Why fight against the current? We aren’t going to convince billions of people, most of whom are struggling for survival, to make dramatic sacrifices. Moreover, in the overwhelming majority of cases consumers can’t tell which item is more environmentally friendly (the state of the art is “does the packaging have a faux burlap aesthetic?” which lends itself to pervasive greenwashing).

We simply cannot solve the problem by asking consumers to care more about the planet than feeding their kids, particularly when “caring about the planet” in this way is basically guesswork.

Climate change and other environmental problems are systemic, and thus we need systemic solutions—in the case of climate change, the ideal and gold standard is carbon pricing (with border adjustments).