What can we do!? Sometimes I feel as though we as consumers have so much power, and other times I feel that my actions are pointless. These feel like opposing truths, and, yet, I think that both are correct. None of us can look at the huge increase in plastic waste caused by the Covid pandemic and think that consumers do not drive massive changes in business practices. Did you know that in a 2020 report, the ocean conservation organization Oceana estimated that Amazon’s plastic packaging waste (those little air filled pillows that “protect” the things we buy) could have circled the Earth 500 times? That was in 2019. As has been documented in many places (like, for example, this Scientific American article), Covid has made our plastic waste problem immeasurably worse, with hundreds of billions of masks and gloves being used every month worldwide, in addition to the increase in other plastic waste like to-go containers.
Of course, most of the time, these impacts only happen in the aggregate. That is, it’s true that consumers’ collective use of more home delivery, more disposable PPE, more single use plastic, has an enormous impact, but it’s not true that my individual choices make that much difference. That doesn’t change the moral case, but it does change the sense of agency I get when I make my choices.
There is an exception: proof-of-work blockchains. These are enormously energy intensive, such that a single transaction (e.g., transferring one Bitcoin or Ethereum-based NFT) could equal the carbon footprint of an average person over many years. So, despite its boosters claiming that those who oppose it are just sad to have missed out, Luddites, or missing some interesting point that actually makes them eco-friendly (twisted!), there is no doubt: buying Bitcoin and similar digital tokens that operate on proof-of-work blockchains is an environmental catastrophe that will outweigh any other actions you take. Anyone who buys such tokens does so at tremendous cost to our natural resources and the health of our future societies. No present profit is worth that cost.
But all actions are more powerful when they are taken by many people at once. I hope this site and the meetings that it encourages generate momentum as part of the larger movement of people everywhere to save our societies and redesign our lives to harmonize with nature’s incredible tunes.