Sunday, 25 August 2019

Names and Locations of the Top 100 People Killing the Planet


XR takes a no blame and shame approach to the climate problem. Putting it simplistically for the sake of brevity: the system is at fault rather than individuals. The idea being that if you don't blame individual people, but rather invite them to join in solving the problem, you are more likely to achieve change.

But the reality is that not everyone is equally to blame. Those in the global South experiencing the worst impacts of climate change right now have tiny carbon footprints compared to those in the global North. Your average European has a smaller footprint than the average American. Some of us work in industries that are contributing to climate change and ecological collapse. Some individuals do everything they can to reduce their impact and others continue to consume like there's no tomorrow (hmm, i didn't think that phrase through) and fly regularly for holiday. Then there are the historical emissions to consider.

But then there are actually people that are in what you might consider pivotal roles with respect to climate change. The CEOs of energy companies. The prime ministers, presidents, ministers of government. And so on. These people do actually have names and addresses. Some of these people are actually working very hard to thwart attempts to limit climate change (and have been doing so for a very long time). In most cases it looks as though their primary motivation is self interest. It can seem sometimes that appealing to these people to do the right thing is wishful thinking.

Anyway, I decided to post this picture in case the no blame and shame approach doesn't work :-)

Credit for the picture to https://decolonialatlas.wordpress.com/2019/04/27/names-and-locations-of-the-top-100-people-killing-the-planet/

No comments:

Post a Comment