David thanks for posting, the effect of destruction of life are heart rending for sure. On what to do about it, I think education is key, especially education of students in chemistry.
If we trace the average chemical formulation back to source, we most likely find it traces to fossil fuels.
So chemistry systemically looks very similar to energy, as we use it, it most often traces back to fossil fuels at source.
All well and good we can do that, but the question is, realistically, as things stand, will we do anything about it? Probably not, because in the end we all of us need financial income, and our instinct has to be to maximise that, above all other things, in most cases, if we are honest.
So that is the thing that needs to be addressed, our individual requirements to maximise our income, the system has to be changed to change that.
What economists in general seem to be missing, is the connection between energy and money.
We use money to transport energy without realising it.
We don't realise that what we need, individually, is actually energy security, not money.
If there was some way to make ourselves individually solar powered, by maybe converting energy received fron sunlight on our skins, removing our need even to eat, the world would be a very different place.
But as it is, we use money very badly to try to assure individual energy security. It is futile, because money as used can, and will be devalued to the point that no matter how much we have, it no longer supplies us with the energy we need, therefore money does not deliver individual energy security to us as stands.
How to change this to something that works, is the fundamental challenge in hand, it seems to me.
We get a clue how to do this by looking at things with skins which do actually supply them with all the enetgy they need, that is plants.
How the plant works is to receive the energy it individually needs, then passing on the remainder it doesn't need, to all other things by the flow of nutrients through its body to Earth via its roots.
Conventional science does not identify this flow of energy to Earth, claiming that the plant stores all the energy it receives in its body as carbohydrates, but if we look at the plant honestly as a system, we can't deny it absorbs far more energy daily than can be explained by analysis of the carbs it creates.
This is the action we need to recreate, as a species.
The plant has to use nutrients to do that, it has to use those to transmit most of the energy it receives to Earth.
Humanity is sprouting its first leaves, in the form of solar farms all over Earth.
We can see how to treat those as money-fuel trees, I've explained as much in my story of that title.
Now there is only one thing missing, to convert the function of humanity as a species to do the same as plants, receiving energy from the sun, using what we individually need, and passing on the remainder to Earth in the form of all manner of things created from the energy of the sun.
Our individual incentive changes then, from seeking to maximise the money we receive, holding onto as much of that as we can, to maximisimg what we can pass on to Earth.
Notice how this automatically changes our entire individual output, from things damaging to Earth like pollution, to things genuinely enhancing Earth, like hydrogen, drinkable water, useful pollution free energy, and even food (see "solein").
Our burden on all things from Earth changes to the opposite, we move from being a destructive force, to being a constructive force.
So chemistry itself will change fundamentally from a science with many unforseen damaging effects, to something with many unforseen positive effects, like Solein, just by changing the source of energy at the input, from fossil fuels, to solar.
We get there by changing the issue of money from its current form, money-as-debt, to Kardashev Money, which I've written about in another story.
If we look through the barrage of profit driven misinformation, at the events that happened during stimulus of 4tn issued per month, we should notice this was the time of the only spike of environmental recovery seen, so far, in terms of fish and coral stocks, when also oil was negatively priced, the only time so far.
The key was the issue of massive stimulus, this was also confirmed by the dollar value actually going up during issue, rather than down, as conventional economists had predicted.
We might see that as being due to the money being issued being backed by solar energy already put to use but never yet monetised, therefore standing as a kind of positive money in the bank, a number of Joules solar energy per token.
Of course conventional economists, not understanding the significance of solar farms appearing on Earth, physical energy being outside the domain of their expertise, claim the free miney had to stop, so it stopped, and so also did the benefits to humanity and Earth.
But nature is forcing the issue now, money is being systematically devalued by nature now, until the right thing is done, by permanent, honest issue of free money representing solar energy put to use, or humanity is no more, per the biblical end of days.
Sorry seemingly rambling reply to your post on what looks like a simple issue, but I hope it gives you hope, that things will be fixed, one way or another, the right thing has to happen, sooner or later.
We either consciously fully accept these laws of energy in nature, or we are done, nature will kick us out of existence, and is already in process of doing that.
I have confidence we will learn as a species, very very soon, that hell is a place of our own making, and we have it almost built.
It still isn't too late to turn around, but will be, after the physical and economic tipping points are passed.