Killing Earth softly

I should agree with Maniates that “easy, cost-effective things” do not work well as many people think. I applaud him for his courage to speak this out on thanksgiving when our expenditure goes up to the peak of the year.
The “going green is easy” idea is problematic due to following reasons. First, it is very difficult to change our life style without real sacrifice. Second, though we change those small actions, unfortunately it does not give a big difference to the current global warming situation.
We work hard for a year and we get some humble rewards for ourselves. Christmas, Halloween and thanksgiving, these are the happiest days for everyone. We celebrate it with our best and these holidays are the miracle time when even badly stingy people open their wallet to buy gifts to their family. Even environmentalists participate in this lifestyle. To be truly environmental, you cannot spend and consume during these celebrations and holidays, such as buying gifts for family and friends. So, I think if you were truly environmental, you would lose friends. Do not ruin your social life.
I buy my groceries in whole food. It has very good intention to promote small local farms and organic products. I really feel good about and even proud to buy my groceries there. At the same time, still a lot of customers drive to the Whole Food rather than using the public transportation. Even though there is a chance to use the metro or metro bus, people prefer to drive because that is more convenient and that is the way we live in America. We can change our food that affects directly our family, but we are not willing to give up some accustomed life style such as driving.
Government might know the original problem of global warming. It is not because we have not driven the hybrid car or have not encouraged grocery shopping in the Whole Food. It is a matter of how we consume which is the most positive factor for economic growth.
We are killing the earth at the fastest rate in Earth’s history. However, now people try to make a difference by adding “easy, cost-effective things” to our consumption. It sounds easy, but actually it just slows the huge destruction a bit down so that we can kill the Earth softly. If you just do the little easy things for improving the global warming without changing your real life style, it can't be more than making yourself feel better because we already know it will not work.