Doing Our Part

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I’m right with Dave on this one! 💚

I’m tired of envi­ron­men­tal respon­si­bil­i­ty always falling on the con­sumer. I know con­sumer demand bub­bles up into soci­etal change, I’m will­ing to do my part. But as a con­sumer it feels like I’m throw­ing time and mon­ey at a solu­tion with­out a crit­i­cal mass behind it.”

…and…

The soci­etal struc­tures we form around peo­ple should be the infra­struc­ture for change and should lead initiative.”

But it is also important to know that emphasizing individual responsibility is one of the new strategies of the fossil fuel industry to distract from their own contributions and to create “apocalypse fatigue” – you don’t act because it doesn’t seem to make a difference anyway.

When it comes to individual action, we have to get to a point where we all realize that we are, actually, not alone. Some of us drive and fly less often, some eat less or no meat, some save energy or install solar panels. Some of us join a climate movement, but not everyone has to.

But we all do something, because it is the right thing to do. And even if it feels like we are the only person doing it, it will make a difference.

We can see it when the folks at Apple start talking about how “green” their products are in their keynotes.

We can see it when, suddenly, discounters in Germany start printing on their packaging how much plastic they are saving.

We can see it when, seemingly out of nowhere, we elect leaders who actually make change happen.

~

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Hidde de Vries (@hdv@front-end.social) is a web enthusiast and accessibility specialist from Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He currently works on accessibility standards for the Dutch government (views his own) and is a participant in the Open UI Community G

Individual climate action: small steps matter

We need bigger steps to combat the climate emergency, but small steps matter too. This week Dave shared he feels climate action falls on consumers too much, rather than large companies and governments. Michelle responded that as tech workers, “we have the power to push for for change”, that we can “extend reach of our actions far beyond ourselves”. Matthias added that we all do something, “even if it ...
Photo of Amelia Wattenberger ????; 華;曼;如;
Amelia Wattenberger ????; 華;曼;如;
how can we balance feeling empowered to make changes to help the climate vs the helplessness of being just a consumer feels like a start is to talk more about how to make even a tiny change (like fund a fight against deforestation via @project_wren) twitter.com/Wattenberger/s…
Photo of Dave Rupert
Dave Rupert
Let’s keep this climate conversation going. Thanks for your thoughts @m_ott.

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