LOL, I’m a child of the Cold War. You can’t tell me about global thermonuclear war fears! :) Weirdly, us teens just accepted it was a thing that could happen any second. Whatever.

And don’t be so cynical! Educating people like that, showing them how things have changed for the worse in their experience has impact. But you gotta follow through with solutions they can work with! “And that’s why I don’t use pesticides or herbicides. Notice the frogs are back on our block? Seen all the dragonflies? Check out my ponds. They double as mosquito control!”

I think we’re missing the trees in this forest of doom. We’re powerless to fight the megacorps, and bitching about them only makes people feel more powerless. But we can teach people to chip away, give them actionable goals. Put the idea in their heads that, “This isn’t normal or right and you’ve experienced this!”, without being preachy. It’s hard.

I’ve seen massive social and environmental progress in my life. It all started with grass-roots talking points. Don’t say “fag”, don’t toss your cigarette fag (heh), pick up trash that’s not yours, and on and on.

Don’t lecture or lay blame, no guilt trips, talk about the problem in a personally, emotionally understandable way they’ll internalize, give them a solution they can act on right now, today.

Maybe I’m still an idealist. So it goes.