Evoluvtion is a long slow process. Revolution short and fast. How much time do we have left before the planet really deals us it's unstoppable left hook?
I tend to agree that people relax after doing the smallest change to their life, such as change a light bulb to CFL or use their green bin or maybe buy one shirt that is organic cotton. The big changes, the really necessary changes to reduce the amount of pollution someone creates, they will never get around to doing.
Every time I have to jump on the highway and I see how many cars are on the road, even if it's late at night, and then I think of how many cities are in the world with the same traffic congestion and I think 'how the hell are we going to change the mindset of billions of people fast enough to meet climate change? The answer that pops in my head is always the same 'Hell no! We are not going to be able to do it' So do your little things or do your big things but just remember how many people there are in the world and how many minds you must influence and think about how hard it is to change the lifestyles of those around you.
But then again,....People need real crisis to induce real change for real results. What serious changes need to be done to get people and industry thinking? I say bring on the $10/Gallon gas prices. Not another car will be sold until the manufacturers create an affordable electric car (or other technology) Ford and GM are already feeling the pinch big time. Ford has doubled and tripled the cost of replacement parts because they are not selling vehicles (Shafted when I had my ball joints replaced).
What else do you think needs to happen for the revolution to start? What big thing? Forget your evolution, what we really need is revolution. Otherwise it will be too late.

Thanks for posting on this Lloyd.

Alex's post is a little short on solutions, but it does capture the anxiety that many must be feeling; there is an almost desperate bid by the middle class (the targeted audience) to buy their way out of the environmental mess. I think Alex's good-and-gloomy point is that you shouldn't kid yourself - it's not going to work as well as you think, for you or the planet.
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It depends if environmentalism continues to be rooted primarily in morality or not. If it is, then people will soon get tired, and the next political shift will turn everything around as it did when Reagan took office.

However, if our move to a more just and sustainable society is rooted in more than 'you should' and includes a healthy dose of 'we can be wildly successful', then people won't tire of pushing efficiency, just as we didn't tire of increasing specialization of tasks in the industrial revolution. It literally went beyond anyone's control. I'm not saying that a carbon-cap or some other price mechanism on ecological value is the answer necessarily. I'm saying something equally powerful is needed, or else we won't have an evolution or a revolution.

I haven't deluded myself into thinking my steps, no matter how big or small, are going to make a larger impact. However if everyone does take small steps, overall that leads to big savings (as long as they don't go and spend it on a trip to Maui like you said). In order to curb the mass effect though, you won't effect change until something happens where you can point at it definitively and say "THAT". The neo-conservative movement percieves no change unless it impacts their pocket, and even then they seek the cheapest, easiest solution.

The change we need to make is NOT easy, nor is it cheap. It's expensive, radical and culture changing. You are not likely to change this overnight, and when the proverbial shit really starts to hit the fan, it'll be too late. But what do they care? Most people I've talked to who won't budge think they'll be dead by then. Some of them are in their 20s and 30s. Shows how much they care about anyone else.

Anyhow, my savings from energy efficiency and gas savings are thrown into an account to build up enough money to start a sustainable community. We already have preliminary plans, farming procedures, job plans (to make money) and are in the process of looking for plots of land and 148 more people (Dunbar's number!).

Some people probably do rest on their laurels after small changes. But for New Years, I resolved to do something about my junk mail and start a compost bin. Since then, I've:

- used greendime to stop junk mail
- moved the last of my financial statements and bills online-only
- filled two DIY compost bins
- started grocery shopping almost exclusively at my local organic market, farmer's market, and a local farm delivery (milk man!)
- started a "victory garden" (to compensate for the expensive local organic milk, you know)
- set up a 3-day/week telecommuting plan so I only have to be in the office (and car) 2 days/week
- leave the car in the driveway at least one day/week
- stopped using disposable diapers (switched first to gDiapers to use in the compost, and now starting cloth) and paper towels/napkins (switched to cloth) and try to reduce packaging as much as possible
- discovered when I took the trash out yesterday that we've gone from an overflowing curbside bin weekly to 1.5 small kitchen bags of trash!

I still haven't changed the light bulbs for CFL yet, though. We bought some last year, and are still waiting for the incandescents to actually burn out.

I love this site despite, not because of, its taste for celebrity shopping tips and glamor. I've found lots of intriguing and useful ideas here for changing the way I navigate the world. But our cultural affinity for consumable solutions doesn't seem to be having any effect on the larger crises occurring around us. Nothing I can buy will have any effect on food riots or rising sea levels or the wildly increasing disparities between wealthy first worlders with computers and almost everyone else. In fact, most things I buy (we spend far more on heating oil — in order to not freeze in the winter — than on all the many fair-traded goods and local produce we consume) seems to have exactly the opposite effect on the least-advantaged peoples of the world. If it already were too late, how would we know and what would be the response of well-intentioned people like ourselves? Read this for a bracing dose of something much stronger than Steffen's latest:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174949/mike_davis_welcome_to_the_next_epoch

When one of Canada's great leaders on environmental issues, David Suzuki, is talking about unplugging unused appliances and electronics the rationale is that "using less electricity means more beer!" It's on youtube for those who haven't seen it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eliEzJ7GjcM

Now David is a great guy and a great Canadian, but the message sent by this commercial is the same as that sent by most green marketing. That message is that by buying into this "club" and having that membership card you are forgiven and may continue on as though nothing is wrong. You can consume at the same level as long as you keep it within your personal balance - which too often equates too how much you are willing to pay on your electricity bill.

I get that these small steps are what is being pushed on the mainstream and that I shouldn't expect anything on a commercial to be deep and meaningful. Deep and meaningful won't sell; it isn't sexy enough. But we need to connect these small steps to the larger movement, websites like TreeHugger have been doing that - green advertisers haven't. Until there is a drastic (you might say revolutionary) change in our traditional economic arrangements, green advertisers as a whole will not make that connection.

I agree that we never know when a small step will trigger a paradigm shift for an individual...but the studies show that small steps are sure not triggering paradigm shifts en masse.

Check out the Fostering Sustainable Behaviour website for information on creating real behaviour change.

Also, Bill Rees, the inventor of ecological footprinting, has shown significant problems with backlash, in exactly the "save money with green, only to spend it on a trip to Spain" sort of way. This is very evident transportation. Cars get better mileage now, but we are driving more and driving further, so the gain is cancelled out. People get complacent because their light bulb is so efficient, so they stop obsessively flicking the switch off.

Some people might spend there energy savings to power other energy hungry devices. In this case, even at the worst the increase in the environmental degradation they cause remains constant, in which case at east they might be happier people. More likely at least some of the savings will benefit the environment. But some of us will do better things with our saving. Like investing and saving (in companies that have decent environmental policies), or in implementing even more efficiency improvements, or in adding home solar systems, or in paying the difference in up-front cost when PHEV become available.

Wow! So I guess I wasn't just an angry crank these past few years here at TH. So next time I rail on some ridiculous "renewable yoga mat" post as being vapid and ridiculous, maybe I'll get a few "hell yeas"?

The problem is that, when you look at technological change historically, every technological change that has promised to increase energy efficiency or resource use efficiency has failed. Not because the potential for efficiencies weren't realized, but because the savings were reinvested in other energy- and resource-hogging ways. Home heating got more efficient; people bought bigger houses. Engines got more efficient; people bought bigger cars. Products used fewer resources; people bought more products. You would have to make a pretty convincing argument to me, personally, to persuade me that this time it's all going to be different, and we're going to spend those savings in responsible, planet-saving ways.

This is why a shift in values is so important. A shift in values might actually get us to save the savings, instead of spending them. But otherwise? Where's the evidence that overall we are reducing our use of energy or resources?