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Not my OC but what I've believed for years: there's no conflict between reducing your own environmental impact and holding corporations responsible. We hold corps responsible for the environment by creating a societal ethos of environmental responsibility that forces corporations to serve the people's needs or go bankrupt or be outlawed. And anyone who feels that kind of ethos will reduce their own environmental impact because it's the right thing to do.
Thoughts?
Ok, but the reality is, as long as the rich are regularly taking corporate jets, and we know government’s not going to act on it, why would John/Jane Q. Public cut their own waste? It’s going to make their lives measurably worse without real benefit to them or climate change. I understand why one might, but we are not going to convince enough more people to “do the right thing” to make a difference if that’s the argument.
Well, the answer, and you imply towards the end, is that it's morally wrong.
If I said...
...you would probably call me an ass, maybe even a lunatic. You'd say I was just looking for excuses to keep being an ass. But that's the thought process you (not just you, more of a general you) are defending and making an excuse for.
The more "utilitarian" answer is that if we can't expect people to make changes in their lives by themselves when they have the choice to, why would we expect them to be okay being forced to make those changes by a government? And why wouldn't they just then go vote for someone who undoes it all?
What if I punch the people who are causing the majority of those bad things.. or maybe eat them.. is that wrong?
I think it's more a matter of going after someone randomly punching people in the face every now and then when there's mass shootings and stuff even worse going on would be a bad use of resources, even though of course the person punching people is morally in the wrong. Similarly, encouraging people to reduce waste and cycle more is not a good use of resources, when companies are burning coal and rich people take their private jets everywhere.
I don't see how consuming less resources is waste of resources.
At the end of the day, they are both morally wrong and reprehensible. Neither should be done if it can be avoided.
I don't feel like writing too much, so I'll just leave this here to perhaps add some context. It's another (longer) comment I wrote earlier about the topic.
On the idea of consuming less resources being a waste of resources: Every one of us has a limited amount of mental energy. Most of us have to spend a lot of that on making a living. If we want to live perfectly moral lives, we can expend the rest of it doing that. But then that is the only thing we will change in the world. On the other hand, if we spend that energy on reforming policy and inspiring societal change, we may have further reaching effects. I don't think the former is necessarily the more moral choice, though it definitely is a moral one. In an ideal world, we'd all do both of course