I see a lot of individual action when it comes to environmental questions really as a form of politics as a way of communicating with political leaders, much in the same way that acts of civil disobedience during the civil rights' movement were really acts of political communication, trying to get laws changed rather than based on the thought that the individual action would really change the practices of segregation.

The Consequentialist trinity is typically regarded in this way: Bentham is crude, Mill's writings are full of howlers and inconsistencies, and Sidgwick was too smart to fully embrace Consequentialism. All of these great traditions in moral philosophy express strands of our moral consciousness and they should all be treated as research programs rather than as fully determinate views that can be leveled by a counterexample or by a clever argument.

Ethics is prescriptive and can change behavior, but usually only at the margins.

Acts are right in virtue of the goodness of their consequences.

We know the "great men" and a handful of heavily cited papers in our specialization. When there is a historical frame around a paper it's often a caricature that has become canonical.

A common rhetorical strategy of politicians and others is to frame their opponents' views in the worst possible light, tacitly suggesting that all versions of the view must be committed to some particularly deplorable conclusion. Philosophers are not immune to this way of arguing.

I must say that in my own mind, I think what's important is for us, as a society, to radically reduce the consumption of meat. This is more important than some fraction of us become moral saints and become vegetarians so it would be much better if we would reduce meat consumption by three quarters of each of us as an individuals would only eat one-quarter as much meat as we do now then that half of the population should become vegetarian. We should see this as a collective challenge rather than an issue about individual, moral period.