That’s why change needs to come from the corporate level through regulation.
People generally just want food, shelter, health, and comfort. And most people in the world are struggling to maintain food and shelter.
Their evironmental footprint doesn’t even register as an afterthought.
For example…
Go look at your local Walmart and it’s bazillion products. They expect to sell almost everything in that store multiple times within a month. All that generates enormous waste on a scale that’s literally impossible for the earth to sustain for another 100 years without total ecological collapse.
We’re living in the single most polluting decade in human history, every decade, since all of us were born. Even if the entire Lemmy user base become subsistence farming monks, the factories would just keep churning out poison unphased.
I’m not saying it’s bad for people to try and consume more responsibly. I’m just saying it doesn’t make a difference over any meaningful time period until there’s a radical change in how our global economy functions.
Environmental catastrophe will continue until we literally cannot ignore it, only then will we do anything substantial about it. Unfortunately that’s just how our society works.
I’m not saying your personal choices are bad, I’m saying if you live as sustainably as possible, you’re only delaying the inevitable by a millisecond at best. Change needs to be forced, globally, or we’re still in the same situation, just by 2051 with a massive “green movement” instead of 2050.
But this talk we’re having, it’s all too late.
We’re entering an era of climate induced super weather that will force the hand of leaders across the globe.
It’s gotten to the point where it’s becoming cheaper and more strategically significant to do something about climate change, than it is to ignore it. That’s when the change happens under our system.