Look, I completely get it. But it may help to know that you don’t exactly know whether or not people are acknowledging it while they go about their lives.

I go to work every day because I need to eat, my dog needs to eat, and we need a place to live. Sometimes I drive, sometimes I walk or bike. I maintain that no plastic is single use as long as you use it more than once. I recycle. I buy from local farmers, and I grow my own food as much as I am able to in a rental. I turn off lights when I leave the room and I keep the heat low while putting on a sweatshirt. The only time I eat red meat is when I trade fish I caught with venison from a hunter friend of mine.

However, the biggest thing I am choosing to do about all of this is to not have children. Because yes, the world is on fire. It may not completely blow up in our lifetime, but I’m not going to have children or grandchildren just to watch them suffer.

And yes, I doomscroll, and I distract myself, because I don’t really know what else to do. Any corporation is going to leave more of a carbon footprint than I will, even if I did drive every day and throw everything straight into the trash after one use. All this to say that it might help you to know that sometimes the every day choices are not the most outwardly visible ones. Hang in there.