A fixation on system change alone opens the door to a kind of cynical self-absolution that divorces personal commitment from political belief. This is its own kind of false consciousness, one that threatens to create a cheapened climate politics incommensurate with this urgent moment.
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Because here’s the thing: When you choose to eat less meat or take the bus instead of driving or have fewer children, you are making a statement that your actions matter, that it’s not too late to avert climate catastrophe, that you have power. To take a measure of personal responsibility for climate change doesn’t have to distract from your political activism—if anything, it amplifies it.
I’m not saying me driving an EV does statistically anything to reduce carbon emissions, or even that if I got all my friends and family to go vegan and bike instead of drive cars that it would. I am saying that the broad public doesn’t care about these issues enough to consume differently or vote for policy or politicians that make their lives less convenient in order to fight climate change, and that instead our individual actions to avert climate change contribute to a public ethos that can accept lifestyle changes and that may potentially hold the mega polluting corporations to account and fix our throw-away durable goods culture in a way that media-demonized protests and pestering bought-and-paid politicians never can.