You and I, though, have virtually no say in what goes on at the top, and realistically, we never will. So I don’t really see why giving up work elsewhere would accomplish anything. Which isn’t to say that we can’t do two things at once, of course–you and I can both push for legislation against large industrial polluters, and we both should. Where I take exception to that is in saying that others also shouldn’t take action in their own way as well.

It assumes that work on climate change is a very zero-sum game, in that focusing on one type of behavior eliminates work on any other sort of behavior, and that’s simply not the case. We can do many things at once. It also helps to build a community that has buy-in from each of its members about how things should be–sustainable and regenerative, instead of exploitative (whether of people, things, the Earth, etc), so that the larger things follow suit. This normalizes the behavior and practices and moves the Overton window away from what the big players are doing.

Thanks for the reminder about the carbon footprint slogan. I don’t think it’s wrong in itself, however, it’s just that it was co-opted to remove pressure from Big Oil instead of being used in tandem with the movement against them.