In recent Green Focus columns, I have been questioning why it is that many people say that they attach importance to environmental concerns but do not show it in the way they live, writes Henry Haslam.
Here, I shall try to sum up.
In seeking to understand this lack of action, I suggested that people might be deterred because their individual contribution was insignificant – to which I reply that, in fact, people power is the only way that change can happen.
Similarly, I suggested that people were inclined to pass the buck and leave it all to government.
It is certainly worthwhile to encourage our governments to take action, but what really makes a difference is how we all decide to live: people power.
I then referred to the unconvincing nature of much of the climate-change publicity, more likely to put people off than to bring them on side.
I could add the increasing publicity given to arguments (often unsound) in opposition to net zero and environmental action generally.
Moreover, we are not getting as strong a lead from our politicians as we were a few years ago.
I also discussed the question of values.
If we want to look after our environment and our planet, handing them on in good condition to those who will come after us, we are following in a long moral tradition.
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Perhaps, however, there is a simpler answer: we just find it easier just to carry on as before.
It’s easier not to change our ways.
We have more than enough things on our minds anyway, and thinking about the environment is just one too many.
Three years ago I wrote a Green Focus column about William Vogt’s 1948 book, Future Survival (search: Green Focus Vogt).
JB Priestley read this book, with its dire warnings, and described how he then dismissed it from his mind: "Our daft species", he wrote, "was hell-bent for starvation and ruin...
"And I knew, I knew.
"But there I was…a sound progressive man in his middle fifties, not giving a damn.’
It is just too easy to dismiss things from our minds.
Perhaps we don’t know what changes we can realistically make to our lifestyles that would help the environment.
There are lots of books, websites and so on.
One example is takethejump.org.
There are plenty of ideas around, and we can each choose the actions that make sense to us, taking account of our personal circumstances.
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