These little sacrifices strike many as an assault on their personal freedoms. Imagine asking the average American to think more about their daily habits, to cut back on their impulse buying, to water their lawn less. Fires like this, everywhere, every summer, destroying homes and displacing populations, and wrecking our ecosystems. This is what happens when we insist on the right to consume and produce plastics, to fly around the world on jets, to eat cheeseburgers, to drink coffee from cups that can’t be recycled.
This is the cost of freedom, as we’ve defined it. We’ve confused freedom with convenience, including the supposed right to waste water and energy in the pursuit of our whims and hankerings. We’ve grown up thinking we’re entitled to everything. Lithium-ion batteries used to power EVs require rare minerals and extractive mining Unless we are mindful of our impacts, the potential of renewable energy sources will be overwhelmed by future energy use.ĭriving a five-thousand-pound EV to get Chinese takeout for dinner is a waste of energy, even if renewable. Half a million people dancing and gambling on the world’s three hundred fifty cruise ships at any given moment is an extraordinary use of valuable energy. If we live in 2050 as we do today, a great deal of energy will still be wasted. We’ve spent the last several decades celebrating personal liberties in a reckless way that consumes far more resources than we can sustain. There’s no way to be hyperbolic about the size and scope of the climate disasters we’re seeing.Ī specific brand of “freedom” got us here. We’re already seeing the frightening consequences of our inaction. The latest report from the UN makes it pretty clear. Someone recently made a condescending remark to me about persuading people. There’s chapters about tackling poverty and pollution. There’s a chapter about reforming our food production and consumption. There’s a chapter about reforming our farming practices.
There’s a chapter about keystone species. That’s the key point of Paul Hawken’s book, Regeneration: Ending The Climate Crisis in One Generation. Without them, everything sorta falls apart. Turns out, wolves are a keystone species. They’re what scientists call a trophic cascade, and they’re everywhere. Wolves also created more carrion for scavengers like crows and bears. They changed the way elk feed on willow and cottonwood plants. Then in 1995, conservationists did something controversial - something local ranchers didn’t like.īringing wolves back to Yellowstone transformed it in ways scientists are still trying to understand. Yellowstone National Park was in sad shape.
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