For me, the most surprising thing from the three videos was Daniel Kammen explaining why we should "go green" in ways that don't make sense on paper. He gives the example of metal straws - in theory, the single-use plastics model used by these straws is wasteful, and creating one metal straw instead and using that repeatedly would be better for the planet. Indeed, I've been to many restaurants that tried to go green by reducing straw usage.
There are a few problems with this in practice, however. First, the up-front cost is way higher to make a metal straw - mining the metal, smelting it, and extruding it all take a ton of energy. In fact, this cost is so high that if the metal straw is only used for 1-2 years, it would be worse for the environment than if a person had just used plastic straws.
Furthermore, Kammen says that we must recognize people are "only gonna change a certain number of things per year" (49:16). When viewed from this lens, straws become even worse as the amount of pollution they contribute to the environment is miniscule. Compared to things like sourcing clean energy or not eating meat one day of the week, choosing not to use straws barely changes one's carbon output.
On this topic, Kammen claims that we should put "maximum effort" into changing things that matter, like buying clean energy, reducing driving, and changing one's diet. But that doesn't mean the idea to eliminate straws, despite its ineffectiveness, is bad - Kammen hopes that this will encourage people to start caring about climate change and other environmental issues more, which will then act as a gateway to them making more meaningful lifestyle changes.
Link to Kammen's interview: https://www.labxchange.org/library/pathway/lx-pathway:825945a0-367c-45dc-82b7-3d160c6e6f7a/items/lx-pb:825945a0-367c-45dc-82b7-3d160c6e6f7a:lx_simulation:fa741ca2?source=%2Flibrary%2Fclusters%2Flx-cluster%3AModernPrediction