Facing the music: The real dangers of our consumption.

Michael Maniates "Going Green: Easy Doesn't Do It" presents some important basic fundamentals of our American society that are seen an inhibitory in our efforts, or those of a portion of the population, to induce real environmental change. Most important of these, he asserts that on a general plane, Americans are individually-interested creatures, with the well-being of ourselves and that of our families as the driving motivators in our daily behaviour. To this end, he describes how only the cost-effective, simple methods of implementing environmental change are currently appealing to the American public. But unfortunately, these methods are the least effective of all measures, since they represent the easy way out, and instead of halting or reversing environmental change, they simply slow our environmental damage on a lesser scale.

This display of ambiguity towards environmental change, in my opinion, paints a horribly self-interested and unaware picture of the United States to our international counterparts. As the world's great economic power, at least up until recent days, we should present ourselves as perhaps on the strongest activists combatting environmental depletion, since are one of the few nations in the world who have the economic resources to impart such change. If we were to take on this active role, as environmental rescuers, and pioneers in the field of innovation to increase efficiency and thus decrease our negative impact of the planet, we would surely have an impact on other countries who look to us as mentors, and possibly coerce them, subliminally, into revising their methods of production and ways of living into methods that are environmentally conducive as well.

I believe the biggest inhibitor to this environmental change is caused by our short-term vision as a nation. In general, I think the citizens of our country hold a relatively limited view of our world, and thus the future and impact of our current behaviour on our planet. Despite the fact that politicians, scientists, activists, etc., are constantly coming out data concerning the negative impact our lifestyles are imposing on Earth, we take them with a grain of salt, and disregard them as exaggerations to scare us, or conspiracy theories or something of the like. We are unable to see past our current situation, in which we are living luxurious and worry-free lives in which our consumption habits are virtually unlimited, for we see no need to limit these habits in the present. If trees were to ignite in flames everytime we wasted paper, or if our backyards were to dry up everytime our showers went a bit too long, perhaps we would take the advice of the political leaders and academics of our country into stride. Unfortunately, the effect of our behaviour on the environmental plight is a prolonged process, in which we cannot, in most cases, tangibly identify the damage our existence on earth is reaping.

I disagree with Maniates' proposed solution of having our political/national leaders impart real answers to our queries on "what can we do?" I think instead of relying wholly on our country's leaders to be the catalysts of change, we need to look inward, and ask ourselves, when we pose such a question regarding our potential actions, if we actually see ourselves completing such actions. For example, even if our leaders presented American citizens with a laundry list of potential, effective actions we could take to curb our environmental detriment, what percentage of US citizens would actually go ahead and infilitrate those suggestions into their actual ways of life? The solution lies with individual awareness and stake in environmental well-being. We must realize the actual, effectual impact our actions have on earth, the toll our lavish lifestyles will bear on the future of our ecosystem, and thus on future generations of humans as well--and thus, how they'll impact our ability to sustain ourselves and continue to exist as entities on our planet.