The tipping point has been reached. We can't prevent it now. So the question is, what do we do about it, especially given that, to be frank, the best thing that could happen for Planet Earth would be for the human race to vanish.
Thing is, partly due to income levels and partly due to choice, we live a reasonably sustainable/low impact lifestyle in this household. Our three worst vices are the car (which is necessary for one household member, a registered nurse, to get to work and make a living, and since my family lives 500 miles away, travelling to see them by car is - just - less damaging than flying; trains are prohibitively expensive), the amount of electronics we have (necessary for other household member to earn a living and, again, slightly less damaging than travelling all round the place for meetings - lots of remote working here); and our pets (two cats). Oh, and we still eat a small amount of organic meat, locally reared and delivered, and sustainable fish, mainly locally caught and delivered. Fruit and veg, eggs and butter come from the local community farm once a month and we are investigating milk deliveries in glass bottles which can be washed and reused again and again. The other vice is fizzy drinks, which we now manage with a Sodastream - not ideal, but better than buying endless plastic bottles of cola.
Other than that, we rarely buy new clothes (underwear, shoes and work uniform excepted); the rest come almost exclusively from charity shops; we are library members, we read ebooks, we recycle books where we can (charity shops again); we don't smoke, we drink alcohol maybe once or twice a year, and when we go on holiday it's usually the UK or maybe, as a treat, Europe. We use beeswax wraps and sandwich boxes, flasks and coffee cups for lunches.
We cook a lot from scratch and freeze the leftovers. We have a breadmaker. Leftovers get put in the compost bin or into the biomass boiler collection which our local authority runs. We repurpose just about everything we can until it falls apart and can no longer be used.
Overall, we are all going to have to start thinking smaller, and smarter. Solar panels, clockwork, using the power of wind, water, and the sun to power our homes. (We've been watching the cost of portable solar panels with interest as we can't put them on the roof, we live in a converted house so it's not just our decision.)
And then there are the floods. I don't understand why we aren't talking to the Dutch more than we are and learning from them about houses on stilts and making sure electrical sockets are wired into the walls above the level any floodwater would reach. What is this British obsession with having electrical sockets near the skirting boards??
Then there's continuing to buy local, and support local businesses. I lived in Devon for four years, and from a green perspective much of the West Country is way ahead of the rest of England.
Am I worried about the environment? Yes. I'm worried because we have materialistic, ostrich-like leaders who don't seem to realise, or don't want to admit, that if we continue as we are, we won't have an ecology, never mind an economy.
We don't have our own kids, but we have several nieces and nephews of varying ages. I take encouragement from the fact that the older ones do seem to be pretty aware, ecologically. Their involvement with their local Scouting group (which has a brilliant female leader) means they've learned bushcraft, and independence, and getting on with others, all of which will be essential to survival in the decades ahead. I
I certainly don't think demonising and declaring groups like Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion is the right approach. As a friend's husband (by no means wealthy but took early retirement, and starting to get involved with Extinction Rebellion) said when we were chatting recently: "I want to be on the right side of history".