Honestly? Yes. It won't matter either way at this point, even if we reach net zero worldwide we're still more or less screwed since it's a positive feedback loop in terms of albedo (until all the ice is gone anyway) and the oceans have absorbed enough CO2 to keep emitting it for a long while if atmospheric levels drop.
Any actual solutions would involve increasing reflectivity though artificial means, i.e. aerosol geoengineering.
"less screwed" here means "fewer dead people". I think it matters how much screwed are we.
BTW this is the exact switcheroo I expect from the climate deniers - first it was "climate change doesn't exist, why should I limit my consumption?", when it's too undeniable they're going to switch in a second to "too late to do anything about it, why should I limit my consumption?"
It certainly matters how screwed we are, but a single person eating less meat and taking the bus more often isn't going to make any impact whatsoever when everyone else maintains business as usual. Laws and tax incentives need to drive it first and foremost, but as usual with these things it's too little, too late.
Systemic change is what matters and it's all too common that "personal responsibility" is the talking point of corporations who greenwash their operation through buying cheap fake carbon offsets to relieve themselves of any responsibility while outputting more CO2 than a small nation on a daily basis, making sure to simultaneously blame everyone else as much as possible to divert attention.
That's the same old Tragedy of the Commons argument, which is valid no matter if we're screwed or have a decent chance at solving the crisis. Using this logic, it's irrational to even vote since you waste your time on something which with all probability will have 0 effect.
> Systemic change is what matters
That's true, but how do you get a systemic change? By influencing individual voting and consumption behavior. Global warming has been started and is still driven the most by democratic countries, you can't absolve yourself of the responsibility.
Corporations are a product of the system we've built. They'll never care about the environment, they're not designed to do that. They care about the legal framework, though, which we (in democratic countries) can influence. The hard pill to swallow is that forcing corporations to care about the environment will increase their costs and thus prices of goods and services.
It's very much tragedy of the commons, but say with the classical example of wells on a combined finite water source, using less water won't make it last longer when you represent a permille of the total consumption, and you are only really hurting yourself by not using it while it still exists. Meanwhile the bottling plant next door pumps half of it for free and sells to back to you with a label that says "save water".
A single vote can change nothing or change everything depending on the overall distribution. If the public opinion is 80% towards one candidate and 20% for the other, even 30% of the votes wouldn't matter. If it's extremely polarized like 50/50 then every vote does indeed make a difference (Gore vs. Bush, topically enough lol). The problem with climate change is that it's more like 95% of people doing nothing cause they just want to live a normal life, and 5% of people trying to do something in a futile way. In the end it doesn't matter if a few million choose to cut down on consumption when the end result is exactly the same in an ocean of billions.
> how do you get a systemic change? By influencing individual voting and consumption behavior.
That's more like a democratic fantasy, believing that most people would even chose to to the right thing if given the option, instead of the most convenient thing.
No, you get it by lobbying key people who have the power to enact change on a massive scale. As you say, corporations only care about legal means and they make sure those means stay in their favor.
One might argue that if enough people can be persuaded to stop using a product (e.g. gasoline) then the production of it will lower, but in lots of cases that's a fallacy as well, since the producer will move against an existential threat to itself with all the means at their disposal, PR, legal, or even less legal. And in a sufficiently large market, any impact a single person can make is again a drop in the ocean.
> using less water won't make it last longer when you represent a permille of the total consumption
Using less water will make finite water supply last longer. You yourself have a small effect, but it is an effect.
Compare that with the elections, where you're not going to have any impact whatsoever.
> The problem with climate change is that it's more like 95% of people doing nothing cause they just want to live a normal life, and 5% of people trying to do something in a futile way.
Those 5% can lobby, talk to friends and make it 10%, then maybe 20% and it starts to become a strong political force.
OTOH you appear to lobby for making 0% out of the 5% ...
> In the end it doesn't matter if a few million choose to cut down on consumption when the end result is exactly the same in an ocean of billions.
No, the result will not be exactly the same. If you e.g. produce less waste, then the total amount of waste will be smaller by that amount.
> That's more like a democratic fantasy, believing that most people would even chose to to the right thing if given the option, instead of the most convenient thing.
People have been convinced to do less convenient things. In most western countries, people learned to not throw trash on the sidewalk and make the extra effort to throw it in a in.
Any actual solutions would involve increasing reflectivity though artificial means, i.e. aerosol geoengineering.