I don’t think that people shouldn’t make individual decisions, but I think their individual decisions should be made in much broader contexts that individual lifestyle adjustments have limited impact. (Eg. Any veganism on one persons part would be wiped away by a non-necessary plane ride.)

It is important to also make broader policy changes, like regulating wasteful plastic packaging in the pipeline (not just at the retail, but storing manufacturing/processing materials).

An individual cannot make a sizable impact compared to the insurmountable damage corporate greed has already caused. Not to mention the proposed “solutions” only cause further ecological damage and reinforce corporate interests.

We have billionaires like Bill Gates telling us to eat bugs instead of meat to “save the planet” while he forcibly e-wastes billions of devices with Windows 10’s end-of-life. We have EV manufacturers pushing to mine lithium, which like most mining is incredibly ecologically damaging, while simultaneously making repair (and thus the sustainability of their cars) nearly impossible. Petroleum products produced en masse and discarded into literal trash islands in the oceans. The destruction of wildlife habitats such as the rainforests. Hell, entire cities in China are nearly uninhabitable due to mass pollution from corporations moving production there.

While we are all to blame, some are more to blame than others. And no, going “carbon neutral” doesn’t mean anything when you’re still actively dumping waste products onto the Earth.

EV's are a half-assed patch and meant to be a drop-in replacement for ICE's until we can do something better, but sadly they've mostly been an excuse for even bigger, faster, heavier, more dangerous vehicles.

I just want to ride my bike and take the train for most of my daily needs, maybe using an hourly car hire for the other trips.

> I just want to ride my bike and take the train for most of my daily needs, maybe using an hourly car hire for the other trips.

If that's what you want, cool, you almost certainly can find a life situation where it's possible. It's people who want to forcibly make everyone live that way that are the problem.

Yeah to re-make public spaces across the cities and towns in that image would require probably a 10s to 100s of trillions in infrastructure spending. Enough to make my personal dream of an aqueduct in to the southwest from the Pacific and associated desalination projects (and mineral separation) a pittance.

We already spent trillions bulldozing cities for cars and building speedways everywhere.

"you almost certainly can find a life situation where it's possible"

The opposite, really. Car-dependence is the default and being able to live well without a car, especially as a family, is very challenging. Sadly we've forcibly made everyone live that way (imagine that!) except for the few who can afford well designed places.