Preaching to the choir

As a novice activist, I have realised that not many people are concerned on a day-to-day basis about the environment and this Earth, and are ambivalent about how their individual choices affect the environment. Yes, as individuals, we do have agency. We have the power to make differences. Pressure must constantly be applied, so that when the earthquake happens, it is because of the constancy and unabated and unswerving pressure that has been applied from all angles, for a long time. I have written about this at length, several times.

Yet we see that in light of all of this ecological degradation, all of this unsustainability, all of this injustice, that the masses are barely moved. As environmentalists and activists, we preach to the choir, and this blog is complicit in that, I suppose. I do not want it to be this way, but of course, it is hard to deny that it is this way. While it is important to surround ourselves with people that agree with us and challenge us (especially because we are a minority), as a recent comment from Tanny said, the divide to those that are unconcerned must be overcome.

Last night, I got to know Avik, my Argentine tango dance instructor, a little bit more. He completed his undergraduate and master's degree in electrical engineering, but then switched gears and got a Ph.D. in environmental policy and behaviour...and he is of Indian descent. (Awesome! That is so nice to see. There are very few non-White people in the environmental movement. It is not hard to see then that many people think the movement is elitist.) He said that for all that the environmental movement has done, it has not been able to move the masses and reach across the divide. Of course when the Cuyahoga River was burning a few decades ago, people took notice. But he said that the reason why people haven't latched on to the movement is that impacts of people's choices need to be felt immediately, and with environmentally-conscious choices, it is very difficult to achieve this. For example, when someone buys a car, the "positive" impacts of that choice are felt immediately - you gain mobility, and accessibility, and the ability to drive cross-country on a whim. (Of course, we would rather have it that you don't need a car to be mobile and to have access.) But what if you don't buy a car out of some environmental awareness? Are the positives of that choice evident to you immediately? Likely not, unless you choose to bike, you become healthier, you feel better, have better endurance, eat healthier, and so on. All of this can take a while, though, and it requires effort, and every day awareness.

It is not as if the negative impacts of environmental choices aren't felt directly or tangibly. They are, to those people that are least capable of defending themselves. Environmental justice can be a framework under which it is possible to mobilise the masses. But how do you take the masses to Delray? Can you take them all to a landfill? Will everyone watch Waste Land or Gasland? And when there is success in getting to the mainstream, as Al Gore did with An Inconvenient Truth? How do you tell the masses about the heroes that win the Goldman Environmental Prizes?

How much has the middle class been adopting environmentally-guided behaviour in their lives, then? Not much, apart from maybe switching out light bulbs and calling it good. All of these people live in comfort. Unemployment may affect them a little bit, but in all seriousness, the middle class is well off in suburbia. How do you connect to these people, those that form the bulk of the population, and those whose choices have massive implications in legitimising large corporations and corrupt governments?

I have thought to myself that environmentalism is a spiritual journey, that in our effort to reduce our ecological footprints, that in our efforts to tread lightly and respect this Earth and its creations, we realise more about ourselves as individuals - our fallibility and our power as ethical beings. Yet Avik said that discussion about ethics and morality outside of the contexts of religion can be very academic. I agree with him to an extent, and yet I have still held on hope that people can more holistically think about and understand their choices, through morality and ethics, and contemplate the influence that their lives have on other people and this Earth.

There are a couple of forces at play here. First, the powerful have put up boundaries and barriers between those well-off, those that serve in the interests of their existence, and those that face the negative outcomes of our collective actions. They have set up physical barriers (like highways and dams and bridges) and mental barriers ("Those that are not well-off are so because of the way that have chosen to lead their lives."). But as individuals, we too have set up mental barriers ourselves so we don't have to deal with challenging situations. Think about the barriers we put up when we are approached by a homeless person asking for money.

How come there were only one thousand people that got arrested in protest of the Keystone XL pipeline between Alberta and Texas? Why not ten thousand? Or one hundred thousand? How do we not preach to the choir? How do we make discussions about environmentalism less academic? How do we move the masses? The masses are powerful, because they have the capacity to take down oppressive systems. I will try my fullest to write in a manner that appreciates Avik's thoughts, because he makes very valid points.

"Going green, but getting nowhere"

I borrowed today's post title from a New York Times op-ed contribution with the same title, written by Gernot Wagner, an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund. (Thank you, Colin, for sending this article to me.) The article makes for an interesting read, but it raises several issues of individualism and collective action that I do not agree with, since they stem from an old mindset of large-scale regulation driven by neoliberal economics, the same economics that has gotten us into this mess.

I agree with Wagner's sentiment on the importance and need for collective action. Of course we need collective action in the face of collectively-made problems. But Wagner almost belittles individual effort, because, it doesn't affect change. He writes,

"But, sadly, individual action does not work. It distracts us from the need for collective action, and it doesn’t add up to enough. Self-interest, not self-sacrifice, is what induces noticeable change. Only the right economic policies will enable us as individuals to be guided by self-interest and still do the right thing for the planet."

I do not agree with him. He is saying that the agency for change is not us, that individuals have no agency, but rather economic policies are what will free us from ourselves. Unfortunately, the economic system that is vague and murky, the policy of which is set by economic wonks in secrecy (look at the Federal Reserve). I agree that individual action doesn't add up when we are not communicative of our efforts, when we are not consciously trying to instill change in others. Of course it wouldn't work, because such individual action is almost selfish and elitist. I have mentioned this several times.

"And economics teaches us that humanity must have the right incentives if it is to stop this terrible trend."

Wagner implies with this statement that humans are "rational" actors, and act rationally when shown a price of their choices. Nothing could be further from the truth, because no one really acts rationally. Look at how many people smoke, and how many eat unhealthily, how many people continue to buy Hummers even when gas "prices" are so high. Furthermore, the costs for environmental compliance are terribly low. Many factories find it cheaper to pay fines for breaking regulations than upping their standards and complying. The boundaries between domestic law and transnational law further provide little incentive to think about cumulative impacts of choices. Law and economy are set up with loopholes - you can prove your case not to pay, or be luckily powerful, or just pay your way out of your problems.

Wagner raises how economic incentives allowed us to get rid of lead from gasoline. But the economy didn't stop us from creating another problem. The economy is not self-correcting, and our faith in it cannot be blind. The reason why all of these problems keep arising is because we have a structure in place that allows them to pop up. As soon as the "problem" of climate change is "solved," something else massive will come up. I know it. Because unless we change the foundation, the offspring are all rotten.

What such articles have the tendency to do is put the burden on the governing elite. But as President Obama said tonight, we all have responsibilities. I have continued to believe in the ability of human emotion and benevolence. Constantly we are surrounded by stories and images and media that tell us stories that are inspiring, not because a price is put on their actions, but because they speak to something deeper, something that is more powerful than rational action and choice. We are guided ethically and emotionally as individuals, so why should we be guided by "rational market principles" that in no way question the status quo? Aren't we more than that? I am not convinced that we are. We are animals, and we have a conscience. It is for that reason we find things beautiful, and some things despicable. Unfortunately, right now, such emotion shows up only when we are manifestly and tangibly distressed, when we actually see something going wrong in front of us.

As individuals, we cannot act in isolation. Rather, we must recognise that we are a part of a community - of people, of species, of ecosystems - forming this Earth. A restructuring of our lives, individual and collective, is in order.