this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
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There are 26 million people in Australia. That 1.2% is obviously all Australian emissions, but let's exaggerate and say that's purely from individuals. That the footprint of all Australian citizens combined was 1.2% of global emissions.
If literally all Australians then brought their personal carbon footprint to 0, it would be a reduction of less than 1/3rd of Saudi Aramco's emissions alone.
But I'm supposed to believe that I, with my ~ 1/26 million of a percent footprint, have an affect. You'll have to try a lot harder to convince me of that.
Your vote is also 1 in 26 million. Do you believe that has an effect?
I think you misread. I don't account for 1 in 26 million of emissions. I count for 1% divided by 26 million of emissions. 1 26 millionth of a percent.
This would be like if there was some kind of global election, and ALL Australian votes added together were worth 1.2% of the total vote.
That means my personal vote/emissions in this scenario would be 0.000000046%
And then there were 57 corporations whose interests were largely aligned that accounted for 80% that also got to vote.
Imagine a school/college/workplace had votes that everyone could participate in to make changes to it. But altogether, the student/employee votes could account for at most 20% of the vote, and teacher/management accounted for 80% of the vote.
Would you believe your vote has an affect in such an election?
(and this isn't even continuing the analogy to the point that there are like 200 classes/departments and yours accounts for like 1-4% assuming you're in one of the larger ones, and there are 26 million or more people in your department, meanwhile there are 57 teachers/managers that mostly agree with each other in protecting what they want/their interests)
Why do you think BP produces emissions? They may be evil, but it's not out of malice, it's for profit. People, like the 26 million residents of Australia, pay BP to give them more fossil fuels.
A top-down response, where governments just outlaw all extraction and burning of fossil fuels, would be a lovely, quick solution to the climate crisis. By all means, try and make that happen, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
One thing you can do today to make an impact is to adjust your lifestyle to give less money to the fossil fuel industry. An individual carbon footprint is small compared with a company, just like the money they give to BP is relatively small, when compared with their total profits. But when you add up all the customers, their money adds up to the revenue of the industry, and their carbon footprints add up to the footprints of the relevant companies.
My mum never owned a car, we walked, biked, bus'd or train'd every day of my life. Because I was used to it and don't have a lot of money, I don't own a car either. I don't know what exactly you want me to do to give them less money, but what I do know is me walking everywhere every day has influenced exactly 0 people to do the same, and it's affected global carbon emissions by such a small fraction it can barely be measured.
It's not relatively small, it's essentially non existent, and there's no way as an individual to force others to give up their conveniences, any more than an individual can have the government ban all fossil fuels.
How much profit do you possibly think Australia provides to BP and other companies? How much of Australia doing business with them contributes to their global emissions? Because the fact is the entirety of Australia could return to tribalism with no modern technology and it would barely move the needle on either global profits or global emissions. Even a country that has 5% global emissions wouldn't achieve much by going to 0. It's near meaningless.
You're arguing that the actions of individuals have no impact on the collective actions of humanity, the sum of 8 billion individuals.
Similarly, you probably never had a conversation where someone said "Gee, I'll stop burning fossil fuels now!" But when you use public transportation, or patronize businesses on foot, policy makers are motivated to continue supporting such options. Not for you personally, but for you and others like you.