We do need action on all levels of society, and we need to be treating this as a crisis.
On a local level (in the UK) there are a lot more community and Council groups being setup to try and find solutions I would absolutely recommend attending those.
Other than that, ensure your pension is invested in green and eco investments and try to fly less (maybe even drive less).
Pension, lol. I don’t know how old you are, but I wouldn’t count on pension in very few decades.
We would need to do much more than flying less, driving less and invest money. We would need to change the entirety of our lifestyles. And by now we probably need to have luck as well.
Pensions are a very large overall current investment pot, so if we can shift that money into green ventures that would be advantageous.
But I agree we need to do a lot more, but outside of voting and contacting your representatives we need to get everyday people to make largest scale changes as soon as possible. But it does need to be more top down, governmental driven.
Christ. We need massive, global action. We need people in the west to commit to drastically lowering their carbon footprints, ideally by finding alternatives to gas powered cars and cars in general, and we need immediate action on geo-engineering. Atmospheric cloud dust, carbon capture, everything. We can’t debate the ethics and morals forever. We just desperately need to start acting.
Yes, the time for debate and discussion are over. We just need people doing things and trying things on mass scale. I would highly recommend writing to your local representatives and ensuring they know it’s an issue people do care about. We need change from the bottom up and top down.
We need people in the west to commit to drastically lowering their carbon footprints
Aaaaaand you’ve succumbed to corporate propaganda. Carbon footprint is a term coined by BP marketing to shift blame to individuals instead of corporations so nothing would be done about it.
We need the GOVERNMENTS of the world to start drastically reducing corporate carbon footprints. Which will then force peoples’ footprints down when the cheap high-carbon goods and services are no longer available.
Or we could just do both - while corporations are the largest polluters and need to be regulated, individual measures such as switching to a plant based diet are still useful.
A huge portion of American carbon usage is personal transportation. The government can do many things to lower its carbon footprint but your life will look significantly different. Local governments are largely responsible for determining what citizens’ primary means of transportation is and that’s where people actually do have a lot of influence.
I mean yes. This is true. Gasoline is extremely subsidized in the US and even just ending those subsidies would encourage people to do something other than drive. Using that money to expand public transit options would be even better.
I’m not American so I already pay twice as much for fuel as Americans do. Something the US government should do, too. Gas should be at least $10/gallon. Makes you consider other forms of transit when travelling locally at least.
Yes, exactly. This is true. Gasoline is extremely subsidized in the US and even just ending those subsidies would encourage people to do something other than drive. Using that money to expand public transit options would be even better. Americans drive literally everywhere. There is no walking anywhere at all. We get very, very little physical activity and use a tremendous amount of fossil fuels and energy to get from Point A to Point B, on top of buying enormous gas guzzling SUVs.
