alt Hacker News> the people in charge couldn't be bothered.
Watching the last decade of American politics has led me to absolutely despise the culture of learned helplessness and attitude of "everything is someone else's fault."
You're absolutely right about the first part. Radical change is much more straightforward. At the individual level there are absolutely things that can be done that are pretty easy Consuming less and recycling more is a huge one. But if the attitude is, "we can't or won't do it individually. We need someone to make us behave," then that's a losing culture. The last American election reassured me that indeed, even if the elite class wants something, no amount of money will override the will of the people. The people just don't want this badly enough.
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> "we can't or won't do it individually. We need someone to make us behave,"
Well, we need to be organized around a plan, such as electrifying power generation and transport. Since government already heavily manages those things, it's not a matter of individual behavior, apart from the behavior of voting, and generally expressing approval of policies.
I do think you should stop with the guilt-tripping of individuals, and I do think that they're powerless - without organization - and that attacking consumers is wrong-headed. To complain about consuming says that the problem is that we have industry and nice things, but that's incorrect. It's a hard sell, firstly because people like nice things and think they're entitled to them, and secondly because they're right about that. The problem is that we have emissions, not that we have consumer goods.
Yes, if anything they want the opposite. Cheap gas.
> But if the attitude is, "we can't or won't do it individually. We need someone to make us behave," then that's a losing culture.
This is every culture. We address it structurally or not at all.
> The last American election reassured me that indeed, even if the elite class wants something, no amount of money will override the will of the people.
:|
Which people are you talking about? The ones that voted? The problem with American politics (and Australia provides an easy point to compare against) is that the young do not vote. Consequently, they have no power, and no one in charge is inclined to do anything that will have long-term impact.