I started getting sad about climate change two years ago after seeing Planet Earth and many documentaries. I completely changed my lifestyle to reduce my part and put significant effort into it.
But seeing rich celebrities who use as much as a common man’s lifetime resources in a week or two, and others who barely put in any effort to combat it, and corporations fucking the entire planet for quarterly profits, barely any efforts towards fighting it even though we had known about its consequences 30-40 years ago, I get this feeling that my efforts are even worth it.
Slowly, I told myself that evolution failed itself by giving a bit more individual selfishness over community/species survival. Just like human beings, Earth’s time has started to end. Its death is inevitable. Everything should come to an end. Only if evolution had given a bit more thought to species survival, we would be in a much better place.
How do you all deal with this?
This is the source of your problem. Individual action will cost you a lot while accomplishing virtually nothing. Donating some small part of your income to green nonprofits has a greater impact, at a much lower cost to your quality of life.
A climate disaster is going to make us all make sacrifices we don’t want to make eventually, no matter what you sacrifice now. If these are the final days of a healthy planet, don’t deprive yourself while the billionaires are taking joyrides in their gigayachts. Just accept that this horror wasn’t your fault, because if everyone lived with your likely very small footprint, this probably wouldn’t be happening.
A story that’s always stuck with me is: “at a party someone told the group that there wasn’t enough pizza for everyone to have 2 slices, and some people took one slice, and some took three - and that really describes humanity.”