Not my OC but what I’ve believed for years: there’s no conflict between reducing your own environmental impact and holding corporations responsible. We hold corps responsible for the environment by creating a societal ethos of environmental responsibility that forces corporations to serve the people’s needs or go bankrupt or be outlawed. And anyone who feels that kind of ethos will reduce their own environmental impact because it’s the right thing to do.
Thoughts?
I don’t really know how oil corps are going to be “held to account” at an international level in any effective way. Who is going to do what to them? for how long? with what mandate? Edward Norton with some home made soap?
Oil/coal corps seem to be better at creating laws for the benefit of them than democratic processes are for the benefit of people. Even in countries that they don’t operate in (especially if they want to operate there).
I think underlying it all is a prisoners dilemma / tragedy of commons type situation - co-operative solutions can sometimes emerge and even persist, but they can be unstable or easier to destabilise than would be nice. Coupled with a large power imbalance (since wars, military and oil are all quite closely related).
If a person can reduce the amount of fossil fuels they use directly and indirectly, or modify their lifestyle / environment to use less of it, then that might be their best (only) method to actually erode their power (however slightly).