One of my proudest moments as an environmentalist came when the Santa Monica Main Public Library answered my plea to install more bike racks. The racks were hard won: I photo-documented then blogged about the over-crowded racks at the LEED-certified building, wrote to the Library board members, then got fellow resident bicyclers to do the same. It all took a while, but in the end we got new racks and were able to park our bikes with ease — until gas prices shot up and the bicycling population doubled, filling up the new bike racks…
No, one bike rack won’t save the world. Some of you may in fact smirk at my celebration of this puny success. Even in California alone, we’ve got way bigger environmental problems: Water’s running out, wildfires keep flaring up, and pinot noir prices are about to go through the roof! Isn’t it time to stop merrily two-wheeling down the beach bike path and start grimly lobbying for the best cap-and-trade program?
There’s no shortage of articles and blog posts that claim most self-described environmentalists can’t see the forest for the trees. Some will go so far as to say individual efforts — switching to CFL blubs and recycling, for example — lull people into enviro-complacency, distracting them from pushing for real, effective change on the federal level. In a Freakonomics quorum on global warming, editor-in-chief of The Economist John Micklethwait admitted his personal carbon footprint’s huge — but then argued his un-eco ways were no cause for concern: “Global warming is going to be solved not by individual but by collective action,” Micklethwait asserted, “and we [at The Economist] have done our bit to encourage that along by, for instance, advocating a carbon tax.”
Hey, I’m all for a carbon tax. Yet despite all the fretting about how a focus on individual action will create a bunch of recycling-as-the-end-all, politically unengaged enviro-lites, I can’t say I’ve met any of these pseudo-greens. Sure, I’ve met people who don’t care much about the environment, but who put their recycling in the blue bin anyway since, after all, it’s right next to the black bin. But what I see more often are people who — through small actions that simply began out of financial or convenience reasons — get sucked into the hardcore environmental movement to lead Step It Up rallies and agitate for stricter fuel efficiency standards.
I do have one thing in common with Mickelthwait: I believe we all need to work together to bring about bigger changes. What we disagree on, however, is how best to engage people to bring these bigger changes about. While Mickelthwait and his cohorts may pooh-pooh personal efforts to reduce individual carbon footprints, I see such efforts as a gateway drug of sorts that get people viscerally involved and engaged in attaining larger environmental goals.
We live in a country with high voter apathy, where many people remain disengaged from all politics because they believe their actions and votes to be ineffectual. Even the more politically engaged can get discouraged by the constant “Click here to send an email to your representative!” appeals, the effects of which seem negligible at best.
I have a lot to learn about enviro-organizing or human psychology, but I do know this: Telling people their individual choices don’t matter tends to be an extremely ineffective way of convincing people to engage in an issue that desperately requires their personal time and involvement.
I have to bike over to a friend’s birthday dinner now, but in my next post, I’ll go into more specifics about how localized, individual initiatives can serve as catalysts for larger political action.
In the meantime, get your library to install more bike racks!
