Structure Vs Agency In The Climate Debate

So many contemporary debates in politics can be boiled down to the structure-agency dichotomy. Is human action primarily the result of institutional structures an individual finds herself in or is it a result of her exerting her free will? A Twitter exchange I chanced upon today flagged the same issue. If corporations are the biggest polluters, does the behaviour of individual consumers, such as cutting down on unnecessary consumption, matter? I tend to think that it does. We can rail against capitalist structures all we can (and we definitely should) but we are all complicit in the structures. That is barely a revealation, but my point is we are complicit in it to differing extents. Middle-class Westerners are extremely complicit in it, and the more complicit we are, the more our power and responsibility to change it. It is unimaginable that our planet will be able to support Western middle-class living standards for all, or even most, of its population. Whether capitalism survives or perishes, we in the West will have to accept a drastic  change in our living standards. The issues of climate justice and social justice are intertwined here. Trying to tamp down on excessive consumption is often dismissed as victim-blaming, and I have been witness to the uncomfortable spectacle of solidly middle-class protesters thumbing their noses at people who shop at Primark, who presumably come from a lower social class. But, can't we do both--go after corporations AND mobilize to change consumer  behaviour? What could be more subversive than attacking the premise of this economic system, which is boundless consumption. Companies directly and indirectly produce goods for consumers. To pretend that they can continue to do so in similar volumes and quality but with substantially lower bio-physical footprints is fanciful.