❶Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dia Mirza and Adrian Grenier have a message for you: It's easy to beat plastic.❷They're part of a bunch of celebrities starring in a new video for World Environment Day― ncouraging you, the consumer, to swap out your single-use plastic staples to combat the plastics crisis.
❶The key messages that have been put together for World Environment Day do include a call for governments to enact legislation to curb single・use plastics.❷But the overarching message is directed at individuals.
❶My concern with leaving it up to the individual, however, is our limited sense of what needs to be achieved.❷On their own, taking our own bags to the grocery store or quitting plastic straws, for example, will accomplish little and require very little of us. ❷They could even be harmful, satisfying a need to have To "done our bit" without ever progressing onto bigger, bolder, more effective actions—a kind of "moral licensing^^ that eases our concerns and stops us doing more and asking more of those in charge.
❶While the conversation around our environment and our responsibility toward it remains centered on shopping bags and straws, we're ignoring the balance of power that implies that as "consumers" we must shop sustainably, rather than as "citizens" hold our governments and industries to account to push for real systemic change. “
❶It's important to acknowledge that the environment isn't everyone's priority— r even most people's.❷We shouldn't expect it to be.❸In her latest book, Why Good People Do Bad Environmental Things, Elizabeth R. DeSombre argues that the best way to collectively change the behavior of large numbers of R・ people is for the change to be structural. ❷This might mean implementing policy such as a plastic tax that adds a cost to environmentally problematic action, or banning single-use plastics altogether.❷India has just announced it will "eliminate all single-use plastic in the country by 2022."❸There are also incentive-based ways of making better environmental choices easier, such as ensuring recycling is at least as easy as trash disposal.
❶DeSombre isn't saying people should stop caring about the environment.❷It's just that individual actions are too slow, she says, for that to be the only, or even primary, approach to changing widespread behavior.
❶None of this is about writing off the individual.❷It's just about putting things into perspective. ❷We don't have time to wait. 0We need progressive policies that shape collective action, alongside engaged citizens pushing for change.
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阿诺德・施瓦辛格、迪亚•米尔扎和阿 德里安•格兰尼有一条信息传递给你：战胜 塑料(污染)很简单。(36)他们与众明星 一起主演了为世界环境日录制的一部新短 片。该短片鼓励你(即消费者)换掉一次性 塑料制品，以对抗塑料危机。 世界环境日汇集所传达的关键信息的确包 括呼吁各国政府立法限制一次性塑料制品。但 核心信息是针对个人的。 然而，将对抗塑料污染这一重任交给个 人，我担心的是，人们对需要实现的目标 认识有限。比如，拿着自己的购物袋去商 店买东西或者停止使用塑料吸管，这样的 做法成效不大，并且对我们的要求也太低 这些举措甚至可能是有害的，因为它们 满足了 “我们已经尽了本分”的需要，使我 们不再采取更宏大、更果敢以及更有效的行 动—— (37 )这是一种“道德许可”，它会 减轻我们的担忧，阻止我们进一步作为，也 阻止我们向当权者提出更高的要求。 当围绕“环境和我们对环境的责任”的话 题仍然聚焦于购物袋和吸管时，我们就一直 在忽略权力的平衡，这意味着我们作为“消 费者”必须可持续地购物，(38)而不是以 公民”身份去要求我们的政府和企业承担 责任，以推动真正的系统性变革。 重要的是要承认，环境问题不是每个人， 或者说甚至不是大多数人的第一要务。我们 也不应该抱这样的希望。(39)伊丽莎白・ 德松布尔在她的最新著作《为什么好人 会做对环境有害的事》中主张，集体改变大 众行为的最好方法是做出结构性的改变。 这可能意味着要实行一些政策，例如 征收塑料税，从而增加产生环境问题的成本， 或者全面禁止一次性塑料制品。印度刚刚宣布， 将“于2022年之前消除国内所有一次性塑料 制品”。此外，还有一些激励方法可以使人们 更易做出使环境变得更好的选择，比如确保回 收利用至少和扔垃圾一样简单。 德松布尔并不是说人们应该停止关心环 境。她表示，（40）只是个人行动过于缓慢， 不足以成为改变普遍行为的唯一方法，甚至 也不能成为最主要的方法。 这些并不是要抹杀个人力量。只是要正 确地看待事物。我们没有时间等待。我们需 要进步的政策以影响集体行动，同时也需要 公民积极参与来推动变革。