{"id":29610,"date":"2018-01-11T08:23:50","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T13:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29610"},"modified":"2018-01-11T08:24:12","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T13:24:12","slug":"individual-vs-collective-are-you-responsible-for-fixing-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29610","title":{"rendered":"Individual vs collective: Are you responsible for fixing climate change?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Individual vs collective: Are you responsible for fixing climate change?<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\"individual<\/div>\n
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The other day I saw a tweet that had escaped its platform of birth to become a Facebook meme. I can\u2019t find it, but it said something like:<\/p>\n

\u201cCan we all please stop acting like ordinary people are to blame for climate change because we won\u2019t take 5 minute showers and go vegan, and not the corporations that make billions from destroying the planet\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think this neatly gets to the crux of something I\u2019ve been thinking about for a while. Individual vs collective responsibility for climate action.<\/p>\n

Individual action is important<\/strong><\/p>\n

We all need to take responsibility for climate change and take action in our own lives. In fact, it\u2019s hypercritical to demand change unless we do so. Climate change is a big problem, but we can solve it by all doing our bit for the planet, by making small everyday choices. <\/em><\/p>\n

Do you agree? This a very prevalent view, maybe the most<\/em> prevalent view on climate change. We\u2019re all to blame and being green is a worthy lifestyle choice.<\/p>\n

In the rest of this post I\u2019m going to explain why I\u2019m not keen on this framing. But first we\u2019re going to discuss what\u2019s right about it.<\/p>\n

This view does have some merit, let\u2019s be fair. Everyone does contribute to climate change and so we all hold some responsibility, and some power. Many people actually find that very empowering, and I can see why.<\/p>\n

Our individual choices do matter.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to see little things like buying organic vegetables, using a reusable coffee cup, biking to work, taking shorter showers, taking your own bags to the store and buying recycled paper as so trivial that they won\u2019t make a difference.<\/p>\n

But sustainable lifestyle choices do make a difference in the following ways:<\/strong><\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Individual vs collective: Are you responsible for fixing climate change? The other day I saw a tweet that had escaped its platform of birth to become a Facebook meme. I can\u2019t find it, but it said something like: \u201cCan we all please stop acting like ordinary people are to blame for climate change because we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[141,17872,17871,769,17873,17870],"class_list":["post-29610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-collective-activism","tag-individual-activism","tag-sustainability","tag-tegan-tallulah","tag-the-climate-lemon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29610"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29612,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29610\/revisions\/29612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}