Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

We have some known factors we can work with here:

1. Climate change is happening, and it will have devastating effects.
2. The richest people/corporations polluting the most don't care if you sacrifice or not, they often don't care about climate change at all, or acknowledge that it exists.
3. The biggest polluters will not stop polluting unless the profit incentive for them is removed, or they are forceably stopped.
4. Reducing emissions by any means possible is crucial in the time window that we have.
5. There are methods that regular people can do in their personal lives to help reduce the total emissions being emitted, but require some sacrifice.

With these known factors, does it make sense to collectively not try to reduce our own emissions just because the biggest emitters won't start first? I would think if the goal is lower emissions to reduce the horrific and deadly effects happening globally, than we should do what we can to minimize them.

It would be amazing if all the big polluters lowered their emissions along with us, but we know that won't happen, so if we wait to lower our own emissions until they do, it will never be done and could very well reach a point of no return.

To survive as a species, we will ultimately have to deal with capitalism and those big polluters by more forceful means, which in itself will require collective, mass effort on a global scale.

We don't know when that mass global effort will take place. It could be in 3 years, or a decade, or even two. In the meantime, the climate continues to get worse. The best thing we can do is give us a little bit more time by collectively reducing our emissions, which requires far less effort and sacrifice than it will to fully solve the problem.

If someone from a more affected poor country who lost family members to climate change (wildfire, drought, famine, etc) asked why someone decided to wait so long before joining in to lower their emissions, do you think they would find "I didn't want to sacrifice until the billionaires did" a compelling response?

We simply do not have the luxury of time to wait until things are fair. It is unfair, but any and all action is direly needed now. I would plead with you to help regardless of how fair it may be, if only to give us a little more time to get our collective shit together so that our species may live long enough for things to become more fair in the future.