badasszombiespinster:

tittyrants:

fire-lord-frowny:

It really, REALLY bothers me when I hear people frame climate change and other environmental crises as something that everyday, average-ass people are responsible for, and not corporations and entire governments. 

Like literally, how can a regular-ass person ~opt out~ of all damaging behaviors while still being able to function in society? 

You literally can’t. 

The future of our planet is not down to whether or not someone recycles their water bottle. 

It’s down to whether or not governments and corporations decide to quit sucking up all our resources and poisoning the earth with reckless abandon. 

I mean obviously people should still live as cleanly and as sustainably as they can manage where they are and with what they have, but like. THAT isn’t the major issue. 

govts and corporations have deliberately put the onus on yr individual choices so the system can continue being as destructive/profitable

This is literally my issue with many global warming campaigns and it’s something which has troubled me a lot both personally and in general

I have been raised throughout my life in a family which has always been involved in issues invoking global warming, poaching, deforestation and other things. I have been personally involved in campaigns, in events and other hands on activities with numerous groups around these areas. It was something I was born being told is the right thing to do, and the onus was always put on me growing up that I had to change the world, to change people’s minds, and that’s what I set out to do from a young age (and it later became another reason for my awful experiences with anxiety, depression and suicide, but that’s another subject).

But as I’ve grown up, and particularly recently I’ve noticed the continuous flaws in most of the campaigns I’ve worked in, and they are consistent across the board.

1.
The Ideology: the average working class and middle class person doesn’t care about the world and what is happening to it

The Truth: Nearly everyone I’ve met in the past eighteen years of my life cares about global warming. The few who don’t came from very privileged backgrounds. The idea that the average person doesn’t care is a way to blame the majority for the actions of the minority. It is a system that tries to emotionally manipulate the people with the least amount of money to donate the most, even when they can’t afford it, and how losing three pounds could lose them a meal.

2.
The Ideology: Its easy for people to be more global warming/deforestation/poaching conscious and people really just can’t make the effort

The Truth: the reason a lot of people cannot (keyword here) make the switch is the one thing that talks in our capitalist society: money. People literally cannot afford to make the switch when products that can help are more expensive, and particularly not when it applies to their jobs. Corporations and governments pay people lots of money to continue working for big oil, for the destruction of reefs, for the hunting of endangered animals, and while there is still very little support in the world for working class people, and whose lives depend on getting a decent income - whose jobs, no matter how awful they are, pay for their family to eat another night, to pay for medicine and antibiotics, to keep a roof over their heads - nothing is going to change. These people cannot afford to give up a job where they are given even the most meagre of stable incomes.

3.
The Ideology: The way to fight things like this is to make the people at the bottom pay, even with their lives in some cases.

The Truth: This form of “fighting back” will not work while money is still flashed about for the work they do. Poaching isn’t going to stop by killing a few poachers, deforestation isn’t going to work by forcing the workers off the land. All it means is their family will go hungry another night. If we want to fight the situation the world is in at the moment we need to give the people at the bottom the chance to refuse these companies. We need to supply them with the stuff they need to be able to walk away from these jobs. 

4. 
The Ideology: One person can change the world. If one person were to make a conservative effort to help the planet, they might start snowball for change.

The Truth: This ideology is incredibly damaging, and something I see most in the Millennial generation. So many people I’ve met through my work in volunteering feel ashamed that they want to a job that doesn’t directly help global warming because then they are not “saving the world”. But something like this cannot be changed by one person alone. It needs to be a joint effort by lots of people across the world, supporting each other and working to defy the corporations and governments behind the world’s destruction.

Furthermore, the privileged people in this world, the minority on top, taking part in these corporations and governments…while they benefit from this system of blaming the people with less money, all at the same time as earning their money off their backs, things won’t change. All the debates, marches and campaigns in the world cannot change the state of the people working in these jobs while they are being paid by these corporations. The campaigners need to help them too, and the people on top need to change.

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