| > Reducing consumption and consumerism, energy efficiency and habits changing surely help a little Keep doing those things. Even if you aren't singlehandedly solving the crisis, you are at least setting an example for others to follow, which is what matters. When people see others caring, they begin to question their own level of caring. If everyone wrote off small changes as "What's the point?", then that attitude feeds into the habits of others too. > but I'm interested in slightly longer term projects (say the next 10 years). I don't have a perfect answer for you, however, incorporating this into a career or public works effort would be something. R&D and implementation is still worth something. Even if it's not crazy lucrative or game-changing immediately, proper change takes time and has to be started somewhere. Think of all the R&D efforts from the past that contributed to massive changes in the present. Someone had to think, work, and tinker on projects to come up with adaptable outcomes. The work of one still has the potential to impact many. > It seems like we're on track for a huge crisis, but as group we're slow to react. My theory is that we are essentially up against a "nonphysical" entity (it's silly but South Park captured this with the use of 'ManBearPig'), so people don't treat it the same as an "us vs. them" dilemma. It's really an "us vs. us". It's hard to react to something that's not right in front of our faces. There's always the ability to count on tomorrow until the day arrives that there won't be any more tomorrows to count on. At which point, people usually look around for solutions. There's a group that will outwards and a group that will look inwards. There's an endless amount of excuses and distractions to fall back to, but at the end of the day doing something is better than doing nothing. |