It has nothing to do with consumer choice because consumers for the most part don’t have a choice.

I live in a very walkable area among relatively wealthy people. The reason we picked here was partially, but significantly, because we could walk into our little downtown so we didn’t have to drive everywhere. I still regularly see people in the downtown who have driven there from right next door. Hell, even sometimes I’ve been lazy and done it myself.

We also have access to a little store that doesn’t use plastic and focuses on decreasing environmental footprint and landfill usage. I’ve actually had neighbors make fun of me for going there. I didn’t even realize how little I needed a lot of the consumer conveniences I was using until I switched to primarily this store. I was making a consumer choice (well, mainly, my wife, I would have been more conscious about it. Luckily she is now fully on board, maybe even more so than me) that I thought made sense. . .but it really didn’t. It was unnecessarily wasteful for almost zero gain. Razors, dishsoap, laundry detergent, shampoo, handsoap. . .we just refill all of these things now.

I tend to bike to work (I know, I’m lucky because it’s only about a 3 mile bike for me and relatively safe). The parking lot of my office has plenty of high end SUVs and even large pickup trucks. It’s safe to say that the people who actually regularly need a vehicle like this is near zero. The consumer is making the choice to buy these huge vehicles.

And let’s talk about meat. Hell, it’s 2024 and I still hear people talk about how mainly it is to eat meat and brag about how they eat it every night. We could be better, but we’ve certainly move towards a more plant-based diet.

I get that the consumer is not the only thing, and corporations need to change too. But this idea that the consumer is somehow innocent in all of this doesn’t reflect the reality that I clearly see around me. People are constantly making just bad choices that are pissing on the environment. . .and this constant “don’t blame the consumer!” I see being pushed is just, as I said in another post, an attempt to deal with the cognitive dissonances of pretending to care about this while at the same time doing jack shit to limit your own personal impact.