When I was younger, this was super important to me. It was probably my top priority, and I tried to maximize sustainability... lowered my consumption, ate bulk organic vegan foods, minimized electricity and water usage, biked everywhere, got a vasectomy, bought solar power addons and carbon credits, whatever. I majored in environmental science and then worked in the sector for a decade.
Over time I realized how little people really cared about any of it, how little mindspace it occupied relative to their day to day, or even relative to other big issues like the culture wars, the homeless, Ukraine, the Middle East, etc. And the climate situation just kept getting worse, even as wildfires got more frequent and intense for the western US.
And then COVID hit and that was a real turning point for me. I'd never have expected such stupidity, between the anti vax and the anti masks movements, with people signing up to die and kill each other for no real reason at all aside from some misguided personal vendetta against community norms, as though keeping someone alive was an attack on their personal liberty. It was a real eye opener for me in terms of large scale crowd and population behaviors, seeing selfishness increase even as the death toll skyrocketed. And that was against a common enemy, easily witnessed, with acute and deadly effects.
If we can't even deal with an urgent crisis like that, what chance do we have? Climate, invisible and operating on a time scale of decades, doesn't stand a chance.
I've learned to accept that our species is pretty fucked, lol, and my sole remaining prayer is that AI will one day grow powerful enough to benevolently rule over us (heh, probably not the sentence you expected to read). I wouldn't bet on humans having some sort of overnight moral awakening.
Maybe slowly over centuries we can refine our ethics, but by and large I've come to believe we are fundamentally limited by our ape biology and primitive brains. We evolved to survive and thrive in small groups in hostile environments, not a hyperconnected overcrowded world of 8 billion all fighting over finite land, resources, wealth, and even water and atmosphere.
These days I've largely given up on the idea that the world will be meaningfully better in my lifetime. I think it will get much, much worse, and capitalist dystopias will become the norm. I still try to contribute (recently decided to go back to school to get an environmental engineering degree), but that's really more of a bandaid at this point than any sort of real solution.
Despite the pessimism, I think I'm generally pretty happy! As long as I get to go out once in a while, participate in community, etc., here in the rich first world it's still easy enough to compartmentalize all of this. I feel bad for anyone who wants kids or lives in a poorer country though. I think it's gonna get quite ugly...