Caring about yourself, caring about the planet
They are not at all at odds - but it requires some learning and serious thinking to realize that one’s health is directly related to the health of the environment. Alternet currently has a brilliant article: Six Ways That Changing Your Life Can Change Global Warming.
What prevents people from doing more and paying attention to environmental topics? Peter Michaelson thinks it boils down to fear: Fear of insignificance, powerlessness and hopelessness, fear of rejection and mockery of the things we care about. Blasé is in; passionate is out. Trivia and consumerism rules our lives, and the culture of the US has been anti-intellectual and anti-education for a long time.
Francis Moore Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet lamented that in the US, people are put down as naive for thinking they can change the world. In Argentina, she pointed out, people tell their children that they are naive if they think they cannot.