Hank Green on the importance of individual action, not because it helps directly (which it does), but because it helps remind our brains of the problems which need to be solved.
Social scientists have studied this, and they’ve found that people taking individual action leads to more pushes for policy change, not less. The original idea is that if you focus more on individual action there will be less push for policy change. It turns out to be the opposite of that.
As social psychologists Leor Hackel and Gregg Sparkman said in their 2018 article, “People don’t spring into action because they see smoke; they spring into action because they see others rushing in with water.”
I’ve seen a lot of the “It doesn’t matter what individuals do because 90% of the emissions are done by 50 companies” sentiment on Lemmy, and find it concerning. What are the best ways to address this?
Although I agree with a lot of what you said, I can’t help but feel like you’ve used a few valid questions to undermine a broader point without offering any real substance behind it. For someone claiming to engage in a “pro science” manner, flat out calling someone “wrong” for the conclusions they drew from research doesn’t exactly meet the standard. You can’t just say anything from turk is biased and worthless, we know that it is biased but that can be corrected for and it’s far from worthless. You also seem to buying into this concept of fatigue without any real proof of the concepts effect on the extremely wide variety of both free/expensive, low/high cost behavior adjustments. Lastly, if you’re going to go this far in the weeds to undermine others’ points on what actions are worthwhile, we need more detail than just “organize”. Are you talking about participating in CCL? Talking to neighbors? Posting memes on Lemmy? Showing up at bike to work day? Hanging outside the courthouse with a sign? Like what does this actually look like to you and what aspects make this effective? Incremental progress is boring but it can absolutely work. Organized movements can absolutely fail, e.g. occupy wall street too. Let’s say your post really spoke to me and I’m inspired to organize - what do I do next? How can I support what you are organizing?
As an anecdote (I know it’s worthless), I become more engaged the more I lean in. I have talked to more neighbors about solar and heat pumps since I installed mine than ever before. It’s not taking away energy I was going to use to “organize” it’s taking energy I was going to spend talking about gutters or sports or what types of tomatoes I might plant this year with my neighbors. I fundamentally don’t understand how you expect someone that can’t be bothered to do any of the low hanging fruit items to effectively organize a movement to net zero. We need to build a culture of stewardship and sustainability that champions every reduction in CO2-eq because that’s the only metric that matters, and that starts at home and builds organically through actions and conversations, including those to our representatives, companies, and anyone else that might listen. I’m basically just advocating for doing all the things that you can while keeping your sanity.