Our problem is that with our tiny primate brains we are incapable of grasping complexity so we reduce things to soundbites, because soundbites are easy to remember. But soundbites, no matter who fashions them, are always misleading because complex reality can't be reduced to a black/white up/down polarity.

The demonization of air travel is a classic example: air travel counts for 3% of global CO2 emissions; meanwhile, if governments penalized companies for making people commute to offices, it's estimated we'd save 9 million barrels of oil per day - nearly the entire output of Saudi Arabia (and a lot more CO2 than ten times our current amount of air travel). But we reliably focus, as always, on the wrong thing.

Same thing with water. We ask people to take shorter showers (domestic use of water accounts for 7% of the total), but ignore the fact 70% of all water is squandered on agriculture that is locked into use-it-or-lose-it deals that encourage wasting as much precious water as possible. But... agrobusiness is big business, and can afford to buy politicians. So once again we focus on the wrong thing (showers) and fail to see the real problem.

There is no hope for getting climate change under control. We are, as a species, too ignorant and simple-minded to see what we need to do, so we'll always focus relentlessly on trivial actions that have no meaningful impact on the problem. It's sad, but it is unfortunately inevitable.