Sat 29 Dec 2007
Think Globally, Act Remotely?
Posted by Devman under Faith and Reason, Grapevines and Nature, Politics
“Think globally, act locally” was the slogan on a poster in my science class growing up; the idea being that you would make changes locally, the area in which you had the most control, in order to effect a global change.
Today, however, I read about Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nancy Pelosi, and others purchasing “carbon offsets” to make amends for their carbon-polluting lifestyles that involve private jets, entourages, hummers, etc.
This type of action can best be described as “think globally, act remotely”, where “remotely” means: get someone else to do something good for the environment while you keep doing whatever you’re doing.
To me, the whole notion of buying carbon offsets is the completely wrong-headed way of being a good steward of the environment. Instead of personally changing your own actions, you use your abundant wealth to pay someone else, somewhere else to do something that counteract them.
Joel Salatin, who wrote three books that Katie and I have bought, is a leader in the locally-grown agriculture movement which encourages treating animals with the respect they deserve as creatures made by God so that the food that we humans eat will be worthy of our dignity as creatures made in God’s image.
His idea is better: You change your ways of eating to support local, humane agriculture, reducing fossil-fuel use in transportation costs, improving your health by eating food from animals that were raised in a good way, and improving your local economy and self-sufficiency.
(As a side note: Katie and I still shop at the grocery store, and we will for a long time to come, but we have come to believe that there is another way that is better, and so we are making small steps toward it.)
At its heart, Salatin’s way is more Christian and more reasonable philosophically because it advocates personal responsibility and conversion of heart and mind, rather than tossing money at the problem to get some other guy you don’t even know to supposedly make amends for you.
Carbon offsets are an example of what can happen when an idea gets hyped up beyond reasonable proportions, leading people to look for quick fixes that don’t address the underlying problems in the system nor personal accountability.
