The Montgomery Bus Boycott versus flying
The Montgomery Bus Boycott addressed people being treated as second-class citizens; they weren’t allowed to use bus seats equally. The people harmed acted to improve their situation. They held back from using the bus for over a year, instead walking, carpooling, avoiding trips, and so on.
Airplanes and the pollution and depletion they cause harm everyone in the world, though the people where the fuels and minerals are extracted, near airports, and in tourist spots that become wrecked most.
Why don’t we boycott planes? What’s worse between treating people as second-class citizens and killing them?
I see the biggest difference between the situations that unlike the bus, with the plane, the person benefiting from using the vehicle isn’t the one suffering from the pollution and depletion.
Polluting is like smoking cigarettes where you get the pleasure and someone else gets cancer. Also, you can’t end the global heroin supply when you’re worried about your own supply. That is, we want to end the harms of pollution, but we still want to fly.
We have to get serious about personal responsibility and personal action. All of this waiting for others to act first is delaying action and results. It worsens our own lives not to stop harming others, even if it means we can’t do everything we want any time we want however we want no matter who suffers for it.
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