What is the individual to do, though, other than moderate their own consumption? How does that actual stop actually happen?
Not with the current players running the show, obviously!
I did the political activism for a few years, lobbying for the then-proposed EPA clean electricity plan to be implemented in my home state. Carrying signs, standing on corners with petitions, manning a booth at fairs, writing letters, under the direction of a well-established environmental organization with a good track record. Went to the state capital to meet with sympathetic state legislators. Who told me flat out, "It's a Republican majority so it won't pass." Which it didn't.
Do you think it would have passed with a Democratic majority? A lot of people put their hopes in Biden, and look at his most recent speech!
Sabotaging refineries or other such direct action might have a more noticeable effect, but it would also cost lives (the more successful, the more lives, because one of the things ITTL has right is that most people cannot imagine the changes in life that would be necessary if fossil fuels were eliminated or significantly curtailed, but I can, and I know they would be fatal for many). I'm not willing to murder for the planet, because you know what, the planet will take care of itself and the murdering will happen without me striking any blow at anyone.
Be careful now because you have fallen for maybe
the most common trick in the book: You take a society that is
based on fossil fuels as your starting point and imagine what would happen if you suddenly removed the only available power source. Conclusion: Fossil fuels are necessary for our (!) survival, so what are we to do?!
The solution is much more obvious than you think, which is why I frequently point to the example of infrastructure changes to big cities. (I don't mention Copenhagen's success with limiting fossil fuel traffic or the increasingly wind and solar-based Danish power grid as examples because I'm a nationalist. I'm not. I use these examples to contradict 'but-what-would-happen-if...' objections. It actually
can be done, and people are if fact
better off when it's done. Sacrifices aren't need to accomplish it.)
Your not being
"willing to murder for the planet" objection is so insane that I'm not sure if you believe it yourself, but maybe you do. But you forget that other people are willing to murder for their profits - and not for the sake of the planet, on the contrary - and you come up with an argument to let them continue to do so.
"Sabotaging refineries" is obviously not the way to go, but sabotaging the business models of the ******** who are destroying the atmosphere and people's lives - right now and in the foreseeable future - is what needs to be done. Right now!
I do in fact take cold showers. I have for years, all cold except when ill. It saves money I can use to help improve my resiliency in other ways, it feels good, it's better for my easily-irritated skin, the bathroom doesn't steam up, I save time and water not having to adjust the water temperature just right and not standing there luxuriating, I don't have to worry about whether the hot water will run out or if it'll run out on someone else if I use it, it doesn't matter if someone else turns on a tap while I'm in there, and being physiologically accustomed to cold water gives me a lot more opportunities to go swimming here in New England. No medal. No illusions that I'm "saving the planet" (see above). But also, no illusions that everything in my surroundings should or can be adjusted to maximize my comfort moment by moment. Something that a lot of people will have to learn or change their minds about, for any change to happen.
No illusions is a very good starting point. And kudos for not pretending that taking cold showers is something you do to limit CO
2 emissions when that is not the case. (And it probably
is healthier both for the skin and the circulatory system.)
But you should follow through with 'no illusions' and give up on the idea that going green = sacrifices. You stick with your delusion that the elimination of fossil fuels = discomfort, something that
"people will have to learn or change their minds about, for any change to happen." Where did you get that idea?! (Rhetorical question!)
Some people - and I am one of them -
prefer hot showers, and I see no reason to give up on them. (I keep them short and end with cold water for some of the reasons you mention.)
Big Oil and their shills have messed with our minds to the extent where even environmentalists (actual environmentalists, not the ones paid by Big Oil) equate environmentalism with austerity. And they do so with the argument mentioned above: Taking fossil-fuel society and imagining fossil-fuel society without fossil fuel.
Do you see the trick?
A society based on solar and wind doesn't require sacrifices. Why would it?! My hot showers won't contribute to the greenhouse effect if the water is heated by solar and wind. And the people we need to teach a lesson about austerity and sacrifices aren't the ones you have in mind. They are the ones who are currently profiting from the fossil fuels and the lies they have been telling us, all of us, to the extent where almost nobody
doesn't believe at least some of those lies.
Plonk.
