Do Personal Consumption Habits Really Matter In The Climate Emergency

In a word, yes. We don’t have to buy what they’re selling.

At Ryerson University where I teach, I am starting an experiment where we try to live a 1.5 degree lifestyle, and limit our individual carbon footprints to 2.5 tonnes per year, which is what the IPCC suggests we all have to do by 2030 if we are going to stay below 1.5 degrees of warming. I have previously tried to address the question of whether these kinds of individual actions make a difference, quoting skeptic Martin Lukacs in the Guardian, who wrote that our concern about our personal habits and consumption are “the result of an ideological war, waged over the last 40 years, against the possibility of collective action.”

I was reminded of this while reading the New York Times recently, where

which questions whether trying to change our habits matters at all in ideological war. She makes the same point as Lukacs:

She continues:

It is true that the big corporations have been brainwashing us for 60 years, training us to pick up their garbage so they could sell disposables and then separate them into little piles so that they could pretend to recycle them. It’s also true that it’s now almost impossible to buy anything in a returnable bottle, or to sit in a restaurant to drink a coffee when they have outsourced the seating and tables to our cars. I get that they are evil and are manipulating us. TreeHugger emeritus Sami Grover, who has fretted about this issue for years, wrote that even “personal carbon footprinting” was an oil company invention:

But we do have an option, and it is not just to avoid taking a straw, it is to not buy what they are selling, the whole damn cup.

That’s when individual actions can add up to mass movements that change markets permanently. One only has to look at American history, and why so few Americans drink tea, going right back to the original Tea Party boycotts; John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail explaining how he developed a taste for coffee.

People’s habits changed, pretty much permanently, to the point that it seems that nobody in the USA even knows how to properly brew a cup of tea.

Ronald Reagan selling cigarettes when everybody smoked/Promo image

People who smoke are now pariahs; and look at what is happening with the #metoo movement. Attitudes are changing. Individual actions lead to collective consciousness. Beyond Meat and Impossible burgers become market leaders.

Youthstrike Tweet/Screen capture

Even leaders of the Youth Strike For Climate say they stand for systemic change, not individual change.

But their entire movement started with individual action. By one person starting a climate strike. Everyone who participates is taking individual action, even as they demand systemic change.

In Toronto, most of the money goes for cars. Vision Zero and bikes get 6 percent./Public Domain

When I decided to give up driving and commute by bike, I didn’t do it out of shame. Yes, the city I live in massively invests in car infrastructure instead of bikes, spending billions to rebuild a highway that only 3 percent of commuters use. Yes, it’s not as convenient or comfortable to take transit or bike as it is to drive.

Mark Wagenbuur – BicycleDutch/Video screen capture

But every additional person on a bike is another message to the politicians that things are changing and so must our cities.

Emma Marris writes:

But consumption habits do matter. Flight shaming has seriously cut the number of short haul flights in Germany and Sweden. Fewer young people are getting drivers’ licenses and car sales are dropping. Panera announced today that it is cutting half the meat off its menu because of “concerns about environmental sustainability.” As Sami has written:

I will never believe that individual actions don’t matter. They do now and they always have. And if we are going to get through 2030 without cooking the planet, that means thinking about our consumption habits. And that means setting an example.