Why Personal Lifestyle Changes Still Matter to Fight Climate Chaos
Even though they won’t fix it.
71% of the world’s carbon emissions come from only 100 companies, companies over which I (and likely, you) have no decision-making power at all. One of the worst polluters on the planet is, of course, the United States military, and no matter how hard I get out there and vote, no one in my federal government ever seems compelled to rein in their capacity for climate destruction.
Today, after a brief reprieve, that summer heat wave is back here in the Northeast. Meanwhile, the McKinney Fire blows up the Klamath National Forest in my home state, a grim harbinger of the worst of fire season yet to come. I heard this Atlantic hurricane season might bring our first Category 6 storm. Sacred wild rice is being poisoned for another tar sands pipeline while the Amazon gets a buzz cut and environmental activists are disappeared and oil clogs the arteries of the Gulf and the glaciers crack like rotting teeth and mind you: we are still in the calm before the storm.
Climate collapse is here. It is everywhere. Its impacts will come down on everyone— not evenly, not by a long shot — but no one will be untouched by it. Those with the greatest personal culpability for climate change will likely suffer the least of its negative outcomes, but all…
