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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I’m always a little perplexed when people say that individual consumer action doesn’t matter.  Aren’t the industries responding to the consumer demands?  So if people don’t want to buy crap, they will stop producing it?  And if people won’t fly anymore, they won’t run all those airplanes for nothing.  Residential and commercial use accounts for 30% of US greenhouse gas.  If people insisted we stop air conditioning offices below 85 degrees, and put solar panels on every empty roof, couldn’t we cut that in half?  The corporations and the governments are only giving us what we want.  The businesses aren’t going to produce shit just for the sake of producing it (well, with the exception of military weapons), right?[/quote]

I think it’s more like if the government doesn’t mandate changes to carbon emissions and things like that it won’t make much of a difference because not enough individuals will make all the sacrifices needed to slow things down.  The ball is rolling downhill at this point and picking up speed.  20% of Americans stopping driving, flying and using plastic will not be enough change.  It has to be forced through governmental action.[/quote]
I think PP is talking about something different, which is the ability of individual actions to spur institutional change. I think it can, but consumer action is possibly the most difficult way to force change. Boycotts might be effective at getting a company to make a small change to their operations, but they probably won't get a company to fundamentally reimagine their business model. For the most part, widespread consumer action is most effective when/if it spurs policy or regulatory change...which requires the individuals who got interested enough in an issue to lobby their governments for change. It's why many cities and states are now issuing single-use plastic bans. It's why many jurisdictions are prioritizing renewable energy.

I try hard to reduce my plastic consumption, but plastic is so ubiquitous that at some point I'd have to stop participating in modern society to reduce it enough to be effective. If I can instead work with my government to ban a lot of the needless use of plastic, it would be far more effective. Where should I put my energy. Finding the one recycling center that will recycle my Starbucks lid? Or working with my government to create a regulation that incentivizes Starbucks to use a different material?[/quote]

Perplexed poster here.  [b]I guess part of my point is also that if people don’t care enough to change their own behavior, how will they care enough to pressure the government to force changes—particularly when those changes will impact them as a consumer?[/b]  Presumably if the government bans single use plastics, the companies will come up with alternatives that will likely be more expensive.  That will make food cost more which consumers have regularly said they don’t want.  (I always come back to the example of antibiotic use in livestock’s—it’s 100% clear it’s a bad idea but there’s no real political will to ban it because people like cheap meat more than they like public health.).  People need to care about humanity more than they care about their own immediate needs and pocket book.  It’s sort of amazing to me when I look back at our grandparents generation—the restrictions and cost increases they dealt with as part of the effort to win WWII.  Gas rationing, bans on sales of new car, etc. People would be on full on revolution if you tried to ration gas now.[/quote]
You are making a very black and white argument. A lot of people are willing to make changes, but for me to make individual changes that have a meaningful impact, I'd pretty much have to completely remove myself from society, go off-grid, bike everywhere, grow my own food, etc. All of that stuff would take a lot of time and energy, and I'm doubtful there is a huge group of people willing to do it. If instead of doing that, I spent even a fraction of the time advocating to ban single use plastics, the overall impact would be much, much higher. I live in California, where we implemented a single-use plastic ban (though COVID delayed its enforcement). The only people lobbying against it were the plastic industry.

You overestimate how much people are invested in the status quo vs. inertia.[/quote]

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