Hi all,
This will be US Centric but of course opinions from everywhere are welcome. I just wanted to let you know where I’m coming from.
Recently I have seen a lot of posts or comments from people online that say something along the lines of “corporations are responsible for the majority of emissions therefore I don’t really have to change bc I’m just one person” and those types of comments receive an overwhelming amount of support.
I wanted to ask you all how you feel about that. To me, by supporting this idea and those similar to it, we are removing personal responsibility over what we choose to buy (and there fore supoport), and thusly are removing one of the only options we have to influence the market, and policy in the US.
For example, when it’s recommended people eat less meat there’s HUGE pushback in the comments over well-meaning leftists/Gen-Z populations. But the reality is that the profits the meat corporations earn from their sales is what they use to lobby our government to pass pro-industry policy and regulation, making our environmental problems worse.
I don’t disagree that corporations cause a lot of damage; but by saying our individual choices don’t matter, people just return to the status who of buying said products from said corporations and the cycle repeats. In fact, i would push the “it’s corporations” idea if I was a corporation myself, because to me, all it does is keep people in the status quo; that is, buying what they usually buy because you’ve successfully convinced that individual “well I’m just one person, it’s corporations that are the problem”. It’s like pointing at corporations is a be-all end-all “gotcha” for any rhetoric in favor of action.
It feels like an intentional muddying of the inherent relationship between corporation and consumer, that really only stands to benefit the corporation.
I don’t know. I just feel disillusioned and disappointed with Gen Z in particular. The more I pay attention to what they’re saying and why, it feels more like a virtue signaling contest rather than sharing ideas with a common goal of fixing our problems. It feels more and more like people want to use fancy words to remove personal responsibility to the earth. It’s worse because a lot of Gen-Z’s can actually admit there’s a problem, but many of them simply don’t care enough to do what they can. Their beliefs start and end with “will people approve of me if I say this” and that’s it.
Anyways, thank you for reading if you got this far. I mostly just feel so frustrated all the time. At this point I just want people to admit they don’t care nearly as much as they want other people to think they do. I have more thoughts regarding this topic but I’ll stop for now.
Can any of you provide any information or evidence that shows, with numbers, why individual choice doesn’t matter? I haven’t been able to find it.