I wouldn't call this friend an "environmentalist".
Long story short:
- These 'few companies' are part of the '100 companies produce 70% of emissions' statistic. This is true, but it's oil companies and governments on the list. Their emissions are driven by the demand by you - the consumer.
- Behavioral changes do matter. It normalizes (and then, in the futures, put's pressure for) sustainable behavior throughout society which is needed;
- Ebikes are great, more efficient (in terms of CO₂ emissions) than normal bikes.
- Please consider removing your flight emissions, then you'll truly appreciate the real cost of flying.
I actually argued that my Terrapass (I paid a fortune to be net zero) helped, but then the environmentalist friends told me that that's just "like indulgences and doesn't help the environment" so I stopped doing it. It's a lot of money per year, man, and everyone will just act like you're the problem if you buy any. No one who didn't buy any got the lecture.
Yeah, it helped that I mostly use bikes and ebikes. I think it's like a 10-15% increase in flight cost with Terrapass (I bought aggregate per year, but you can do per flight) for something like SFO<->LAX so that's manageable though unpleasant. But there's not that much reason to do that since it's apparently not real.
Besides, while you say this on HN, the top comments are often how China etc. are the problem. So if they're going to be the problem how does it matter if I fly some.
Long story short: