What if we, as humanity, simply worked less... be less "productive" accordingly primarily to capitalistic principles—and instead spent ~4days/week reconnecting with the environment. Sounds crazy, but I feel like I can't imagine a world with a majority saying they care about the environment, and go behind its back and still extract every last drop of resources.
I feel that this sounds extreme, but not so much when most systems currently in place haven't been too successful:
recycling is basically a sham- has potential, but currently it is simply not what people believe and can't function until the information asymmetry is completely gone.
renewable energy- 1000000000x times better than coal, fossil fuels, and natural gas... but still I don't think continuing our increase in electricity is necessarily the way to go.
industry- it doesn't matter how "green" we're making a product if it still requires resources it is innately more unsustainable at a large scale. We have to widely address consumerism, but no brand is going to advertise that... Maybe an trendy shop in San Francisco that sells you $200 items and tells you to only have 1 outfit at a time... but not to the mainstream.
food- well... ever since the agricultural revolution, population has unsustainably skyrocketed and now we have significant issues with food distribution, having some cultures waste tonnes of food while others starve. And well, deforestation due to agriculture and ranching happening currently all over the world simply breaks my heart.
water- more than 60% of our own bodies, and responsible for Life. Water scarcity is growing and we are not managing it appropriately at all.
"offsetting your emissions" niehhh- I believe some companies are doing better than others, but this is a band-aid for a broken bone. We need to recover from disastrous deforestation, the answer is more than planting trees, it is recovering entire ecosystems AND motivating people to to lower their carbon foot-print— not pay more to feel better about emitting them.
I understand that the quality of life has dramatically increased the past few decades; but does that exclude the idea of changing the way we perceive our surroundings and society. Humans get really creative when they're forced to, so I feel like with a very drastic change their lifestyle, some really cool and beautiful things would happen.
At first, I would first address people who hate their jobs and are the most disconnected to nature.... that just seems easy. Activists, sure. Smart lazy people, sure. Regular lazy people, also sure. And anybody else, I don't see why not...
