And the idea that voting does anything real is kind of cute, that's literally the least you can do and should take all of 5 minutes every couple of months these days.
Switching back to (wax)paper wrapping and bulk supplies in general with paper baggies would probably help a bit. The demonization of paper/wood always bugged me as it's generally a renewable resource, and at least in N. America mostly used as such. It also inherently pulls carbon from the atmosphere. As opposed to refined plastics.
I've also avoided refined foods much more over the past decade. As much for health related issues as for any ecological factor. But the changes in hormonal balance in people in general, in particular in men, is pretty startling. While I can understand the desire to let it all happen and reduce populations, I think the methods are worse than the problem at this point. I don't think it's generally a conspiracy, only that refined foods are simply not as good for you, and hormonal issues abound in the past half century to century in particular.
The idea that this problem is solvable by individuals changing their behavior when there is a vast ocean of money being deployed to keep everything (roughly) the same is pretty laughable. Changing the behaviour of a large population first requires them to agree on what the problem is in the first place. "Energy" interests have done a good job of clouding the issue and providing enough plausible deniability for continuing the status quo.
Here's a relevant example: a generation of people have been convinced to recycle - but those efforts were largely wasted because the collected material was shipped to China (!) and sometimes dumped in the ocean (!!). So individuals did their part, but "the system" is still going to optimize for cost-efficiency and not for environmental impact.
Well, you can reduce your carbon footprint!… wait, British Petroleum invented that slogan, didn’t they…
I don't think that individuals can solve climate change without having government and corporations change.
But governments and corporations won't ever change without action by individuals to pressure them to change.
Activism on the part of individuals turning into collective action is the kind of thing that would produce actual change, not actions like plastic recycling.
But again there's a failure of the Millennial generation for you. You've figured out the individual actions which don't work and which you've been led down an alley by moneyed interests into thinking they're effective, but you have no answers to effecting change past pointing blame.
Glad people are realizing it
Great, I'm sure that's true. Concretely, what do you recommend individual Millenials should be doing?
Getting involved in local politics and making small changes in a progressive direction as opposed to trying to save the world. A good example are communities that are supporting local growers/producers and freeing them from some of the national/state level red tape. Improving the chain of supply more locally and increasing awareness. This is much harder in larger cities though... as local foods are less diverse and less universally available year-round.
Working with local restaurants that aren't chains and trying to build local sustainable menus. Moving away from refined products to more local.
As it stands, it's very niche and trendy, which can come across as off-putting or out of touch. But working locally can be very impactful. If you can convince one restaurant to move at least part of their menu to local supply, that can help. Being closer to the source will lead you to connecting with the source and having a better understanding.
There are a lot of people out there, working on actually making their small parts work... connecting these people is really hard. I've been pushing for years talking to local restaurants to try to get them to move away from refined seed oils for cooking alone, and it often falls on deaf ears.
Shop and advocate for local coop markets that have sustainable practices.
Unfortunately, it's hard to fight the convenience/abundance of Wal-Mart, Amazon and Costco. I have enough trouble convincing my SO to hit a couple different grocery stores in a day, as opposed to trying to get everything needed in one convenient stop.
An excellent point. So what have you done to solve the problem?