climate action
It’s a weird feeling witnessing others claim what you’re doing is impossible, even though you both have quite similar or equal privileges and resources. I mean things like boycotting certain brands, veganism, no social media, no car, no flying, less heating etc.
It’s bad because people tend to feel guilty and ashamed. I wish they would remember that lashing out to me about it won’t change a thing, and also, that I wasn’t always like this and I didn’t turn my life upside down yesterday. It’s the culmination of years of small changes here and there that were relatively easy to implement at the time or that I got used to as time passed. If spread out like that, these things don’t feel radical, they just are the new normal and what you’re used to. I’d be overwhelmed too if I was Caruser McCarface flying to my family every month to have KBBQ with and my biggest joy in life is to reward myself with stylish dresses from SheIn and posting my thirst traps on Insta while being confronted with the fact that I should change all of that immediately.
Why don’t you take it one day at a time? Why not start with one thing until it feels natural and like a no-brainer to you and then you feel out the next thing?
I had a conversation today about the energy cutting measures my country used to have years back for a few months and the suggestion that it’s easy to dress in warmer clothes or blankets during those times elicited quite the anger from someone equally if not more privileged than me, and that was fun (not). It started because I said I wish we would temporarily have these measures every now and then to do more for the climate, and of course I’m a fucking dumbass for suggesting that it’s okay to sit in Uni halls at 18 degrees Celsius instead of 20 degrees when the Ultra Rich and their private jets and yachts exist whose cessation of their excessive lifestyle would do more.
I wonder sometimes if these people truly think we who care and change our behavior don’t know about the climate footprint of these clowns. Of course I do, but I cannot control the rich, just myself, and I wanna do as much as I reasonably can and stop being complicit in things that I don’t have to be complicit in, if you get my drift. I don’t get anything out of Pareto-ing climate change in my head.
They’re always like “I can’t control anything anyway!” and then list the things we all have to buy and have no choice in. But that’s not the only stuff out there, is it? That’s what I mean with “stop being complicit in things that I don’t have to be complicit in”. There’s plenty I can’t change, but instead of letting that discourage me, I can just put my focus on the things I can control, which doesn’t have to be the exact same things you can control.
With some people you can tell they’re grateful they can blame everything on billionaires because then they don’t have to critically look at themselves. It’s always little in comparison and someone is always worse and they deserve a little wasteful and abusive behavior as a treat and they’re not doing it personally, they just hire companies to do it for them, and life is so hard, etc.
Why do you refuse to acknowledge your life often unnecessarily depends on highly precarious global supply chains and actively harmful substances and goods that need modern slave labor and animal abuse? And it could depend on that less?