some thoughts on personal responsibility in the climate apocalypse:

at the same time that personal sustainability choices (their election and the diversity of options) are at an all-time high of the last 100 years, it's a common talking point of the left and of left-leaning climate activism that personal responsibility isn't enough

I agree, as we know that the worst of climate change is caused by corporations, by systematic gutting of the land, by interests that put immediate profits over long-time health of the land. And "responsibility" often means "blame," which at the personal level is useless.

but I do think "personal" action matters in the extinction event also, as within the awful crises of the contemporary ecological moment, we as individuals need to be oriented towards care: mitigation, assistance, health, sustaining, and growth (not economic, but ecological).

yes this explicitly means DONT give in to the feeling of doom from outside of your hands to just live in the impulse of your society, dont throw your hands up and say well someone else did this and so therefore I'm going to keep leaning into my society's death-dealing impulses

yes this also means that things like reducing, recycling (correctly), reusing, veg(etari)anism, composts, CSAs, community gardens, donations, protests, avoiding single use plastic, not littering, driving less, are all in fact good and doable and useful and not just an illusion

we're so far into this crisis that literally every step to make it better matters. that doesn't mean social shaming is helpful, it doesn't mean we stop fighting for smart regulation, it means we should ask what care for the ecology we can give everyday.

what I'm talking about is, how do we make this world as livable as possible for all living things while contemporary capitalism still drives this extinction event? it means believing that every life saved here is a miracle, that every action on earth has a reaction.

I'm also talking about crisis care, like say, that in a land prone to fire, your personal fire safety, giving friends shelter, getting an animal out of immediate danger, knowing how to make the land you live on less prone to unnecessary burns, and avoiding flammables all matter

none of that can truly batter the fact that, for example, the west coast's ecology was dessicated by dam systems. But it might be the difference between one death and another, how and when someone (human or animal) has a home again, etc.

so anyways, all I'm trying to say is that going forward we have to know how to take care of each other (human and animal) and that we owe it to ourselves and the earth to think twice about even the smallest action while we continue the fight against the exploitation of the earth

and I'm trying to say that the doom-attitude that this is out of our hands and can only be changed by immediate revolution, while useful and true, actually isn't as helpful as it wants to think it is! and tells us extremely little about how to live every day.

It has too much in common with the rightist view that "if it's happening, it's happening, so whatever" for me to be comfortable with it, honestly!

yes this also means don't have gender reveal parties with explosives

that's all, I just hate the see the world burn and people say it is out of their hands. It is and it isn't. We are ecology. You and I are ecological beings. We are never outside of ecology. Lets try to save everything, but let's also try to mitigate suffering.