Personal Responsibility
“After the last speaker had cleared the stage the conference was opened to audience questions. Most drew out details from the speaker’s lines of reasoning. Then a slender man in a well-worn brown jacket stood up. With short, grey hair he looked a youthful sixty.
His tone was quiet and respectful. He said (paraphrasing), “For three decades, I’ve heard speakers say things similar to what I’ve heard today. Thirty years ago, they were called doomsdayers. Today, we know enough to respect their opinions, but we still haven’t changed our lifestyles. I take good care of my clothes and they last a long time. I have short, cold showers and I don’t own a car. These solutions aren’t complex. They’re right before every one of us.”
When he sat down, there was a moment’s pause and then the auditorium filled with applause.
The man’s point, as I took it, was though we should all take the initiative to push our governments and businesses to act in environmentally sustainable ways, it’s a two way street and the other side starts with individual action. In all the talk of the latest thin film solar technology and the goods and evils of corporate environmentalism, somehow even the great speakers at this conference had forgotten to bring the message home, literally.”
Full story here.
