I don’t know exactly what “enlightened environmentalism” is or where the term comes from .I haven’t Googled it and I’m not going to. For all I know, it could be anything from a Sierra Club pact to a term of the professor’s own coinage. It’s not government policy, that’s for sure. The first three paths all have to do with the mindset transformation that must take place to put us on the tract to lasting change and sustainability. My guess is that the last two, as of yet unrevealed, will have to do with a commitment to action.
The problem with the actions taken thus far by the government, the only authority that can enforce environmental policies, is that they’re limited in their scope and their goals. The conservation movement delineated lands that would be protected from commercial use, but there’s nothing that can protect those lands from the environmental impact of commercial activities nearby or upriver. There’s no bubble that any piece of land can be shoved into that will place it above the Earth’s web of life.
The measures taken seem to have been put in place with hardly any sense of value for the land. Why were they conserved? So people could still have a bit of nature to enjoy, to divert themselves with after everything else is gone. I don’t think that the mindset behind the conservation laws was actually serious about protecting the environment from the impact of pollution in the long run. What they did was relatively easy and looked much nicer, in symbolic terms, to the public. Rather than chasing down big business and forcing them to follow regulations for ethical and sustainable behavior—which could’ve been reported as “socialism”, “communism” or “restriction of free speech” and provoked citizen outcry—the government took some pristine lands, stuck a ribbon on them and said to the public, Look—You’ve got a nice new park! It’s huge!
The conservation movement did nothing to reform agri-industry, a perfect example of this country’s craze for overconsumption, nor did it do anything to prevent, curb or clean up pollution. All it did was protect certain lands from the damage of being directly used for commercial production. What if all U.S. lands had been protected from such exploitation from the time that this country first absorbed them? America would not be what it is today. If we tried to change the landscape to what it was in the early 1800s (pre-Lewis and Clark), the economy would probably collapse and people would be forced to adopt to a new quality-of-life standard—to live off of what they could grow, gather and catch. And, while sustainable and probably healthier in the long run, this would bruise people’s first-world egos. We’re so used to having more than we need that we’ve redefined “need”—from “something necessary” to “something necessary to live the life most other people with disposable income are living”.
What do people need? Masses of people today feel that they “need” to preserve a wasteful way of life. They feel that they need more goods, not better ones. And once they attain what they want, they still want more. Two TVs? Well, we have three floors in our house…–and look! We can get a great deal!—why not make it three TVs? Why not? We work hard, don’t we deserve it? They don’t bother informing themselves about the sources of their cheap luxury goods. Neither producers nor consumers stop to think about the long-term costs. When the costs that don’t impact them directly are brought to their attention, they shrug and say, “Oh well.” They say, “Such is the way of things,” “What do you want me to do?” or, “It’s a shame, but . . . there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Humans need food, water and shelter. They don’t need a new cell phone every year just because they’re tired of the old one. They need clothes and medicine, but not to the point where they can’t even reach the deepest depths of their closet, become resistant to Tylenol or can’t even remember what the flux of pills in their medicine cabinets are for. They need technology that works, not planned obsolescence. And they need air, water, and land that won’t make them sick in the long run. When it comes down to what people really need, it turns out that there’s no need to exploit the planet or each other to attain it.
