I'm sorry, but you completely misunderstand the gravity of the crisis.

We are already committed to a literal climate disaster. Just the emissions already emitted commit the world to 2ºC in heating - which is going to devastate crops everywhere, wild populations everywhere.

Everything I'm saying here is by the way the consensus of science. If you need references, ask me.

The last time in Earth's history the CO2 level was this high, the sea level was 20 meters higher than it is now and there were palm trees at the pole. And there's a locked correlation over hundreds of thousands of years between CO2 and temperature.

But we aren't stopping. Indeed, CO2 emissions continue to accelerate. Non-carbon emitting energy sources are only about 5% of the world's power; they are growing but have yet to replace any fossil fuel use, which still grows about 1% a year.

Look at this image: https://ourworldindata.org/energy

There are six different energy sources in that tiny little multicolored band at top. All the rest emit carbon dioxide - 95%.

At some point, we melt the world's permafrost. This contains locked within it in the form of clathrates and rotting vegetable material about twice as much carbon as in the entire atmosphere already.

At that point, it's game over. Over a generation, the CO2 triples. The temperature increases 5ºC and up. The Earth ends up only being able to support a small fraction of its previous population.

And climate change is only part of it. Our obsessive consumption and obsessive generation of every form of waste is devastating every single aspect of our natural world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

In my lifetime, waste plastic has spread until it's in every single body of water in the entire world and in every creature that lives in our seas.

In my lifetime alone, we've killed more than half of the wild mammals, more than half the flying insects, more than half the aquatic animals larger than 5kg, far more than half the aquatic mammals, more than half the wild birds.

How long can we go on killing more than half of everything in a lifetime and have any of the natural world left?

We must avoid this catastrophe. We cannot avoid disaster, it is already fixed due to our previous selfishness and consumption, but if we stop our obsessive consumption, we still have the ability to turn back from catastrophe

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"The new RS4 emits 210 grams of CO2 per driven kilometer. That’s a lot, about 20% more than the average in Germany but"

There is no BUT here. This is an emergency. You are blighting the lives of all humans for the rest of time. STOP.

And if you doubt the scientific truth of anything in this article, ask me for verification.

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And since this always comes up — no, I have never owned a car or any internal combustion engine. I have used public transport or bikes all my life and now I bike everywhere. I have a plant-based diet, I rarely fly and that only for the most dire obligations, I rarely buy consumer junk (I still have the only TV I ever owned, and the second cell phone, and I’m almost 60) blah blah blah.

It shouldn’t make a difference, but it does, and yes, I changed my life and it really wasn’t an issue. You should too.