While this isn’t a suggestion, just want to say don’t let other people saying one person doesn’t make a difference discourage you from doing what you can anyway.

“What is any ocean but a multitude of drops”? If a million people each don’t bother because they alone don’t make a difference?

Similar to the Starfish Story.

Actual suggestions:

• Aid education. Lots of illiterate youth is going to be a problem when they can’t even read to research on their own.
• Encourage increasing plant-based agriculture and the reduction of animal agriculture. Animal agriculture is terrible for the environment, and ironically the “green” version of it is even worse for the environment than factory farming if it were done to scale with the same product output. (Hunting is also not good to promote as an alternative, because if we hunted as much as we eat we would absolutely cause mass extinction very fast.)

A website with detailed steps on eco-terrorism.

Spending and consumning less could help more. Espicially gas and meat.

Get a vasotomy/tubal ligation.

As a few people have said, buying something like solar panels, or the deposit on an electric car would probably be the best - reducing your impact is probably the most you can do.

The other option could be green investment.... They do exist, ignore 'transitional energy' funds (90% oil majors), look at the individual shares that any fund that looks interesting. I have some money in EdenTree funds. That way your money is hopefully helping do good, while (hopefully) growing so you can do something that will have a bigger personal effect.

Your time and energy is far more valuable than your money.

I would recommend using that money as an emergency fund, and getting involved with an activist organization working to stop climate change. There are a wide range of them, with tactics ranging from legislative pressure to property destruction and civil disobedience. Believe it or not, there are lots of small local problems that a small group can meaningfully impact, and will add up.

While there are systemic problems that cannot be solved by an individual, they can be solved by collective organization. You have to be part of that collective if you want to stop climate change.

Put that money in stocks or ETFs that align with your climate goals. You don’t even have to dig too deep to find ones that meet your needs. Much digital ink has been spilled on the topic. Just find one or two you like and go for it.

In a general sense, put the money where you want change to happen in this version of reality.

Children of Kali

Plant a fuckload of protected species trees

Buy second hand, don't buy new unless you know that the company is trying to solve climate change. Example, at Honolulu there's a company that is setting up water filling stations on some hotels and providing these hotels with aluminum bottles for the folks staying in the hotel so hotels can provide water to their guests and stop plastic pollution.

Probably planting trees as effectively it's free to scatter seeds you find.

Start a fund raiser, do advertisement, (make some donations your self so that it does not look dead) - ones you get a lot of money (lets say you have doubled) - start again and repeat until you double - within 10 cycles of doublings, you reach 10 million, and keep doing until you get rich enough (lets say 10 more cycles to reach 10B) then you have 2 paths to choose - either be a hero and actual invest in research and actively reversing shit done, maybe helping displaced or other good deeds, or the mlm path, and continue the doubling cycle, keep earning - with this much money, you can now have actors and fake donations, maybe even fake researches into how you are helping, and keep growing your wealth, and maybe then escape to a tax heaven.

Apologies for the dystopian ending, but realistically a person even going full carbon negative is not even a dent. If you actually want to do good, then you realistically require trillions, and then you feed that money to politicians, and reverse launder your way towards actual green solutions.

Well, a certain cadre of income is responsible for the lion's share of western emissions. Maybe you could use that money to "influence" them.

Put it in a bank that doesn't invest your money into the wrong stuff. In fact a bank can loan more money than it has, but there's a ratio set by law. So for example that could effectively be 30k in arbitrary investments.

If you want to spend it, I'd buy a good bicycle or get my home isolated or sum like that. You could get cooking lessons and proper cookware and stay away from processed foods that generate tons of waste. If you have the space you could grow your own vegetables and have chickens, which eat bio waste. Basically reduce what you buy. You could get tools and learn how to fix things if that's more up your alley. For example I've fixed my Sennheiser headphones several times, but it did need some investment in tools. You could also donate it to a repair café.