# One man's look at personal environmentalism

This article by Dan Polansky looks at personal environmentalism (or individual or individualistic environmentalism), by which I mean choice of action by an ordinary citizen on a personal level toward the protection of the environment and nature. It is written from a European perspective, that is, of one living in a rather rich, technologically developed country; and thus, e.g. avoiding flying to a vacation is discussed, a concern that poor people in Africa do not have.
It seems to me that personal (or individual), as opposed to political, environmentalism is largely in vain, with low chance of making sizable impact. It seems unlikely to me that personal environmentally protective choices are going to spread through population by means of immitation; most people seem too reckless, uncaring or unconcerned for that. Moreover, in a societal setup adapted to harmful practices, a small number of individuals trying to engage in different practices lead to them incurring much larger inconvenience than would otherwise be the case. For instance, in a country with well developed and dense network of public transportation, it is much easier to use it and avoid driving a personal car, but this is usually a result of political action, not personal/individual action. Even so, one may want to do what one can to limit one's harmful impact for symbolic reasons (whether this is rational and in what sense is another matter).
Some of the things one can do for the environment on personal level, often for symbolic value only:
* Population measures
** Kill oneself. This will relieve the environment of one human burden. This action seems unwise since it can do almost nothing to address environmental issues: if adopted as a policy of environmentally conscientious citizens, it would eliminate being conscientious from the pool and all that would remain would be reckless people. That cannot be desirable.
** Kill multiple other people. This will relieve the environment of multiple items of human burden. This action seems unwise since, apart from being unethical, it will paint those who want to protect the environment as dangerous terrorists. This action was chosen by Ted Kaczynski/Unabomber, who engaged in bombing campaign in relation to spread of new technology.
** Go childless. This will relieve the environment of the burden of the humans that would be born. It seems not sustainable and somewhat problematic: it leads to the putative gene of being considerate being eliminated from the gene pool. (It is not necessarily genetic or solely genetic, though; this is the first idea.)
** Reduce the number of children one has. More children means more burden on the environment.
* Reduced consumption
** Avoid buying bottled water.
** Avoid buying bottled beverages other than water.
** Avoid buying foods imported from afar.
** Avoid buying foods with a high ratio of packaging mass to food mass.
** Avoid buying needless items bought just for pleasure, perhaps pieces of art.
** Avoid buying musical instruments; use your voice instead for pleasure from music.
** Do not dye your hair.
* Other
** Have selected consumer items repaired rather than buying new despite the increased effort and inconvenience.
** Avoid flying to a vacation.
** Avoid long distance driving a car to a vacation.
** Avoid hobbies that harm the environment, e.g. motor racing, car driving for fun, flying for fun, etc.
** Sort waste to support recycling.
For contrast to personal/individual environmentalism, let us consider how political action looks like:
* Introducing or increasing environmental taxes on fossil fuels and other items that economists call externalities.
* Introducing environmental subsidies.
* Prohibition of classes of toxic substances.
* Other prohibitions in cases where one can expect them to work better than environmental taxes.
Let me expand on why government regulation is required or preferable. We have to do with a form of prisoner's dilemma. If a lone company decides to implement processes less harmful to the environment, it can be expected in general to incur additional costs, and unless it can successfully pass these additional costs on the consumers or other buyers, it will be less competitive. By contrast, when the burden of implementing the less harmful processes is imposed on all market actors, none of them is made less competitive (roughly speaking; a more careful analysis could show that e.g. larger actors have it easier to accomodate environmental requirements). One could object that the environmentally friendly company could market its products as environmentally friendly, that will attract environment-conscious consumers and that will compensate for the incurred additional cost; without sound empirical substantiation, I find it unconvincing.
A related question is whether it is contradictory for a climate politician to fly a private jet. It does not seem to be contradictory since individual actions have hardly ever the impact/scale of a political action. Views apparently differ on this.
A somewhat related (and somewhat tangential) question is whether, in environmental issues, the free market usually or always solves these issues better than government regulation. It can be admitted that the price mechanism does to some extent lead e.g. to introduction of less energy-wasteful technology since the result is paying less for the energy inputs. But I do not see how free markets would generally solve these issues, nor do I see it as somehow obvious; this would require careful, specific analysis, informed by empirical detail and historical experience, I think. Nor, on a tangent, do I see how free markets make government regulation of medicines unnecessary. (Passing this paragraph to Google Gemini produces much more impressive and compelling text.) That is not to deny: there is such a thing as bad government regulation and government and regulatory roles all too often attract incompetent people who have not seen a paying customer in their life and who have no idea how to serve but rather want to rule and govern.