It's generally agreed that we are already living within a mass extinction event[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene#Biodiversity "Humankind has entered what is sometimes called the Earth's sixth major extinction. Most experts agree that human activities have accelerated the rate of species extinction.The exact rate remains controversial – perhaps 100 to 1000 times the normal background rate of extinction"

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17910054-the-sixth-extin...

1. As the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the partial pressure of CO2 also increases. This tends to increase the concentration of CO2 dissolved in seawater.

2. As the temperature of the seawater increases, the solubility of CO2 decreases.

(1) is much stronger than (2) so far. Atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased much more than CO2 solubility has decreased due to temperature.

Recycle if you want, but don't stress about it (especially religiously).

One, for the landfill reason you mentioned, and two, while it does feel good to 'do something about it', the scale of individuals recycling doesn't make up for massive companies generating waste without recycling. If you want the agency back, you'll likely have to get into politics, activism, and/or join those companies and change them from the inside (note: incredibly difficult side quest)

http://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-c...

I did try to convince people to use nuclear power for a couple decades. Now I’m told it’s too late.

The windmills and solar are still coming…

(gridwatch is currently broken but you can see that we're now gas-with-some-renewables if you look back a few days: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ )

The key to getting this to work in other countries is to exclude the coal extractors from the political process.

We should also seek to oppose new car-centric development that increasingly destroys what remaining natural habitats we have. Watching Canadian Geese (as mean as they are) get run over by cars in the parking lots of furniture stores selling cheap crap shipped over from other countries is so stupid and unnecessary. And we can prevent it too.

I think the fact that people don't seem to be aware of this is a massive failure of our society and in particular the education system. I do not know, but I would like to believe that it would have made a difference if we were all aware of how huge our impact is on the biosphere is.

Refs: [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

It will. It is.

Horizon Zero Dawn game> "Another problem to add to our big steaming pile. Apparently a fisherman in the Banda Sea captured video of a Hartz-Timor Horus unit refueling via biomatter conversion along the shoreline of Pulau Wetar. On a pod of endangered dolphins, no less, quite possibly the last of their kind. Not to get graphic, but it looks like what happens inside a blender, as if the robot was whipping up a big pink swirling milkshake of dolphin chum. Our suppression team has scrubbed it from 43 networks, but it's still propagating, so it's only a matter of time before it goes viral. A prepared statement feels grossly insufficient. Any suggestions? This one's a real stinker."

"The Holocene extinction, otherwise referred to as the sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction, is an ongoing extinction event of species during the present Holocene epoch (with the more recent time sometimes called Anthropocene) as a result of human activity."

There were a lot of happy little crabs about.

What exactly is meant by boiling here? It's not literally boiling I assume. What's the temperature threshold change at which animals start to die in the ocean? I would assume it's very small.

> I've also been religiously recycling in my personal life but every now and then I read articles about even recycling from a lot of places ending up in landfills which really frustrates me as it takes away any agency I really have on this action.

It depends on a number of factors, including the market value of natural gas at the time. You can always feel good about recycling aluminum however. This is very easy and cost effective so it pretty much always happens.

What is your power source?

But at the individual level, it is understandable that people do this during heatwaves. Use green energy ;).

[1] residential buildings traditionally do not have airco’s in countries such as Germany or The Netherlands.

>there's no political will or consensus to combat climate change; it's also not a one nation issue.

Think about this in the context of the warmist's proposals for limiting energy consumption in the developing world. People who've never had access to AC at home will be priced out of the market due to rising energy costs. Those who have no electricity will have to wait longer or perhaps never enjoy electric lighting.

There's also the OPs complaint that he has no agency in this - but he chooses to have AC. I wonder how many tons of CO2 are emitted so people in offices can wear suits and jackets and work through the day, rather than shorts and t-shirts and siesta in the cool.

A whole lot less than 1.5 years ago!

I suspect that because humans live in all sorts of temperature zones the combination of the two basically makes it a wash energy wise.

And some individuals have an extremely outsized effect on climate change a pollution, namely top management of fossil fuel companies and other gross polluters, as well as the politicians who enable them. They carry by far the largest guilt out of any of us. I'll accept my <millionth of a percent of guilt, if they accept their extremely outsized and enormous portion of guilt, and actually do something about it.

As a shorthand, we refer to these corporations as the entities guilty of gross pollution, rather than name every single individual in management positions in said companies, but we all know that the individuals in top management are responsible.

Similarly, the politicians are generally responsible for decisions and actions taken on a societal level, so they bear significantly more responsibility than Average Joe down the street, who's just trying to stay cool during a massive heatwave.