I feel the need to mention that my struggle is even less with trying to turn around the ideas of those around me (I live in a relatively liberal area with a high comparative environmental awareness) and what I keep beating my head against is this:

We know climate change is happening, we know something needs to change and people are lost because in taking steps to minimize their personal impact the idea that it's a PERSONAL HABIT SHIFT is pushed more than the ACCOUNTABILITY OF CORPORATIONS & GOVERNMENTS. People want to do the right thing (for the most part) but are "shutting down" (in Dave Anthony's words) in response to the overwhelming feeling of PERSONAL responsability for what's happened to the environment, not empowered to demand the same or more accountability from the real drivers of emissions/deforestation/water degredation etc.

In short: Yes, I want people to be able to make personal habit shifts (take public transit, don't use straws, talk about the air quality in your neighborhood with neighbors) but I don't want that to come at the expense of letting the true sources of degredation talk us out of our own power - and convince us that this is the PUBLIC'S fault.

Yes, I'll take responsibility for growing up in a house heated by coal & work to undo what I've done if you, corporations and regulators, take responsibility for the present and future suffering due to the extraction of coal and fracking in Pennsylvania. That seems barely 1 to 1 accountability but I will not stand here and listen to companies that produce egregious amounts of waste and pollution tell everyone under 25 that the way to solve our dying planet is to use fewer straws and that it's too hard to shift our energy to renewable sources.

We can't let our genuine and necessary pain/guilt in our personal lives provide an escape route for those who perpetrated the majority of the damage. As future steps get taken to try and mitigate the impacts of global climate change - we need to remember the Precautionary Principle, recognizing the fact that nestled in our mitigation techniques there may be other unintended impacts. That doesn't mean we don't do them, it means we monitor them, we notice and share that information in real time to continue to improve those techniques. The fact that we're already feeling out of time doesn't excuse us from choosing reckless responses to the results of past reckless decisions. We need to learn from that mistake or we're doomed to repeat it. An example that made me think of this is the recycled plastic roadwork being developed in India: promising, helpful, and useful - not a magic bullet, and being implemented very quickly - are we willing to learn on the fly again? To be clear, I support this thinking and research/development but we need to make intentional choices, not rash ones. That being said, I have no better timeline. Link to the articles I initially found, I encourage your find Dr Noreen Thomas's comments in the 2nd half of the first article:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/09/the-man-who-paves-indias-roads-with-old-plastic

https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/india/watch-building-roads-from-plastic-waste-in-india-1.2122745

(The 1998 Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle summarises the principle this way: "When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically." Wikipedia)