"If everyone does a little, we’ll only achieve a little"

I drive a gasoline-powered car.
I fly--domestic and international.
I live in a house that is way big for one person.
I eat almonds from California.
These past few days, I have been cranking up the air-conditioning.

And, oh, I don't use plastic drinking straws, and I recycle paper, bottle, and plastic.

Can you tell me again why recycling and staying away from straws makes me an environmentalist, when my carbon footprint in everything else that I do is humongous?

For years, I have been complaining that we are not pursuing the big-impact issues, and are instead doing merely feel-good things. Like banning plastic straws and plastic bags.  I don't mean to suggest that banning these is a bad idea.  They are much needed.  But, it also does a huge disservice by making people think that banning straws and plastic bags is all that is needed.

If we want to educate conscientious environmental consumers, we should be honest about the scale of the problems and the results of our actions.

Exactly!

We should also remind people that this is a large-scale issue, and pointing fingers at individuals is ineffective.

Effectively, we have accepted individual responsibility for a problem we have little control over. We can swim against this plastic stream with all our might and fail to make much headway. At some point we need to address the source.

On top of that, a much bigger problem:

If environmentalism becomes about vilifying so many of life’s small pleasures and conveniences, I fear it will turn off more people than it rallies to its cause.

Like a neighbor who thinks that being environmental means to walk around with a stink--from not taking showers--and to wear dirty rags.

So, what should be done?

For starters, don't be a dick and blame population growth.  That is atrocious!  Our consumption patterns are the problem, not the numbers of humans born every year.

Go after the producers:

the best way to accelerate significant environmental progress might be to worry less about individual consumption and more about the production side of the equation.

Of course, this is increasingly difficult in this trump era; those in power now and the pro-business maniacs think that every shit that any business does is gold, and that those of us who worry about the long-term impacts on the natural environment are nothing but socialist snowflakes!

Elections have consequences, which the Berniacs did not think through when they went on a hate-Hillary campaign!

We are less than 100 days away from the next major election.  Do whatever you can to vote out these irresponsible scumbags who are robbing from the grandchildren.



ps: The title for this post was a quote in the essay that I have referred to.