[prower]

It's also a matter of perceived consequences. To put it bluntly, most people simply don't have the energy, at the end of the day, to chase "feel good", distant, ethereal causes. Yeah meat consuption leads to pollution, but that's such a stretch of the imagination, and I'm hungry, so please let me see what I need to do to pay this month's rent and taxes instead.

There's an oil spill in the ocean? Man, that sounds bad. But what can you do, it's in the ocean, someone will take care of it eventually.

I know it's a defeatist way of thinking but you can't build a running society (meaning with, literally, people running all the time) and expect to conserve energy for non-primary, non-immediate, non-localized causes.

To put it even more bluntly: I would be very happy to change my whole way of life if I didn't have to run after money. But I have to, and I'm exhausted, and that's the problem.