"I don’t know where to start, or where to stop. I want a mandate, guidelines, someone to force my hand. I want rules, shared sacrifice."
The above statement in particular made me think because I can relate to the difficulty of being self-motivated to do things that are better for the environment. The problem is that the government would never put guidelines to make people more energy efficient and people would have a bad attitude to a list of new laws to help the environment anyways. Picket signs with "Global warming is a conspiracy" and news headlines reading "Climate laws: Necessity or Insanity" would be rampant. That may not be the best way out, but their could be laws to increase the culture of environmental consciousness. Whether that means making every street and building have a recycle bin or teaching children at a young age about the effects of our wastefulness on the world, it may just do the trick.
I agree with you, and find it perplexing how unwilling the government is to acknowledge the prevalence of global warming. George Bush rejected the Tokyo protocol even though a large number of countries agreed to lower gas emissions. In this country, politicians are more concerned with money and jobs than the Earth, which should be changed. If the government's mindset changed, citizens would be more likely to feel pressed to make environmentally conscious decisions.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. If the government forces us to be more energy-efficient, then people are going to protest. I like the idea of incentives. That's the main reason why my family recycles now. The government, a couple years ago, gave everyone in our neighborhood green trash bins for recycling, and we've been recycling since. We just need more incentives like those.
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you based your blog post off of that quote. I would also like to add that by starting small and slow with laws and incentives that promote environmental consciousness, more and more people will begin to notice how important it is to take care of the earth. When people are not forced to do things, they tend to ease up to rethinking their ways more, which is what the world needs.
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