Yeah I think this is a much better path. If you mix chicken with jackfruit 50/50 in tacos, for example, it’s barely noticeable.

We’re not going to convince Americans to give up meat, but if we can reduce consumption when they do eat it, we can make incremental change.

I just don't advocate, at least not without prompting; it's too maddening. That I'm vegan often becomes known naturally, and once it's established, people in the know tend to start bringing it up on their own. I hardly ever go into advocacy unprompted. I think this is more effective. Just by being present, you might spark the thoughts that lead someone to changing their mind... :)

People need cars because we designed our environments to require them. It was a choice, not an inevitability.

I've managed to avoid driving one for all but 1-2 years of my life, and I'm 42.

Your mileage, ironic phrase noted, may vary.

Yeah people never haul anything with trucks for work

Uhh a lot of people need trucks for their work

Spoiler, the oil and other energy industries have done a world changing amount of lobbying and regulatory capture in order to drive decisions that cause more and more fossil fuel use. This includes everything from subsidies to industry stagnating regulations to reduced enforcement to suburban sprawl. Look at how the current US administration shills for big coal. Pretending they haven't shaped the world around the consumers is either naive or bad faith.

Yes, consumers have to stop funding these companies and behaviors. Also, the governments that operate on behalf of those consumers have to drop their corruption and start protecting those people they represent. Both virtuous and nonvirtuous conservatives know neither of these are going to happen, which is why they see massive terraforming technology as the only way out - if someone with power can't get rich(er) fixing it then it won't get fixed.

Yes they are, in the form of lobbying to remove subsidies and adding tax penalties to EV/solar purchases.

This chain of blaming random persons is both useless and distraction. It failed in the past. And it is not even a good faith argument.

Guilting people for existing in society wont fix anything. Actually regulating largest contributors to the issue can fix things. And individual behavioral changes will logically follow once rules and laws change.

Well, yeah. Corporations aren't just nefarious evil entities, dumping carbon into the atmosphere for no reason. They're doing it to sell goods. The problem is that a lot of the environmental costs for the manufacture and transport of those goods are externalized and go unpaid.

It's difficult to put the blame for that on the consumer, who has no visibility into manufacturing or logistics, and who has vanishingly-small options for not participating. Buying domestic goods is very difficult or impossible, and goods which are manufactured in more environmentally-safe ways are significantly more expensive (because the costs I mentioned earlier weren't externalized).

If a consumer is presented with two options, one that costs $X and has unknown environmental costs, and one that costs $2X and is marketed as being environmentally safe, the majority will choose the first. This is especially true as economic forces continue to squeeze average people.

Consumers absolutely participate in the problem, but the only process by which it could be corrected is regulation, and the only entity capable of that is the government. (Democracy being what it is, you can however place more blame at the feet of voters.)