"Why Bother?"

In this article, Michael Pollan asks the titular question to the reader about whether individually adopting environmentally friendly behavior is enough to combat climate change. He does not disillusion the reader with simple proclamations that fixing this current crisis is as easy as just changing your light bulbs. Rather, he tells the reader that is a matter of fundamentally changing each of our lifestyles, because in his view the climate change crisis comes down to the “countless little everyday choices”, which makes the problem one of a character flaw in each of us. Of course he does not disregard the importance of laws and legislation in effecting this problem, but he contends that political representatives act in accordance to the general desires of those they are supposed to represent. Also he believes that this type of thinking delegates responsibility to some other individual and is not conducive to actual change for the majority of people. He views the solutions to these problems as being a process of “viral social change”, starting with each individual and eventually spreading to everyone.
Before reading this article I had been admittedly wary of the idea of this type of social change he describes. Mostly because I thought that the crisis is too urgent, that without immediate action from legislating bodies no matter of individual change would be enough to subside the destructive behavior an entire global civilization is doing. Of course I knew that most societal changes happen in the manner of slow incremental processes done by individuals over a long period of time. In general, the human species are slow learners and not keen to change. I have been hesitant for a long time with the idea of placing this responsibility in each of our hands. I thought by the time we all get our act together, it would be too late, and that we had to rely on our governments to fix it for us. Undoubtedly I wanted individuals to change their behaviors as well, so as to make these changes permanent, but again I thought if we only did this it would result to too little, too late.
While reading this article, I was skeptical of his viewpoint. But then I passed something he wrote about placing all of the responsibility into the political sphere, in which he states: “they will not move until we do”. I realized then that even if the process of having individuals change and then eventually the society is a slow process, it is how it must be in order to effectively shift away from our civilization’s destructive habits. I only hope it will be enough.