Will Americans Sacrifice to Save the Planet from Global Warming?
by John Lawrence, January 21, 2020
President Kennedy famously said,"Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." That was in 1961. 59 years later we are faced with a problem - global warming - that can't be solved just by Americans taking action within America. We must now ask, "What can you do for your planet?" Global warming makes nationalistic boundaries irrelevant. We must now think of the planet as a whole and come up with global solutions. We are all related, and we are all connected whether we like it or not. We must give up old rivalries, animosities and lifestyles. Will Americans sacrifice their consumerist lifestyles to save the planet for future generations? Don't bet on it.
In 1979 President Jimmy Carter gave a speech asking for Americans to give up their consumerist lifestyles.
In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we have discovered that owning things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We have learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.
Carter put solar panels on the White House. When Ronald Reagan was elected, he promptly took them down. Global warming was not on either of their radars in those days, but those symbolic acts characterize the two parties' attitudes towards global warming to this day. The Democrats believe the scientists and believe we must do something about global warming post haste. Republicans, and Trump in particular, are global warming deniers. Ronald Reagan delivered the following quote: "Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation. So let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards for man-made sources." It goes to show his ignorance on the matter. He wanted Americans to have more material goods, not less. "They tell us we must learn to live with less, and teach our children that their lives will be less full and prosperous than ours have been; that the America of the coming years will be a place where — because of our past excesses — it will be impossible to dream and make those dreams come true. I don't believe that." His dreams were all involved with material accumulation, of course.
George W Bush's response to the 9/11 attacks was "go out and shop!" Time magazine wrote:
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President Bush didn't call for sacrifice. He called for shopping. "Get down to Disney World in Florida," he said. "Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed." Taken on its own, this wasn't such a horrible sentiment. But Boston University historian Andrew Bacevich has made a convincing case that it was part of a broader pattern of encouraging financial irresponsibility. "Bush seems to have calculated — cynically but correctly — that prolonging the credit-fueled consumer binge could help keep complaints about his performance as Commander in Chief from becoming more than a nuisance," Bacevich wrote in the Washington Post in October. Now we're paying the bill.
So the issue of global warming does call for sacrifice. It calls for sacrificing gas guzzlers and instead driving hybrid or full electric cars or taking public mass transpostation. It calls for eating less meat because the factory farm production of cows pollutes the planet compared to eating the same grains that are first run through a cow. It calls for a less consumerist lifestyle, reusing plastic bags and getting away from one use items. It calls for recycling as much waste as possible. It calls for cutting back on air travel and jet fuel pollution. It calls for working with people in the rest of the world, instead of trying to control them, for a common cause and common purpose. It means cutting back on the world's worst polluter - the US military.
All of the measures that need to be taken call for a less consumerist society instead of a using it once and throwing it away society. It calls for young people to join the Peace Corps, a green oriented Peace Corps, instead of a polluting military. It calls for solutions to the problem of waste production by young entrepreneurs. It calls for replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and doing this with a sense of urgency because we don't have much time left to get it right. The Green New Deal encompasses all these concerns. Ramping up this effort must be undertaken with the urgency manifested in the buildup for World War II. All of this will decrease economic activity as we've known it because less things will be bought and sold and more will be reused. We must replace a throw away society with a sustainable society for the future whatever sacrifices in profits and business activity must be made.
