Why Bother Flashcards
Who is the author of “Why Bother?”
Micheal Pollan
(IMPORTANT) What is specialization and what is the issue about it that leads to climate change?
Specialization is a deep-embedded problem in human civilization that leads to climate change. It is because everyone contributes to society by becoming a worker in their specialized field, a consumer, a worker, and a voter but it allows us to leave a variety of other problems for other specialists to solve.
IN THIS CASE: We believe climate change can be resolved by environmentalists as specialists. Like how doctors are specialists in the treatment of health. However, we become less proactive together against climate change as a result of specialization.
What’s wrong with this statement from the New Yorker media?
“A change of personal lifestyle for environmental conservation and being morally virtuous isn’t enough to make significant changes in global warming, it will take legal action and financial resources instead”
The actual foundation of global warming is influenced by people’s everyday choices in their lifestyle
(IMPORTANT) What is cheap energy and how does it relate to specialization?
Cheap energy is the main source of specialization.
People become specialists who are trained in a variety of fields, who bring us entertainment, grow our food, and solve other problems.
It is convenient and inexpensive but results in carbon footprints and fosters the mentality that dealing with climate change in our own lives is impossible.
Climate change as a result is a crisis in lifestyle negatively affecting the environment.
What is a moral imperative term?
Moral imperative happens when an individual is compelled to act as if it is the right thing to do by the principle.
What is the term that defines this? “Allows us to pay distant others to process our food for us, to entertain us and to try to solve our problems, with the result that there is very little we know how to accomplish for ourselves.”
Cheap energy
What is the mentality of cheap energy and how does it get fueled?
The mentality of cheap energy has a relationship with money where they rather depend on how market-based solutions and the economy will resolve climate change through carbon taxes & more instead of themselves.
What does a person should be required to do before they do moral standing to demand changes?
A person who can rightfully do a moral standing and demand a change in the behaviour of organizations and people involved in climate change. It has to be the kind of person who changed their lifestyle and choices to reduce their carbon footprint.
(IMPORTANT) What does Micheal Pollan tries to argue in “Why Bother”
Micheal Pollan defends that it is important that everyone must bother to act ethically since this is the only way for us to help create the kind of world that we wish to live in.
More specifically in climate change, he argues that everyone should contribute to creating a stable world by reducing their carbon footprints and therefore reducing the chances that our world becomes inhabitable.
What does Micheal Pollan encourage us to do?
Micheal Pollan encourages you to learn the skill of growing a food garden as a method to reduce your carbon footprint. It discourages the need to buy from a source that produces more carbon dioxide. It’s good to learn the habit of relying less on specialists to solve needs and make changes at the same time.
