The Need for Sacrifice

This section of the book was especially deep, addressing many different concepts about climate change and society, but the idea of sacrifice was something that particularly sparked my imagination. The experts in the section discussed the widely held view by politicians and leaders that “green capitalism” is possible. If we just advance enough technologically, we can compensate for the damage  we have done. They say it will not take a large shift in the way of life we have come to know, just minor alterations here and there to make our society more eco friendly and that should be enough. This view has been subject to much scrutiny in the eyes of the public in recent times. I think the realization that the issue of global climate change is not going to be rectified in passive circumstances but rather in collective action and individual sacrifice has already taken place. Occupy Wall Street, though not explicitly aimed at bringing attention to climate change, did address  the problems that capitalism, as a means of organizing a society’s economy, raises for us. People are not satisfied with the ever growing inequality and lack of avenues to a better life that the economic/political system is fostering. The same discontent is visible in climate activism. The people involved in climate activism and awareness identify that the current economic system, while beneficial insofar as individual accumulation of material goods, is not expedient to the health of the environment. It will take a sacrifice on the part of the very elite to not tailor the system in a way that concentrates wealth in their hands at the cost of everyone and everything else. Similarly, we will have to sacrifice our desire to be like the wealthy and limit our consumption. Sacrificing is going to be hard; we will have to make similar decisions to Squarzoni’s refusal to fly to Asia. The way of life for generations hundreds of years from now may still be similar to ours, but serious concessions will have to be made.