Results tagged “thenewyorktimesmagazine”

This week's New York Times Magazine features an article entitled "Why Bother?" by Michael Pollan (the author of must-reads The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto). In "Why Bother," Pollan states that the bleakest part of watching An Inconvenient Truth for him was "during the closing credits, when we are asked to . . . change our light bulbs. That’s when it got really depressing. The immense disproportion between the magnitude of the problem Gore had described and the puniness of what he was asking us to do about it was enough to sink your heart." Many of us can relate to that. We think, wow, there are just so many environmental problems out there, how can what little I do make a difference? And with that defeatist attitude, many of us choose the path of not doing anything. Pollan argues that "Climate change is upon us, and it has arrived well ahead of schedule," but now is not the time to think that whatever you may do as an individual is "too little too late." He says, "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."