Today is Earth Day, the 53rd one ever. It's possibly the first one that I am actually consciously observing. Not that I'm really doing anything special (except, shortly, ranting into the smol void), but I didn't just happen to hear by surprise about today being Earth Day, I knew it was coming in advance and was mentally ready for it to happen.
This post will conclude with a long angry rant which you don't have to read which is mostly just me venting frustration with what really feels like the most visible form of online discourse around environmentalism these days, at least in the very small subspace of the net that I have some eye on. But let's ease into the rage with some more fun and/or interesting stuff first.
=> Glorious 1970 Earth Week logo, preserved by Wikimedia
=> Paltry English Wikipedia article on Earth Day 20 International Peace Climb, but oh, that logo!
The truth is that the real hijacking of the environmental movement has been by some kind of hysterical class warfare movement. I'm not saying capitalism is good for planet. Of course it's not. I'm not saying billionaires are the environment's friends. Of course they aren't. I'm not saying governments could not possibly have done more than they have. Of course they could have. But you emphatically do not need to be some kind of climate change denying, big business championing, SUV driving, Ayn Rand worshipping nutjob to push back against this attitude. It's not the blaming corporations and rich people I'm objecting to, it's the gross exaggeration of the extent of their contribution relative to that of "ordinary people", and it's the total washing of hands of responsibility where responsibility actually exists and the insistent claiming that nothing anybody individually does can possibly matter when it plainly does.
You will have no doubt encountered claims like "the richest 1% of people contribute as more to climate change than the poorest 50% of people!". That's true! And it's shocking. And it's unjust. And we should change it. But this fact in isolation is misleading. It ignores the fact that the richest 1% and the poorest 50% combined contribute less than the middle 49%. A lot less! If eco-fascist lynch mobs wiped the richest 1% off the face of the Earth, the majority of the problem would still remain. The entire aviation industry contributes about 2% of global carbon emissions. If Greta Thunberg presided over a ceremonial crushing of all private jets into cubes (for recycling, of course), while Elon Musk, forced to watch with his eyes pried open with matchsticks, sobbed inconsolably, the internet would be in throes of ecstasy, but approximately nothing would be actually accomplished. Even a literal ban on powered flight of any kind for any purpose would leave more than 95% of the problem to be solved.
Even if you discard the poorest 50% and the richest 10%, the "upper middle 40%" (a category which includes me personally and almost certainly you personally, too) contribute almost as much as the richest 10%. If you think the upper middle 40% are innocent and should not be encouraged to change their lifestyles at all, and you also believe in global scale economic justice, you have to confront the fact that dragging the top 10%'s contribution down to "our" level and simultaneously lifting the bottom 50%'s contribution up to that same level would have the overall effect of substantially increasing total global emissions. No informed and right-thinking person can possibly characterise the most important part of the fight against climate change as a large majority of the population dragging a small ultra-rich minority into line.
The ultra-rich surely have tremendous, disgustingly high individual contributions to this problem, and by all means let's shame them for it, but thank goodness, on a global scale there are approximately zero of them. Because of this, their total contribution is actually small. Meanwhile, the very poor number in the billions, but their individual contributions are so trivial that their total contribution is also small. But the upper middle 40% are in a kind of sweet spot. We also number in the billions and we have substantial individual contributions, so our contributions actually add up to something that matters. We have a very large collective capacity for change. We jointly have our hands together on one of the largest levers on the planet killing machine. It's true, the upper 10% have an even bigger lever, but it's genuinely only a little bigger than ours. It's not a serious distortion of reality to say that they are the same size. And, honestly, comparing the richest 10% against the upper middle 40%, which group do you think is collectively less sociopathic? Combining our capacity for actual impact with the higher likelihood that a good chunk of us can be convinced to do the right thing, we honestly might be the safest bet.
=> Poorest 50% vs richest 1/10% stuff based on this visualisation of UN Emissions Gap Report
Yes, "our leaders" could reduce our collective contribution for us without any of us little people lifting a finger, by investing in lower carbon electricity generation and better public transport and a whole bunch of other things. I don't deny it. I'm not saying they shouldn't do it. I'm not saying we shouldn't shout at them for dragging their feet on it. But let's not pretend we can't play a role, too. If we put all of our eggs in the basket of system level changes decreasing the environmental impact of unchanged individual lifestyles, we run two serious risks. One is that that those system level changes just don't happen no matter how much we kick and scream and vote because our political and economic systems are so damn broken. Another is that those system level changes somehow happen and then people take them as license to relax and increase their personal consumption which partially or maybe even completely cancels the changes out - ye olde Jevons paradox strikes again. And let's not forget that global justice angle. Even if the Phantom Thieves of Hearts intervened and all the politicians and the captains of industry abruptly mended their ways, they simply do not have a system change magic wand large enough to allow the poorest 50% to start living like the upper middle 40% without global emissions increasing. That's sheer la la fantasy land thinking. But if we get some system level changes and we reduce individual consumption as well, then those two changes don't fight against each other Jevons style, instead they stack and give us an even higher bonus on our saving throw against climate change. The best case scenario involving mass adoption of individual action is...do I even have to say this?...it's better than the best case scenario when most people do nothing but point their finger higher up the chain. People who refuse to even consider the prospect of mass individual action against climate change are literally making the best case scenario worse. They are not helping.
I'm not saying we should all wear rags and live on rice and shiver through the winter. I am not saying politicians and CEOs are blameless angels. I am just pushing back very hard against three ideas I am encountering more and more. First, that nothing we as individuals can do can possibly matter, that our individual contributions are completely dwarfed by other contributions totally beyond our control. Second, that even if our actions could in principle make a difference, that it's some kind of moral outrage to ask little old us to do anything, that we can and should pass the buck to some even guiltier party. Third, that only financially very well off people can afford to take effective action against climate change because greener lifestyles are more expensive. All three of these ideas are dangerous misinformation.
Greenhouse gas emissions from energy usage in domestic buildings (from lights, cooking, refrigeration, air conditioning, heating, and hot water) are about 11% of all of global emissions. That's not to be sneezed at, and it's nearly double the 6.6% that come from commercial buildings like offices, restaurants and shops. Much like with the rich vs the poor, it's not that individual commercial buildings aren't worse than individual residential buildings, of course they are. But they are vastly outnumbered, so the residential buildings contribute more overall. Don't let anybody tell you that taking shorter, cooler showers, washing your clothes in cooler water, heating your home less and wearing a sweater indoors is a pointless, idiotic sacrifice. An 11% slice of the pie is well worth attacking by any means possible. If household energy usage were reduced by 20%, that would be as big a win as completely banning powered flight. 7% of global emissions come from transporting people by car, motorcycle or bus. That is more than the roughly 5% that comes from transporting stuff around by trucks. I don't want to lean on this point as hard as the building energy point, because while nobody is under strong financial incentives to take longer showers or make their house toastier - quite the opposite, saving energy saves you money - plenty of people do actually have little choice but to drive to get to work to support their families, and I don't want to be dismissive of that (though of course there is still a lot of needless driving in the world). But I mention this point mostly to highlight that moving ordinary people around in the course of their daily lives constitutes a larger slice of road transport emissions (which dwarf air and rail and shipping combined - and, yes, that little fact is indeed relevant for my "One Billion, One Continent" scenario, I've not failed to notice) than commercial transport of stuff. Before I knew better, I would have guessed the other way around, and I bet others would have too. That's the assumption that is encouraged by the attitude that I am trying to fight back against.
Let's not forget that a full quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions are tied to food production, or that a full quarter of the total calories those emissions yield us end up being wasted. Global emissions from food waste are three times global emissions from aviation (sorry if I'm starting to sound like some kind of aviation industry shrill, I promise I'm not, it's just that aviation is consistently presented in the media as if it were the single largest problem we face, but it's not, there are multiple problems which are both larger and easier to solve). Some of that waste happens in the supply chain, but about a third of it is squarely down to consumer habits. I have sure as hell bought food, let it go bad in the fridge and thrown it out. Don't pretend you haven't, either! No individual consumer is under perverse economic incentives or forced by bad government policies to waste food. A hugely disproportionate amount of the emissions related to food production, relative to how much energy or protein they provide, come from raising livestock or fish. Beef is by far the most environmentally destructive meat and chicken by far the least, and since beef is also more expensive than chicken, greening up your diet saves you money. You don't have to go vegan to have a substantial impact here, you don't even have to go vegetarian. Cut your meat consumption in half, and whatever proportion of your meat consumption is made up of beef, cut that proportion in half, too. Do this gradually over the course of three years if that's easier for you. If your family has always eaten roast beef on Christmas Day every year for ten consecutive generations, that's fine, you can keep that tradition alive, just back off for the rest of the year to compensate. This change will save you money and really, truly will substantially reduce your individual contribution to climate change. This is so easy, no laws need to be passed, no new technology needs to be developed, we don't even need to give anything up completely, just shift the distribution of what we eat in a different direction, and yet we are dropping the ball on this so badly. I read a news report last month that said "the global production of animal flesh for human consumption was 45% higher in 2020 than in 2000 as the global taste for meat skyrockets". 45% higher! Are you going to blame Donald Trump for that? Are you going to blame Elon Musk for that? Do you think the richest 1% or even the richest 10% of humanity have driven that 45% increase by packing away multiple steaks per day out of sheer spite? Is this skyrocketing demand for meat the fault of capitalism? Or teh corporations? Knock it off! Nobody is being forced by anybody or any -isms to eat more meat and not less, and yet we are. We are literally destroying the Amazon to make more room available for grazing cows so we can eat them, and we have nobody to blame for this but our own lack of self control at the dinner table.
(before anybody writes me to object, yes, I am aware of the concept of a food desert. The people living in food deserts lack much agency to make this kind of shift. They are victims, they have my sympathy, it is not my intent to blame them for anything, and corporate control of food supply unquestionably plays a huge role in their plight. The food desert phenomenon is by far the worst in the US, and that 45% increase in global demand is not coming from the US. It's true that a good chunk of my readers probably are. I'm not pretending that this rant is directed at everybody who would benefit from hearing it. I'm just venting. But, hey, let's also not pretend that smolnet readership isn't likely highest in the parts of the world with the highest incidence of people with meat-heavy diets trying to blame other people's inaction for climate change)
=> Global emission share figures mostly from this Our World in Data page | DW: Farmed animals suffer amid exploding meat demand | DW: Brazil struggles to protect Amazon amid booming beef demand
Serious, concerted and sustained effort by people who are not in any sense rich or elite to address their largest individual contributions to climate change is not futile, it's not delusional, it's not naive, it's not like trying to bail out a sinking ocean liner using a teaspoon. It can in fact have substantial impacts, and we need as many of those as we can get. Anybody who tells you it will make no difference is wrong. Don't listen to them. Don't let them distract you by screaming about how we need top-down system change. We need both, a lot of both, as much of both as we can get. They don't need to arrive at the same time. There is no sense in stubbornly insisting "Hey, buddy, I'm not moving my lever until you move yours!". Either kind of change alone is better than neither. If you work hard to reduce your home energy consumption and then a few years later your country shuts down all its coal power plants and builds greener ones, it's not as if you reduced your energy consumption in vain, it wasn't a sacrifice for nothing, your individual change still combines with the system change years later just as well as it would have if both changes had happened at the same time, or if the system change came first. Your early actions have made the later shift away from coal more impactful than it would have been if you had done nothing, congratulations! This is the beauty of degrowth, or downshifting. If you buy into the notion of technological progress and system change allowing us to live however we like forever without consequences, you face a nasty co-ordination problem. The little people can never push their levers up further or faster than the people at the top pull the system's levers down, otherwise one change cancels out the other. It's a risky eternal tightrope walk, or rather multiple simultaneous eternal risky tightrope walks in parallel. Good luck with that! If we commit to moving all the levers down, coordination is not required. There should still be some sense of priority, it makes sense to move the biggest levers first, but there is no such thing as a futile or pointless or senseless downshift. The worst such a change can possibly be is "ahead of schedule". That's not a bad thing! Forget pointless symbolic gestures, forget finger pointing and class warfare. Let's educate ourselves on what the levers are and face up to the fact that a lot of 'em - not all of 'em, maybe not the single largest one, but a lot of 'em and at least some of the big ones - are in our own hands.
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