2. once again it seems like they’ll just adapt as humans always have.
my point is this apocalyptic behavior by activists is counter productive and offputting. it means we can’t have a reasonable discussion about solutions and trade offs because “the world is ending in 12 years”. this led to me just giving up because we can’t have conversation
What is known is that our entire eco-system is failing to adapt fast enough to keep up with the rate of change - what makes you think we can beat it?
Its disappointingly reductive to throw the towel in and, really, that point of view is no better than 'the world is ending in 12 years'
To deal with a problem you must first acknowledge that it exists - any action is clearly going to beat sticking ones head in the sand.
Not if the action makes things worse than they would have been if you'd done nothing. And given our very poor understanding of how the climate and ecosystems work, any action we take that is not an obvious benefit (like "bring more people out of poverty" or "make our infrastructure more robust", both of which are things we certainly should be doing) is much more likely to make things worse than to make things better.
Tell me which of those is going to make the situation worse?
Recycle costs energy.
Reuse should be ok, as long as whatever it is is in fact reusable.
But these three hardly cover all possible actions.