Anthropocene

Happy Earth Day! We're doomed, please care.

Remember climate change? The thing that threatens to kill us all and end society as we know it? Or have you forgotten between all the bouts of endless corporation-sponsored doomscrolling and general apathy? I'm going crazy worrying about something that will literally kill billions of humans within 25 years, while no one else seems to care. When people do care, they don't realize the extent to which we are screwed and/or they think solving this will as simple as waiting on new advancements in science and implementing easy lifestyle changes like recycling, not littering, or using paper straws.

The good news is that we have all the science and all the resources we would ever need to solve or improve the climate crisis. We aren't waiting on a miracle cure via some breakthrough renewable energy tech or through new sustainable urban planning. We have all that. The bad news is that there are systemic barriers in place preventing our salvation, and it will take all of us to realize that if we want to live.

First, let's explore how royally fucked we are via the beautiful medium of ominous peer reviewed research.

Game over, GGs

Climate change continues to make our world hotter, raise the sea levels, destroy entire countries, make our weather more extreme, threaten food supplies, destroy habitats, risk the deaths of billions, and lead society to it's end while we do little to stop it (UCS, Ripple et al., Pearce and Parncutt). We are heating the planet at the rate of dropping the nuclear bomb used on Hiroshima over twelve times every single second, or over one million every day (Mulhern, Jacobson, Pan et al.). We have plunged the globe into an era of global water bankruptcy (UN News). Critical ocean currents are collapsing, leading to catastrophic consequences (Carrington). Land and trees absorbed almost no carbon dioxide (CO₂) in 2025 (Greenfield, Ke et al.). Only 16% of coastlines are in a good shape, and the remaining 84% are so bad they can't recover (Felippi, Williams et al.). New generations will face triple the amount of disasters (Thiery et al.). Hospitalizations in the US due to extreme heat will double by 2040 (Milman). Rising heat kills one person per minute (Carrington).

Even if the existential concerns don't bother you, the unbreathable city air from Denver to Beijing should (Alvarez, Mankel and Phillips, SCMP). Aurora polaris (northern lights) visible in the southern US (Ramakrishnan). India, Europe, and California on fire, both literally and metaphorically, via heat waves that would be "virtually impossible" without climate change (Ober, Pylas, Wikipedia, Zhong, Milman). 440 people killed per day during a heat waves in England and Wales alone (Carrington). Natural disaster after natural disaster. Soil degradation, species extinction, water scarcity, food shortages, and more (F4F). It's not going to be some singular apocalyptic event like you'd see in a movie - it will be a slow and painful series of disasters, deaths, extinctions, and rising temperatures. It "will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it." Climate change isn't on the horizon, it's here.

Earth's sixth large mass extinction event has begun (Carrington, WWF). Over 15,000 species are already affected by climate change (IUCN). There has been an average 73% decline of animal populations across the world from 1970 to 2020 (WWF, Ritchie). 40% of all plant species and one million species in total are at risk of extinction (Carrington, UN Sustainable Development). 90% of marine species are at risk by 2100 (Boyce et al., Yirka). Birds and insects are disappearing, even in areas free of pesticides and human-caused habitat destruction (Carrington, McClure, McClure). A third of all species face extinction at its worst (Urban). For many, it's already too late (Haddon, IFAW, Manzello et al.). Blue whales have stopped singing due to starvation (Nunn, Ryan et al.). The lands home to the countries of Kiribati, Maldives, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Nauru, Fiji, and the Marshall Islands - including all their landscape, nature, culture, history, language, resources, and animal, plant, and human inhabitants - are at risk of being completely wiped off the face of the Earth due to our inaction, to the point where some have started making digital copies of their nation to preserve themselves (Active Sustainability, Fainu). Inhabitants of costal areas like that of New Orleans are being urged to relocate (Milman, Törnqvist et al.). Some states are allowing fishers to take and kill as many fish as they want, as "they're doomed either way" due to drought (Bush).

With the way temperatures are heading, we can expect billions of human deaths. Every decade is hotter than the previous ones (Roper). We have a little over 3 years to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.8 degrees Fahrenheit) (Climate Clock). That's to limit it to 1.5, not to prevent it from reaching 1.5. Global temperatures are expected to rise between 2.3 to 2.5 degrees (4.14 to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) within this century alone (UN Environment Programme). It could reach 2 degrees (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) as soon as 2030 (Worland, WMO, Hansen et al.). When this happens, we will be sacrificing roughly a billion human lives, which governments are already preparing for (Ripple et al., Pearce and Parncutt, Harvey). Pass 3 degrees (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and you're looking at the deaths of of over four billion people, a rise in sea level from 6 to 19 meters, and the inability for human civilization to function as normal (Laville, IFoA, UN Climate Summit). We could reach 3 degrees (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) as soon as 2050 (Erdmann and Schmitt). Almost half of all top climate scientists think that 3 degrees or more will be reached this century. 77% think it will be 2.5 degrees (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) or more, and only 6% think it will stop at 1.5 (2.8 degrees Fahrenheit) (Carrington).

Things are getting worse at a pace that's that's faster than we are acting (Climate Action Tracker). We as a species continue to soar past climate deadlines, and we and all other species are feeling the effects (UN Environment Programme, Dunne). This is a human-caused polycrisis, not something natural (IPCC, ClientEarth, xkcd, NASA, UNEP).

Please note that "global warming" is an outdated term for climate change as a whole. Climate change includes so much more than just the planet warming (Harvey, Leiserowitz et al.).

Let me make this clear and emphasize what's at stake here: we are on track for multiple countries to disappear, over a million species to be extinct, and over a billion human deaths. If near half of the top climate scientists are to be believed and we continue at that pace, then we reach over four billion human deaths, a third of all species extinct, and societal collapse within the next 25 years. It's planetary suicide.

But think of the stockholders!

You may be thinking about what's next. What do we do? Thinking that it's not your fault because you reduce, reuse, and recycle like they taught you in grade school. The scientists will handle it, you don't need to worry about it. As long as we carpool, we'll save the day. Renewable energy is the future!

The truth is that that kind of thinking will never save us. Scientists know how to handle it, but society doesn't let them. We already have all the science we could possibly need, we're just not using it because it isn't profitable (Gulledge, Cristophers, Wallace-Wells, Blakely). Only 10% of emissions can be reduced through individual actions alone (Hernandez). Big oil invented the idea of your carbon footprint in 2004 (Solnit). Scientists have been telling us all this for years (Kalmus). You've been lied to about the causes of the crisis.

It's been a while since you've heard or thought much on Greta Thunberg, hasn't it? Remember, the Swedish climate activist known for her young age and opposition towards climate change? Famous for her "How dare you!" sound bite at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit? Hopefully you hadn't forgotten about her or the impending doom this planet faces between all the circuses. She certainly hasn't. Something has changed with Thunberg, though, specifically with how the media covers her. It wasn't her career or her love life or something that changed the media, and therefore the public's, perception of her, but instead it was the very thing that brought her to the spotlight: her activism. She started to fight the same thing causing the climate crisis, the Gaza genocide, the military industrial complex, the rise of AI, and much of the other problems facing the world en masse today: the systems in place (Flakin).

Just 100 companies are responsible for 70% of emissions and just 32 are responsible for half (Riley, Carrington). Billionaires emit more carbon pollution in 90 minutes than the average person does in an entire lifetime (Thériault). The emissions of the richest 1% are as much as that of the bottom two thirds and account for a fourth of the entire world's emissions (Oxfam, Harvey). The world's wealthiest 10% of people are responsible for two thirds of all global warming (Schöngart et al.). Big oil has known about their definitive effect on climate change since the 1950s, yet they popularized the idea of the carbon footprint to make it your fault (Noor, Solnit). We've known about the possibility of human-caused climate change since 1896 (Sample, Revkin). With the over $100 billion in profit ($300 million daily) that the oil company Saudi Aramco makes, making it the most profitable company in existence, you could solve world hunger 5 times, give every student in the US free tuition, and still have billions left over (Gratton, UN, Hanson). Climate change disproportionately affects impoverished people, sparing the wealthy ones (Rayner and Malone, Ripple et al.). GDPs continue to soar while we face the extinction of life itself (Clark). Just 30% of our society's resources could give every human on Earth decent living standards, which they currently don't have (Hickel and Sullivan). Current climate initiatives conveniently ignore the wealthy class of people (Nielson et al.). All of this is happening while the wealthy build bunkers and spaceships to escape what they've done and create surveillance states and private prisons to dodge the rest (Rushkoff, Osnos, SpaceX, Youn and Theodoruou, NYSE, Ley).

Thunberg hasn't gone anywhere. Instead, she's shifted her focus to the oppression at the hands of the powerful in general. The exact CEOs and billion-dollar corporations causing the climate crisis. The same ones that were frequent fliers to Jeffrey Epstein's island. She used to be a favorite of the media, now shes barely brought up. If she is brought up, it's either talking about her in a negative light and/or mentioning one of her most recent endeavors supplying aid directly to the people of Palestine, and being promptly kidnapped by Israel in response (Flakin). I had a hard time finding quotes from her due to the amount of hatred towards her that seems to permeate through all news sources, big and small; I eventually just had to check out her book for myself at the library. Like her, it's time we shift to the real problems of society, too.

But hey, at least we were able to trade our planetary demise for cash! Sure, billion dollar corporations like Google and Microsoft lie about their impacts on the environment that already passed their previously-set goals... but they're making record profit, so does it really matter (Turek, St. John, Microsoft, MacroTrends, MacroTrends)? Just 100 oil and gas companies make more than $30 million an hour profiting off of the US-Iran War (Carrington). Despite the fact that we make enough food for 1.5 times the global population, 1 in 11 people go hungry while detrimentally polluting food companies profit (Holt-Giménez et al., FAO et al., Popli) People are winning money off of the death of our planet with prediction markets like Kalshi (Cerf et al., Lieberman). Oil companies manage to participate in both greenwashing and pinkwashing (ClientEarth, Yoder, ExxonMobil). Sam Altman, founder and CEO of OpenAI (the creator of ChatGPT), summarized it best when he said "y'know, I think AI will probably, like, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world, but, in the meantime... uh... there will be great companies created with serious machine learning" (ControlAI).

Governments and political parties aren't putting in effort to try and stop this, either. They refuse to. 95% of all countries failed to submit UN climate pledges (Dunne). The Paris Agreement was the bare minimum (Rose). The United States is doing what the United States does best and not caring about how it's decisions affect anyone else within the planet or the country (Calma, Joselow, McKinnon). After the Environmental Protection Agency of the US announced it would stop considering human lives saved when ruling on pollution, they said that keeping environmental protection laws in place "would be unreasonable given their futility" (Doniger and Drajem, Joselow) The White House pardons people who violated vehicle emissions controls under the Clear Air Act (Price). The members of the ruiling class are the only ones that could force us to fix this mess, yet we're still in it. And why would they fix it? Both US parties, Democrats and Republicans alike, are part of the problem. They're both paid by the same corporate lobbies that would fail if they couldn't exploit the planet for it's resources (Integrity Index, OpenSecrets). In 2024 alone, the oil and gas lobby spent over $150 million on US politicans on both sides of the aisle (OpenSecrets). They both lead the same military that is the single largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gasses (Thombs et al.). They both meet with oil execs directly in the White House (Waldman, Brown et al.). The solution for this problem does not lie in voting for the right flavor of US imperialism come four years from now, it comes from direct action, community support, and systematic change.

And the economists' response to this, the death of billions of humans and millions of species? According to the World Economic Forum, it's trust that the markets will do the right thing, carbon credits, and solar panel startups (Turner, Turner). The winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics says that 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming - which is worse than those billions dead nightmare scenarios from before - is optimal (Keen). Not only does all this completely ignore the urgency required due to the fact that we are slowly and painfully dying, it also ignores the fact that those solutions alone won't solve the polycrisis, it ignores the fact that those solutions aren't being implemented at a scale that would have any impact, it ignores the fact that companies and governments are breaking their climate obligations with no repercussions, and it ignores the underlying systemic issues in place (Greenfield, Toussaint, Embedding Project, Chalendar and Benson, Turek, St. John, Microsoft, MacroTrends, MacroTrends, CAN, Tso and Mehling). That leaves us with nothing but hope that climate change will be solved by the system that's brought us poverty, AI generated "music", factory farms, private prisons, copyrighted seeds, and climate change itself. We're asked to trust their companies with doing what is right, but we can't even trust them to not partner with the world's largest emitters or fly on private jets to get to the Forum where they discuss the trust we need to have (Parekh, WEF).

Economists discussions on climate change seem to always go down the road of the dollars lost due to policies like zero emissions by 20XX, rather than the species lost due to wildfires. The article about the report that shows how four billion humans will die that I cited earlier is titled "Global economy could face 50% loss in GDP between 2070 and 2090 from climate shocks, say actuaries" rather than "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE" - or maybe something more reasonable like "Four billion human deaths expected from climate shocks, say actuaries" (Laville). The so-called invisible hand of the market has deemed pollution to be profitable. Even the World Economic Forum itself can't deny that "the capitalist system has failed to respond to the challenge of climate change fast enough" and that "capitalism has impeded effective action" (Turner).

We have everything we need to stop this (UOCS). We know exactly how to end the fossil fuel industry, usher in renewable energy, and cease our pumping of CO₂ into the atmosphere. We know how to not create landfills. We know how to build solar panels and windmills, how to make free green public transit, and how to stop war. We aren't waiting for some new miracle cure in a new scientific study to solve our climate woes. We have all that already. We've been working on it since the 1800s (Sample, Revkin). There are hundreds upon hundreds of ways we could go about solving this, but we won't (Project Drawdown, Revkin). All this is not to advocate for doomerism. We aren't waiting on science, we're waiting on us. Waiting on us to do something about the world we created (Rose).

The companies and the top 1% aren't doing all their evil in spite of the world, they're being rewarded by the world in doing them. They are incentivized to destroy, kill, and profit while being discouraged from doing anything good, unless it can get them some good press or an award. This is a struggle as old as time; weaker people being disenfranchised by more powerful people while being told to hate whatever marginalized group it is that era. The only difference is that, now, we have all the scientific innovation we could ask for - yet when it tells us very clearly what's going to happen and what's at stake, we ignore it. The people at the top only get richer and richer while the people at the bottom and young people face the end of it all. We continue to use the things they sell to us without caring about what other uses the tech and money is going to. We consume their media without a care in the world. If we want to stand a chance at saving our one and only planet, it will take all of us to realize that us the rich and powerful people and systems - along with the politicians from all sides they pay off - are the common enemy to our salvation.

In a blog post about why we shouldn't worry about the climate, billionaire friend of Epstein Bill Gates said that "what's good for prosperity is bad for the environment" (Glazer, Gates). I can't help but agree with him. Prosperity, in the sense of profit, seems to be mutually exclusive with the our planet's health, and we've made our choice. Despite the current and impending doom, companies, countries, and individuals are incentivized to continue to pollute, loot, and destroy by their ever-increasing revenues.

There's a reason we learn about doing stuff like recycling to save the planet from a young age. A reason society makes you feel bad for using a plastic straw over a disintegrating paper one (for the turtles, of course). Before we are even conscious enough to fully understand what apocalypse means, we are told the apocalypse is coming because you didn't do enough. Not because of the extremely lucrative fossil fuel industry, not because of rich, white, male nepo babies who could solve world hunger with their wealth if they wanted to, but because you opted to use a plastic water bottle instead of refilling a reusable one. If we were taught the real causes, they wouldn't stand a chance. We know how to fix the problem, but we won't because our society prioritizes money over science. To put my intentions plainly, I'm suggesting for you to become class conscious and anti-capitalist.

Otherwise, things are pretty great

At least all the other things our species does in our current pursuit of wealth is as noble as it could be. I heard that, once the wealth has trickled down to you and and you've became a billionaire, a guy named Jeffrey Epstein will take you to hang out with British royalty and CEOs on a private island! Those impoverished Venezuelan children just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work a little harder, then they'll be trillionaires - just like the great man Musk (Binnie and Wang, Saini and Nishant, Condon)! At least Adam Smith didn't kill a million bajillion people like Karl Marx did.

Workers and children in the global south mine for the cobalt used in your iPhone for pennies a day (Gross). Despite our developed world, millions struggle to maintain access to food, water, and shelter while the richest of us live lavishly. There are 28 vacant homes for every homeless person in the US (UWNCA). Private prison and immigrant concentration camp companies are publicly traded on the stock market while their employees run over protesters in their personal luxury vehicles (NYSE, Ley). The millions of us that suffer with mental illness are told it's a personal shortcoming, rather than a symptom of larger issues (NAMI). Our imperialist governments bomb, kill, take over, go to war, and steal in the name of oil and profits (regardless of who's in office) (Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Priya, Brown University). Data centers are built despite the local residents votes and trillion dollar grocery store empires throw perfect food out just so people who need it can't get it without paying (Goodman and Two Bulls, Harris et al., Tan, Skibell, Covert). You can patent seeds, life itself, meaning farmers need to pay for the right to replant their seeds and can be sued over misuse (Jenney, Scotten, Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser, McHughen and Wager, OSSI). Both sides of the political spectrums take money from and send weapons to regimes that, according to anyone who would have the authority to say so, is committing a genocide (Integrity Index, UN, Graham-Harrison, UN, MAP). Our billionaire-owned news tells us how great billionaires are and that if we want to survive our day-to-day or the incoming apocolypse we should just skip breakfast or not eat rice (Russell, Rubin, Quinn and Hodges). Depending on where you are, corporations can be considered people and vote in elections (Totenberg, Hals).

We grow farther apart from each other despite the big tech that pinky-promises to bring us closer than ever. People work multiple jobs just to put food on the table for their family that they don't get to see because of how much they work. We tell our kids to go outside, when we're banning them from and killing the little outside that isn't roads or parking lots. We worry about what new dress we'll buy on Temu while the 10th Gazan child this minute has their legs blown off after a Palantir drone found them daring to try and get food (UNRWA, UN). The biggest three record labels own upwards of 70% of our musical arts (Howie). We discriminate against the minority of the week, whether it be women, other races, or other sexualities. Your teacher instructs you on how epic Manifest Destiny was on your Google Chromebook - just don't think about the tens of millions of Native Americans we killed along the way (Kent, HMH). The US healthcare system kills and puts people into debt while their executives make trillions (HealthDay, Tanne). 6 days a week, while watching the news our media oligarchs feed us, we hate our neighbors; then we love our neighbors on Sundays. We worship a killed Palestinian baby while stomping on everything he stood for and sending our tax dollars to kill more Palestinian babies (UN, Sharp).

We're so desensitized to all that that we don't even realize that the chicken you got from Walmart you're eating for dinner just wanted to live, same as you. We attend our state police-sanctioned parade/protest, brought to you by Target, while the same force tear gasses citizens protesting their murder of a one year old baby and while the same force kicks over the memorial for the woman they just shot in the face (Gallant, Lybrand et al., Valko). Even if we try voting for a party that claims that they'll make it better for us, we look past the billions that the US has killed, is killing, and will kill in the pursuit of "freedom".

None of these things (including climate change) are separate issues, unless you make them as such. You could spend your days fighting each of them individually, or fight them all at once. What do we expect in a system that relies on infinite growth within a finite universe?

What is to be done?

Are you not tired of doomscrolling through tragedy after tragedy? Tired of wondering if you have rights tomorrow? Do you want your children to have a liveable atmosphere? Who am I kidding: you're going to get on TikTok after this, aren't you? The planet can wait. I'm sure Trump was right when he said communists were just evil woke leftist islamists with TDS, you probably shouldn't listen to me.

Considering the rate we're going, many scientists, philosophers, organizers, campaigns, and academics have begun to speak about the Earth as if it is over - as if we lost. They are saying the fight is no longer about stopping climate change, but about making it as bearable as possible (Read, Spencer and Dowell, Legree, Dyke and Rockström, Mav, Franzen). That we're too stupid to stop it (Lovelock). They aren't wrong.

For one last time, please recall the severity of the situation at hand and what's at stake with climate change (that being everything, or at least everything for those who don't fuck off to Mars with Elon). Billions of deaths? Societal collapse? Yes? Good. Thankfully, climate change psychological distress leads to an increase in collective action (Ballew et al.). Please, please don't forget. If not for our planet's sake, then for mine - I'm tired of feeling crazy and alone by being burdened with this knowledge.

As the species that caused the problem, we owe it to all the other living things on this planet to make it a place they can live in. As the citizens that allow the Epstein class to methodically burn our planet, we owe it to our future generations to take back control. As colonizers that took the land, we owe it to native plant, animal, and human populations to bring it back to what it once was. As residents of the one and only Earth and direct beneficiaries and losers of climate change, we are all at fault for the continued threat to all life due to our passivity. We failed ourselves and all the other living things who depend on us. We will continue to fail for as long as we don't do something about the rather greedy elephants in the room.

Again, this wasn't just to make you sad. It was to inspire you to hopefully care, learn more, and do something. And all that isn't to say climate wins aren't happening either: Internationally, and more recently in the US, solar has overtaken coal (Wiatros-Motyka and Rangelova, Mishra). People overwhelmingly oppose data centers in their area (Gallup, Gramlich et al.). As the climate becomes more of an obvious problem, people will act even more. I could list smaller, local climate wins for hours (Good Good Good, Good Climate News).

If you're anything like me or the other 84% of young people who think we have failed to take care of the planet, then you aren't optimistic about the outlook based on the way things are trending (Hickman et al.). My goal with this was not to suggest that, because this issue is largely caused by the groups and systems in place, that it is hopeless. This is not reason for you to say "welp, we tried" and give up on saving the world. Even if we aren't ready for revolution, then organizing, advocacy, mutual aid, and individual action are still moves we can and need to take. Below are tangible things to do and think about. While it's too late to undo much of the death and destruction we've doomed plants, animals, and us to, we still have some time to correct course to something better.

Things are only going to improve if you actually do something. Not just sitting at home, scrolling, and complaining, but actually getting involved. People who actually do something about the world are happier (Lubrano, Okulicz-Kozaryn et al., Klar and Kasser, Stanley et al.). I don't believe that you truly care about these issues if you aren't doing anything about them. I'm normally pessimistic as to if people will actually organize and try to change the world, so prove me wrong. Please.
See also: If you want things to change, you have to do something

There's a lot more that politics can be than checking off red or blue at the ballot box. It's crucial you realize that if we want to stop the incoming apocalypse. Our salvation is not with politicians and parties that prioritize economic growth or taking money from AIPAC over our continued survival. As environmentalist and anarchist Edward Abbey put it, "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." Capitalism didn't build your iPhone, workers did. We need systemic change, away from systems that benefit the oligarchs killing us all. Something that benefits us all. Participate in mutual aid in your local community. Organize locally, nationally, and internationally. Read something other than what you read for school. Maybe start with Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti. Follow it up with The Lorax, I don't know. Check out the links below for more information and books. The video Eco-Socialism Explained explains what the world could like like and how it could function better than I ever could. As an aside, I think this essay (and this site in general) makes me a terrorist according to Trump (Milman, Boguslaw, White House).

Fight systems, not people. Online debate will literally get you know where (they're not a game of who has better facts, it's a game of who has better persuasion). While yes, bigots and racists suck, they are symptoms of one problem. It's a waste of effort to fight a billion-front war with all the people you could fight against. Fight a one-front war instead (GMS).

Be annoying. Don't shut up about how we are all, quite literally, going to die. Make your friends, your family, and strangers hate you with how much you talk about it. The more we talk about it, the greater an issue it becomes among us. The more it enters the cultural zeitgeist, the more likely that something will change. Make people uncomfortable. We should be uncomfortable. We deserve it. Use that energy and direct it to something meaningful.

Eat less meat and dairy, or none at all. Go vegetarian, if not vegan. Go "vegan, except burgers," as they say, if there's one or multiple foods or products you think you can't live without. Anything is better than nothing; just because you aren't perfect doesn't mean it didn't matter. Not mentioning any ethical concerns that come with consuming another living, feeling being and their secretions, the biggest way to reduce your individual climate impact is by avoiding meat and dairy (Carrington). People concern themselves with the environmental impact of AI, but 50 grams of beef is as bas as over 600,000 chatbot queries (not to suggest that you should be using AI) (Hoyle).
See also: Be Vegan

On what to do with your money, don't support companies that are fine with us ending it all. Switch your bank to one that doesn't fund the fossil fuel industry. Buy used and second hand or fix old things before buying new. Stop using big tech platforms, which is something I've made a guide on.
See also: The rest of the site

Help to tend to plants, if not a whole garden. Bonus points if it's a community garden kind of thing where you're both creating ethical, sustainable food while helping to prevent and stop food insecurity in your local area. Don't maintain a water-guzzling, ugly grass lawn.

Stay informed and involved with direct action movements, organizations, people, and, sadly, the news. See bellow for lots of links.

Generally be kind to the climate in the ways they teach you in school. I know I just trashed (get it) on things like this when compared to the big things destroying the planet on the large scale, but it's still important and it isn't nothing. Yes, only 10% of emissions could be reduced through individual actions alone, but 10% is still a lot considering the extent to which we're killing the planet (Hernandez). At worst, it can't hurt. Change is only possible when people work towards it in every possible way they can. I did not write this to dissuade you from doing basic climate action. Reduce, reuse, and recycle. Go zero waste. Carpool and take public or non-motorized forms of transit. Unplug and/or turn off your devices, machines, water, and lights when possible. Avoid buying plastic when possible, like by using bars of soap over plastic bottles. Go paperless, like by refusing paper receipts. Properly dispose of batteries. Do the things, but don't beat yourself up about them. Do beat yourself up about not attacking systems.

Further Information and Links

Here are further things to read, watch, see, view, join, follow, etc. If I could get you to follow any of the accounts, other than my own, it would be earthlyeducation. My favorites/the ones that I especially recommend you to check out are in bold. I tried to link to their websites, link trees, or Substacks before their accounts on billion-dollar social media platforms so you can find and follow them on all platforms. You really should get off social media and actually do something with your anger and desire, though.

I highly recommend you find local groups. If I could demand it, I would. Volunteer, mutual aid, conservation, and political actions groups specifically. If you're at a college, your college will have something to join where you can actually make a different in your local community. Once I found some local groups, I checked the accounts that they were following to find even more.

If you ask me, I'd recommend following all these people and orgs on every platform they're on so you can see their content and amplify their messages. Maybe that can hijack your doomscrolling into something that actually matters. If you need even more, I'm following a couple hundred climate and political accounts on my Instagram.