How to Create Change

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by Rona Fried As we know, the American consumer has yet to embrace the big changes required to halt climate change. We have a big hole to dig ourselves out of and don’t have the time to do it gradually. Americans have demanded everything to be cheap and industry has responded: food, clothes, airline tickets have become inexpensive enough for us to buy pretty much whatever we want when we want it. If we don’t have the cash, we just put it on a credit card or take the retailer’s offer to pay nothing for a year. That also worked for buying houses until recently; we continue to see car manufacturers hawk SUVs the same way in their endless television commercials. This consumer society is completely unsustainable for our environment and our economy. We’ve shipped our manufacturing offshore where it’s cheapest, hurting our economy and making it vulnerable to China’s whims. We are suffering from a severe leadership vacuum that few are willing to fill – utter words that intimate we might have to curtail our excesses and expect to get crushed by the political process and the media. I believe peoples’ attitudes will evolve with time – and strong […]

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