Human Beings & Their Patterns

So today is Blog Action Day where bloggers and such get together and all post about the same thing. This year it's The Environment.

By now I figure most people are tired of, or at least underwhelmed with, hearing about the environment and how we're reaching a tipping point and we need to make changes and holy crap where are all these animal species going, etc, etc. So a day when people are supposed to unite and write about the environment may seem cliche and default.

I could sit here and type out all the ways in which we're screwing ourselves with our wasteful ways and harmful practices, but I'd be beating a dead horse.

It's just like smoking: People know it's bad for them. We know, we really do. We've had the facts about lung cancer since grade school. We are aware cigarettes contain harmful chemicals meant to keep us addicted, and we know it's making our bodies unhealthy and that over long periods of time it has a high probability of killing us. People see all those Truth commercials (which personally I hate, and I don't even smoke cigarettes) numbing informing us with the same facts over and over and over.

And yet, people keep smoking. People keep polluting their bodies despite the the knowledge of what it's doing to them, just like what we're doing to the environment.

What's the reason? Why do people do things they know will have negative and unhealthy consequences? I'm sure men and women smarter then me have complex theories with cascades of data supporting them, and that Wikipedia will describe them all to you. Personally, I don't think we can nail it down to one thing. One set of personality traits, one pattern of thinking or type of nurturing. There are as many reasons for people to do things as there are people.

I lean towards the belief that people are inherently lazy (even God had to have a lazy day after all that work) and this laziness has both positive and negative side-effects.

On the positive side we have inventions that make life easier: Machines capable of moving heavy objects and people quickly over vast distances on land, sea, or air. Devices allowing for long, safe storage of food and quick cooking. Medicines, instant electronic communication, farms that produce huge crops, safer childbirth. Basically any invention you can think of was meant to make some job easier.

The negative side is that we get set into certain patterns and don't really want to get out unless we have to. It's easier to continue driving my truck to work where my only physical exertion is the pressing of a pedal and the turning of a (hydraulically assisted) wheel than to pedal my ass, my change of clothes, and my lunch eight miles uphill both ways to work and back on a bike. The bicycle was invented to make travel easier than walking. The motor vehicle was invented to make it easier still. Why go back a step?

Unless it's cheaper, faster, funner (be quiet), and/or most importantly easier, people are not likely to make volitional changes in their lifestyles. No matter how many facts we have. No matter what the television in all it's infinite wisdom tells us. No matter how many protests and fliers dirty hippies and soy brigades create. They just won't. In most people's minds there is no reason to change unless there is a semi-instant benefit for them in doing so.

So what do we do then? Keep trying scare-tactics and hope we can eventually terrorize people into recycling, taking public transit or bicycles, buying hybrids, converting to solar energy and going organic? That isn't working now and I don't think it ever will. Plus, the more you try to force people to do something they don't want to, the more they fight it. They'll do a shitty version of the bare minimum just to get people off their backs.

In my admittedly inexperienced opinion, I think they key to getting people to change their habits is not to bash them over the heads with figures of rising temperatures or images of slash-and-burned rain forest plots or scary news specials about all the ways in which we're dicking ourselves and our children's children's children. That direction has been tried repeatedly and is making minimal headway at best. Definitely not the changes of quality and quantity we need to curb or repair the damage we've done.

The goal should be to make positive environmental choices cheaper and easier for Mr. & Ms. Ryan Q. Everybody.

If we can save money by easily buying a different light bulb, we'll do it without having to be told. If we can get that cute little Honda or VW everyone else has and spend a lot less on gas because it's a hybrid, we'll do it. If the trash man drops off and picks up recycling containers with the normal trash, we will most likely start recycling. If locally-grown food is just as easy to access as stuff flown in from all over the country, and is less expensive because it doesn't have to pay for trucks and airplanes, people will go with the local choice.

People will go to great lengths to save money. But not if it's a bigger pain in the ass then it's worth. This is the razor's edge that companies and groups have to walk in order to get us to change our ways. And it's only people and their personal, individual, daily choices that will start saving the environment.

Big events with celebrities and fanfare and TV spots are great and all, but it creates a tiny drop in a big bucket when compared with the choices we make every day. Sure, we get all hyped up about saving the planet and hopefully ride the momentum for a while, but unless it's a continual thing we're doing it won't make much of a difference.

I don't mean to say that until we are forced to be more responsible (seems like a contradictory concept to me) or technology comes along that makes hybrids 75% cheaper than internal combustion engines are we excused from doing our part.

Those of us with the ability and capacity to endure a small amount of inconvenience should, as human beings, do what we can. And as Colin Beavan (No Impact Man) recently wrote, ten months of no electricity, no motorized transportation, no buying anything new, and nothing but locally grown food feels, "Normal. Unremarkable. Life as usual."

It's really not that hard to do. Start small and stick with it. Do anything. Buy those little spiral light bulbs that last forever. Take a bike once in a while. Bring a big load to the recycling center at the end of the month. Try some organic coffee beans and fruit.

And for Christ's sake, don't let those people who are all high and mighty for not touching any paper for nine months and growing all their own food make you feel badly for doing your own little part. They do what they can, you do what you can, and they need to be helpful instead of elitist assholes.

One person alone can't save the world, but it takes all of us one persons to get it done.

- David