Mark - that is tragic, and unnecessary. As is your “guilt over how bad things have gone…” The facts are that nearly everything is so much better than it was 50yrs ago it is almost impossible to imagine it. You really do need to read Matt Ridley’s book The Rational Optimist or other books like Ronald Bailey’s The End of Doom or Michael Schellenberger’s Apocalypse Never. Also check out the Factfulness website. On almost every metric that matters to human and planet earth’s well being we are much, much better off than we were 50, 100 or 500 yrs ago - pick your time period. We as humans love to focus on the negative to the detriment of the positive and that is especially true of our social media obsessed world. Saying all that, I do agree that we need to continue to work to defeat injustices and unnecessary assaults on the natural world.
Onward and Upward!
TJO