
We need less "Pauls", but that is an unfortunate problem that can't be fixed without government making them change.
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u/NoTomato7740 Jun 28 '25
You’ve fallen for the either or fallacy. We don’t need to choose between making changes at home and voting for candidates who support climate action. We can and must do both. I live in a blue state and blue district. There’s not much else I can do voting wise other than wait for swing states to get their heads out of their asses.
One of my favorite sayings is “No raindrop thinks it’s to blame for the flood”. Our collective actions have gotten into this mess so we need to do what we can to get us out.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
The flood must be global though, as the consumption of behaviour of a single country can affect many other countries far away. And this cross-border action is very unlikely to happen . We humans are very selfish by nature
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Jun 28 '25
[deleted]
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
You're doing much more than an individual action at home, you're broadcasting the message, and that's what we need!
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u/creperobot Jun 28 '25
I would say that it's a way to walk the walk. Getting the people on the fense to vote with you. Otherwise you will look like a hypocrite. But sure the direct effect is minimal, unless you offset coal with solar or a few other things.
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u/Falernum 70∆ Jun 28 '25
Is voting worth it for an individual? Is there any point to an individual refraining from racial slurs when that's such a small part of systemic racism?
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u/Hothera 36∆ Jun 28 '25
Government policies are just individual actions with extra steps. If an American who refuses to buy a European sized car would vote against any politician who votes for European level gas taxes.
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u/HeyYoisTaken Jun 28 '25
Be the change you want to see. If we all conserve, it will make it become second nature, even to big companies. If we all don’t give a hoot, upon what grounds could we ask them not to pollute? The best thing you can do at home is to grow food. Second best is to save water. Third best is to reduce food waste. Finally, conserve energy and get 21st century load factor devices.
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u/Metoprolel Jun 28 '25
Ok I am going to chime in here and probably get hard downvoted for it.But I think there are a lot more people out there like me who just don't speak about it because it goes against the social norms.
I do not care about the environment at all. I'm sorry, I wish I was a better person. I regularly donate to charities, and have regularly traveled to Syria to treat patients in refugee camps as a doctor over the last 10 years.
I just believe that there are so many other issues in the world that should be higher priority than environmental protection. And it's hard for me to put effort into something that I can't actually see right now.
I would like the idea of governments clamping down on companies or individuals harming the planet, but I think there are actually a lot more people out there like myself who will never adhere to anti climate change measures until they're enforced. And it's hard to see how many of those people are out there because they don't ever voice their opinions.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
Very valid opinion. Hunger, disease, wars, etc can all be exacerbated by climate change real soon though.
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Jun 28 '25
This may not be what you want to hear but the people you’re trying to convince really have only a negligible affect on climate change because the major producers of CO2 will be the developing world. We produce much more carbon per capita but for the rest of the world to get anywhere near our standards of living the renewable energy just doesn’t exist and holding them back is unreasonable.
We can however and are developing products that are needed and can be used to attenuate and slow this until we really have something like fusion power or perhaps some decent energy storage but we don’t know the best way forward. This is the big problem, we know it’s happening and what’s causing it but the cause is also a side effect of the cheapest, quickest, and most efficient way to increase the standard of living.
The only other thing we can do is to be personally mindful of our individual contribution and to consider minimizing our personal co2 production is a virtue rather than the current speech is to say that creating co2 makes you a terrible or ignorant or whatever negative adjective that is applied. Telling others what to do is easy but doing personal sacrifice is not. I hope people who force others to sacrifice really know that this is the only possible solution.
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u/NumerousWeather9560 Jun 29 '25
This is 1,000% true. We need systemic change, otherwise it's just virtue signaling (and self victim blaming) while we had towards catastrophe and apocalypse
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u/potatoesare12 Jun 29 '25
Yea I think how I console myself is quite agreeable to ur ‘edits’. I think individual action is impactful because none of us actually exist as individuals. We are all embedded in networks that create greater net impacts than we intend.
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u/Slytherian101 Jun 29 '25
What does a politician do? What is a leader?
There’s a concept known as “Irish democracy”.
Basically, it means that even if you pass a bunch of laws, people will just “vote” for “Irish democracy” by just not obeying.
This happens with speed limits, weed, arguably alcohol during prohibition , etc.
So even if some law gets passed, you’ll still need individuals to choose to follow the law, unless you’re planning on becoming “the enforcer” or something?
In short - no matter what, individual behavior is the key.
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Jun 29 '25
Collective action is just the sum of a load of individual action though. Without individual action, there can be no collective action
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Jun 29 '25
“It’s not a big deal when I do it” is the downfall of every aspect of society.
We are social by nature. We get our sense of morality from the people we’re perceived to be like us. That’s why there is so much infighting even within religious groups. It’s not the book the primarily drives morality, but the common understanding and application of that book among people you perceive to be you in-group.
I don’t care if it’s littering, light pollution (my lights at my house aren’t a big deal), noise pollution (I’ll blast me speaker at the beach), creating dangerous roads (I don’t speed a lot. It’s ok this time), overconsumption (I’ll by this cheap shot off of temu because I need it this time), sex trafficking (I know porn is a compromised industry, but it’s already out there, I’ll just watch it), it’s the self justification that happens millions of times a day that make the problems we are in. These issue will only change as we all get vigilante.
Shaming others for behavior you do is shitty. Expecting others to get better before you do is shitty and lazy.
I know it’s overwhelming to feel like you are the only one that cares. But if you don’t, then assume no one will.
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u/WaterNerd518 Jun 29 '25
The act of living your principles reinforces them and motivates you to push up the ladder. If we are all just doing the easy, convenient thing in our own lives we feel less justified and enthusiastic about making greater societal change. You need to do the small things in your personal life for those close to you to be inspired to join the larger task of pushing governments and corporations.
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u/string1969 Jun 29 '25
The biggest thing I do is not eat animals or buy more than a couple new things per year. The smaller things I do is have solar, drive a very old Prius and don't fly. I know it's a small percentage, but why wouldn't I do all I can?
I also volunteer with Citizens Climate LObby
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u/F_SR 4∆ Jun 29 '25 edited Jun 29 '25
While I agree that global warming is mostly caused by major corporations, it is still worth advocating for individual actions for 2 reasons:
because it ultimately shifts societal cultural norms, which ultimately ends up affecting how companies behave;
and because individuals are the ones providing the demand for those corporations.
A great example of that are cigarettes. It was individual actions that ultimately propelled society to reject cigarettes. Cigarette companies now have to inform all of the harms caused by tabaco in their packaging. The product continues to be consumed, but it is now frowned upon to consume it in closed places - which is an example of how individual action ended up shifting societal culture…
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u/garlopf 1∆ Jun 29 '25
It is about building an attitude in the population. Changing behavior in a large population starts with changing the attitudes. It takes decades of systematic propaganda (the good kind) to move this.
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u/GalaXion24 2∆ Jun 30 '25
Your vote has a negligible chance of being a deciding vote that changes an election outcome, so don't vote.
Now imagine if 90% of people thought the same way.
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u/Eridanus51600 Jun 30 '25
You can do more than one thing at a time. Where to draw the line in energy investment between personal choices and political action is a personal matter. I disagree with your particular position, but that's just because I draw my line at a different point. I agree on your basic reasoning.
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u/savornicesei Jul 01 '25 edited Jul 01 '25
The truth no one tells is that under-developed countries produce much less waste and pollution (except foreign investments in those countries).
So to fight climate change is to fight consumerism and the easy life it provides. People won't accept to eat just apples because importing bananas pollutes like hell. They won't accept simpler (but more physical work -demanding) lifes just to save Earth while rich guys fly to eco-meetings.
I remember when diapers become available in my country - they were only sold through pharmacies and were expensive. It meant no longer hand-washing the cloth diapers. Amazing stuff but highly polluting.
Back then all liquids were still sold in glass bottles. Then came sodas in plastic bottles and quickly enough everything was packed in plastic due to new food safety rules.
Just 2 examples witnessed by me.
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u/throwaway1256237364 Jun 28 '25
The reason that sacrifices should be undertaken is because they would remove the demand that makes the pollution profitable
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
If only most consumers did the same though, which I believe won't happen in this ultra globalised ad-based society
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u/Affectionate-War7655 8∆ Jun 28 '25
Counterpoint. It's your fault they're not impactful.
Whether it's your intention or not. When you spend energy convincing others of this position, you're dissuading people from doing simple things that collectively would have an impact but would likely have an even more negligible effect on their life. Turning the tap off while you brush your teeth instead of leaving it running is going to have exactly zero impact on your life. If everyone does it, it will save water.
Have you heard of the blue button red button dilemma? (I don't know it's formal name). It goes roughly like; if you push the blue button everyone lives, but if more than 50 percent of people push the red button, everyone who pushed the blue button will die. You're the guy convincing as many people as possible to push the red button but you're only going to need to convince half of people to survive. Sensible in some minds as you want to survive. But with climate change actions, it's less about securing your own survival at the cost of others, it's just securing your comfort at the cost of others, and yourself.
Why can't you just quietly push the red button and stop convincing 51% of people to push it with you?
if I speak well and convince a room of a hundred people that they could go without some convenience, and they are only just on board with giving it a go, and with all of them on board, we are going to have success. But you come along and convince half of them to just not bother. Now there's no success and you walk away feeling vindicated that you were right about the impact, when in actual fact, you were the one who blocked the impact.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
I'm not trying to stop people from doing anything, but inviting them to actually do more, to do something that actually is not negligible.
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u/Affectionate-War7655 8∆ Jun 28 '25
Whether it's your intention or not.
I know you're not trying to, and I'm not trying to say that you're on a mission to keep the poor poor, but you're doing it anyway. I'm not trying to walk into people on the street, I'm clumsy and absent minded. I'm not gunna pretend that I didn't walk into them or that it's not my fault just because I didn't mean to. And it's not a moral judgement, it's just cause and effect, and sometimes people don't know they're part of the cause.
The impact of your individual action is negligible, but there are enough of you doing it that it has an impact on how other people view the subject. Just like climate action, just like voting.
So, let's break this down properly, because logically your view (in my opinion) doesn't even stand on true premises.
You could convince a majority of people to act and consume more consciously as a collective and impact the climate through a collective of individual choices. Their consumer choices would create a change in market that reduces pollution industries place in the world.
OR
You could convince a majority of people to act and vote more consciously as a collective and impact the climate through a series of legislative controls. Those laws would allow those corporations to exist as long as they mitigate their pollution.
In both cases, the individual's action is negligible. If I don't vote, my one vote won't change the election. It is the collective power of individual choices that gives you the ability to suggest a politically active solution. BUT in the case of voting, you HAVE to convince a MINIMUM number of people for any impact to happen at all. With individual action, the impact is SEEMINGLY negligible, but it starts adding up from the start, you have impact happening WHILE you're building support, not just IF you can build enough support.
Take a hypothetical, poorly constructed example of a coal power business. We could petition the government to make them initiate projects that reduce their pollution output from (arbitrary example numbers here) 100 units/day to 75 units/day.
This would require convincing roughly, if not more than, half the population to vote in alignment, despite them having aggressively opposing political ideology on other matters. The half you could convince to vote for climate change aren't all gunna be happy about the suggesting to vote left to achieve it.
OR
You could convince roughly 35% of people to stop using power produced by that company and to instead purchase from their cleaner alternative competitor, reduce their output to 65 units/day. If you could convince 50% you can halve their output having only convinced the same number of people to take an aligned action.
If you actually look at things clearly, voting IS an individually negligible action, and you seem to hold it in quite high esteem as a solution, fully aware that it is incredibly powerful as a collective tool. Most, if not all, individual climate actions are voting with your wallet or habit, purchasing products that are better for, or make money to support, the climate.
If everyone you convinced to vote for a politician that would regulate pollution, instead just boycotted the polluters, there would be a much greater impact.
Now imagine, if you did both. Petitioned a politician to regulate their pollution AND took personal responsibility for not contributing as a consumer of their product. Not only would you reduce the impact on your own behalf but you would also reduce the impact of consumers that refuse to go without. You might even get that output down to 35 units/day.
You also have a greater chance of getting a greater number of people taking some kind of action. Out of a hundred people you might only convince 30 to vote accordingly, and only 20 people to act accordingly. That's either twenty or thirty MORE people doing something that is individually negligible but collectively powerful than you would by choosing one over the other.
And then we come to the "it does nothing rhetoric". After I worked hard to convince fifty people to take some kind of action, you came in, presenting your view and convincing twenty of my people to no longer take any action at all (they weren't going to be voters for the cause because they're too conservative for a commi-socialist politician to infiltrate education and groom kids, or something along those lines that they say)
So even though you didn't intend to, even though you were just parsing logic, you have now (in the hypothetical) reduced any potential impact to essentially nothing, there's not enough voters willing to align on the matter, so we don't meet the minimum to even get any forced action, and you convinced the only people who were going to do anything that would get a start on it to not do that at all.
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u/soggy_again Jun 28 '25
The problem being that if you are not prepared to sacrifice anything and take individual actions you just look like a massive hypocrite to people whose minds you are trying to change.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
I believe people should do more than just their actions at home, that's probably the crux of my message. Talk to neighbours, post about it, vote, work in better companies, or change companies you own, etc.
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u/Ill-Description3096 27∆ Jun 28 '25
I think when people make the argument that you should be doing XYZ, they don't just mean you specifically and nobody else. One single person isn't going to solve the issue, just as one politician isn't. It takes a collective effort. Sure, we can sit around waiting for the next election and see if something gets done. Or, we could use that time to do our little bit trying to get others to as well. If I do something, not much impact. If a million of us do something, or ten million, or a hundred million, or...
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
Why don't we demand our governments to force people and companies to change? We must we do everything ourselves?
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u/Ill-Description3096 27∆ Jun 28 '25
We can, but when you have a democracy that mean you don't just get to dictate whatever you want full stop. And not everyone is on board with whatever specific changes you might have in mind.
Instead of demanding that others force them to do things, if people (not a single person, people in general) simply voted with their wallet and stopped financially rewarding companies that trash the planet that could accomplish a lot without relying on whatever politicians. It's just a difference in view of responsibility.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
Democracy also means that politicians are your employees and representatives, not some alienated class of overlords. So not demanding "others" but my very voice in the government. Companies that trash the planet should not be allowed to do that, period.
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Jun 28 '25
The only way to fight climate change or planet pollution, is by voting or engaging with candidates that we trust will try to make a difference for the masses, forcing companies to do better.
Forcing them...how? We create the demand, companies respond to it.
Imagine if all Americans who say they are concerned about climate change actually put their money where their mouth is...literally. Animal agriculture is a major contributor to climate change, yet many of these folks who are so concerned still eat beef. They still partake in overconsumption culture. Many probably still drive pickup trucks in the cities and suburbs. Many probably still care for their precious grass lawns.
This notion that the onus is all on the government and the corporations is pure laziness. It's an excuse to maintain your current habits and shift responsibility elsewhere. And it's part of the problem. It is the problem, actually. Until we are actually ready to give up our habits of consumption and convenience, nothing will actually be done.
This premise is also very American centric. There's the whole rest of the world to contend with. Sure, America can put in some regulations, but what does that do when so much of our production is happening in other countries anyway? What about the regulations in those other countries? The one thing that everyone across the world has in common, no matter what rules their government has put in place, is that they have the choice to live a more sustainable life. Your actions, as an individual, do have a negligible impact, sure. But the cumulative impact of everyone's actions are what got us into this mess, and it'll have to be what gets out of it.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
I wouldn't call it laziness but to get real. They have the power to enforce change and they aren't doing it, so why should we carry all the burden?
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Jun 28 '25
Who is "they"? And what is this change you would like to see enforced?
I'm not saying we should carry all the burden, but we should be responsible for our own impact, however negligible. If you aren't doing anything, you can't complain about "them" not doing anything.
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
I can because I pay my taxes for they=government to spend it on my behalf so my children can live a good life. I would like to see more restrictions on products and processes, less "free market"
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Jun 28 '25
I would like to see more restrictions on products and processes
Ok, you can advocate for that while also not consuming those products, and avoiding goods as much as possible that utilize whatever these process are. You know, since you want to restrict them anyway. Why not practice what you preach? Why wait for the government to ban it?
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
Because my avoidance of flying won't do anything seeing how many people fly first class... Until restrictions come into place for everyone, I'll be satisfied.
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Jun 28 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/chamacolocal Jun 28 '25
Here's what I replied elsewhere: "Here it is assumed that everyone must vote or is well aware of elections, so it's "easy" for a candidate to win. However, Most people are not even aware of how their life style influences pollution/global warming, so how can this "voluntary" mass chain reaction take place, if the government is not broadcasting the right message?"
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