Also, and more to the point, if these sectors have such a large carbon footprint, then where did that demand come from? I don’t buy that cutting back on animal products or flying aren’t scaleable. Our global culture isn’t inexorably evolving to flying helicopters to work and eating meat 4x a day with a tall glass of milk, so why aren’t we talking about behavior change more in the West? We’ve always had a choice, and we know better now that these choices and path dependencies are destructive.
Furthermore, companies that produce these products are simply providing for demand. It’s silly to lay the blame at their feet when they’ve no incentive to stop.
you're not thinking systemically enough - the incentive system is also a choice
there's a reason big oil were the original champions of plastics recycling as a marketable non-solution that focuses on individual/peer consumer habits over anything that would challenge their position. this neoliberal approach ultimately ensures their power remains.
these replies are saying to take the solutions available to us individually, but you're promoting individual actor conscientiousness over organizing to effect systemic change at scale. I'm not saying only corps/govs have the power to fix this, I'm saying that by taking an individualist consumer solution perspective, we let corps/govs off their leash because individuals can't stand up to their level of organized power.
While the whole “carbon footprint” thing was clever misdirection by the fossil fuel industry, there is still value in examining what aspects of your life are causing problems for the planet and trying to rectify them.
To say that the solutions to climate change are only large scale and available to massive corporations and governments is as foolish as to say that they are only small scale and available to individuals.
Whatever solutions are available to you, wherever you are in life, do the work to see them through. We need all the help we can get.