It's part stupidity, willful ignorance and part selfishness. A lot of people "in charge" of things are at least 35yr old plus. they figure they'll be long gone by the time things go to "****" if they even believe there's merit to climate change. Kind of sad how they don't give a d*** about the future of their kids and grandkids etc.
They/we keep convincing them/ourselves that it's not a big deal because the change isn't overtly dramatically different in our workaday lives. We're a reactive society. There's not been enough of an "obvious" "disasterous" change to "react" yet. Basically things have to go to extreme sh** before people care. noone wants to sacrifice much to lower their carbon footprints. or at least very few people would make drastic changes to their daily lives.
Its a large part learned helplessness. Because we all share the Earth. We share it with Countries like China which impact the globe immensely. Canada, for its part is small fry and our national impact on global warming is not all that significant and our forests uptake Carbon as well. No matter what Canada does its outstrapped by what say China, Russia, India, etc do. Global cooperation is NOT occurring.
But domestically theres a lot of activities people should reconsider.;
If people truly care about the environment stop Offroading NOW (absolutely obliterates habitat and watersheds. . Stop burning copious wood at campsites or in the city. Stop Golfing Now (more arable land dedicated to this sport than any other rec endeavor on the globe. Golfing is particularly obscene, and golf courses are bad for the environment not even considering the massive space they take up across the globe.
While you're at it stop Air travel immediately. Planes require obscene amounts of fuel to take off and todays system of short hops, Edmonton-Calgary joint pickup type flights is nuts. Air Travel should ONLY exist for international travel, if that. Its time to do away with domestic or continental travel NOW. FTR I travel rail whenever possible. RARELY fly anywhere.
Further, stop buying vehicles. A family should get back to the former mode of one vehicle per family (we have done this our whole lives and my parents did too) and have got by fine. We even provide a lot of people without vehicles rides for shopping etc. It not only cuts environmental footprint it saves money.
Reduce meat consumption. (I've done this my whole adult life, even been a vegetarian for extended periods)
Stop buying so many disposable tech devices which are extremely harmful to the environment through manufacture and disposal.
Stop Wanting HUGE houses that are 2-3 times the size of houses built just 70yrs ago. People aren't that much bigger, families are smaller. Who needs todays mammoth houses?
Stop using plastic bags.
Those points are just a start.
Stop overconsuming pretty much everything.
So walk the walk. Its easy to talk about what should be done, people not caring, actually go forth and make changes and model those to everybody you know. But when it comes down to it people often don't want to inconvenience their own lifestyle. Somebody else should do it..
