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But what can I do?
但我能做些什么呢？
That single question has followed me like a spectre ever since I started this YouTube channel over 3 years ago.
自从3年多前我开通这个YouTube频道以来，这个问题就像幽灵一样一直跟着我。
Often upon hearing about one of the many terrifying effects of climate change, my mom, my friends or hundreds of commentaries on my videos all ask a simple question: what can we, as individuals, do about climate change?
通常，当听到气候变化的众多可怕影响中的一个时，我的母亲、我的朋友或我视频上显示的数百条评论都会问一个简单的问题：为应对气候变化，我们个人能做些什么呢？
I also have been seeking the answer to that question.
我也一直在寻找这个问题的答案。
But I also really want to know why we ask this so much.
但我也真的很想知道我们会问这个问题这么多次的原因。
Why is this our burning question about stopping climate change?
为什么这是我们阻止气候变化的紧迫问题？
Today I'm going to explore the cultural context that has led to our fixation on individually reducing our carbon footprints.
今天，我将会探讨导致我们执着于个人减少碳足迹的文化背景。
A fixation that in many ways has prevented many of us from imagining a way to act collectively instead.
这种执念在许多方面反而阻碍了我们中的许多人想象出一种集体行动的方式。
As a chaos caused by climate change grows larger year after year so to do the cries to action.
随着气候变化造成的混乱年复一年地加剧，要求采取行动的呼声也越来越高。
But environmental action seems to have been cleaved into two distinct paths toward stopping and ultimately reversing climate change: personal actions and systemic changes.
但是，为了阻止并最终扭转气候变化，环保行动似乎被分成了两条截然不同的道路：个人行动和系统变革。
This tension takes shape most visibly in the back-and-forth flow of media where new sources and blogs pour out their top lists for individual cures to climate change that inevitably gets shouted down by cries for collective action as the only medicine for our climatic problem.
这种紧张关系在媒体来回流动的信息中表现得最为明显。虽然有关个人应对气候变化的对策的信息和博客铺天盖地地占据媒体热搜，但却不可避免地被呼吁把集体行动作为解决气候问题的唯一良药的呼声所压制。
Individual action versus systemic change, that is the binary option supplied to us in our fight to save the world.
个人行动对系统变革，这是我们在拯救世界的斗争中供我们选择的二元方法。
From the start, the individual option is flawed because it subscribes to an ideology that continues to prolong the problem of climate change.
从一开始，选择个人行动就是有缺陷的，因为它认同一种继续延长气候变化问题的意识形态。
This notion that the solution to such a massive global issue can be solved through individual lifestyle changes like buying an electric car is a culturally specific one based in neoliberal thought.
这种认为可以通过改变个人生活方式（如购买电动汽车）来解决如此重大的全球问题的想法是一种基于新自由主义思想的特定文化的想法。
Championed by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, the hyper individualistic mentality of neoliberalism pervades our current world.
当今世界弥漫着由罗纳德·里根和玛格丽特·撒切尔在20世纪80年代倡导的新自由主义极端个人主义思想。
The agenda of neoliberalism is as journalist Martin Lucas writes headlined by policies of privatization, deregulation, tax cuts and free trade deals, all of which de-emphasizes the individual as a citizen able to take collective action and instead transforms them into a consumer who as Lucas goes on to write is more prone to self-reliance than communal interdependence.
正如记者马丁·卢卡斯所写的那样，新自由主义议程是以私有化、放松监管、减税和自由贸易协议政策为标题的，所有这些政策都削弱了个人作为能够采取集体行动的公民的重要性，而是将他们转变为消费者，正如卢卡斯继续写道的那样，消费者更倾向于自力更生，而不是集体相互依赖。
It's with this lens then that we should understand the task of individual action because individual action is important, but it's also limited.
在新自由主义思想的影响下，因为个人行动是重要的，所以我们应该理解个人行动的任务，但个人行动也是有限的。
Focusing on what the individual can do frequently means that we are not asking what the collective can do.
经常关注个人能做什么意味着我们没有在问集体能做什么。
When we talk about individual actions, I mean a transformation in lifestyle for those that are financially and physically able to.
我认为个人行动指的是那些有经济能力和身体健康的人在生活方式上的转变。
There are plenty of people in countries like the US which has one of the highest per capita emissions rates in the world who have the luxury of embracing market-based individual solutions to climate change.
在美国等人均碳排放量位居全球前列的国家，有很多人有幸接受基于市场的应对气候变化的个人解决方案。
And if you're curious as to what those solutions are, multiple studies have calculated what the most effective lifestyle changes are for someone wanting to reduce their carbon footprint.
如果你想知道这些解决方案的内容，多项研究已经推测出，对于那些想要减少碳足迹的人来说，最有效的改变生活方式的方法是什么。
According to one study by Seth Wynes and Kimberly Nicholas, forgoing a car, having fewer children or embracing a plant-based diet are some of the most effective ways an individual can slash their own carbon footprint.
根据塞斯·瓦恩斯和金柏莉·尼古拉斯的一项研究，放弃汽车、少生孩子或接受植物性饮食是一些个人减少碳足迹的最有效的方法。
But these individual solutions can be morally and politically wrongheaded as in the case of using eugenicist arguments to regulate someone's reproductive future and can also be costly, difficult or downright impossible, especially for marginalized people.
但是，这些个人的解决方案在道德和政治上可能是错误的，比如使用优生主义论点来规范某人的生殖未来，也可能是成本高的、困难的或完全不可能的，尤其是对被边缘化的人来说。
Not using a car is feasible for some people in certain neighborhoods of cities with plentiful public transit but for many in the disabled community, for example, a car is a necessity to get around.
对于居住在拥有丰富的公共交通资源的某些城市社区的一些人来说，不使用汽车是可行的，但对于居住在公共交通不便利的社区的许多人来说，例如，汽车是出行的必需品。
Or if your only option is to get to work or a 25-minute drive or a two-hour transit via public transportation that is often inaccessible, you're more than likely to choose the car.
或者，如果你必须去上班，在开车25分钟和乘坐通常无法直接到达公司的公共交通工具两个小时之间，你更有可能选择开车。
Additionally, cities structurally divest from poor neighborhoods and predominantly non-white communities.
此外，城市在结构上把贫困社区和以非白人为主的社区剥离出去。
So there tends to be less public transits in those areas.
因此，这些地区的公共交通资源往往比较少。
So while there are individual environmental solutions, they need to be viewed in a much broader context as short-term harm reduction strategies rather than the cure-all to climate change.
因此，虽然有个人的环境解决方案，但它们在更广泛的背景下需要被视为短期减少危害的策略，而不是应对气候变化的灵丹妙药。
These ways of individual change are based on the idea of the individual as the consumer not as a citizen.
这些个人改变的方式是基于个人作为消费者而不是公民的理念。
