So grow some carrots and jump on a bike: it will make you happier and healthier. But it is time to stop obsessing with how personally green we live – and start collectively taking on corporate power.
📑 Should we really all fly less?
But if I eat less meat or take fewer flights, that’s just me – how much of a difference can that really make? Actually, it’s not just you. Social scientists have found that when one person makes a sustainability-oriented decision, other people do too.
Diego Arguedas Ortiz discusses a recent study unpacking the individual actions that can help lead to climate change. Some of these actions include taking public transport, invest in renewable energies, eat less meat and stop flying. If this is too much then Arguedas Ortiz provides a list of actions to offset your activities. On the flipside, Martin Lukacs argues that individual action is a con and that what is really needed is collective action:
Kim Stanley Robinson argues that change is still possible to alivate the crisis of global warming. However, this is not individual change, but rather political change.
This ‘political economy’ would be post-capitalism. In many respects this touches on Douglas Rushkoff’s push for more human intervention and involvement.
Rebecca Solnit unpacks the problem of heroes when trying to drive change. In part this reminds me of some of the arguments in Douglas Rushkoff’s Team Human, especially the challenge of narrative. It also captures what Martin Lukacs describes as the ‘con’ of individual action associated with change.
via Katexic