570
I love that analogy. No, you're not going to personally save the world by reducing your carbon footprint. But you know what you are going to be? One leaf on a tree in a forest, making that little bit more oxygen that helps collectively make the world a better place.
And that's worth doing. Especially if you can encourage other people to be leaves too.
That's all well and good, but relying on individual action to solve systemic problems still doesn't work. Systemic problems require system-level solutions. We didn't get rid of the hole in the ozon layer because everyone individually did their part; we got there through regulations, laws, and action on the level of governments.
You're correct, but your analysis is incomplete.
It took global, coordinated, governmental action to ban CFCs worldwide.
But governments were motivated to ban CFCs because so many individual people, ordinary citizens and voters, learned that CFCs were destroying the ozone layer. Those individuals called on their governments to act. They funded the NGOs that studied and lobbied and suggested alternatives to CFCs. And they bought those alternatives instead of using CFCs themselves, which helped build the consensus to eliminate CFCs.
And individual action was part of building that consensus. Individual people, spreading awareness about the damage CFCs did, and choosing alternatives to CFCs in their own individual purchases, helped build consensus for system-level change.
Here's a couple thought experiments. A new train or bus line is a system-level solution to improving public transit. So is a bike lane. But what individuals are more likely to vote for a new train line? People who drive to work, or people who rely on public transit? Who's more likely to support a new bike lane, people who drive or people who bicycle?
Factory farming of animals is one of the greatest atrocities in modern society. But it provides cheap meat. Who's more likely to support the system-level change necessary to ban factory farming? Someone who eats meat or someone who doesn't? Someone who eats meat everyday or someone who eats meat once a week? Someone who knows how to cook without meat, or someone who doesn't know how to cook without it?
And who's going to be more passionate about banning factory farming - someone who consumes the products of factory farming daily and is necessarily going to feel conflicted about it? Or someone who has already rejected those products, in their own life, through individual action, and who will not lose anything in their own life if every feedlot and slaughterhouse is shut down?
Systemic change transforms the individual actions of entire communities. But it also works the other way around. Individual action builds consensus for systemic change. And we need to encourage and celebrate both.
That's completely fair. Individuals did do a lot to change governments minds for the ozone layer. However, there are a lot of people who think that buying into oil companies' propaganda and recycling or driving electric cars or whatever is the way to drive such systemic change, sadly. Instead of course (as the oil companies intended), all it does is make people feel good about themselves so they're not motivated to do anything to actually solve the problem.
It happened because we pushed the limits and world leaders were more competent.
No, please don't construct the illusion of some "past golden age". Leaders were not more competent in the past.