Does anyone else get annoyed by living with people who bang on about personal responsibility being the fix for everything, and how everyone just needs to be responsible like them...
... then chuck food waste and #recycling into the landfill bin, when there's recycling and green waste bins *right there* next to it!
Kerbside collection means they don't even have to take personal responsibility for composting or taking stuff to a recycling centre. But they still can't separate their waste.
Another thought: people too closely watching eachother's consumption and behavior is rightly frowned upon ... but a certain degree of watching and communication and feedback is IMO clearly needed if we want to keep the planet habitable.
To be clear. The behavior of many of the richest 1 % is intolerably destructive and damaging to the ecosphere. Private jets, yachts, luxurious real estate, cars, fossil business models, ... often part of their lifestyles.
But it's just not true that their share of the carbon footprint is that big and thus important.
According to ourworldindata the richest 16 % of the global population account for 38 % of global CO2.
Let's be pessimistic and assume the richest 1 % account for 15 % of global CO2.
Then let's leave out the poorer 49 % of global population as they only account for 14 % of CO2.
Taking the richer 51 % of population and subtracting the richest 1 % (using the above assumption) leaves us with 50 % of global population (~ 4 billion people) accounting for 86 % - 15 % = 71 % of global CO2.
Even though the richest 1 % do lead dramatically more destructive lifestyles, the claim that only the individual actions of the richest 1 % should be relevant, while the individual actions of 4 billion people accounting for 71 % of global CO2 aren't really relevant for reducing the burden on our ecosphere, appears obviously and clearly wrong to me.
Sure, institutional actions are a very impactful means to lower the footprint of the billions. They are necessary, yes, but they're not sufficient at all.
> The purpose of the "personal responsibility" ideology is to misdirect people's attention, away from institutions and the wealthiest individuals, and onto policing each other.
And the purpose of the "the rich are the biggest emissions problem" ideology is to misdirect people's (meaning the 50 % of the richer half) attention from their own over consumption, so that they can point fingers and continue their 6.4 tCO2 (~ 3 x earth) lifestyles and keep the trickle-up-consumerism-economy running at full speed (*) .. instead of shrinking their consumption to 2.x tCO2, which would (on paper) reduce global emissions by 33 %.
Getting the richest 1 % to lower their emissions by 90 % - something I would totally welcome and even demand - would (on paper) reduce global emissions by just 13,5 %.
When I see how many people all around me (definitely not belonging to the 1 %) ventilate their homes in winter by just leaving a window tilted open most of the time, it's just one of the countless examples of how the 50 % emit a huge amount of CO2 totally needlessly, without any benefit at all (except for oil/gas companies' revenues).
We need #degrowth to rescue the ecosphere. And not only the richest 1 % or 15 % need to consume/emit less, but also billions of people of the richer half of global population need to as well.
It's not just "those guys up there who we never meet in person" but "this guy over there" and "person xyz right next to you/me".
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions#global-inequalities-in-co2-emissions
(*) Sounds like a legit conspiracy theory to me: the capitalists want the masses to think their emissions are negligible (because the emissions of the rich are many times larger) and to think what they're doing is mostly ok and just the richer people need to change their behaviour .. and to continue to consume, so their trickle-up businesses continue earning them money.
@iLikeAltitude
> it's just not true that their share of the carbon footprint is that big and thus important
Strawman. I wasn't talking about the personal consumption of the 1%, but rather their decision-making power over the way resources are managed across the planet. My whole point was that personal consumption is a distraction, because it's determined by institutional decision-making. You can deny this and hector people about their personal habits all you want. Good luck with that.
@iLikeAltitude
> people too closely watching each other's consumption and behavior is rightly frowned upon
... because the biggest threats to keeping...
> the planet habitable
... are not individual actions, but institutional ones. To the degree they are individual, they are the actions of the 1% with the most wealth.
The purpose of the "personal responsibility" ideology is to misdirect people's attention, away from institutions and the wealthiest individuals, and onto policing each other.