Change Who You Imagine You Are

It’s becoming clearer every day that the roots of climate change lie not just in the technological infrastructure we’ve built to exploit fossil fuels, but in the habits of mind and heart created by that infrastructure. For example: cheap gasoline allowed us to rip up the trolley lines and replace them with cars, which in turn allowed the sprawling suburbs, which in turn allowed ever bigger houses, which in turn allowed an unprecedented isolation from community. One survey of Americans found that three quarters did not really know their next door neighbors.

So how do you change that? Well, you could raise the price of gas, or rebuild the trolley line.

But as long as we’re trapped in our sense of ourselves as individuals, such changes will breed as much resentment as anything else. If we’re really going to start using the bus, we need – to borrow from earlier movements – some consciousness raising.

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