Thread by @IsabelleLetell1

While billionaires & so called liberalism try to guilt consumers putting the responsibility of any change on our shoulders...
It is tempting to reply that change can ONLY come through political action targeting those corporations & discount individual actions.

Disagreeing thread

2 First: yes, fossil fuel billionaires are cynical monsters who have spent billions in lobbying & spreading doubts to torch the planet without being disturbed - and to receive massive state subsidies doing that. They should be sued, dismantled & held accountable. Absolutely!

3 Order matters here. This comes first. This is the only way to reply to those billionaires' strategy (as pointed by @MichaelEMann ) to blind us by making us obsessed with all "sacrifices" pathing the way to decarbonize our society. So how to look at "individual actions" then?

4 what is the point with individual people trying to reduce their own carbon footprint? Isn’t that a drop in the sea? ...Well the thing is, individual actions are not so "individual" as we think they are. Stop using plastic, stop flying, stop eating meat, consuming less, etc…

5 All these can contribute to system change because the system at stake here both drives and is fed by our consumption patterns. Now is the time to go back to Merleau-Ponty a bit. ;-)

6 Refuse consumption modes you are expected to embrace IS refusing the system. (There's a reason why so much advertisement try to drive these concumption patterns!) Refusing is an everyday vote against the system. @petekalmus already made this point. And there’s more...

7 Refusing the system by this type of everyday small action - I would call it everyday activism - is not only good, but it is NECESSARY. Not doing that while screaming we want “system change” or even voting for it creates a double message that can only work against the change.

8 On the one hand, we feed the system, on the other, we say we want system change. Not clear. Counter-productive.
I am with you. Resisting the system is quite hard - see that is why I think we should acknowledge it as a form of activism in its own right!

9 Blocking the street feels like a strong action. But not flying while all your colleagues do is quite a challenge. Trying to buy #plasticfree in a plastic world is also quite a challenge. And yes, there’s only so much we can do…

10 Again I am with you. This is hard. Take it one step at a time. Start where you are. Go #flyingless first and see how it goes. In fact, I am sure you will start to see the “sacrifice” it seemed it was will soon feel really small - if you don't just forget about it. Truth is…

11 this type of “individual small actions” are really neither small nor individual. Our representations are influenced by what happens around us… just like our representations and behaviors influences what happens around us!

12 And I believe this is a point we often forget. Our actions are social. By changing your actions, especially if you are loud about it - be loud about it! - does bring change around you! And quite frankly this type of change is exactly what WE DESPERATELY NEED.

13 One of the strongest obstacle to solve the climate crisis is exactly this: our mental barriers. In fact, I believe many think we won’t solve it because of our mental barriers. But those barriers can fall!

14 ...They already are: in Sweden, people have started to fly less. So we just need to accelerate the change… to make it closer to #stopflying
...how?

15 By going on being loud about our #flyingless #stopflying and spreading the good word about all our behavior changes, we change others’ behavior. This is simply inevitable because that is how we, human beings, work. People flying to Thailand don’t seem so cool anymore, do they?

16 See the mistake is to limit the scope of possible actions to top down political actions. Mental barriers can only change bottom-up by domino-effect spreading of new individual behaviors and representations.

17 Now hear me… of course, we need political actions! But unless you have a dictatorship plan or you are fine with “we are doomed” we simply cannot discount individual changes. Today discounting it is actually yet another form of climate denial…

18 ... like my friends who think their flying to Thailand for vacation is ok because they know best that fighting climate change means dealing with big corporations not individual actions…

19 The argument that others have bigger emissions will not make ours count less. Our emissions will just add up to the others and accelerate the process. Is it what we want? to accelerate the process?

20 We just need to admit that today, the scale of change that is required requires ALL TYPES OF ACTIONS TOGETHER. And we need to be as many as possible doing them NOW.

So get onboard with us and change the system!

sorry I meant @ClimateHuman
Just missed a R. (Peter Kalmus) 🙂

@stopflying @flyingless @FlightFree2020 @flygfritt