> You laugh but if everyone changed just some of their behavior, we would be in a much better place.

Please be more specific about "some" and "much" because I don't think that's true.

As far as climate goes, turning oil into single use plastic has very little effect. We could cut plastic use 90% and nothing would really change.

The problem is that a single consumer can't throw themselves into the gears of the industrial machine to slow its progress. If you stop buying food in plastic containers, the food will still be produced, and it will still be purchased by the large multinational corporations that have supply contracts with the food industry, it will just go straight into a landfill when its expiration date passes instead of being purchased. Unsold subsidized produce, which took petroleum based fertilizers to grow, and petroleum powered equipment to cultivate and distribute, will rot in a landfill. Farmers won't stop growing it if you stop buying it. The damage has already been done by the time you make the choice to purchase it or not, and it takes more than a handful of people making a conscientious decision to reduce waste to stop the waste from happening in the first place. And that's if you even have a choice in the first place. The only way to eliminate carbon emissions is to return to manual labor and subsistence farming, and since all the arable acreage is owned by land barons and the price is so high, even that is out of reach of the average consumer. We are trapped.

If you buy an electric car, consider the amount of petroleum it took to forge the steel, power the aluminum smelters, and ship the components around the world on titanic ships. How long does it take to pay off the carbon debt that was incurred by getting rid of that old polluting car? How much petroleum would it take to relocate to a locality with clean-energy powered public transit? What other externalities are incurred by such a choice, and are they greater than simply maintaining the status quo? Is it even within the means of the majority to make such a choice?

Consider that aviation is a much larger contributor to emissions. Airlines will consistently fly completely empty planes just so they can maintain a parking spot at a given airport. Or compare the carbon emissions of the military to the rest of society. Or the quantity of flare gas that gets uselessly burned off by oil rigs. All market forces which a single consumer or group of consumers is powerless to stop. And all of which are backed by investors with more clout to sway the powers that be than you or I will ever have.

As a sibling commenter said, it's a fun hobby and makes us feel a little better about ourselves, but it's a drop in the bucket. A depressing state of affairs to be sure.

We used to live lifestyles that didn't require driving every day and flying eight times a year...

the great thing about these sorts of personal choices is that you can make them for yourself without having to be afraid of any of the consequences that would come from actually confronting power.

None of the loops are open in the sense that it's all within the earth system as a whole. The issue is extracting carbon from geological deposits. Stuff about farming and methane is temporary and short term.

I don't mean to suggest we shouldn't compost or recycle things. Just that such measures are only indirectly related to carbon emissions.

We either stop extracting hydrocarbons from deep within the crust or else the problem will persist. (I guess technically we could industrially sequester the equivalent but that would almost certainly defeat the cost-benefit of extraction.)

From your source:

> Effective pile management and aeration are key to minimizing CH4 emissions.

So it sounds like a correctly managed pile is not a problem.

Also, I have a hard time believing my composting in my backyard is in any way worse than my sending the same food scraps to a landfill.

So are humans (we breathe out CO2 constantly!). A process emitting greenhouse gases is not an inherent reason to eschew it, so long as the entire end-to-end process isn't net-positive.

Use that compost to fertilise a tree, and you are still net negative on carbon, versus sending those food scraps to the local trash incinerator.