IIRC during the last season of the Good Place there is an episode fixated on the idea that humans no longer make it into heaven because the complexity of systems make it much harder to be good based on a rigid system of measurement.

The same is true for being "green" /1

I get so, so, frustrated with the framing around individual actions on climate change because so much of it is framed around "if we all did it" that would move the needle.

This is bullshit.

We can't "all" do x because the systems we're embedded in make it impossible. /2

For example, I didn't learn to drive until I was almost 30 not because I'm eco-pious but because I lived in NYC where driving was an expensive PITA & I had other options.

When I moved to rural Vermont that calculus changed. Egoism isn't why I drove 10,000 miles that year. /3

And honestly, the focus on individual actions - showering less, changing lightbulbs, changing diets - is a fucking distraction.

The best thing you can do as an individual is to join with others to change the fucking system /4

A really really good friend of mine who I truly respect says that frugality is good for it's own sake. We should all try to be frugal as in not wasteful in our personal lives. But not at the expense of collective action. /5

IMHO do what you can easily on an individual basis, automate it, and then spend the energy you'd be devoting to perfecting your individual lifestyle to working in collaboration with others to make BIG CHANGES.

Get those protected bike lines put in. Increase transit service. /6

Push for the changes that lower OTHER people's carbon footprints while also making their lives better. It's been a minute since I looked at the data but the average US family spends ~ 15% of household income on car ownership. Which is bananas. /7

I own a car now for pandemic not living in NYC temporarily reasons and what I spend on one month of (not super fancy) car ownership is equal to FIVE MONTHS of what I spent on transit as a commuter.

It's really hard not to think of a car as a luxury good. /8

I think we do real harm in ignoring that HOW we adapt to climate change (and environmental harm broadly) has huge implications in terms of making life ... better... more human scale. What we likely have to give up in terms of mass consumption we gain in like community.

Addendum: there's arguably one place where your choices really do have an impact - flying less. Airlines are pretty sensitive to flight behaviors (though weird ass rules made them fly empty planes during the pandemic to keep flight berths)