The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [163]
The shift we need to make in order to live within the planet’s limits is big. It requires our government, banks, labor unions, media, cultural trendsetters, schools, and corporations and business owners to get on board. Creating change this big requires that we move way beyond the simple lifestyle changes promoted as solutions through an endless parade of lists and books on “ten easy things that you can do to save the planet.” Michael Maniates, a professor of political science and environmental science at Allegheny College and an expert on consumption issues, says that the fundamental flaw of the “ten easy things” approach is that it implies: (1) our greatest source of power as individuals is in our role as consumers; (2) we humans, by nature, aren’t interested in or willing to do anything that isn’t easy; and (3) change will only happen if we convince every single person on the planet to join us. Let’s get real. It’s simply not possible to get 100 percent agreement from nearly 7 billion people on any issue, and our ecological systems are on such overload, that we simply don’t have time to try. Imagine if we had had to wait for 100 percent consensus before getting women the vote or ending slavery: we’d still be waiting.
Not to mention that individual responsibility to save the planet can be a big drag. Let’s face it: you will become wildly unpopular if you become the disposable cup police and the PVC alarmist and the Debbie Downer about the toxins in cosmetics. People will stop inviting you to their parties if you insist on resorting their recycling for them (trust me, they will). Keeping track of all the corporations you want to avoid because of their poor labor policies or their environmental impacts will cause you no end of anxiety and stress. There’s too much wrong with the system for even the most obsessive-compulsive among us to get every action and every choice just right. And because that scenario is so overwhelming, the individual-responsibility model of change risks causing people to freak out, throw their hands up in despair, and sink back into overconsumptive, wasteful lifestyles. People are busy enough already: rather than offering an overwhelming range of green lifestyle choices, we need meaningful opportunities to make big choices (for example on policy) that make big differences.
In a 2007 op-ed piece in the Washington Post, Maniates lamented, “Never has so little been asked of so many at such a critical moment. The hard facts are these: If we sum up the easy, cost-effective eco-efficiency measures we should all embrace, the best we get is a slowing of the growth of environmental damage... Obsessing over recycling and installing a few special lightbulbs won’t cut it. We need to be looking at fundamental change in our energy, transportation and agricultural systems rather than technological tweaking on the margins, and this means changes and costs that our current and would-be leaders seem afraid to discuss... To stop at ‘easy’ is to say that the best we can do is accept an uninspired politics of guilt around a parade of uncoordinated individual action. What of the power and exhilaration that comes from working with others toward bold possibilities for the future?”4
No doubt about it: humanity needs to undertake the much bigger and harder task of changing the way the system works. That way everyone, even those individuals too busy or too tired or too clueless to care, can still end up making low-impact choices—because that’s the new default option. With a solution of proper scope, the influence we have as consumers only gets asserted after the system has been fundamentally changed to serve sustainability and fairness—so there are entirely different choices about how to spend our money. First and foremost, the influence we have as individuals comes from our role as informed, engaged citizens: citizens who participate actively in communities and