Pardon my Pessimism

In his article, “Going Green? Easy Doesn’t Do It,” Michael Maniates argues that our society needs to do more to end the looming environmental crisis. More, in this sense, does not entail changing our light bulbs from incandescent to fluorescent, or recycling every plastic bottle we purchase; rather, we must do something greater, something which will truly have an impact on the environment and reverse the damage we have done over the past two centuries. He calls for the mobilization of our country, to reduce its carbon emissions by 80% over the next few decades, a radical change in our transportation sector, and new agricultural techniques at any cost in order for us to truly implement any sort of environmental change. The problem, of course, is that we are not thinking big enough. We are avoiding the larger picture, and instead we are focusing on minuscule aspects of environmental friendliness.

I absolutely agree with Maniates’s argument. In order for us to really install any sort of long-term, radical change to our environment, we must mobilize now, pursuing large-scale efforts which would truly turn around the mounds of environmental problems we have inflicted on our planet. His comparisons to Roosevelt and King are perfectly analogous of the situation we face: When faced with difficult times and circumstances in our nation’s history, they did not hold back. They did not call for less than what was needed; they got right to the point, and called for the change our society as a whole demanded. Not only do we need to call for these changes, but we need to fund them, whatever the cost is. Because the costs we endure today may be insurmountable, but the problems we will essentially eradicate in the decades ahead will be well worth the cost.

Of course, the problem we face isn’t necessarily the need for new ideas. There are plenty of long-term ideas out there, from scholars, scientists, politicians and activists, which would very well be implemented in modern times. The larger problem we face is the collective will of society to support such change, to think outside of the “recycling and carpooling” mentality we have come to associate with “responsible environmentalism” and actually support something greater. Can society revert to one-child households? Can society be willing to give up half of its income to support a “Manhattan Project” focused on cleaning up our environment? Will society be willing to consume less and change its habits in order for us to truly instill environmental change?

I am a pessimist in the sense that I do not believe it is possible to sway the majority of society to think this way. It takes us decades, even centuries, for us to reform our views on issues of social importance. Institutional racism, sanctioned by the government, took two hundred years to disappear in this country—though it still exists on the personal level today. It took nearly the same time for women to gain the right to vote, for homosexuality to be considered a sexual orientation and not a disease, and over a century for us to truly realize that the industrial revolution is having an effect on the environment. So how much longer will it take for us to realize that the time to act is now, that the time for us to change our habits to avoid an environmental catastrophe is upon us, and that we do not have much longer before any chance to fix these problems is past us?

We are stubborn in our ways, and I have a feeling our own stubbornness is going to destroy us.