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Not my OC but what I've believed for years: there's no conflict between reducing your own environmental impact and holding corporations responsible. We hold corps responsible for the environment by creating a societal ethos of environmental responsibility that forces corporations to serve the people's needs or go bankrupt or be outlawed. And anyone who feels that kind of ethos will reduce their own environmental impact because it's the right thing to do.
Thoughts?
Agreed. It's simply lip service to absolve people of their own part of the responsibility for the problems of the world. It's highly disingenuous. If you can't act with any level of personal responsibility, how can you be a good advocate for corporate responsibility?
I disagree. It isn't lip service.
It is NOT your personal decisions that are ruining the planet. Only collective action can do that and so only collective action can address it.
The term carbon footprint was invented by British Petroleum to fracture and confuse people who desired a more beautiful and sustainable world. It worked like hell. Insanely effective. Still showing continuing efficacy even when British Petroleum behaves with such ruinous irresponsibility they had to change their goddamn name to try and make people forget who they really are.
You should be a responsible consumer to the degree you can. You should make choices to signal your own preferences to the world, to remind people that a better life is possible, and to reward the businesses that behave well. You should not be shaming and gatekeeping people who fail to behave their best by holding them to incredibly unfair standards like "if you can’t act with any level of personal responsibility, how can you be a good advocate for corporate responsibility". You absolutely, 100% can be an a good advocate for corporate and collective responsibility without having good personal behaviors and we NEED the people who behave exactly like this if we want the planet to have a future. Because we need their votes. And people who gatekeep and shame others for their perceived bad behaviors drive them away instead of calling them in.
If they can't handle it now at least in some degree, then I don't see how they'll be able to handle it in a much worse degree after we make these large reforms and changes. My fear is that these people will turn away from us as soon as things get too hard and run into the arms of the first strongman who tells them they'll make it all better.
I also do not see it as gatekeeping to ask people to do better. Nobody is saying they can't vote with us. We're just asking them to not wait until forced to make at least some changes.
I heard the position many times: Some people would like to use better options, but won't, as long as it's just more expensive and less convenient for them. If it was the general rule, they'd be fine with it. They don't want to feel disadvantaged.
That is a terrible ethos and one that I struggle to imagine being truly compatible with any form of leftism. Yes, unethical behavior typically grants a personal advantage over ethical, but society suffers as a whole because of it; that's ultimately the core criticism of capitalist society that all leftist ideology centers on. I would find it hard to trust anybody who lives their life that way. I would have constant doubts that they would have my back during tough times. After all, it may be disadvantagous to them, and they don't want to feel disadvantaged.
And here's the leftist purity tests coming out. Nothing hurts these causes worse than attitudes like this.
The idea that someone might advocate for a society that makes it easier for everyone (themselves included) to make the right choices is not some absurd, extreme, selfish position. It's a totally normal, mundane perspective. And here you are rejecting anyone who doesn't maintain your highest standard of moral virtue from your cause.
The attitude of "please try to do the best you can, even when it's hard" is an example of unreasonable purity testing? I don't think we're having the same conversation.