A common belief today is that individual action has the ability to make a change for the good. People focus on what companies they are buying their products from, turning off the lights when no one’s in the room, and bringing reusable bags to the market, revealing how actions to combat climate change has largely been placed in the hands of the consumer to make smart choices. Other than not all people having the ability to make such thought out decisions, and while these individual actions surely can’t be considered bad things, largely these actions don’t make much a difference to successfully combat climate change. Instead of this individual action, Paul F. Steinberg describes in Who Rules the Earth that “to bring about lasting change requires modifying the very rules that societies live by” (Steinberg 2015, 11).
One of the most important things to consider is that “the rules that we live by can be changed” (Steinberg 2015, 26). So much of our life is determined by rules and successful ones are constantly evolving as the tastes and needs of societies change. Often, rules are thought of as solid and impenetrable forces, if they are even questioned at all. Institutions can become so engrained within our world views that we barely even notice or think twice about them. However, even if we think that these things are “permanent and unyielding on a daily basis”, they “are in fact prone to major shifts within a single human lifetime, punctuating long periods of stability with moments of sweeping social change” (Steinberg 2015, 26). Although these changes are completely possible and plausible, it is not only a challenge to break up the rules, but also to create lasting grooves of progression that will continue to evolve as societies do and that continue to create a better world with more thought out rules (Steinberg 2015).
Some of my greatest takeaways is the importance of collaboration. A main reason for my own interest in Environmental Studies is to understood best how I can love the Earth and make a difference to benefit our world. Within the last paragraph of Who Rules the Earth?, Steinberg leaves us with stressing the importance of not only connecting to our planet, but also connecting with others (2015). Institutional change is seldom achieved through the actions of one particular person doing all the work, but instead relies on people working together to come up with ways to tackle an issue. In such an interconnected world with economies and ecosystems relying on actions taking place in distant corners of the globe, “we need to think and act at multiple levels if we are to make progress on vexing social and environmental problems” (Steinberg 2015, 163). No problems are able to be achieved without collaboration among different levels of society, from individual citizens to cities, to national agencies. As well as this takeaway, the other is that change for the good is possible. What this good change hinges on is the ability to work at these varying levels successfully to roadmap a future that allows for the creation of rules that will continue development towards well thought out rules and goals to improve our standards of living and the health of the world.
Bibliography
Steinberg, Paul F. 2015. Who Rules the Earth?: How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.