> Correct, it is not an individual choice. It is an individual action.
Every world government has passed a law, rigorously enforced, that says each person can drive no more than 20 miles a week. dleslie drives 20 miles a week. Has dleslie performed an individual action to address climate change?
> Apparently I've done the opposite, because that's more than I drive in a week now. ;)
Ha! Pandemics, eh? :)
> But not to be trite, yes I would have
This feels to me like over-egging the pudding - but getting into this discussion is really more of a question of philosophy than climate science, so it's a bit of a distraction.
It seems that, beyond the semantics of what constitutes "individual action", we seem to agree with what's needed:
> advocating for individual action has always meant making changes in the aggregate behaviour of individuals.
> Make it so that the opportunities to commute start to disappear.
> but getting into this discussion is really more of a question of philosophy than climate science, so it's a bit of a distraction.
Ah, but the politics of it are important to causing change to happen. If we can't get voters to buy-in to changing their behaviour then Governments are unlikely to create such policies.
The important concept for the opposition to individual action, I think, is that the opposition is rooted in two ideas:
1. Individuals shouldn't be burdened with having to change the way they live
2. The burden should be on the big evil capitalist corporations
Neither of which hold much water, I think; the data behind carbon reduction due to covid restrictions shows that changing the lives of individuals is an important and necessary part of the solution.
And those big evil corps are mostly serving consumer demand. They're not pumping carbon into the atmosphere just because they're evil, right? Moreover, some of the largest polluters are in China, and China has been a major polluter for generations; it's not a strictly capitalist concern.
Every world government has passed a law, rigorously enforced, that says each person can drive no more than 20 miles a week. dleslie drives 20 miles a week. Has dleslie performed an individual action to address climate change?