You live super sustainable. You try to reduce your individual carbon footprint wherever you can. You only buy regional and seasonal food in a local store. And, of course, you are vegan.
You don’t fly, you don’t own a car, your apartment is perfectly insulated, so you do not need much energy to regulate the temperature. The energy you use is renewable. Your bank account is at a common good bank.
Your clothes are second hand and free of plastic. Your phone, where you’re reading this, is 5 years old and refurbed.
You do everything you can and yet, the climate is still changing.
Why? Aren’t people causing climate change?
The myth of the individual carbon footprint
Yes, the current climate change is human made. But you are not the cause. Your individual footprint doesn’t matter.
Living a sustainable lifestyle is mostly great. I will talk about the negative effects later.
Be vegan be healthy
Being vegan can be healthier than being carnivorous or omnivorous. It always depends on what you eat. Replacing a burger with meat with a vegan burger won’t make much of a difference. Eating chips is worse than eating lean chicken. But eating raw vegetables I better than eating raw chicken.
Furthermore, veganism has a far better CO2 balance than other diets. Although again, it depends on what you’re eating and how you’re preparing it.
By the way, eating locally has only a tiny effect on CO2 emissions. The problem with your avocado toast is not that it has to travel around the world, it’s the extreme water usage of avocado plantations.
How to travel sustainable
But how you travel to eat locally somewhere else, can be an issue. What a great transition.
You best get there walking, cycling or per public transit.
Driving or flying are the worst modes of transportation.
Cars not only emit more per person than trains, for example. They’re destroying the whole society. But I have already written and spoken about that.
So do not own or using one is a good thing in many ways.
How to bully a capitalist
Buying used stuff isn’t only good for the climate and the environment. It’s also good for you. It often has less hazardous chemicals and it is much cheaper.
That’s of course the reason our capitalist system doesn’t like it. They would prefer you to buy the expensive sustainable labeled stuff. And while some items can indeed be better for the climate some labels are just greenwashing.
Or it is complicated. Organic, for example, can be good for biodiversity but bad for the climate because it uses so much more land.
The individual carbon footprint brought to you by BP
But mentioning these labels is another good transition. Because, like these labels, the individual carbon footprint is a label created by the fossil fuels industry.
It was invented to prompt that climate change is a personal matter and has nothing to do with the fossil fuel industry or the system they provide.
It falls into the scheme of individualism.
The move was genius.
- It freed the industry from guild.
- It created the opportunity to sell products at a higher prize when they are labeled sustainable.
- It distracted the people from the real problem because they concentrated on their own carbon footprint.
So the system didn’t need to change while climate is still changing.
But it is the system that needs to change. Not you. Well, you too, because you are part of the system. But as long as you live in a system, that is. Hurting our planet and therefore us, you can change as much as you want. It won’t help against the climate change.
Why is the system we live in bad for the environment?
The most obvious reason is because we depend on fossil fuels. They’re not only the fuel for cars and planes. Oil is everywhere. In our clothes, in your food, in your cosmetics, in the air, in your brain.
Since only a few countries and companies provide the stuff, the dependency is high. And the ones having the black gold have the money.
They are against renewable energy, not only because it destroys their business model, but also because air and wind is available nearly everywhere. For free. A sacrilege for capitalists.
Furthermore, countries and people would gain freedom, the fossil fuel industry can’t have that. They’re the only ones allowed to be free. Driving their SUV through untouched nature, with a cigarette in their mouth. Until they are stuck in the middle of nowhere because of the bad mileage of their tanks.
That’s one of the reasons why they are pushing so hard on nuclear energy to be a renewable energy, because you can create a new dependency. But that’s a topic for another article.
What you eat is killing us
Another big issue is the food industry or more specific, the meat and animal products‘ industry.
To produce a kilogram of beef, you need an enormous amount of energy and land. Forests are being cut down and the animals produce methane. An even worse greenhouse gas than CO2.
Build on burning ground
Another industry that contributes significantly to climate change is the construction industry. There are the materials they use, which are mostly cement, steel and concrete. But also they have heavy machinery that runs on fossil fuels and, of course, the land use, which is, with all the streets, parking lots and single family homes, terrible.
There are already alternatives for materials and construction equipment. And there are also many things that can be done from an architectural perspective to build in a climate-friendly way.
It’s the old white men, stupid
But as with the industries mentioned above or, for example, the textile industry, those responsible in the construction industry are not ready for change.
Because it’s always been done that way, they know their way around. New things are less scalable and involve a certain amount of risk.
So, instead of investing the money into future-proof and climate friendly ways of running their businesses, they give their money to politicians who do what they want. And those are mostly conservatives.
Furthermore, the rich control most of the popular media outlets, so they control what people know about climate change.
That’s how they could everyone make believe it is their personal carbon footprint that causes climate change and not the industries, the system itself.
Beyond individual carbon footprints: Collective climate action
Can we do anything against it?
Actually, and I’m contradicting myself a little now, having a sustainable lifestyle and doing all the things I mentioned in the beginning are a good way to start. But don’t think that this alone will change something. And don’t let searching for the best way to reduce your personal carbon footprint distract you from better things to do.
Don’t let the system fool you into buying expensive things, that are labeled as sustainable.
Try to buy as little as possible. Don’t feed the system, but don’t starve.
Do not try to be perfect. You only have this one life. Live it.
The best thing, as always, if you want to change something, is voting. Be engaged in groups, local politics, or your neighborhood.
Talk about your sustainable lifestyle, educate people about the real causes of climate change.
And, essential, listen to your peers. Climate change triggers fear and anxiety. Take these feelings seriously. Your own and those of the others.
The ones who are keeping the system alive have the money and the power. What we need to be able to counter this are people, lots of them.
So fuck individualism and come together.
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