I think we should work both ways: be conscious about what we can do as individuals and at the same time, organize society.
Useless? Of course not. Completely negligible? Absolutely, 100%. I'm no climate scientist but voting literally once for the party that believes in climate science probably has about a million x the effect of you not going on vacation.
>Be conscious about what we can do as individuals
All I'm contesting is that the most effective thing we can do is participate and organize in politics.
Not going on vacation and markedly decreasing your quality of life to reduce climate emissions by 1x10^-9999999 percent is naively negligible at best, a propagandized (by an oil company nonetheless) abdication of their larger responsibility to participate in politics causing the actual damage as science denying lunatics fill offices around the nation at worst.
The sad thing is that, with all the COVID lock downs and travel restrictions, carbon emissions only slightly went down a couple percent in 2020, and promptly went back up to "normal" levels in 2021.
Given all those rhetorical shaming of individuals to consume less, it's illuminating to actually look at the data and see what's the actual the effect even if you could literally force (instead of shaming) everyone to live that lifestyle.
Exactly. I completely agree with the both sides bit, I just think we've got the direction of priority wrong.
Reduction in consumerism comes downstream from that type of education and outreach. Going at consumerism first just makes you seem like a reactionary who wants to "steal our gas stoves" to the ignorant propagandized, and unfortunately needed, masses