You sound like someone who hasn’t been to dozens of city council meetings where the vast majority of liberal urban dwellers would rather remove all transportation alternatives if it would make it easier for them to park their second car in front of their house.

These are just excuses for why people won't bother.

In reality, only mass behavioral change by individuals will make a difference. There is no political change without mass individual behavioral change. There is no pressure on the rich or corporations without the masses giving a crap.

Your excuses are exactly the message corporations and the rich love to hear because it means their propaganda is working.

Yes the issue is the species. Billionaires are a product of our species. What you describe is a similar thinking that murderers, drug addicts or queers are somehow dissimilar to the general population. This is not the case. The issue is a product of how a human mind works, and it presents this way because humanity improved thinking faster than how fast ecosystems could adapt. The result is a dominant species that behaves very similarly to how invasive species work.

Yes, what you say is technically true, billionaires have infinite more power than you and I, and they could very well take care of a lot of bad things in the world, if they somehow chose to. And so, this power comes with responsibility as well, or so some think. Maybe we indeed could design a system that takes care that no individual rises to these unnatural heights. But, the incentives are not there. The incentives in the human say that more = better. Not in everyone, and people can certainly grow in character, a LOT - but we are talking a big number of people here, as long as there will be some that are highly functional, and also have a craving for infinite power, there will be such power imbalances in the world.

So again, the issue boils down to species. And if we survive ourselves, I expect this trend to continue.

Let me also bring up another species problem: Look at how much friction giving up straws caused. Fucking straws, man. I don't think it can get any more petty than that.

Yeah it is.

Tackling climate change would've required people to potentially change their lives, possibly drastically and in doing so likely have a lower standard of living.

And they didn't want to.

They don't want to drive less, they don't want to fly less, they don't want smaller houses, they may say they want to do something about climate change but only so long as it doesn't actually meaningfully effect them.

The environmental movement between 1970-1990 made great changes in the way people lived. What stopped it was all out effort by the fossil fuel industry to ensure nothing would affect their profits.

I bet you can think of ways to reduce carbon output without changing square footage or miles driven.

The environmental movement was in large part, wealthy people trying to block development in their own neighborhoods.

Much of that environmental movement created the sprawl we live with today.

what the fuck

You look at the history of the sierra club. They went from an organization fighting dams and the army corp, to a group fighting neighborhood development and densification in Marin county.

Try looking beyond your beef with the Sierra club.

Have you every heard of CEQA?

You can be an environmentalist (I am) and realize that much of the 'environmentalist movement' is self-serving nonsense; e.g., plastic recycling. It doesn't mean you don't care... it just means the world is less altruistic than you thought.

Say what you will about misguided efforts, you have to admit they changed public behavior.

The fact that they changed behavior is immaterial to whether they improved or damaged the environment on net.

You look at California’s sprawl in the face of climate change, and you have to condemn a significant amount of the cliched 70’s environmentalism movements as as much about aesthetics as they were genuinely concerned about the environment.

Yes, it’s called nuclear energy. We had nuclear power on the grid in 1954.

What that really implies is that media controls legislation.

I mean, maybe? Media stations are the first target in most coups... Cutting off alternative voices limits opposition, which is probably why Musk, Ellison, and whatever Saudi princes bought Twitter; and why TikTok was neutered.

What I'm really 'implying' (ie, saying explicitly) is that we have a billionaire problem. They're strip-mining our future, and using every tool money can buy to do so. This includes the tools in the media and political class. It's blatant and in our face now, after years of being behind the scenes.