Mind-shift needed

"Our planet is at a crossroads and we have the opportunity to decide the path ahead."

We recently watched an episode called Into the Wilderness from the Planet Earth: The Future series (2006) and our professor asked us to reflect on the series and our current environmental challenges. Well since the doccie was produced in 2006, and already then they were warning us about environmental challenges, which in 2018 we're still not addressing - I of course had a whooooole lotta say!

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I do wonder if the majority of society hasn’t reached a “saturation point” of actually caring about the environment, similar to what I’ve noticed about the ongoing rhino poaching in South Africa. When it first started, everybody was on board and eager to make a difference, but as the poaching continued and other crisis’ emerged, most people just moved on or thought of it as somebody else’s problem. With the release of WWF’s Living Planet Report, I just wonder how many individuals are actually going to care about it. Hopefully the report can be used to cause change at the higher level (companies/policies), but at the individual level I’m doubtful. A clear example is the study Brandon mentioned that compared the lifestyles of conservationists’ with the rest of society showing very little difference - it’s so disheartening because of all the environmental challenges we know about. Maybe it’s because there’s still this notion of what difference can one person actually make, which is unfortunately just the lazy man’s way of opting out of changing his/her lifestyle. Or maybe we’re just in this bad habit of not caring? In addition there’s also still this idea, at least in South Africa, of “going green” as being reserved for the hippies/tree huggers, a manly-man eats meat! Vegetarians/vegans are branded as an almost annoyance, yet cutting out meat is one of the easiest ways of actually making a difference to your carbon footprint. When I went vegetarian I was asked for how long am I going to try it?!

Shouldn’t we as a society (or perhaps just those who actually care about the future of our planet) start holding others responsible for their action? Or is that not socially acceptable? That we all basically have the right to do whatever we see fit. But surely now that we know (like we’ve known for several years already) that we’re slowly destroying our planet, shouldn’t we feel the need to start confronting those that are ignorantly adding to its demise? Unintentional or not, in this day and age, there is almost no excuse for ignorance about environmental problems, especially when it comes to plastic pollution and water shortages. Then again, I guess depending on that persons interests, they might not have been exposed to what’s happening in the real world, but surely it’s then everyone’s duty to educate those that are unaware. 

And I’m just referring to educated/ financially well-off people, those living in poverty is a whole other discussion. I’ve (diplomatically and in a joking-kind-of-way) confronted my housemates about their excessive water usage and never switching off lights they don’t need, and I initially felt cautious about bringing it up, because I might be seen as this annoying “greenie”! Which is simultaneously annoying because one shouldn’t have to worry about coming across as that when the end goal is actually being more conscious of our footprint on the planet.

So basically, my rant is just about a mind-shift that is needed in society until corporations are forced to make changes from higher up. As consumers we’re all decision-makers, we shouldn’t be waiting for political decision-makers to force change when we can already make a difference today. Think about that the next time you buy single-use plastic (i.e. water bottle/coffee cup from the café, whether compostable or not, energy was still wasted to produce it) or leave a light on 😉

Like the WWF’s General Director Marco Lambertini said: “Today, we still have a choice. We can be the founders of a global movement that changed our relationship with the planet, that saw us secure a future for all life on Earth, including our own. Or we can be the generation that had its chance and failed to act; that let Earth slip away.”