Denying the role that individuals need to play in combating the climate crisis is the leftist version of climate change denial. Anyone responding to suggestions of realistic, accessible changes to reduce your own impact with anything resembling ‘100 companies are responsible for most of our emissions so this is pointless’ are engaging in science denialism.
There is no way that collective action takes place without individuals making changes in their own lives. Yes, the rich are more responsible than the poor and yes, what we need is systematic change. However, there absolutely are things we can and should be doing to reduce our own impact and put pressure on polluting industries through direct action and boycott.
These include stopping or reducing flying, eliminating or drastically reducing our consumption of meat and dairy, buying second hand where possible, repairing, recycling and supporting environmental action and rewilding efforts. None of this in isolation will mend the world but its a hell of a lot better than passing the buck while refusing to make any changes in our own lives.
I know that the idea that climate change is caused by someone else; somewhere else, and that it’s up to them to change instead of us is seductive rhetoric, but it’s also extremely dangerous. It encourages the kind of apathy that plays directly into the hands of corporations who want us to feel powerless and to continue to consume as we do now.
We can’t just sit around and wait for The Revolution; we have to live revolutionary lives.
Just to add for some of you in the notes, the ‘100 corporations are responsible for 71% of emissions’ headline was a gross, clickbait misrepresentation of the truth. Influencers and media outlets twisted the results of this study because they knew consumers wanted something, anything, to tell them that the responsibility isn’t on them to make any change, since it’s all the fault of those big nasty corporations. The following is from the Fullfact analysis of this study:
“In the original press release accompanying the report, CDP said: “100 active fossil fuel producers including ExxonMobil, Shell, BHP Billiton and Gazprom are linked to 71% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988.”
“This means that the total estimated cumulative greenhouse gas emissions released by human activity (excluding carbon dioxide from land use, land use change and forestry, and agricultural methane) between 1988 and 2015, 71% of those emissions originated from 100 fossil fuel producers. This includes the emissions from producing fossil fuels (like oil, coal and gas), and the subsequent use of the fossil fuels they sell to other companies. Therefore, it might not come as such a surprise that these 100 entities are linked to 71% of human activity-related greenhouse gas emissions, since all 100 are fossil fuel producers.”
In other words, this study (which was extremely limited in scope) concluded that 100 companies produce 71% of the fossil fuels which are then used by other industries and by consumers themselves. 100 companies aren’t causing 71% of emissions, they’re producing the fossil fuels that are then linked to 71% of emissions. Those are completely different things.
