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four decades or so, these practices have gradually become a familiar part
of developed societies, at least in many locations, and now sound like
basic common sense for many of us.
But because even now the greenhouse gas footprint of the average
American citizen remains sharply higher than that of people elsewhere
in the world, in this nation we have far to go. Moreover, as I suggested in
chapter five, even if humanity as a whole shifts to renewable energy soon,
our imprint on the Earth's surface will still be enormous in part because
of the immensity of the global human population.
To address these challenges, we must go significantly further than
we already have. We may be forced to examine aspects of our habits or
assumptions that we do not want to think about at all, to tackle serious
difficulties not only in the public sphere but in our own lives as well. If
we are to see our own moment through the eyes of the future, we may
have to endure changes to our intimate lives that we can hardly bear, to
do what seems at first impossible. Our dilemma forces us toward radical
thinking and action on every level—political and cultural, social and eth-
ical, collective and personal. It demands that we cut to the root in every
domain, including in our own individual lives.
In the end, we have no serious reason to hesitate applying a prag-
matic environmental ethics to our own lives. Refusing to do so cannot
withstand close scrutiny. Living by such an ethics will be no easy mater;
we will inevitably meet resistance from that part of us still caught in the
familiar habits of our culture. As a result, we might be tempted to alter
our practices only when it is most convenient to do so, when it intrudes
least into our lives. We might atempt to combine ease and responsibility,
blending our current habits with new ways, as if changing our lives a litle
bit will be enough. Most dangerously, we might bargain with the future,
giving up practices that do relatively litle harm so that we can keep those
that do much more. Renouncing the disastrous habits of our culture can
be surprisingly difficult. The toughest and most essential task is to over-
come this resistance, especially with regard to those truly destructive
practices on which we most depend. On this score we should compro-
mise as litle as possible.
Accordingly, in this chapter I will focus on one example of damag-
ing activity—travelling by air—to examine how great a harm it causes,
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