Rev. Danny Fisher

Earlier this week, the Washington Post ran a provocative (and dare I say essential) opinion piece by Michael Maniates, a professor of political science and environmental science at Allegheny College. His argument: the environmental movement is “glorifying” that which is “easy,” and to questionable effect.

Several best-sellers offer advice about what we must ask of ourselves and one another. Their titles suggest that we needn’t break much of a sweat: “It’s Easy Being Green,” “The Lazy Environmentalist,” or even “The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time.”

Although each offers familiar advice (“reuse scrap paper before recycling” or “take shorter showers”), it’s what’s left unsaid by these books that’s intriguing. Three assertions permeate the pages: (1) We should look for easy, cost-effective things to do in our private lives as consumers, since that’s where we have the most power and control; these are the best things to do because (2) if we all do them the cumulative effect of these individual choices will be a safe planet; which is fortunate indeed because (3) we, by nature, aren’t terribly interested in doing anything that isn’t private, individualistic, cost-effective and, above all, easy.

This glorification of easy isn’t limited to the newest environmental self-help books. The Web sites of the big U.S. environmental groups, the Environmental Protection Agency and even the American Association for the Advancement of Science offer markedly similar lists of actions that tell us we can change the world through our consumer choices, choices that are economic, simple, even stylish. Al Gore himself isn’t immune. His recent Live Earth concert featured a who’s-who lineup of celebrities who said that if we all do our little bit to recycle and conserve–the simple things, mind you, because that’s all we’ll need (translation: that’s all they think we’ll go for)–we can together rescue the world for our children and grandchildren.

Never has so little been asked of so many at such a critical moment.

The hard facts are these: If we sum up the easy, cost-effective, eco-efficiency measures we should all embrace, the best we get is a slowing of the growth of environmental damage. That’s hardly enough: Avoiding the worst risks of climate change, for instance, may require reducing U.S. carbon emissions by 80 percent in the next 30 years while invoking the moral authority such reductions would confer to persuade China, India and other booming nations to embrace similar restraint. Obsessing over recycling and installing a few special light bulbs won’t cut it. We need to be looking at fundamental change in our energy, transportation and agricultural systems rather than technological tweaking on the margins, and this means changes and costs that our current and would-be leaders seem afraid to discuss. Which is a pity, since Americans are at their best when they’re struggling together, and sometimes with one another, toward difficult goals.

Maniates is right on here in his assessment, I think. In addition, he goes on to end the piece with a crucial reminder:

Throughout our history it has been the knotty, vexing challenges, and leaders who speak frankly about them, that have fired our individual and communal imagination, creativity and commitment. Paul Revere didn’t race through the streets of Middlesex County hawking a book on “The Lazy Revolutionary.” Franklin Roosevelt didn’t mobilize the country’s energies by listing 10 easy ways to oppose fascism. And it’s unlikely that Martin Luther King Jr.’s drafts of his “I Have a Dream” speech or his “Letter From Birmingham Jail” imagined a practical politics of change rooted in individualistic, consumer-centered actions.

Indeed, one of the ways I think our country has gone soft with regards to social engagement is by allowing activism to take root in “individualistic, consumer-centered actions.” This is an astute and well-articulated bit by Maniates.

All that said, Bill Maher, comedian and host of H.B.O.’s Real Time, takes advantage of the Thanksgiving holiday and acidly reminds us of something we can do that is “not hard” but nonetheless makes a huge impact environmentally: vegetarianism.

Former Vice President Al Gore should be the first to take the meat-free Thanksgiving pledge. Since raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined, is it too much ask Mr. Gore to stop gazing at his Oscar and his Nobel Prize long enough to read the United Nations report that calls the meat industry “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global”?

The issue that Maher raises is something that I’ve blogged about before–here and here.

Maniates may or may not have had it in mind when he wrote his piece, but it seems to me that vegetarianism is one of those changes we will have to make if we want to “avoid the worst risks of climate change.” Though “not hard,” it may not be an “easy” thing for some of us. But, hey, it’s not easy being green.