Metropolis, dir Fritz Lang 1927

I recently took part in a debate on LinkedIn triggered by a statement by new UK Green Party leader Zack Polanski that while he follows a low carbon lifestyle, it is mainly to avoid charges of hypocrisy, because avoiding flying, buying green electricity eating vegan food etc is a drop in the ocean. People taking part in the debate repeated what I see as a fallacy: that the individual carbon footprint is an attempt by Big Oil to divert the blame for climate change from themselves to individuals. “We need systematic change” stated many agreeing with Polanski without specifying what that systematic change is.

I find this whole narrative to verge on the conspiracy theory level: that us poor pawns are at the mercy of the system. We have to remember that ‘the system’, whether the private or public sector, is a. made up of individuals and b. there to provide for us individuals. The idea that we are helpless drones trudging away in a Fritz Lang Metropolis-style dystopia is, to use Polanski’s term, bollocks.

OK, say a local authority wants to install a cycle lane along a busy route which will take a lane away from motorised transport. First of all, they will need a certain amount of public buy-in to proceed – if there’s a public uproar against it, then it makes life very difficult. But let’s say it gets built – it won’t save any carbon at all unless you and I as punters choose to use it over commuting in a nice warm car. Same if it’s a bus lane – carbon reductions will depend on modal shift by individual commuters to use the buses. The system can provide the facility, but thousands of individuals will have to decide to do things differently to make an actual difference. It’s supply and demand which is a complex relationship: the bike/bus lanes enable and encourage modal shift, but they can’t force us to use it (a politician that tried could be voted out of office).

This goes for our entire carbon footprint: we can choose to reduce it drastically. And who will lose out if we do? The purveyors of the fossil fuels that we are no longer burning as a result of those actions – the idea of the carbon footprint concept being some form of insidious mind control by Big Oil is nonsense. Instead, we should be worried about the disinformation and dirty money flowing from certain organisations to promote ‘predatory delay’ by discouraging individuals from embracing low carbon lifestyles (if individual action was pointless, they wouldn’t be spending their money influencing public opinion). In contrast to that very real and cynical threat, I would argue that the carbon footprint is actually a welcome contribution to transparency.

I fear that the ‘individual action is pointless’ argument is a way of people salving their own consciences by blaming the shadowy ‘system’, and letting themselves off the hook. Fundamentally, every time we vote, every time we spend money and every time we do or don’t make our voices heard, we are sending a message to the system. We are part of the economy, part of society, and part of the environment – we can’t write ourselves out of the equation.