Please listen to this. It's really important.
is ace, on individual & systemic change being 2 sides of the same #climateaction coin, and the damage of saying "oh individual changes don't matter..."
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Your individual actions do matter.
They are activism, they start conversations, they model choices.
They give essential credibility for the conversations needed for system change.
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- "Individual action is advocating for change. I didn't stop flying just to reduce my carbon footprint. Mostly I did it to influence the people around me, signalling that we're in an emergency and that in an emergency you change your behaviour."
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- "Of course we shouldn't only focus on individual action. We should focus more on the systemic change we need to achieve. But of course we can't have systemic change without individuals realising the emergency and taking action."
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(climate scientist) -
"I see individual action & system change as the same thing - the same coin, flipped over. A lot of people say don't worry about individual actions, we need to change the system. Sometimes deliberately to protect what they do in their lives."
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- "Try and change the largest carbon emitting element of your life. But I don't really care how well you do, I care if you talk about it, with your family and friends, down the pub, at work, with local leaders and policymakers"
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"If you make the changes yourself your credibility changes dramatically. If you want your arguments about system change to stick, change how we live our lives. We're all hypocrits in some way, but attempt to align, and people take more notice."
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"So when people say 'it's not about individual change', that often deliberately misunderstands how system change comes about."
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This exchange, the first few minutes of this interview, gets to the nub of what needs to happen societally, and why so many people urge us to take either insufficient action, or none at all, because "hey it doesn't matter what you do..."
youtube.com/watch?v=72nrXR
Over and out.
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