Teaching America to Walk

Ask any American on the street what they can do to help reduce environmental harm, they will probably ramble on to you about recycling more, shortening their showers, or actually remembering to bring to the store the hoards of reusable bags they have collected. It's unlikely anyone will talk to you about switching to alternative energy or reducing their consumerism. Most Americans will point to the simple solutions, the everyday little changes that anyone can make. And these are the same types of answers that even some top environmental leaders are selling to us. The argument that little things are all we need to do to make a difference is certainly compelling. We like the idea of all the small individual things adding up to a meaningful whole. We also like the idea of not having to do too much individually. Words like "simple," "easy," and even--god help us--"lazy" are permeating the environmental movement from all sides.

But this isn't a simple issue. And the solution will by no means be easy. So, as Michael Maniates argues in his article in the Washington Post, Americans need to stop being so lazy and take some real steps towards reducing our environmental harm. Furthermore, environmental leaders should expect us to be capable and willing to do what is necessary to reduce our environmental harm enough to stop climate change, not just slow it down. On this point, I certainly agree. Baby steps are not going to get us where we need to be on time. We need leaps and bounds.

I do not, however, think it's as simple as environmental leaders changing their message and asking more of the public. Maniates brings up several historical examples of when Americans were able to band together behind a strong leader to really change an issue: the Revolution, World War II, and the Civil Rights movement. Although these moments definitely show that Americans have the power to rally behind a cause, I'm not sure they can be applied to environmental issues.

The first reason for this is the nature of the environmental problem. In all of the examples above the issues were very tangible. Revolutionaries were feeling the oppression (and taxation) of England. Events like Pearl Harbor and the Holocaust were obviously harmful. African Americans had to deal with discrimination every day of their lives. Moreover, the results of taking action against these things was relatively immediate and obvious. In other words Americans are great at banding together towards resolving a problem when it is something that that is obviously hurting them and when they will be able to see results from taking action.

At this point in environmental degradation, neither of these facts hold true. Most people aren't feeling obvious negative effects in their everyday lives. Except for maybe a little change in weather (or a freak snowstorm), life goes on as normal. And the effects of making a big change in our lives wouldn't be evident to us--they would first occur up in some mysterious, far off atmosphere and then eventually trickle down to causing changes on earth.

The second reason I'm not sure that the comparisons work is that we live in a different age now. A high speed, multi-tasking, constant stimulation kind of age. Arguably, we have less focus in this digital age than we used to. We like the solution to environmental problems in 140 characters or less. We want to do our part quickly, and then move on to the next thing.

So although I agree that everybody needs to put more effort towards stopping environmental change, the tricky part is going to be convincing the American public of how much this really matters to their lives (and getting them to listen long enough to do so).