The Trinity of Despair

After last class, I think the thing that most resonated with me was the discussion about social movements. It really does only take a committed minority to make great change. The key word there is committed. We have to really want the change, at the expense of other causes, and we have to be willing to make sacrifices in order to bring that change about. With climate change, I believe we have an issue to galvanize public opinion to the point where changes can be railroaded through. The sticking point is always Congress, and some serious politicking has to be done in order to get the government to change, but we can always lobby state governments and follow the example of California, which is pushing ahead on limiting emissions, leaving the Federal government behind.

As far as the little things are concerned, we have to be careful about how we use them. We shouldn't totally abandon advocating them to the public, but I feel that we've gotten carried away with extolling the virtues of little solutions because they're easy and tangible. And its true, that if everyone in the world did little things, we could make great strides toward solving our environmental problems. But the fact is that you'll never get enough people on board to enable you to combat environment issues just through little solutions alone.

For the last corner of the triangle, I don't believe that people are inherently selfish, but they are lazy or too busy to care when it comes to environmental and political issues as a whole, which often has the same effect. Whether people are selfish or lazy, it doesn't matter because its still a herculean task to get them to do anything to put pressure on private business or the government. However, I do believe that there will always be enough people who care to mobilize social movements to enact change, for the environment but also for other political issues as well.