People in the West who have by far the highest carbon footprint per capita: “There is nothing I can do to offset my environmental impact. Don’t you see? This system is forcing me to enjoy luxuries that destroy the planet for everyone.”
I’m not saying capitalism has nothing to do with it, but saying there is no personal responsibility to reduce your own carbon footprint is dumb as hell. Here’s two things you can do right this second: stop eating meat and stop driving (take public transit instead) and boom you’ve cut your carbon emissions by at least half.
The nearest public bus route to my house is a 40 minute drive away.
A train track does go through town and there is a station served by a long-distance Amtrak train that services this stop twice a day, once in each direction. It’s really designed for people at either end of the route to travel its entire length, so it comes through here, roughly the middle of the route, at oh-fuck-thirty AM and PM. It can stop here, but doesn’t unless someone has bought a ticket to get on or off here. Most of the time it rolls right through town. If I were to buy a ticket on that train, it would have to come to a stop, idle for a bit, then accelerate back to cruising speed. How far do you think i could drive my sedan for the carbon emissions I would have caused stopping and starting a train?
Make vegan food free and people will naturally eat more of it.
Exactly. Most people don’t actually care that much about vegan food vs meat. Drop all government subsidies for meat/dairy/eggs and transfer them to vegan food. Make it the cheapest thing at the grocery store (or better yet, free like you said) and people will effectively go vegan without even caring about veganism.
