Hey, That's the Name of Our Blog!

Touche, Maniates. The Washington Post article, "Going Green?" was an interesting contrast to the Stanley Fish opinion piece we read earlier this semester. While the latter dragged its proverbial feet when it came to any sort of environmental action, the former vehemently criticized this approach, that somehow a solution to today's current ecological crisis can be solved by what Western society would consider cheap, efficient, and quite frankly, mindless.

As discussed in the first response blog, I would have to fall on the side of Maniates. While it can be debated that large changes can develop from smaller alterations in behavior, in a sort of snowball effect, the collective, radical alternatives presented in "Going Green" represent the mindset that is essential in combatting global climate change and its subsequent effects. Actions such as recycling and changing a lightbulb are not to be scoffed at; every little bit counts, but actions alone are not going to absorb excess carbon dioxide, bring species back into extinction, or reverse population explosion. The macroscopic changes that Maniates proposes, ones that are institutionalized, or call for greater civic and governmental actions, also demonstrate a paradigm of sustainability and biocentrism that is vital to fully repairing the current degraded state of the Earth.