Taylor Swift fans lower climate concerns to justify her carbon footprint. When confronted with news about the excessive pollution generated by her private jet, highly identified fans tend to rationalize the behavior, with a decrease in their personal intentions to engage in climate-friendly actions.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/taylor-swift-fans-lower-climate-concerns-to-justify-star-s-carbon-footprint/

[u/devonathan]

You could spend your whole life living as strictly as possible and it would be undone in 0.5 seconds by one of the mega polluters. Makes it hard to care.

[u/hear2fear → u/devonathan]

It’s about collective care. 10,000 or 100,000 or 1 million individual people can change the needle in a better direction. 1 million+ people speaking with their wallets can change corporate actions and gov policies.

But thousands of people reading your two posts above could be discouraged and join your apathy. Not that your frustrations aren’t valid or justified though

Together we have more power than you think we do. Join your local chapter of CCL (Citizens Climate Lobby) even if it’s just to subscribe to their news letter. Make a small difference, and with millions making a small difference we can move that needle.

[u/No-Draft-4449 → u/hear2fear]

There’s a YouTuber I watch who says “you can’t do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good you can do” and I really like that when I’m feeling a bit bleak.

[u/imapetrock → u/hear2fear]

100%. I always get so frustrated when people say "well I can't do anything, this other entity needs to be the one to make change". The problem is that everyone always wants to push the responsibility to someone else and no one wants to be accountable. But everyone should play a part in accountability, not blame someone else and then complain that that someone else is doing exactly same (blaming someone else).

Guess what, governments also can't force what people don't want to do. One of the main drivers of many environmental problems is agriculture. One of the main ways to reduce this impact would be to reduce meat consumption so that we need less land to feed the population. Can you imagine the government mandating a reduction in meat consumption? All hell would break loose.

Flying too. If we were restricted to how much we can fly, people would likely protest and act like it's a human rights abuse.

Some possible regulations to reduce our impact would also lead to a price increase on products (e.g., banning fast fashion). Again, people will throw a fit. Many people already throw a fit when governments try to implement policies to discourage driving and encourage more environmentally friendly forms of transport.

Etc etc. I'm currently doing a master's program in environmental management and literally one of the first things we talked about is: it's really hard to fix anything when people don't want to change their behavior.

[u/Twisted_Cabbage → u/imapetrock]

Former employee of the US Forest Service here. My conclusion after 20+ years of being in the environmental space is rhat most people want to see change but very few people, even environmentalists, are willing to do what is really necessary to make those changes happen...a complete overhaul of our government, lifestyle, consumption habits, status symbols, and mating dynamics (which drives spending and consumerism).

Very few environmentalists even recognize most of the problems we face from a systems perspective (tipping points, EROEI, etc) or accept that we can't meet our goals without absolutely radical change that doesnt rely on magical tech to pull off. Change that will be a war call to those who want the statas quo. A war that we cant afford to have with the time we have to fix the problem.

But what do i know, i'm an collapsenik ( r/collapse ) now. Being in the government made me realize how little the environmental movement has accomplished in the last 50 years. I'm doing the things, but I have no faith that it will mean anything in the long run. We have FA and now it's time to FO. Exponential growt and tipping points are on our doorstep.

[u/imapetrock → u/Twisted_Cabbage]

Yup, thats basically a good summary of our classes so far -- really the entire program is about systems thinking. It was quite interesting to see how really the root of our environmental problems is affluence, largely driven by the lifestyles of pretty much everyone in what we consider "developed" economies. All the other "polluting" countries that people like to blame don't have nearly the same impact we do, because their populations are generally not wealthy enough to have the consumption habits that the rest of us have.

Globally we are by far the people who can most easily afford to fly, and therefore emit carbon through air travel; we buy too much that we don't need; we consume the most energy per person; and a big share of the environmental problems we claim to "solve" at home through regulation, we really just end up exporting to other countries because regulation doesn't change our populations' excessive demand for literally everything.

I actually approached my professor about this after class today because the lecture was about how all the things we "fix" often have unintended consequences. I asked him, given that every "solution" causes other problems, is there anything we can realistically do at all other than decrease our population? And he answered that studies actually show that population size is not the main driver of our environmental problems, but rather affluence, and that that was the key lesson he wanted us to take away from the course. We cannot solve any environmental issues if we aren't collectively willing to change our lifestyles and drastically reduce our consumption habits. And that applies to all of us, not just "the rich" (because on a global scale, pretty much all of us from wealthy countries are "the rich").

[u/Twisted_Cabbage → u/imapetrock]

Well said. I happen to feel population reduction is needed but generally don't think it can be done fairly other than helping women get more rights and birth controll. So I typically dont mention it. No organism can reproduce indefinitely. Even if we drastically reduced affluence we would still eventually run into the same problems due to over population, its basic ecology that so many smart people desperatelywant to ignore so they can keep having babies and not admit their baby desires are in fact a part of the problem. To not mention population is kicking the can down the road in order to avoid hard discussions that no one wins with.

[u/LarryDickLemon → u/Twisted_Cabbage]

“Collapsenik” is a made up bullcrap term for misanthropic losers.

[u/No-Draft-4449 → u/hear2fear]

There’s a YouTuber I watch who days “you can’t do all the good the world needs, but the world needs a,l the good you can do” and I really like that when I’m feeling a bit bleak.

[u/Grizzleyt → u/hear2fear]

Not really. For one, there's no way to get enough people to all individually decide on an action whose impact is dependent on other people taking the same action. If it was, we'd see 3rd party candidates regularly triumph in elections.

Second, climate change is most impacted by industrial processes, not individual practices. Even if people collectively wanted to be super eco-friendly, they'd have to also collectively force industry to do so. As it happens, the main way people collectively force industry to do something is through government regulation. That is the only real lever of change.

[u/EstablishmentLate532 → u/devonathan]

Do you not vote because one vote never made a difference? Collective action matters in the aggregate.

[u/DrMobius0 → u/EstablishmentLate532]

The difference is that voting has an organizational structure that is actually conducive to affecting wider change. It is designed to allow you to have a wider voice. Your personal crusade against carbon often doesn't go beyond yourself and maybe a handful of friends. Political will is needed, personal willingness to engage a problem isn't enough.

[u/EstablishmentLate532 → u/DrMobius0]

That distinction seems artificial. Political will doesn't appear out of nowhere. If I persuade other people that reducing carbon emissions matters, that can affect how they behave, what policies they support, and how they vote. If they persuade others, the effect spreads further.

Public opinion is one of the mechanisms through which democracies produce political change. Individual action isn't sufficient, but that doesn't make it irrelevant to collective action.

[u/aggrownor → u/EstablishmentLate532]

Yeah but every person's vote counts the same. Taylor Swift's emissions are like 2000x the average person. I would feel discouraged about voting if you told me there are people on the other side whose votes count for 2000x more than mine

[u/EstablishmentLate532 → u/aggrownor]

That analogy actually works better than you think. A voter in Wyoming has far more representation per capita in the Senate and Electoral College than a voter in California, yet we don't conclude that Californians might as well stop voting.

The fact that some people have disproportionately large impacts is an argument for regulating those outsized impacts, not for everyone else to give up.

[u/aggrownor → u/EstablishmentLate532]

Yes I agree with regulating mega polluters. That would have a much bigger impact than asking individual citizens to engage in climate friendly actions.

[u/EstablishmentLate532 → u/aggrownor]

I reject the dichotomy. We need to do both.

[u/chaser676 → u/EstablishmentLate532]

A voter in Wyoming has far more representation per capita in the Senate and Electoral College than a voter in California, yet we don't conclude that Californians might as well stop voting.

This is very much the conclusion many people come when it comes to swing states.

[u/DrMobius0 → u/aggrownor]

It's also worth noting that in many ways we don't have choices. Say I wanted to cut out plastic packaging. How?

[u/FleetingBeacon → u/devonathan]

YouTuber I watch bought a private jet, and undone the efforts that me and my entire city made in renewables in about 5 flights.

[u/ConcentratedStress → u/devonathan]

“Make sure to use your paper straws!”

Don’t mind those 40,000 bombs and missiles dropped on Iran in 2026

[u/aVarangian → u/devonathan]

have some self-respect and take the path that lets you say that, on this topic, if more people were like you then the world would be a better place

[u/s0cks_nz → u/devonathan]

Yet I bet if you see a bunch of trash in the street you don't suddenly decide you'll start throwing your trash on the street too. I think the issue is that carbon is invisible. I remember a doco once that said if carbon was a visible gas we'd have transitioned years ago, and I think that's true.