Originally Posted by
Az B
Exactly. Everyone wants to blame someone else... the government, drivers of big SUVs, other countries... but the bottom line is that we put ourselves into this predicament. We even had a wake up call in the 70s, but as soon as oil got cheap again, we went right back to our old wasteful ways.
Until everyone in this country takes responsibility for themselves and learns what they can do to make it better, it will never change. But we're happy being fat and ignorant.
Az
But: the problem is precisely that everyone takes responsibility for themselves with no regard for society. If a person can afford $3.50/gal gas for an SUV, then they keep on driving, and this is rational given that no single individual's behavior will cure our environmental problems. This is exactly the rationale expressed by merlinextraligh, and it is precisely why we have such pressing environmental problems here in the developed world: the pursuit of individual self-interest, when aggregated, produces negative social outcomes.