FOR Earth Day, a patch of water somewhere between the East Siberian Sea and the Chukchi Sea became mine to adopt. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which organized #AdoptThePlanet, offered plenty of information on my bit of the planet, but much of it proved too technical.
Symbolic gestures like adopting parts of the planet do help, but we will need to go beyond these if we truly want to help protect the Earth. Fortunately, the list of things we can do stretches long.
Among the things we can do is use a laptop instead of a desktop, because it runs on less power. We can eat locally grown food. Give up meat for, say, two days a week. Use a pail and dipper when bathing, instead of taking showers. Collect rainwater. Walk more and burn less fossil fuels.
But while it won’t hurt to persuade people to make eco-friendly choices, concern for the environment shouldn’t remain a matter of personal responsibility, David Roberts wrote in Grist.org last October 2005.
“The kind of environmental change we need will never happen solely through personal virtue,” Roberts wrote. “There just aren’t enough virtuous people.” So, in addition to persuading individuals to consume less and make more mindful choices, environmentalists need to keep working on reshaping public policy and the rules that govern built and natural environments, “in order to make eco-friendly choices easy.”
One challenge of being eco-friendly is that of making careful choices even if we don’t have to suffer any immediate consequence when we choose poorly. Some people can toss plastic water bottles into canals or leave liquor bottles on what used to be a pristine shore, because there’s no swift and obvious deterrent to doing that. This past week, while thinking about what to write for today, the day after Earth Day, I used disposable plastic utensils, failed to recycle water bottles, forgot to bring recyclable cloth bags during a grocery run, had food delivered (causing someone to burn fuel to bring me meals in single-use cardboard containers, which in hindsight was irresponsible on several levels), and ate processed meat made in China. Ayayay.
There ought to be a way to remember more consistently the chain of causation that leads from all the mindless choices I (along with countless others) have made as a consumer, to the floods I had to drive through early last Easter Sunday and the mind-bending heat of some recent middays.
Countries operate in the same vein. Last year, enough states cooperated for the Paris climate accord to go into effect. But that agreement rests on fragile, voluntary commitments. The parties promised to help prevent the global average temperature from rising by more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Richer countries pledged to spend $100 billion every year starting in 2020, to help poor countries invest in clean energy and deal with the effects of climate change, like droughts and floods.
Yet the Paris accord says only what these countries promise to do. How they will make good on their promises remains up in the air, and there is no mechanism for dealing with those who fail to deliver. Expecting persons and countries to act virtuously, on Earth Day and the rest of the year, seems unrealistic. But since giving up is not an option either, some compromise will have to be found.
Perhaps the way forward is to take stock of what we can do in our households—going beyond gimmicky moves like “adopting” part of the planet—and appeal for legislation and executive actions that will nudge individuals, governments, and corporations toward making eco-friendly choices more often.
(Go to go.nasa.gov/adopt to adopt your piece of the planet. On Twitter: @isoldeamante)