Why Bother?

In “Why Bother?” Michael Pollan makes a great argument for why every person should have their own garden, but what I really enjoyed was the way that he made his argument.  The whole reading started with a basic question that he elaborated on for the rest of the paper.  At the beginning, he began by talking about how Al Gore scared him by making the case that climate change was a true threat, but the scariest part of it for Michael was that Al Gore asked everyone to change their light bulbs.  He talks about how he felt depressed because of the disproportion between the huge threat that we were facing and the small task that he asked people to take in order to help stop climate change.  After this first point he goes on to talk about how even if he made all of these changes to his lifestyle and habits, that there is most likely someone just like him on the other side of the planet that would be more than grateful to take up all of the resources that he was no longer going to consume.  Michael tells us about how easy it is to not make any changes in your life at all and just how easy it is to justify not making those changes.  Then he goes on to make a small suggestion to the reader, plant your own garden.  He argues that this is one small step that has many different benefits to help combat climate change.  Having your own garden helps reduce your spending, since you can grow some herbs and vegetables at home that you won’t have to drive to the store to buy, they won’t need to make packaging for and it also won’t have to be shipped to the city or town that you live in.  Also, there is the more direct benefit of how plants and trees help eliminate the greenhouse gases that are causing climate change in the first place.  For this entire paper Michael tells you about how easy it would be to not make any changes to how you live, but then at the end, he tells you exactly why you should make those changes and how easy that would be too.