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I believe that people respond to both positive and negative stimuli. If you rely on the gov’t to impose the rules, you rely on long and drawn out negative stimuli - for example fines and sanctions to get people to fall in line. An example is speeding or seatbelts in motor vehicles, with fines and so on. The gov’t is important for the big industry, but as we see by other social issues they fail the person on the street in some respect every day.
However, I am asking if people -as @rhb has demonstrated - are willing and capable to make a change from the ground up. That is an incredibly positive stimuli if the youngest generations have their habits formed by the closest influencers in their lives, and if the older generations attempt to set a good example.
I fear that even by 2025 it will be too late, because that is only one generation of change, and there will still be the billions in the world that buy bottled water for convenience, shop fast fashion, eat the cheapest food thanks to the tightest margins of budget from their employment. It relies on you and I making a small change each day, for an incredibly large cumulative effect year on year.
Mostly, if each individual makes changes, the demands change. For example when you or I demand ethically sourced nutrition then the food shops want to protect their profit and start stocking it, because no amount of advertisement will succeed in engineering demand in reverse.
Also, notice how many people willed themselves to change their habits on plastic thanks to Attenborough. That was genius propaganda, because it was nothing the rest of us didn’t already know, but suddenly the tv-watching, convenience-shopping percentile were faced with what they had otherwise chosen to remain ignorant of.
People still buy plastic bags from the shops no matter what the levy, so more needs to be done on the discourse not just the government.
pdlouche-
People still buy plastic bags from the shops no matter what the levy, so more needs to be done on the discourse not just the government.
This is a case-in-point which somewhat counters your argument.
The levy on plastic bags was vaguely unpopular but reduced plastic use. Your assertion that ‘people will ... at whatever price’ isn’t actually the issue. What matters is how many people and therefore how much wasteful plastic/recourse. Measured this way it was a success.
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Fwiw I totally acknowledge individual daily behaviour can make a difference and is the place to start if for no other reason than it gives a better understanding of any costs/sacrifices that society may need to implement.
miro_o
It's important to recognise how XR are dealing with this. They are specifically not blaming individuals, but are (correctly, IMHO) saying that this should be dealt with by the government.
They also are not suggesting specific solutions, as this has the possibility of being divisive and turning people off the message, which is that we are in a crisis that needs immediate action.
They want the government to commit to cutting carbon emissions to zero by 2025 and to hold a people's assembly to work out the exact details of how that happens.
If the government commits to that goal, then large scale action can happen very quickly and all of our behaviours will change, whether we like it or not.