While I share your sense of personal responsibility being key to any hope of mitigating the impact for future generations, a recent project I've been involved with has left me feeling quite cynical about the chance of any meaningful impact.
The project was related to measuring greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation industry. Everyone is excited about the massive savings (potentially the largest single saving in the State) but the numbers are pathetic when you put them into an equivalency calculator (https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calc...).
My takeaway from the project has been that without dramatic and systematic change at a societal level nothing else really matters. At best we can mitigate and try to slow the impacts of climate change. The Sustainability Manager at my work has told me that the industry/literature/academics are also shifting towards talk of mitigation and resiliency now instead of prevention.
I hope I'm wrong but global GHG emissions are massive compared to the solutions we currently have.
The project was related to measuring greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation industry. Everyone is excited about the massive savings (potentially the largest single saving in the State) but the numbers are pathetic when you put them into an equivalency calculator (https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calc...).
My takeaway from the project has been that without dramatic and systematic change at a societal level nothing else really matters. At best we can mitigate and try to slow the impacts of climate change. The Sustainability Manager at my work has told me that the industry/literature/academics are also shifting towards talk of mitigation and resiliency now instead of prevention.
I hope I'm wrong but global GHG emissions are massive compared to the solutions we currently have.