robertShippey

First thing is to stop thinking of change on an individual level. This is a society problem so it needs a society solution. That’s harder, but that’s where we are.

Join groups organising around this. You will learn more from them than anywhere else. Joining with others and campaigning for social change is much more effective than individual changes in the grand scheme of things. Though, also talking about personal changes that you’ve done may help convince others to do them too so there is that.

But here’s the individual level stuff if you want it lol. Switch your home electricity to a green tariff. Insulate your home and replace gas/oil heating with a heat pump if you can afford it. Don’t fly. Reduce car use. Switch your bank and pension providers to fossil fuel free accounts. Reduce meat and dairy intake (particularly red meat). And vote for candidates that support green policies.

Well firstly, it’s not true that no one ever mentions this, because I’m constantly being told “no one ever mentions having fewer children” whenever I talk about this stuff. People keep talking about it. Too much IMO.

I don’t think it’s realistic to ask people to not have a child because of their carbon footprint. People will have children if they want. Increasingly people are choosing not to because of where we’re at. If we collectively as society actually started working on addressing the climate crisis, your individual choice to have a baby or not isn’t the determining factor in addressing it or not. A baby brought into a loving and low-carbon family is better than a millionaire who chooses not to have a child.

That’s the problem with this discussion. It has to necessarily lead to trying to decide who can have a child. That’s not a route I want society to go down.

Hence the general racist and eugenic implications of talking about “””pOpULatIOn ConTroL”””.

Will you be at Extinction Rebellion’s upcoming “Big One” April 21-24? https://extinctionrebellion.uk/the-big-one/