re: Maniates

I am not sure what the reader is supposed to take away from Michael Maniate op-ed "Going Green? Easy Doesn't Do It". A sense of doom? A feeling of powerlessness to create change? This is, in my mind, the worst face of the environmental movement: condescending, alarmist, and calling for some mystical change to come down from the heavens and rewrite the whole way we live our lives. The only way we can even dream of seeing real progress is to move incrementally, and align peoples best interests with those of the environment.

At the moment, there is no incentive except for altruism to make environmental change. We have displaced the costs of our unsustainable lifestyle across time and space, and in doing so have moved environmentalism upwards on our hierarchy of needs. The only way to make the big changes Maniates is pushing for is to make every individual feel these costs viscerally, in their wallets and their day to day lives, and let market forces do their efficient work. When you tell someone who's paid $10 an hour to spend an extra hour commuting to work on public transportation at a savings of $5, they do a quick cost-benefit analysis in their head and say "No, thank you."

Maniates, and environmentalists who share his views, shouldn't be surprised that people are only willing to make marginal changes to help the environment at the moment. It's human nature to ignore issues that do not appear to directly affect you, and wailing about that on the op-ed page will not change anything. Any environmentalist who is hungry for genuine change needs to approach these questions pragmatically, to cooperate with people and align their interests with those of the planet. Talking down to the small minority of Americans who are willing to start making change, even if it is just a few CFL lightbulbs and recycling their cans, is counterproductive and harmful to the movement as a whole.