Who is doing the asking?

In his New York Times article, Michael Maniates argues whether or not people are being prompted to change as much as the environment needs them to. Environmentalists are regarded as baby-talkers, encouraging small time change through re-usable bags and water bottles, certainly no Dr. Kings of this global rights movement. Expanding last lecture's economic discussion and touching on Grace's post, I want to raise the question of who is doing the asking and how loudly can a population respond?

Some may say that it is the public faces of going green that prompt all this change, the touring and preaching Al Gores of our time, but I beg to differ and say it is our elected officials that are prompting the American public. Through the polls they determine the answer, how green can we go as a society, and as Grace said we answer time and time again with our consistent "gas guzzling" and "conditioned-air" lifestyles. Political change is arduous and viscous, citing only extreme cases leading to rapid response (million-man marches for equality, or 9/11 response rationale for acts of patriotism) so what the degradation of the environment warrants is a higher value placed on what we have left to lose, appraised by our world leaders.

We have already seen it put in place in DC with a simple initiative to reduce a local aquatic impact in the form of 5 cents per plastic bag. One of the smallest recognizable taxes has spawned a collective thought of personal responsibility and created a more widely-ecoconscience city (note the look of confusion and disgust on a tourists face when they're demanded to hand over a nickel or two and compare that to the non-chalance and active nature with which a DC resident now totes a re-usable bag.) This small act of local government stepping in to create positive change parallels Maniates' dilemma of we being asked to little, but puts the questioning power in the hands of the government.

Politicians and policy makers are testing the waters, they're baby-talking us with bag-taxes. It's up to a collective voting population to make it clear that citizens today know that "the time for easy is over." We must make it known that we're ready for some harder questions, and we will answer through the vote.