Of course, it’s better to emit less carbon, and support systems and policies that emit less carbon. That said, carbon emission is unavoidable, and I’d like to minimize that portion of my impact as much as possible.
I am definitely willing to pay to offset my carbon usage, but I’m under the impression that this is mostly a scam. Does anyone use these services? If so, can you tell me what reasoning or sources you used that satisfied you that the service your chose isn’t a scam?
Individual action cannot be a solution for the climate crisis. The whole idea of individual responsibility for climate impact is the divide and conquer strategy of big business as ultimate form of the collective action problem.
Global actions are the sum of individual actions. Just because one can not safe the world alone, one still should behave like one could.
Nope. Global action is more than sum of individual action. It is meta action that only the collective humanity can do, and not just the time when everyone is doing the same thing, as if that was possible.
And no, you should not behave as if you can solve the climate crisis yourself, because you cannot. Time, money, attention, willpower and empathy are limited resources in people. Of you spend all your personal resources just mitigating your own impact, you will convince yourself that you’ve done enough when the job is not to curb your personal impact, but to drive cultural and political change that results in global policy that solves the problem. Changing one politicians mind to support pro-climate legislation is far more valuable and impactful than any amount recycling you could ever do.
Further than that, there are emissions done on your behalf that you have no say in; emissions spent on building and maintaining the government that provides services (whether you use them or want them or not), infrastructure that you cannot help but utilise to live your life or military that “protects” (or destroys brown people’s homes, it’s really a toss up).
Big business has been telling us to recycle for approximately 40 years, and recycling is at an all time low as proportion of total waste produced. Advocating away from meaningful legislation and towards individual action is the ultimate weapon of big business. Recycling, and individual action more broadly, are effectively the same as being stabbed in the abdomen and bleeding to death, and then confidentially pulling out a band aid and putting it onto the gaping wound. I mean, yeah, sure, put it on, it’ll absorb some blood, but you, and our planet, are still dying. More decisive collective action, such as calling the ambulance and seeing a team of trauma surgeons asap is necessary.