With deep empathy and admiration, Lauren, I’d gently suggest your advice is naïve, even though your piece is full of great insight. Repairing the climate will involve massive sacrifice. Very few people are positive about making painful sacrifices. Sacrifices are the outcome of trade-offs – when you have a choice only between two evils, you choose the lesser – you just do the thing you decided you just have to do. I think we’d agree though that people have to find their own motivation – it won’t come through someone berating them.

What I think would help motivate people is a clear picture of what life will be like after we have repaired the climate. For instance, will we still have indoor plumbing? If there was a picture of future life and a plan for getting there, then I could say to myself, “Alex, this is your part, if you and other people do their part, we will get to a promised land that’s at least better than the one we’re heading for now.”