This recent version of climate doomerism lacks all practicality and provides no solutions other than total tyranny of the state over the individual, for your own good, of course. It appears to me that the movement has been fully captured by politicians who are no longer interested in actual science or engineering of solutions.
Personally, I checked out about a year ago. As I suspect the people pushing this message the hardest don't actually want to work with me to improve the future, they just want to control my purchasing decisions.
We can't say "everyone has the freedom to pollute as much as they want" and get through this.
From here you could address the wage issues that cause this amount of shipping to occur in the first place. You could make the fleet more efficient and use newer technologies and fuels that pollute less. You could simply incorporate the cost of that pollution into the "cheap" consumer products so conveyed through one of any of a dozen means. You could do all of these at once.
So, my point would be, where is the prioritization here? It seems like corporate profits come first, then environmentalism entirely at the consumers expense comes next, mostly to make the corporations feel better about their blood money. And.. I'm supposed to be on board with this because of "sustainability?"
I'm on board. The issues do actually need to be addressed. I don't believe we are currently doing that in any meaningful way.
For example, living in a suburban house with multiple trucks/SUVs and driving a lot is seen as part of a lifestyle that borders on essential. Suggesting that people can drive smaller, more efficient vehicles will receive such vitriol in so many parts of society. Suggesting that cars should pay for their road use will get people attacking you in online forums. Even the right-leaning Tax Foundation believes that drivers pay for about half of their road costs - and they don't account for things like pollution [1]. Drivers will say that their gas taxes, tolls, and registration fees fund the roads they use, but that really isn't the case. When we map out carbon emissions, cities do very well and suburbs often use 2-3x more than cities [2].
It's not just a campaign against science and facts. It's also a campaign that pushes a narrative that many of the things that pollute are what you should desire in life. You should want a big grass lawn. You should want a large vehicle that can fit 5-10x more than you normally carry on a given day.
I think it's also tough because many of the things we need in order to combat climate change will require an amount of change that can cause resistance. Taking space away from cars for bike or bus lanes means that if you made the choice to live in a car-dependent area, you can find your commute getting slightly worse. It's usually not as bad as drivers fear because more efficient transit options often divert a lot of people who would end up as traffic with the drivers, but it does make things slightly worse. Housing is the biggest investment in most households and two-thirds of Americans own their homes - higher in car-dependent areas. Telling such a large group of people that they made a slightly worse choice is hard. Even if their investment is secure, it might not be as positive as they had assumed.
Right now in Arizona, there are huge water issues in communities that haven't secured long-term water resources. People bought houses, invested their money, and they want the government to ensure their investment is prosperous - which means having access to affordable, abundant water. They don't want to be told that they shouldn't have built outside of the Scottsdale municipal boundaries and that there was a reason the land was cheap there. Likewise, suburban owners don't want to be told that their location isn't as sustainable and that in order to ensure life on the planet we'll need to wean them off of parts of their lifestyle (which will become more expensive compared to urban dwellers).
It's hard to change how people think about their world and their position in it. So many people think of cities as "that's now how I live." We've spent the better part of a century painting a picture of what prosperity means that is now running into the reality of climate change. It's not just the campaign against science. It's also about how we've shaped what people think of as good and desirable; what they see as their lifestyle and even what they see as essential. There are lots of suburban Democrats who believe in climate change, want the government to address it, but will balk at the idea of driving less, increasing housing density, or living in a slightly smaller home that doesn't require as much fuel. They'd rather talk about giving up straws while their cars put out way more micro plastics from their tires. They want to find the things that they can "sacrifice" without major lifestyle changes.
The campaign against science is important. I think the social perception of what defines prosperity and a good lifestyle is also important. It's been shaped by decades of policy and media and it can be hard to combat even when you're in a circle of people who believe in climate change.
Which is why I'm not optimistic about being able to stop catastrophic climate change at this point. The vast majority of people aren't willing to make the sacrifices required - in fact many of them sneer at the whole idea of making sacrifices. The hyper-individualism in the US and elsewhere doesn't allow us to think about changing our behavior for the greater good.
I live in a liberal area. Hardly any Trump voters here. Getting people to drive slightly less or even allowing a bike lane to allow other people to drive slightly less is viewed as the apocalypse.
The information war rages on both sides. But the fact remains that too much doomerism without any clear way for an individual to make a difference and politicians carrying on like normal leads to apathy. Our movies and TV are already saturated with barren hellscapes. Why confront the actual reality when you feel powerless to stop it, and doing anything necessarily means austerity?