Local Futures

  • Home
  • Media room
  • Blog
  • Store
  • Contact

The Economics of Happiness

Donate
Menu
  • About us
    • Local Futures
    • Our team
    • Founder, Helena Norberg-Hodge
    • Get involved and support us
    • Our history
    • Close
  • Projects
    • Connect globally and locally
      • World Localization Day
      • Voices from the Field
      • Localization Action Guide
      • International Alliance for Localization
        • Join the IAL
        • IAL members
          • IAL member organizations
          • IAL Listserv
      • Ladakh Project
      • Planet Local
        • Culture
        • Eco Communities
        • Ecology
        • Health
        • Local Business & Finance
        • Local Energy
        • Local Food, Farming & Fisheries
        • Local Policy & Community Rights
        • Place-based Education
        • Sharing & Repairing
    • Gain a big picture perspective
      • Blog
      • Local Futures Podcast
        • Jeremy Lent: Shifting Paradigms
        • COP, carbon and high-tech: who is setting the agenda?
        • Beyond Conspiracy: Framing Meaningful Activism
        • Unpacking Global Empire from an Indigenous Perspective
        • More than Just the Vegetables
        • Food Sovereignty in the Global Economy
        • Transition, Tradition, and Trade
        • Not-for-Profit Businesses
        • Love, Values, and Wellbeing Economies
        • Growing a Farmers Market from the Ground Up
        • Beautiful Places: A Conversation with Wendell Berry
        • Creating the Framework for a New Economy
        • From GDP to GNH
        • Rebuilding Healthy Communities: The Growing Ecovillage Movement
        • Seeds of Resilience, Seeds of Sovereignty
        • Why Local Ownership Matters
        • Local Alternatives to Globalized Development: A View from India
        • How to Feed the World? A Political Agroecological Approach
        • Helena Norberg-Hodge on how corporate ‘free trade’ deals threaten local communities and economies worldwide
      • Webinars
        • Sacred Activism in a Post-Trump World Webinar
        • Talking Climate Webinar
        • People Power: Democracy and the Economy Webinar
        • Beyond Trump: The Path to Real Change Webinar
        • Bringing the Food Economy Home Webinar
        • A World Without ‘Free’ Trade: What it would look like and how to get there
        • Beyond ‘Free Trade’ – Alternatives to Corporate Rule
        • Education: Promises, Myths & Realities Webinar
        • Debt and Speculation in the Global Economy Webinar
        • A New Activism Webinar
        • Climate Change or System Change Webinar
        • Going Local Webinar
      • Powerful talks
      • The Economics of Happiness film
      • Films and short videos
      • Books and reports
    • Close
  • Events
    • Upcoming events
    • World Localization Day
    • Economics of Happiness conferences
    • Other past events
    • Close
  • Action resources
    • Getting the facts
      • Globalization – drivers and impacts
      • Localization – a solution-multiplier
      • Big Picture Activism – rethinking basic assumptions
    • Action tools
      • Localization Action Guide
      • Covid-19 response: let’s localize like never before
      • Maps of alternatives
      • Organizations for change
      • Independent media sources
      • Films for change
      • Recommended readings
    • Close
  • Books, reports & videos
    • Books and reports
      • Local is Our Future by Helena Norberg-Hodge
        • Endorsements for Local is Our Future
        • Translations of Local is Our Future
      • Ancient Futures by Helena Norberg-Hodge
      • Free reading materials
      • Annual reports
      • Translated resources
    • Films and short videos
      • PLANET LOCAL : A Quiet Revolution film
      • LOCAL: A Story of Hope short video
      • Local Food Can Save The World short video
      • Going Local: the solution-multiplier animation
      • Insane Trade short video and factsheet
        • Insane Trade! & factsheet translated
      • The Economics of Happiness film
      • Ancient Futures film
      • Planet Local short film series
        • 1 – Introduction: The new local food movement
        • 2 – Diverse farming systems
        • 3 – Local food webs: Exploring systems of distribution
        • 4 – Local food processors: AKA making delicious food
        • 5 – Challenges & solutions
        • 6 – Ecovillages & networks for new farmers
        • 7 – and finally… Here’s a little more inspiration
    • Close
You are here: Home / Climate Change / Personal Virtue and Public Responsibility

Personal Virtue and Public Responsibility

May 13, 2010 by Steven Gorelick and Local Futures Leave a Comment

By Steven Gorelick

2006

By now there is little doubt that the effects of global warming will be calamitous within a generation or two, if not sooner. There is no way to predict precisely what the impact will be in any given place, though it is clear that human habitation will be exceedingly difficult in many areas, no longer possible in others. As a consequence, hundreds of millions of people will be displaced, creating tremendous waves of environmental refugees with nowhere to go. The Ladakhis may well be among them if the glaciers that are their only source of irrigation and drinking water disappear.

If all this comes to pass, I wonder what our children and grandchildren, living in that degraded world, will think of us and our actions today. I imagine them asking, “why didn’t you do something?” and wonder how we might respond. We certainly can’t claim ignorance, since by now we should all be aware that climate change is real. Nor is there any shortage of suggestions about what we can do: every large environmental organization provides them, as does the mainstream media.

Unfortunately, almost all of those suggestions are focused on what we as atomized consumers can do: we should buy energy efficient appliances, drive less, turn our thermostats down, add more insulation to our homes. These are reasonable steps that people should certainly take. The problem is that these individual actions will never make a big enough difference to slow – much less reverse – the pace of climate change if at the same time our governments continue to pursue policies that spread an environmentally-destructive, energy-intensive consumer culture worldwide. Even as we are being asked to properly inflate the tires on the family car, our tax dollars are being spent on still more road-building at home, as well as massive highway projects in China, India and elsewhere in the South, all in the name of ‘development’ and trade. There is no question which of these will have the greater impact on global climate.

The implicit message in every list of “Ten Simple Things You Can Do” is that climate change can be averted if greedy, irresponsible consumers change their habits. Rarely are we asked to question, much less work to change, the direction governments are pushing us and our economies through globalization. Instead we are led to believe that a carpool here and a few technofixes there will allow us to have our cake and climate too. There is even reason to believe that the persistent focus on individual responses is intended to deflect our attention from deeper root causes. This was the subtext of US vice-President Dick Cheney’s claim that “conservation may be a sign of personal virtue but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.” In other words, citizens can go ahead and fiddle with their thermostats, but must keep their hands off government policy.

Even in the west, most people are more victims than perpetrators of the destructive system that is destabilizing not only the climate, but our families, communities and the ecosystems we depend upon. That doesn’t absolve us from responsibility, nor does it mean that individual actions have no consequence. The corporate executives that fund bogus ‘scientific’ studies debunking global warming have placed their allegiance to the corporation above their responsibility to the planet – even to their own children. Marketing professionals whose role is to turn 3-year olds into ‘greedy’ consumers that nag their parents for Happy Meals, Barbie dolls and Reeboks also have much to answer for. To some degree we all, especially in the industrialized parts of the world, bear some responsibility. But if we fail to do the right thing now, it will not be that we neglected to add an extra layer of insulation to the water heater, but that we made a ‘personal virtue’ of our actions, rather than demanding that crucial decisions made in our names be virtuous as well.

Share this:

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn

Related

Peak Oil and Localization
Davos: peeling back the veneer

Filed Under: Climate Change

Author: Steven Gorelick

Steven Gorelick - Local Futures

Steven Gorelick is the Managing Programs Director of Local Futures. He is the author of Small is Beautiful, Big is Subsidized, co-author of Bringing the Food Economy Home, and co-director of The Economics of Happiness. His writings have been published in The Ecologist and Resurgence magazines.

Author: Local Futures

Local Futures’ mission is to protect and renew ecological and social well being by promoting a systemic shift away from economic globalization towards localization. Through its “education for action” programs, Local Futures develops innovative models and tools to catalyze collaboration for strategic change at the community and international level.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I accept the Privacy Policy

Subscribe to the Economics of Happiness Blog

Sign up for our email updates

Latest Blogs

  • Of George Monbiot, mathematical modernism and the case for agrarian localism

    August 3, 20221 Comment
  • The Gospel of Progress

    July 20, 2022No Comments
  • Lurching from food crisis to food crisis

    July 8, 2022No Comments
  • The food shortage solution in your backyard

    June 15, 20221 Comment
  • Supply chain failures: another reason for localized economies

    June 8, 20221 Comment
  • The dirty truth about clean energy

    May 25, 20229 Comments

Blog posts by Category

  • Capitalism (10)
  • Cities (2)
  • Climate Change (54)
  • Community (32)
  • Consumerism (6)
  • Coronavirus (19)
  • Democracy (4)
  • Development (24)
  • Economic Growth and Degrowth (34)
  • Economics of Happiness Conferences (4)
  • Education (9)
  • Energy (3)
  • Environment (45)
  • Food and Farming (71)
  • Free Trade and Globalization (45)
  • Happiness (5)
  • Health (27)
  • Indigenous worldview (16)
  • Inequality (7)
  • Inner transformation (16)
  • Livelihoods and jobs (38)
  • Local energy (9)
  • Local finance (5)
  • Local food (14)
  • Localization (56)
  • Nature (6)
  • New economy (20)
  • Resistance and Renewal (18)
  • Technology (38)
  • The Economics of Happiness (17)
  • Transportation (2)
  • Uncategorized (4)
  • War (2)

Local Futures Logo
About us
Contact
Get involved
Privacy policy

Projects
The Economics of Happiness film
Events
Action resources
Books, reports and videos
Blog
Store

Sign up for our email update

Donate

Local Futures © Copyright 2022 | site by digiflip