Why Individual Consumers Create Sustainable Society

Individual consumer choices have to make a difference in sustainability. The sum of all the consumers in a society, and their choices, will determine how sustainable a society is. If there is a large enough movement amongst the members of a society, then the society as a whole can impact change.

For example, say everyone decided to switch all the light bulbs in their homes to CFLs from standard incandescents. Each consumer makes an individual choice to do so, maybe because they want a bulb that puts out very little heat, they want to lower their energy bill, or they simply think that it will help the environment. Conservatively a CFL uses less than half the energy of a regular light bulb. So if each consumer just reduces their energy consumption used for lighting by half, all these little amounts add up. If everyone switched then half the energy used for lighting in a large area will be massively decreased.
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The point of consumer choices impacting the society as a whole is that individual choices have ways of impacting other individual's choices. If one person decides to install solar panels in a neighborhood on his roof, then his neighbors are more likely to look at that, start conversations. They will ask questions about them. Once the discussions is started amongst a group of consumers they will get the same idea. Advertisers know that sometimes simply getting some sort of public interest in a product is the way to get people thinking about buying it. Then the neighbors might install solar panels of their own, which will increase the popularity of doing so in a specific neighborhood. These consumers then take what they learned and talk about it with family, friends, coworkers, etc., outside of the neighborhood. They then get others interested in solar panels. What happens when one consumer makes a choice, then a few others do, the mob mentality can take over and others will want to jump on the band wagon. The example of solar panels is a little extreme due to cost, but the point is that starting the discussion about different changes in a person's lifestyle is half of the battle. Another reasonable example might be as simple as someone in the neighborhood improving the insulation in their home, and bragging to their neighbors how much money they save on heating and cooling. The neighbors then out of financial motives improve the insulation in their homes as well.

I will concede that a single consumer cannot single handedly change the world, but a single consumer can lead to others, which can lead to others. When groups of consumers start to change their habits as a whole then true change starts to occur.