Not my OC but what I’ve believed for years: there’s no conflict between reducing your own environmental impact and holding corporations responsible. We hold corps responsible for the environment by creating a societal ethos of environmental responsibility that forces corporations to serve the people’s needs or go bankrupt or be outlawed. And anyone who feels that kind of ethos will reduce their own environmental impact because it’s the right thing to do.
Thoughts?
I’d agree with your politics there, too. The poorer you make yourself, the more likely you are to live a moral life. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to also make it a good, comfortable, safe life, and I think it’s a bit much to ask people to go that much against their own interests. (This varies from country to country of course, I’m sure there’s places where you’d be ok)
Their “own interests”
this is a key phrase here for me.
Once a person has a modest amount; is it in their interests to eat more and get fat, or to live in a place where other people share in having a modest amount, or, at least have a fair oppotunity to get a modest amount.
A person’s morality will influence the scope of their concept of “own interests”.
And therefore how much they want beyond meeting their “own basic needs” before they start caring more about neighbours with unfulfilled “basic needs”.
I fully agree. I just think that the economic situations have been getting more and more precarious for lots of people, meaning getting to a modest amount moves further into the distance. I truly believe that we’ll have more people championing climate change issues if we put them in positions where fulfilling their own needs is easier
Part of the point of the mutual aid is to make life better without needing the money. That’s why I put “poor” in quotations and specified in the eyes of the economy.
Fair, I should have made the effort to use “poor” in quotations, too. I love the idea of mutual aid working that way. I guess I’d be worried about relying on it for anything as potentially life-or-death as healthcare, but that’s a few steps further down the line than we’re discussing here
Yeah, you take the steps you can when you can. The ultimate point is to create a real alternative to the existing power structure. The anti consumerism is a by-product.
Edit: maybe the anti-consumerism is necessarily interwoven in the project, because you are freeing yourself from reliance on consumer goods and from the entire consumer identity.