What are your ideas for making sustainable development synonymous with prosperity?

Clever marketing would be the key! That, and making sure it is still convenient to be green. Unfortunately, many people don’t want to have to spend a lot of time or effort on being green.

Tax oil so it costs $300/barrel and gasoline costs $10/gallon. That would change everyone’s behavior except for the uberrich.

Start a marketing campaign that equates a large carbon footprints as making up for a short penis.
Convince women to mate with guys that have small carbon footprints.

In my city we have to pay for recycling whether we put out the blue box or not- I don’t know if the encourages people or not. I have always been green- hippie child. I think it will just take more and more people doing it.

It always disgusts me to see “buy green products” as a solution to our environmental problems because the better thing to do is obviously to STOP BUYING. Obviously there are some things you need, but greenwashing is prevalent and annoying. It is clever marketing that drives people to consume things they do not truly need.

Education is always #1 and really the only surefire way to see long term progression towards environmentally conscious society. Smarter people make smarter decisions, elect more competent politicians, etc. Public awareness programs are part of education.

Celebrity endorsement falls under clever marketing and is a band aid solution / ineffective long-term substitution for quality education.

Because environmental costs (pollution, contamination, depletion of resources, etc) are not accounted for in dollar costs of goods and services some people think we need to assign a dollar cost to environmental costs so that they can be accounted for. The flip side to this is that some people think our environmental resources are priceless and you shouldn’t be able to buy your way around the issue. Once you introduce a pollutant, e.g., the system will never be the same…ecological restoration of a clear-cut forest will not be as productive as the original forest was.

Sustainable development is kind of an oxymoron. We can’t continue to grow the human population forever. We can’t continue to develop forever. Yet year in and out, we continue to assume population growth and support further development of infrastructure, buildings, etc to accommodate this anticipated growth. At some point, we need to admit that there is a finite limit to growth and development if we would like to truly exist on this planet in a sustainable fashion.

There is a balance; we have yet to allow ourselves to find it. The unfortunate truth is that humans are innately selfish and politicians are forced to think short-term due to the structure of our government. Rather than sit around on Fluther debating what might ideally be done, what can be done, what should be done, we should all look into ourselves, figure out what talents we have to offer the world, and exploit them to make the world a better place in our own small way.

Change is not going to happen in our lifetime. It is a slow process in which we sometimes have to take three steps backwards before we can take another step forward. Eventually we will get there, or be forced into extinction. Either way, there is no bucket list of things everyone should do to make sure we avoid the latter. There is no formula.

Honestly, I don’t have the time to list every single idea I have for doing my part to move us in the right direction. Climate change is just one issue. There are hundreds more. And there are several things I do to address many of them.

@worriedguy
“equates a large carbon footprints as making up for a short penis.”
Wouldn’t that go straight in to the popular myth (no myth in my case ~) that big feet = big penii?~

Simple…make crazy over packaging of products and non recyclable products cost prohibitive. Also raise the price of gas to $5.00 a gallon and charge more for non nuclear electricity and people will change their wasteful mindsets in a hurry. A persons wallet is a powerful decision maker.

The material properties of plastics are so useful and unmatched that their use will not be discontinued any time soon…Any politician that votes to raise taxes and gas prices will likely have a hard time being re-elected…

@lilikoi – Right, sorry, I actually meant “the wealthy must be persuaded to embrace renewable energy and recycle products,” not “recycleD.” Celebrity endorsement is a short-term solution but better than no solution at all. Public awareness and classroom education can only do so much as an immediate solution.

Of course there are millions of ways to do your part for the environment but I feel like there must be some way to embrace environmental change without throwing economic growth out the window. Otherwise, like you said, the change in mindset and action will be so gradual that the earth may be beyond repair.

@rebbel Ah .. the old big feet, big wingding theory. Carbon works in the opposite manner.
The guys with the smallest wieners make up for it by buying the biggest buns.
See? We’ve started the marketing campaign already. Ladies are you taking notes?

@xxii

I used to be the optimist that believed in short-term change. These days, though, I feel like realistically, I can’t expect to see real change in the short-term and if it takes too long to happen then we simply aren’t fit enough to survive. So be it. Something better will come along to take our place, and the world will be better off for it.

Basically, I think education is the only surefire way to get where you and I would like us to go. All of the efforts we make in the short-term are not necessarily futile, but it is not realistic to expect huge shifts in our lifetimes either.

I disagree that celebrity endorsements are better than nothing. They can be, but it is not necessarily the case. A slew of celebrities endorsed buying the Prius. Obviously buying a Prius is better than buying a Hummer, but if you were doing fine with your bicycle and are now buying a Prius because XYZ celeb makes it look cool you are not doing Earth a favor. Celeb endorsements do not come with caveats – they simply push consumers to consume .

I am not an economist. Economics turns my brain into a pretzel. But it does seem that profits and the right thing to do are often at odds.

@lilikoi – Interesting point about the celebrity endorsements. What if celebrities advocated the recycling of products, and less consumption? What if governments encouraged celebrities (through monetary incentives or otherwise… I have enough faith in celebrities to say that at least some of them would “donate their fame”) to spread messages of buying less and reusing instead of consuming more?

@xxii I think that would be a better way to go. There are lots of low-hanging fruit that have been around since the 70s or maybe even earlier. Like recycling, R-R-R, CFLs, not throwing your cigarette butt on the ground – these are all things people still do not get. It would be nice to have everyone on board on these simple points. It would sure make me feel better. People should work on both long and short term solutions simultaneously, which is pretty much what is happening. We can’t forget that we’re running our education system into the ground (our governor just asked public teachers here to work for free, for example). That certainly doesn’t help us at all.

I think by redefining the meaning of “prosperity”.
As long as we equate “prosperity” with material wealth we will continue to consume, consume, consume.

As long as affluence is equated with the freedom to consume needlessly, discard carelessly and to waste shamelessly, we will make little progress towards reducing, reusing and recycling.

A significant shift in values is required to bring about widespread change. We need to promote and give recognition to those who succeed in living well with the lowest carbon footprint.

Wastefulness must have both a high financial cost and a high social cost. The prestige of conspicuous consumption and wastefulness must be replaced with admiration for living sensibly and with respect for the environment.