Conclusion

• Author: Jason J. Czarnezki
• Pages: 141-150

141

CHAP TER SE VEN

Conclusion

Even environmentalists, committed to the rescue of wild places, have failed to address

the problem of human ecology in the place where we live and work.

JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER, THE GEOGRAPHY OF NOWHERE:

THE RISE AND DECLINE OF AMERICA’S MAN-MADE LANDSCAPE 249 (1994)

Without a doubt, in Americ an society, consumption is king, with its ascension

causing major and unforeseen ecological problems. Whether the focus is on bigger

cars, homes, backyards or meals, consumers have been driven by marketing and

permitted by policy to make this coronation in their everyday lives—but at the

unforeseen expense of natural elements in the environment. The democratization of

pollution sources, in the aggregate, comes with considerable environmental costs,

and new ideas and strategies must be created in an effort to address key environ-

mental policy questions.1 How can society understand the environmental costs of

daily life? What is the appropriate role for traditional environmenta l regulation?

And what might promote changes in cultural and social norms so that everyday

choices become more environmentally friendly?

The preceding chapters address these queries in the context of the household

carbon and waste footprint (Chapter Three), food choice (Chapter Four), residential

geography and sprawl (Chapter Five), and the unforeseen costs of destruction of

small organisms (Chapter Six). From this, two overwhelming themes emerge for

promoting everyday environmentalism, both relying on information as a driver for

change. First, and most obviously, there must be a concerted and basic effort to

raise awareness of the environmental costs of individual behavior in the aggregate

and of the potential power of changes in individual behavior. Second, to generate

   

decision-making tools to: (1) promote focused efforts to increase public awareness

of the aggregate environmental costs of particular individual behavior, (2) deter-

mine the appropriate level of government or private action best suited to address

that category of behavior, (3) create and promote use of broader information and

labeling so individuals can evaluate the ecological costs of a service or product,



1. See Timothy P. Duane, Environmental Planning and Policy in a Post-Rio World, 7 BERKELEY

PLANNING J. 27, 31 (1992).