Your choice to take a vacation was not a vote for more fossil fuel drilling, even if our economy is structured that way and our cultural myth is that a dollar is a vote and makes you complicit in the supply chain. You're trying to meet your needs to experience novelty and relax using the means at your disposal; the kerosene in that airplane could have been produced any number of ways, it could have been drawn from the air using nuclear power and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis if we structured our economy to meet the needs of society instead of structuring society to meet the needs of the economy.

> Your choice to take a vacation was not a vote for more fossil fuel drilling

I don't know how you can say that. I know exactly where jet fuel comes from and knew my flight to Britain was going to melt something like 2 m^2 of arctic ice.

Sure, but your goal was not for that to happen, was it? I assume you weren't trying to cause harm, even if you were aware of it; you were trying to get your needs met.

Don't get me wrong, I try to avoid travelling and reduce my footprint where I can, but like they say, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Consuming less is great, but the problem is that this economy is structured in a way that will kill us, not that we need to consume things to live.

Nobody’s goal is to warm the planet. Not even the most evil, mustache twirling capitalist wants to the worst of the global warming predictions come to light.

Big change has to come from the bottom up. If the electorate doesn’t ask for changes to be made, politicians aren’t going to make them. Now that climate is a political left/right issue, it’s even less likely for meaningful change to happen. The right seems to have forgotten how much of our existing environmental protections were put in place by Republican administrations (especially Nikon’s).

It’s this: western standards of living are fueled by armies of child laborers picking our cacao, coltan mined and smuggled out of conflict zones, abused sweatshop workers sewing our clothes, and barrels and barrels of oil to move the machines forward.

I doubt many of us will give that up voluntarily. Most people don’t want to walk away from Omelas.

You said western standards of living, but don't you really mean modern standards of living? I don't think people in Russia or Japan or Singapore or China are doing much better with respect to cacoa, coltan, etc...