This is so important to state and recognize.

It's easy to say, to tell ourselves, it's the big corporations and the fossil fuel industry that is at fault for climate change, and it's only until they change, until the system changes, that we have any hope of fighting climate change, and my miniscule carbon footprint (comparatively) has little effect on climate change, or reducing it, in combatting climate change.

It's easy to shuffle responsibility off elsewhere.

But, the truth is: we are all complicit.

The truth is: if we have any hope of making any meaningful dent in preventing absolutely catastrophic climate change in the very near future, the entire world, how it is run, what we all value, what we pursue, what we think of as a successful life, all of this has to change radically, and this will require, as you say, enormous sacrifice and hardship for everyone, the world over, almost as if sending us back to pre-industrial age.

Carbon is the enemy and damn near everything humans do has carbon rolled up and entwined in it.

And, similarly, damn near everything we do that has a carbon cost is also tied to the economy. We can't stop raping the planet because it will damage the almighty economy.

And, believe me, I don't want to live through a catastrophic economic crash anymore than the next person. My self-interest and survival, like most, is tied directly in myriad ways to the economy.

We cant stop flying because it will not only kill the airline industry, and people will lose jobs, but it will kill tourism, which supports millions and millions of people and entire regions of the globe, and these cities and towns and communities will wither and die without tourism.

We can't stop consuming, whatever it is, because it will kill the economy.

And nobody wants to go through this pain and struggle and nobody trusts any government to put any workable plan in place, nobody trusts any government to even treat climate change seriously, because government are beholden to money and big corporations.

We need carbon to make money, and we need money to make a life, to simply survive, and when you are in survival mode, nobody is thinking about five weeks or five years down the road.

We don't want to change, but I understand why.

I get it.

It's not a pretty picture, but it's the one we are gonna be staring at for the rest of our lives.