Making the tough decisions...

One of Tim's most recent posts discussed five simple ways in which we can all be 'greener'. It was a great post and I highly encourage everyone to take any or all of those five steps.

But unfortunately, not every part of making our lives 'greener' can be accomplished on our own, even if we think they can. Humans are not perfect and we will often do things that will harm the environment (even though we might think it awful), especially if there is no incentive for us to do otherwise or if that incentive is not large enough.

I will use myself as an example. My shower in my rented house is pretty crappy, so when I find myself in a very nice shower (say, at a hotel or my parents' home), I tend to take much longer showers than normal. They're too long, waste lots of water and I know it. But I really love it.

It's almost like a guilty pleasure, except rather than potentially doing harm to me, it's also doing harm to other people and the environment.

So what can we do about it? Self-discipline is the most obvious option, but clearly it doesn't work. If someone who is an advocate of water conservation can't help himself sometimes, then how on Earth can we expect the majority of the population to also do so, even though they may also be aware they're probably doing harm to the environment?

The problem is that the incentives to not harm the environment are not there, at least in Canada. We have abundant resources and loads of space. From an environmental point of view, we're sitting pretty. We know we're wasting water, but we can't see the effects. The same goes for climate change. We can have these consequences of our actions drilled into us for eternity, but until we actually see it with our own eyes, we won't take it as seriously. That's human nature. But then it might be too late.

What we need are incentives. And they would need to hit us immediately, rather than a delayed consequence, like climate change may bring. Be it regulations, economic incentives or something else, we as relatively well-off Canadian human beings need someone to make those hard decisions for us. I certainly wouldn't take such a long shower if it cost me as much as lunch.

The stuff we can do on our own is great, and if you can change those things in your life, do it, but not everyone has the self-discipline to shift their lives around in the 'green' direction. So if government or any other policymaker decides to implement a policy that may make life a little more difficult in the name of the environment, don't immediately fight it. Take a second look because they might be making the decision you haven't been able to make on your own.