Instead I am confronted each day with my own fallibility, tininess and hypocrisy (as just one more trash ape among billions, I contribute to the problem simply by existing). In short, I’m skeptical both of working within any system and of trying to upend it. Which is another way of saying I’m skeptical of my own species. Climate change and other ecological consequences of human activity are both incomprehensibly huge and diffuse, and thus easy to distance ourselves from. Our very own personal garbage, however, and our habits in disposing of it, are not so easy to disavow — and they are damning.

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Persons: I’ve, I’m, —