[astigsen]

Individuals reducing their carbon footprint by reducing consumption is all good, but it is really a drop in the bucket in the big picture. I would be worried that focusing on that could be counter-productive with a higher chance of making people either feel that they have "done their part" (if they have personally done these minor reductions) or induce general apathy over the fact that the only way forward is to reduce your quality of living while knowing that it won't make any real difference anyway.

If we really want to make a change we have to focus on big picture solutions. Instead of being against, we need to focus on what we want to move towards.

The only way to reduce our dependency on carbon fuels within a realistic timeframe is an aggressive rollout of renevable energy like wind and solar, _and_ nuclear. If we were really serious about this, we would do massive investments in nuclear, building lots of new plants and also stepping up the research in technologies like molten salt and thorium based reactors.

If we should take to the street and demonstrate, it should be _for_ actual solutions like that, rather than _against_ minor things that don't make much of a difference anyways.

[ahje]

Definitely! I'm not against big picture solutions -- I just don't see then need to postpone action on an individual level until a big picture solution has been put in place.

The changes we need to do will require a large cultural change in order for people to accept them. We need to accept collective AND individual responsibility for something that affects the entire biosphere. Increasing taxes on fuel won't change the way people think, any more than getting rid of plastic straws will. After all, most large changes can be summarized as a long sequence of smaller events (not sure if that last part sounds right -- English isn't my first language).