Kurt Andersen says, "So We're Green. Now What?"
That's the headline on Kurt Andersen's Imperial City column in this week's New York magazine.
(The column isn't his only gig; he hosts a weekly arts-and-culture radio show called Studio 360, just published his second novel, Heyday, started the late, lamented, ahead-of-its-time website Inside.com, and was one of the two founding editors of Spy magazine. Find out more at www.kurtandersen.com.)
The New York column outlines the good things that are happening, then raises some issues may threaten the momentum driving what seem to be fundamental changes. And some of those -- maybe all of them -- are cultural and have to do with the national character.
Andersen writes:
"Americans have an intensely ambivalent relationship with sin and
redemption. Heedlessly ruining the global climate is plainly sinful,
and we are a people desperate to feel good about our shining city on a
hill. But we also hated Jimmy Carter’s guilt-inducing sermons. (As I do
some of the current green epiphenomena: The other day a Whole Foods
clerk refused to give me Splenda with my cup of coffee—artificial
sweeteners, their Website explains, lack “ideological compatibility.”)
Americans have shown themselves willing to undertake epic battles
against evil only when there’s somebody else to hold accountable—Nazis,
communists, radical Islamists. But blaming and changing our own Homer
Simpson–ish ways of life? We couldn’t even make Prohibition work."
It's an intriguing take, and reminds us that a lot of what needs ot be done is as much a matter of emotion and habit and viewpoint as it is science.
Marnie Newell
I think this is a hugely valid point that we need to take into account when envisioning a greener future. We've grown so self-serving and individualistic. For people to make lasting changes in their everyday activities they need to see a benefit in doing so. It appears much more difficult to make sacrifices or change deep-rooted habits than to point a finger.
Mark Lutes
Perhaps this points to a potential benefit of China passing the US to take the lead in total annual emissions. Of course, it will be unfair to see China as greater villains than the US, given their much lower per capita emissions, but this won't stop many in the US from presenting it this way and perhaps even believing it.
So maybe believing there is an external villain as the leading cause of climate change will allow Americans to get over their guilt, rationalizations, self-justifications, etc., and get on with the business of exorcising this evil from their tortured souls and profligate energy systems.
With China in the lead, the US will have a weird psychological (not to mention geo-political) incentive to demonize greenhouse emissions, and to have any credibility in doing this they will have to reduce their own emissions drastically.
And they are never very comfortable with being number two at anything.