Hope in the Trinity of Despair

I found Dr. Maniates’ trinity of despair rather insightful. I think he hit the nail on the head.

However, I personally think he is wrong about human nature. I think human nature is inherently selfish and rather lazy actually. And it makes sense that it would be, presumably, only creatures that looked out for themselves would survive, but I think there is also a community aspect built in to the selfishness of humanity. That is to say, communities look out for its members so an indirect way to look out for oneself is to look out for the other members of the community so that, when the times come, the community will have your back as well. So, even with my understanding of human nature, the environmental movement still has a way in.

Dr. Maniates’ is right about the strategy. While the small things part of the environmental movement should not end and is important, the focus should be on larger scale things. If half the people on a given power grid change all their light bulbs, they’re not going to save nearly as much CO2 as if the grid changed to solar, wind, and other non-fossil fuel based energy.

The social change one is similar. The entire population does not need to be on board to affect major social change, just the key decision makers. While republicans have been more successful at this lately, there is no reason serious environmental legislation cannot get pushed through congress. And surely, no piece of environmental legislation will be more unpopular than the Patriot Act, which will probably be renewed within a year.

The Trinity of Despair is a powerful way to look at the lack of hope in the current environmental movement and offers some hope and perhaps a new calling.