One of my all-time favorite quotes is from Mahatma Gandhi, "Be the change you want to see in the world." And I believe that people really want to make a change in the world.
But life gets in the way. We have bills to pay (on time!), kids to feed, laundry to do, bosses to appease, etc.,
So, what to do?
I don't think that we all have to chain ourselves to giant sequoias or go completely vegan 365 days a year to make a difference.
For some people those options are feasible. But for others they already have established lives and built-in demands that make making a change on a monumental scale rather tricky.
Therefore, what to do?
It's a matter of finding what can you do? There are simple solutions like installing CFLS, using a low-flow showerhead, using reusable bags instead of paper or plastic bags, buying organic produce or etc.,
But take a hard look at your lifestyle and think what else could you do? Make a donation to an organization such as the Sierra Club or Greenpeace? Take mass transportation to work one day a week? Only eat locally (like Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon did, which they documented in their work, Plenty: One Man, One Woman and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally) Don't shop at big box stores for a week, a month, a year? (a la Judith Levine in her (mixed review) work Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping)
This is in nooooo way a value judgment. While I don't own a car, I still am having a love affair with Target and Amazon.com I try to buy some of my food from the farmer's market. But it can be expensive! And for a grad student, I'm always trying to save money. Everyone will do something different. The important thing is that we all do something. A lot of small actions will lead to a collectively big impact.
