Michael Pollan Gives Us Hope

Here's a wonderful piece by Michael Pollan in the Guardian. Pollan addresses the dismay many of us face in dealing with climate change my making adjustments to our personal lives, a feeling he encapsulates in the question: Why bother?

After citing farmer/writer Wendell Berry, Pollan offers one of the most concise assessments of our collective, American passivity in the face of man-made climate change:

For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we're living our lives suggests we're not really serious about changing - something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will not move until we do. Indeed, to look to leaders and experts, to laws and money and grand schemes, to save us from our predicament represents precisely the sort of thinking - passive, delegated, dependent for solutions on specialists - that helped get us into this mess in the first place. It's hard to believe that the same sort of thinking could now get us out of it.

It's an inspired article, but then I expect nothing less from someone as articulate about his passions as Michael Pollan.