Pollan asks ‘why bother?’

Published: April 22, 2008

by frog

One of my current favourite political authors, Michael Pollan is on his way to New Zealand to promote his new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.

On Sunday he had an opinion piece in the New York Times where he asks that dark question that troubles many  environmentally aware people – why bother doing anything when other people around the world are moving in the opposite direction counteracting any efforts you make? Sometimes the problem can seem just too big:

In the judgment of James Hansen, the NASA climate scientist who began sounding the alarm on global warming 20 years ago, we have only 10 years left to start cutting – not just slowing – the amount of carbon we’re emitting or face a “different planet.” Hansen said this more than two years ago, however; two years have gone by, and nothing of consequence has been done. So: eight years left to go and a great deal left to do.

I have previously argued that it is not enough for the government to tell people to change their light bulbs and pressure their tyres correctly. What we need are big, nationwide, political actions led by government.  Pollan approaches this dilemma from the other side:

It’s hard to argue with Michael Specter, in a recent New Yorker piece on carbon footprints, when he says: “Personal choices, no matter how virtuous, cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money.” So it will. Yet it is no less accurate or hardheaded to say that laws and money cannot do enough, either; that it will also take profound changes in the way we live. Why? Because the climate-change crisis is at its very bottom a crisis of lifestyle – of character, even.

Pollan argues that the only way we can comprehend not just the extent of the changes we as a global community face, but also the beauty and value of those lifestyle changes is if we face up to those changes in our own lives:

Here’s the point: Cheap energy, which gives us climate change, fosters precisely the mentality that makes dealing with climate change in our own lives seem impossibly difficult. Specialists ourselves, we can no longer imagine anyone but an expert, or anything but a new technology or law, solving our problems. Al Gore asks us to change the light bulbs because he probably can’t imagine us doing anything much more challenging, like, say, growing some portion of our own food. We can’t imagine it, either, which is probably why we prefer to cross our fingers and talk about the promise of ethanol and nuclear power – new liquids and electrons to power the same old cars and houses and lives.

Pollan has a solution that sounds simple but is an intimidatingly dramatic change in lifestyle for most of us.  Which I guess is exactly the point he is trying to make. He calls it opening up a ‘tiny space of liberty’ in our community that can then be extended, or perhaps, more appropriately, grown.

[T]he act I want to talk about is growing some – even just a little – of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t – if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade – look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do – to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.

frog says

Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Tue, April 22nd, 2008   

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