A Response to K. Gruodyte “Climate Change Activists Are Lying to You”
Why massive change in consumer habits ARE necessary for sustainability
Dear Kornelija Gruodyte,
I just finished reading your article “Climate Change Activists Are Lying to You” and, although I can appreciate some of your points, I find your opinion to be exhausting, oversimplified, and misinformed. I am not trolling you. I thought it was a good read and I used to have a similar opinion as youself.
The basic premise of your piece is that:
1. The changes that individuals are making in their consumer choices (i.e. using reusable water bottles) in the attempt to create a collective large scale impact on the global carbon footprint are negligible.
2. Environmentalists convince others to shift to sustainable consumer products more so to draft them into the cause than to lower the global carbon footprint.
3. The only way to influence the global carbon footprint is to regulate the top 10% of the global economy since they are responsible for the predominant amount of the world’s production and carbon footprint.
4. The most effective action that citizens concerned with the environment can make is to vote for politicians that support environmental sustainability and environmental regulation.
I think many activists end up ignoring the primary principles of economics when deciding to rebel against industrial sectors and that society, in response, views activists as immature and infantile. This negligence is one of our greatest downfalls. By ignoring the sciences of economic theory when pursuing new economic order, we are viewed as creationists in a room of evolutionists.
One of the primary principles of economics is Supply vs. Demand where, most of the time, demand dictates supply and not the other way around. For instance, Apple wouldn’t produce an initial stockpile of 30 million new phones unless there were at least 25 million customers who are demanding the new phone. Point being: Citizens of developed countries are producing the continuing Demand for ecologically unsound products that influence the mass production of Supply of those unsound products. If average citizens/consumers do not immediately change their Demand via economic choices there will be very little incentive for major producers to create immediate change in their production process.
You are right in the sense that merely switching from the consumption of environmentally destructive products to environmentally sustainable products will not effectively slow the curve of climate change but changing the amount in which we consume has the ability to create large scale change of both our global carbon footprint and the environmental sustainability of industrial production methods internationally.
Citizens of the US have an average carbon footprint of 20 tons of carbon per capita per year; 4–5 times higher than those in developing countries. Citizens of developed countries are over-consuming and, due to our overconsumption, we own a fair share of responsibility for the environmental disasters that Earth has created.
If citizens of developed countries (excluding the poorest citizens of those countries) do not drastically reduce our amount of consumption and modify our consumption choices to reflect our environmental values then there will be little reason for the top 10% of the economy to alter their production methods. To rub this one in: If consumers do not reduce their amount of consumption, producers will not produce less. If consumers do not buy mainly sustainable products, producers will not change their methods of production to meet a nonexistent demand.
Without the full utilization of Consumer Choice, also referred to as monetary voting, the only hope for creating a sustainable global industry would be through legislation and that sort of legislation will fail to pass because market science will show that the demand for environmental improvements in production is stagnant. The rate of consumer choice that is being used to support environmentally sustainable production must continue to grow if we are hoping to change laws in ways that reflect our ideals.
Those who chose to control the economy will control the majority of political actions. Those who control the majority of political actions are owned by those who control the economy. We, the people, need to take back ownership of the economy by taking ownership of the way we create and diminish Demand. It is only through that lofty hope of the ripple effect that we can create a world that can endure climate change as it comes.
First world citizens cannot live the life that they are living in now. Consumerism among the world’s middle and upper class must face drastic drastic drastic (i.e. 50% in 4 years) reductions and, if we want to avoid Draconian rule to protect the environment, then we need to start those reductions now.
Cheers,
JaXson Hart
