I want it all

Today is the Canadian federal election.  My riding is a total lock for the governing Liberals, but I voted for the NDP in my riding anyway.  Listening to election advertising and seeing the responses on social media has made me think a lot about how issues are framed, and how that framing is so one sided when the actual answers are complex.

Take climate change (or any environmental issue, really).  The right tends to either deny it outright because admitting it would lead to a moral imperative to do something about it or say that people can take personal responsibility for it.  They are fine with individuals driving less, consuming less, or otherwise making good environmental decisions, but they don't want to do anything to force companies to do the same.  The left tends to portray it as a problem with companies, and puts the blame squarely on the biggest multinationals.

The solution isn't to sit on either side.  Trying to find a villain, an easy place to lay all the blame, isn't actually leading us to good solutions.  People do need to consume less.  For example, we need to stop using disposable plastic straws.  I am not convinced that global bans on said straws are a good idea because certain disabilities make them a necessity, but people need to drink out of reusable containers, not disposable cups and straws.

But I can't do anything if, for example, a huge steel company decides to be a massive polluter.  I can't possibly figure out which things their steel is in and avoid those things.  I need the government to step in and regulate the hell out of that company to make sure that they aren't causing a mess.  No individual can possibly fix problems like that on their own.

We need solutions from all sides.  We need people to stop buying shit they don't need.  Is your thing broken beyond repair, or is it just a little old?  If it is just a little old, don't replace it, keep on using it until there are massive holes in the side.

But we also need the governments of the world to take a gigantic hammer to the ways big corporations operate, and put appropriate rules and incentives in place to keep them on the straight and narrow.

We can spend our time yelling about how Amazon is bad, or we can spend our time yelling about how it isn't Amazon's fault, it is the fault of their customers.

Or we can say that both things are a problem.  We need to order less junk from Amazon, and we need every country Amazon operates in to impose crushing regulations on them to reduce their environmental impact.  Both things need to happen.

The concern I have is that climate change is just so big a thing that people are simply unwilling to come to grips with what we have to give up to combat it.  We can talk about green jobs all we want, but the fact is that rich countries have to massively reduce our standard of living in a variety of ways if we want to stop climate change.  Full stop.  We can't just ask individuals to make better choices - that can't possibly be enough.  We also can't just sit back and relax, hoping the government will lay the smack down on big companies and fix everything.  We all have to be willing to pay an enormous price now for a huge payoff later.

I wish I could be more optimistic that humanity is willing to make that investment.