Every once in a while some people come up with something new to make people feel like we're doing okay by the environment. People lap it up, because really, we want to keep our conveniences and way of life mostly unchanged. No plastic bags at the grocery store anymore, yay for us!

Just don't read anything from the IPCC, don't keep track of glacier ice melt rates, or biodiversity collapse, and definitely don't read anything from that suppressed UK environmental assessment. Otherwise you might realise that the problem is so much larger than plastic bags or straws or even recycling, and you might risk losing some of those virtuous environmentalist feelings you enjoy.