We're fucked, but at least have your conscience clean. Anything helps: eat less meat, plant some trees, start recycling, bike to work, refuse single-use plastic, sacrifice a little bit of your personal convenience for the benefit of the planet. Do anything you weren't doing until today.
Nobody will save the planet on their own, but a large swath of people doing one single thing is bound to have some effect. It won't cancel out the damage for sure, but at least it would minimize the effects a tiny bit.
Quite. As I did in another thread, I'd like to point to the Extinction Rebellion as a pragmatic way to panic (eh, act):
Worl/UK: https://rebellion.earth/the-truth/demands/
USA: https://extinctionrebellion.us/demands
[ed: also mentioned in tfa.]
The last best time was yestrday. The next best one is now.
I'll do something today about the climate and planting trees. I'm not physically able to plant stuff myself, so it will have to be something I donate to. I can also push my employer to start sponsoring climate disaster mitigation efforts.
Extinction Rebellion, organisers of the civil disobedience protests in the UK and elsewhere - https://rebellion.earth
Client Earth, a legal charity aiming to repeatedly take governments to court on climate matters. Became much more visible when Dave Gilmour made a major donation recently: https://www.clientearth.org
They're not quite as established in the US yet as they landed there later, but are active and growing. The whole movement is only around a year or so old. They've achieved remarkable visibility and growth the time since the first UK demos.
Client Earth has a US arm: https://www.clientearth.org/usa/ though it doesn't look terribly active. I suspect there are better US equivalents that have achieved more stateside. I don't know who though, sorry.
If nobody ever tries, nothing will ever change. Change inspires change. Someone seeing you plant a tree might very well decide to plant one themselves.
Live a life that requires no apology, starting today. Too little, too late? I don't know, not much I can do about that. But what I can do is live a life less impactful on the environment, which is what I ought to be doing climate change or not. Perhaps climate change is your personal wake up call to dial back on the life of consumerism. Maybe it's a call to examine some other aspect of your life, I dunno. Regardless, it is an opportunity for examination, and answering the question of your place in the your environment and your impact on it. The rest of it will take care of itself, one way or another.
... why aren't you, then? Taking personal steps towards improving things is by far the best thing you can do for your personal feelings of guilt. It won't solve the bigger issues. But collective behavior is built on lots of independent individual action.
There is a technical ability to save this. There is a long way to go in a relatively short time to create the necessary awareness and accept the necessary "sacrifices".
Thanks for the reply, and I'm really happy to hear that.
Do you have any idea how I, or anyone else, can do this?
So if you're serious, try to get a career in politics. Good Luck!
I want to sponsor planting trees, but I worry that we're doing far too little, far too late.