I've had a long day at work, so I apologize in advanced if this is hard to read because I'm not explaining myself well.

I think my hangups with approaches like this is they don't really offer a path forward. They point out the (very real) flaws today, describe a utopia, and then leave as an exercise for the reader how to get there.

It's easier to think of the ideas being offered not as "a path forward" but as "an eye towards possibilities." When we look back at people's ideas of what the future might look like, both cynical and optimistic, even when they're based on data and the best information possible, they're often at least partly wrong. We can never really predict "a path forward" because what's around the bend is obscured by hills, trees, and dense fog.

When we think about the future in less defined terms of figuring out what will be and in more vague terms of musing over what might be, we allow flexibility, creativity, and awe to take hold and suddenly the sense of possibility is what drives us. I disagree with quite a few things McKibben said, some on particulars and some on philosophies, but I still come away from the book with a sense that we have a chance of making things work.

On the same token, people have to want to have fewer options and more times of scarcity. It a scenario I just don't see happening until they're forced to.

I had a wonderful conversation with a new friend earlier this week. One of the themes we touched upon was carelessness and awareness. We talked about one of the reasons people are careless, both in the sense of heedlessness as well as apathy, is that it's because it's impossible to care about something if we know very little about it, much less if we know nothing at all.

Personally, I'm an optimist on the issue, but I think in regards to the environment I don't think we have to wait until things become so horrible that we run out of options and then must be forced to accept things. Yeah, we have some real problems with weather right now, in terms of hurricanes, droughts, etc. Same with biodiversity and a whole host of issues. But I think we're reaching a greater and greater awareness every year.

Case in point, when McKibben wrote this book ten years ago, I don't think you could use the word Greenwashing in a room with a hundred people and expect anyone to know what you're talking about. Today though? I bet you'd get at least a few people knowing what you mean without explanation. I think this is because the activity is becoming more common, which points to A) the activity is increasing among companies to the point that they're starting to bow to very real market pressures and B) they're responding to it so much and enough people care about the world enough, that the very idea of Greenwashing being an issue means that there's a greater awareness of environmental issues in the public in general.

I pulled up Youtube and typed in "Compost." The first five videos I came across have a total of over 3.5 Million views together. The first five videos I came across for "Urban Farming" have a total of over 1.8 Million views together. The first five videos "Solar Panels" similarly have over 4.1 million views together.

I doubt any of the people who watched those videos did so because they felt forced to. I very much think they did because there's a part to each one of them that very much cared to.