I was inspired to highlight this issue by a Facebook post from Prof. Kathryn Harrison from UBC. It’s worth pointing out that her kids Sophie Harrison and Sam Harrison are both doing a heck of a lot to fight climate change and have been since they were young.
Spoiler Alert: I don’t think that is the right thing to focus on. The real question is why aren’t we focusing on the actual fossil fuels being burned by and major contributors of these emissions, multi-national corporations?
This is from a piece I highlighted in response (see below for links in the show notes):
“The packaging industry justifies disposables as a response to consumer demand: buyers wanted convenience; packagers simply provided it. But that’s not exactly true. Consumers had to be trained to be wasteful. Part of this re-education involved forestalling any debate over the wisdom of creating disposables in the first place, replacing it with an emphasis on “proper” disposal. Keep America Beautiful led this refocusing on the symptoms rather than the system. The trouble was not their industry’s promulgation of throwaway stuff; the trouble was those oafs who threw it away.”
FYI: This is a clip taken from the Great Climate Race LIVE broadcasts that I did over the summer while traveling across Canada. The music that was added is via https://www.bensound.com.
Show Notes:
On Not Having Children to Stop Climate Change Piece in Question from the Guardian – https://www.theguardian.com/environme…
Dave Roberts Response in Vox – https://www.vox.com/energy-and-enviro…
Sophie Harrison recommended this article re the choice to have children – http://gutsmagazine.ca/motherearth-on…
Emphasizing individual solutions to big issues can reduce support for government efforts – https://m.phys.org/news/2017-06-empha…
On the shift to focusing on personal responsibility – https://orionmagazine.org/article/the…
Drawdown (edited by Paul Hawken) Are you interested in being in a book club? Let me know, my contact information is below.