Can One Person Alone Fight Climate Change?
Unless you are living under a rock or are a Republican, then you know this planet has issues. Climate change has almost reached a point of no return. Weather events will keep on destroying infrastructure, displacing families, and taking lives. Consumption of petroleum products will continue to have an irreversible environmental impact. Virtually all elements of the consumerist lifestyle will have to change if we want to salvage the Earth.
Like you, I know there are changes I can make to save the planet and improve humanity’s situation. I can stop purchasing plastic products, such as non-recyclable bags and any number of cheap, superfluous novelties. I can give up eating red meat, thereby limiting greenhouse gas emissions and reducing water waste. I can get a few extra months out of my clothes, spurning fast fashion. I can seek out a minimalistic living space. I can stop driving a car, relying instead on public transit or, better yet, bicycling or pedestrianism. I can give up airplane travel altogether.
But I won’t do any of this. It’s not that I’m some pigheaded paleoconservative who feels entitled to consumption by diktat of God. Rather, it’s because I know that you, the reader, and almost everyone else, are not going to give up consumption. Even though you may want to prevent climate change as much as I do, you will not give up the taste of steak. You will continue to purchase plastic products ranging from smartphones to furnishings to video game systems. These will fill up your capacious living space. You will buy new clothes in lockstep with changing fashions, wearing them once or twice and then discarding them. You will certainly not give up your car, a totem of your status and a shelter from public transit riffraff. You will cut and water your lawn weekly. Faced with the risk of missing out on that lavish and mind-blowing family vacation in a tropical location (and getting new taste sensations there), you will not give up plane rides.
You will not make significant changes to your lifestyle, so why should I? Neither you nor I should feel guilty for proceeding as such, as our lives without all of the above would be bleak, to say the least.
Take for instance my friend, Johnny G. He gave up meat with a view to consuming more sustainable food products. He has not sought out a lavish living space. He has eliminated long-distance travel. He wears clothes until they are threadbare. He has chosen throughout his life not to pursue a driver’s license, as he desires all things pedestrian.
And what’s his life like, you ask? At present, he lives with his parents. On account of an inability to properly hit the pavement (sans automobile), he can’t keep anything beyond the most fleeting work-from-home job. He never travels. And even if he did, he doesn’t have an Instagram account to show off the pictures. He has no significant other.
All told, my friend Johnny G embodies the pedestrian, almost clinically so. He’s impressive, unambitious, and unrelatable. Quite frankly, he’s my hardest friend to be around. He’s completely lonely. This is who you become when you give up consumerist goals and products — a total loser.
So don’t be Johnny G. If you give up so much for the planet, you’ll be the odd man out, and Johnny G is an odd man, to say the least. Take your vacations, drive your gas guzzler, and keep the economy humming along with your self-respect. And when the fiery end does happen, just pray it will be quick and merciful, as opposed to long and protracted. Even if the end is slow and painful, at least you can take some consolation in knowing that you are, with your car and your house and your plastic products, not to mention the memories of a myriad great meat-eating experiences, going out in a blaze of glory.
