> You need pioneers, people who show it is possible to live a good life without destroying the planet.

The thing is, it isn't. People aren't islands. Our societies, our economies, are structured in a way that make it really hard to keep your impact on the environment low. It's hard to give up on a car in a car-oriented town or country. It's hard to give up on plastic where every single thing you buy has some in it. It's hard to give up on meat when it's the most cost-effective form of nutrition you have available. And then, when you add up all those sacrifices - the result is not living a good life. It's mortification on principle. It's not something you can reasonably expect everyone to follow.

(At a risk of bringing religion into the topic - Jesus has said, "If you want to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."[0], and yet almost no Christian in history ever actually did that. No, these words are used as comfort for those already poor - an explanation, not a plan for life. Environmental self-sacrifice, which doesn't have a mainstream belief system backing it, can hardly be expected to fare better.)

Add to that, most people have no fucking clue what is or isn't destroying the planet. Hell, I consider myself somewhat broadly educated, striving for evidence-based, rational thinking, and I still admit I only have vague idea. There are some obvious things one can do, like "don't fly if you can avoid it", "don't use a car[1] if you can avoid it". Then there are plenty of wrong ideas, like "always unplug your chargers" (negligible gain for significant "I've made an effort" cost) or "use reusable bags instead of single-use plastic ones" (actually plastic bags come way ahead environmentally). Most other changes popular articles list tend to be hard to evaluate - they may or may not help, depending on various second-order effects and proper accounting of impact across product/behavior lifetime, which is often nearly impossible to do.

And all of that - all of that - relies on almost everyone making those same sacrifices simultaneously[2], so the effect is noticeable, all while people not making the sacrifice are visibly better off[3]. Meanwhile, corporations and governments are the ones making the most impact[4], and importantly, they hold the biggest levers. A single law, or a single contract change, can make much more impact than thousands or millions of people abandoning everything and moving to live in the woods as hunter-gatherers.

The way I see it, trying to convince everyone to make personal sacrifices is a fool's errand, and insisting on this as a solution is sabotaging our future. This is a systemic problem, we need systemic solutions.

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[0] - Matthew 19:21

[1] - I say "use", not "own", because if you're just using taxis to do the same trips that you would with a car, you're hardly achieving anything.

[2] - And continuously, as the market will keep adapting to people's preferences, offering new goods and services ruining the planet.

[3] - I'll just defer to "Meditations on Moloch" on that point. It's an obligatory intro reading for any discussion about any of the world problems - because underneath, they're all just aspect of the same issues with human coordination. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/.

[4] - As a random example, try stacking up household water or energy use, or greenhouse emissions, against business and industrial ones.