Personal Responsibility?

Sophie Utteridge

There is a lot to say about taking personal responsibility for climate change.

For many, changing habits to environmentally conscious behaviours is a fairly difficult step. It can be difficult to know where to start, especially when the state of the world’s climate emergency is so dire. But as always, the motto for many climate activists has been fairly encouraging on this matter. Little changes, no matter their size, will always make some kind of difference. From switching to reusable coffee mugs to using tote bags for your shopping, these kinds of changes at least start to make some inroads into the climate disaster we find ourselves in today. However, whilst switching to sustainable habits is all well and good, it must be said that

Maxim Nägele

With the meteoric rise of Fridays For Future protests across the world sparked by Greta Thunberg’s school strikes in 2018, many were hopeful that climate awareness and actual ecological protection would reach not just the population but also national governments and corporations. These strikes initially caused controversies and media attention as many children disobeyed their parents/ schools by skipping school to protest. But the media attention and the radicality of the protesters decreased from time to time with key figures of the movement becoming mere “regulars” on discussion panels and podcasts. While Fridays for Future did increase overall awareness about responsibility and sustainability, it failed to realise its goals towards climate neutrality or bring impactful political and economic change. While the participatory aspect of individual responsibility across society is an important step towards reducing Co2-emissions and achieving wide-scale sustainability, I believe that only systemic change towards post-capitalist alternatives of society can effectively minimise the damage that humans are doing to our environment.

Just Stop Oil is a newly founded British activist group change is needed on a far wider scale than the everyday person. Coffee cups and tote bags can only go so far when governments and companies across the globe are pumping millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. At this point, many people feel like giving up on taking personal responsibility. After all, what is the point of not buying a plastic bottle when millions are being made anyway? movement.

To this extent, the impact of celebrities and influencers needs to be further scrutinised. In recent years, we have heard multiple stories of celebrities hopping on flights lasting mere minutes to save half an hour. Kylie Jenner is perhaps the most prominent of these when she made headlines for her seventeen minute flight that resulted in a ton of carbon dioxide emissions. The same trip, if taken by car, would have taken only forty minutes with a fraction of the emissions.

The answer is simple to me: keep trying. Every conscious effort you make to avoid unsustainable products might inspire another to do the same. We can never know the extent of the impact we have on other people. For all you know, your decision to use a cute coffee cup is the reason for someone else buying the exact same thing. Your influence, no matter how small, could be the beginning of a huge protesting the licensing and use of fossil fuels as the main source of environmental pollution. They received massive media attention and wide-scale criticism through controversial forms of boycott like throwing soup at paintings, blocking highways, or tying themselves to goalposts at football matches. Many see their public disruptions as too extreme, useless, or damaging to the wrong people and overlook the existential issues that these protests are shedding light on. As I believe that only systemic change that overcomes the exploitation of resources and labour can lastingly create protection for our environment, I do support the confrontations and boycotts that Just Stop Oil challenges the UK government with. The lack of support from the public and the shift of attention away from the actual problem currently makes this protest movement as unsuccessful as Fridays for Future.

Celebrities such as Jenner must be held accountable for actions like these. Whilst all lifestyles are different, celebrities have more responsibility than most to make conscious choices to mitigate their environmental impact. Their influence has far more reach than the average person, and their fame places their decisions and behaviours on a pedestal. If people like Kylie Jenner can just hop on a seventeen minute flight without any consequence, what is to stop people like you and me to simply stop recycling? A ‘one rule for them, one rule for us’ society will be detrimental in the fight against climate change.

Moreover, the resources available to celebrities to make a much larger contribution to environmental protection cannot be ignored. Kylie Jenner alone could make huge steps to ensure her cosmetics company is carbon-zero, ethical, and green. The influence she has to not only remodel her company into a completely environmentally friendly corporation but also to refuse partnering with any brand that does not reflect these values is beyond measure. Yet, Jenner has already proved she has little regard for the climate and so we take one step closer to climate disaster.

Personal responsibility is nothing to shy away from. Every one of us has potential to mitigate and even stop climate damage completely. From installing solar panels to buying second hand, from avoiding single-use plastics to using reusable tote bags, everyone has the power to positively impact the planet. It is up to you the extent to which you help.

Looking at theories of social movement research helps us understand what kind of approach both of these movements take and why they are (not) successful. In his book

“Envisioning Real Utopias” (2010) political scientist Erik Olin Wright defines three approaches or “routes” towards social change. The “symbiotic” route emphasises compromisedriven social change that happens within the limits and rules of the current state to improve the status quo without replacing it. While Fridays for Future started as a more controversial and disruptive movement, I would argue that it ended up on this compromise – and reformbased route that works within the realm of capitalist society. The symbiotic route that Fridays for Future is taking can effectively improve the status quo towards climate justice by reaching a wide-range consensus on ecological protection, but its acceptance of the capitalist system makes it a protest movement that I believe can never reach climate neutrality.

In stark contrast to this concept, the “ruptural” route is aiming for a systematic transition by disrupting and opposing the status quo. Just Stop Oil, although not fully revolutionary in their goals, represents this ruptural path by choosing disruptive measures to oppose the UK government and capitalist corporations. While this ruptural approach towards social and systemic change approaches anti-capitalist ideas of reasonable and sustainable consumption, their disruptive and controversial measures to gain public attention are not able to reach widescale agreement in a society and culture which is highly influenced and persuaded by capitalism. Although both protest movements have valuable and effective approaches towards a greener future, they have inherent problems hindering the full realisation of their political goals.

The “interstitial” route is the final concept of social change introduced by Wright and has the potential of overcoming these challenges. The Interstitial path towards social change works through grass-root mobilisation and other egalitarian ways to work around the boundaries of the dominating state or class to ultimately create and enforce an alternative status quo. It opposes the boundaries and rules of the current system