Thread by @MichaelEMann

"What Matters More, Personal Responsibility or Collective Action? Students provide interesting answers to the question of carbon" | Interesting piece by @LloydAlter for @TreeHugger premised on The #NewClimateWar (publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/michael…) (thread) 🧵
treehugger.com/what-matters-m…

It's fascinating to read the thoughtful commentary by the students quoted in the piece. Both individual and collective action are of course important, and it's easy to lose sight of that in these discussions. Nuance here matters.

What I note in The #NewClimateWar is that individual actions are important, but an *exclusive* focus on individual behavior alone can crowd out needed discussion about systemic change/policy:

I discuss peer-reviewed research that suggests that this is actually the case:

But I am unambiguous about the importance of climate-friendly lifestyle choices. The point is that we cannot let pollutors use individual action framing as a means of deflecting attention from policy action:

I spend a whole chapter telling the cautionary tale of the "Crying Indian" ad, and past industry-funded campaigns to divert attention from systemic change to individual responsibility. We know what happens to those who fail to study history...