The idea that there is a single "top priority" is the problem. There's inevitably going to be a list of primary criteria, with the specific situation driving how they are balanced.
I am gonna say, priorization is nice and all, but you can have your priorities all figured out and not achive anything because you live in a nation where there is no majority for it and if there was your politicians are incentivised to ignore it.
So you do the things you can do. Fly less, eat less/no meat, use your bike more often, point at the coal plants and vote for political parties that want to get rid of them. May later generations (should they exist) say: "He was one of the good ones". Or you know, you could hide behind your priorities, fly, eat meat, drive a SUV and point at the coal plants.
I get it, we should not let them blame individuals for corporate and political failure, but what you do yourself also matters, because it makes you more aware, it makes you have higher standards, it makes you less tolerant to weak excuses.
I agree this is a real problem. I guess I've come from organizations where everything is declared a top priority, therefore nothing is. And nothing can be pushed aside for a true priority.
In particular, it is damaging for a leader to declare a top priority and then go on the same as usual, not making extra efforts to invest in that priority, because of course the reality is that so many things are important, and they lack the will to focus at the expense of something else.
If something is that important, you'll direct significant resources to the goal and I imagine the author of the article is sincere in doing that. Many organizations however are resource-constrained and must make tough choices. It's just mismanagement to declare lots of top priorities - heck, you don't have to say anything, just show us how you are allocating the money and people, and adjusting your expectations of everybody's schedules and deadlines.
The problem with priorities is that multiple issues can have the same priority. If you give every issue it's own priority number then you no longer have this problem.
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