Stanley Fish, a grumpy old man with a reasonable point.

There is no doubt that our consumer driven society has put us down a destructive path which has lead to poisoned water supplies, deforestation and other substantial damage to our environment. These damages have not gone unnoticed in recent years however. For a few years now, environmentalism has become the new catch phrase which has become all the fashionable rage among Americas middle and upper classes. Although their are many people in the US that are truly concerned about the environmental damages our consumer lifestyles have caused, the Stanley Fish post makes very valid points about how much we want to disrupt our everyday life for the environmental good.

Although many of his points are those of a grumpy old man who dislikes the new ideas to what is socially acceptable, his example of the progressing level of detail to the sorting of paper trash shows that we might have reached a level of absurdity.

The question of living an environmentally friendly lifestyle in the US is an extremely loaded and controversial question because to primarily raises the question of to what degree are we willing to forfeit our comforts for the greater environmental good.

There is no doubt that we can all do small changes that collectively would have a huge impact but at the same time I do agree with Mr. Fish that the pop culture appeal of environmentalism is in some instances going to far. I feel that should we continue to push for more and more radical environmental changes, we risk a backlash against it all. Just as the 1980s was a backlash against the hippy environmentalism of the 1970s, we could risk the same outcome unless we slow down this green drive. I am all favor for more recycling, less dependence on oil and energy but for a sustained drive towards conservationism, we need to move slower and make people feel that changes have an effect rather then for some abstract cause.