What is the biggest environmental problem? We are.

The average environmentalist will triumphantly tell you that in today’s capitalistic global economy, greedy companies and corrupt governments pose the biggest threat to the environment and society. Staples is accused of cutting down forests, General Motors is blamed for global warming and depletion of the ozone layer, Nike is chastised for exploiting impoverished workers of third world countries, governments around the world are short-sighted about energy and population policies, et cetera, et cetera. At first sight, these accusations make sense, since these companies’ actions directly affect the environment and society. But what exactly are these companies doing, from the economic perspective? They are supplying our demands. The whole idea behind a company is to provide a product or service of some kind that is needed or wanted by us, consumers. Staples will keep cutting down forests as long as we demand a lot of paper, 10 magazine subscriptions, and endless printouts from the Internet. General Motors will keep producing bigger, less energy efficient, and less environmentally sustainable SUVs. Nike will keep its sweatshops open as long as we keep buying their over-priced sneakers. And governments will continue advancing policies that fly in the face of not only environment’s health but even our own. The companies and governments cater to our demands, titillate us with commercials and introduce us to new, environmentally harmful products and technologies. The governments work alongside companies to create mind-boggling energy policies. We – you and I, your friends and family – pose the biggest threat to the environment, and thus to ourselves. Because we do make decisions that directly or indirectly have a negative impact on our environment, in the end, the responsibility rests on us. The buck doesn’t stop at the White House (thankfully). The only way we can stop harming the environment is by changing our lifestyles – drastically. The problem is, we don’t want to. We want to drive SUVs, own multiple cars (since one is not enough!), 4 computers, and buy products produced by companies with crooked policies. We likewise vote for Democrats and Republicans, whose environmental policies are focused partly on saying “Yes, the environment is important,” and partly on opposing one another, so that if by accident one of them tries to do something to protect the environment, the other will prevent it from doing so. How about voting for a Green Party candidate? Just about anything we do has an impact on the environment. We cannot actually throw garbage “away” – it stays in the environment. We do not have a limitless supply of energy and resources, and thus cannot increase our population size at the current rate. Likewise, technology cannot solve the problems before us, because the environmental problem is socio-ethical. It is a profound issue, which’ resolution requires a complete paradigm shift of our value system. We must broaden our assessment of the environmental problem. Do we not have obligations to the future generations? Or, as some environmentalists claim, should we not value the environment for its own sake? The bottom line is that most of us have already decided, often unknowingly, that we want to endlessly increase our standard of living, despite the harmful consequences for the generations ahead of us. We are choosing to live as comfortably as possible at the expense of those who will follow a hundred or a few hundred years from now, and at the expense of humanity’s inevitable shorter existence. Our generation will have a profound impact on the world, and we will have to deal with the environmental problems. We must become educated about the issues affecting all of us – not by listening to corporate interest groups or corrupt politicians – but by genuine interest, and an understanding that since each one of us is part of the environmental problem, each one of us can be the solution.