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Think of some environmentally unfriendly choices – taking the car instead of public transport or driving an SUV, just binning something recyclable, using lots of plastic bags, buying an enormous television, washing clothes in hot water, replacing something when you could make do with last year's model, heating rooms you don't use or leaving the heating high when you could put on another layer of clothing, flying for holidays, wasting food and water, eating a lot of beef, installing a patio heater, maybe even, as some have said lately, owning a dog.1 Think about your own choices, instances in which you take an action which enlarges your carbon footprint when you might have done otherwise without much trouble. Is there consolation in the thought that it makes no difference what you do?
If you didn't drive an SUV, maybe someone else would. The Americans are putting more and more cars on the road, so what's one more drop in that metallic ocean? So you throw away a recyclable bottle after lunch – it doesn't matter. Doesn't it all go in the landfill anyway? Have you seen how many plastic bags other people use – your one or two won't make a difference. What difference could your widescreen make when countries like China are producing more coal-burning power plants? Leave the heating on – it's your bill after all – and what's a few hours of wasted heat anyway, given the many millions of people who heat their homes every night? Why shouldn't you fly? The plane was going there anyway, and what difference can your comparatively little weight make? So what if you throw away food? Supermarkets throw away tons of food each day. Your tiny contribution can make no difference at all.
These are the thoughts which turn up in the heads of real people when they make everyday choices. The moral case for the claim that various countries ought to take strong action on climate change is fairly easy to see. What's much harder to spot is the moral demand for individual action, for making green choices in the course of an ordinary human life. One thing which gets in the way is the thought that nothing an individual does can possibly...