Blaming consumers for climate change is a con. Giving regular people a bunch of useless busywork when they are already busy instead of regulating at the manufacturer where the effort would be minimal is a choice.
It will always work. The opportunity to blame your neighbor for climate change for not being as conscientious as you is the archetype of a liberal wedge issue. You can yell at them on social media. But regulate my company? Akshualy you're killing jobs?
I'm not blaming anyone. People make their choices, every choice has a consequence. Its as simple as that.
It sounds like you may take more issue with the busy work we're all given. Is the problem really that the government isn't regulating problems away, or that people are kept so busy and distracted that they can't make their own decisions?
Asking everybody nicely to stop contributing to climate change does not work to stop climate change. It is an individualized solution to a societal problem.
We didn't clean up our water by asking people to stop buying lightbulbs from the factory that dumped mercury directly into the river - we made it illegal for the company to do so, and we were successful.
I'm also not proposing we ask people nicely to do anything. People will make their choices, we have to expect people will generally make a decision that's best for them and that in the long run if people continue to do what they think is best it will work out.
What are we even doing here with capitalism, democracy, etc if we don't generally trust people to make their own decisions?
With regards specifically to lightbulb factories dumping mercury - the problem is often that the people in the area have no power to legally handle it themselves. Companies get to hide behind expensive lawyers, lobbyists, and often regulations themselves to avoid repercussions.
We often can get just as far by removing legal protections for companies rather than further centralizing power and authority to a few people we trust to do the right thing.
> What are we even doing here with capitalism, democracy, etc if we don't generally trust people to make their own decisions?
Laws are the primary mechanism by which democracy safeguards threatened community resources. You may be longing for an anarcho-capitalist society, but don't expect negative externalities to ever be priced in.
I'm not an anarcho-capitalist, or an anarchist in general. I generally agree with laws that protect individual freedoms and generally disagree with laws that limit freedoms. Protecting everyone's right to free speech is important for example, legislating whether my milk must be pasteurized is not for example.
It will always work. The opportunity to blame your neighbor for climate change for not being as conscientious as you is the archetype of a liberal wedge issue. You can yell at them on social media. But regulate my company? Akshualy you're killing jobs?