{"id":61568,"date":"2022-01-20T08:07:30","date_gmt":"2022-01-20T13:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61568"},"modified":"2022-01-20T08:07:30","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T13:07:30","slug":"rest-is-good-but-resolving-global-crises-means-not-looking-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61568","title":{"rendered":"Rest is good, but resolving global crises means not looking away"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"title details-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.piquenewsmagazine.com\/opinion\/rest-is-good-but-resolving-global-crises-means-not-looking-away-4952949\">Rest is good, but resolving global crises means not looking away<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col-md-7 details-byline\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<figure id=\"file-2406081\" class=\"figure details-file\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vmcdn.ca\/f\/files\/piquenewsmagazine\/images\/environment\/plastic-by-gary-bell.jpg;w=960\" alt=\"plastic by Gary Bell\" \/><figcaption><span class=\"caption-byline\">Photo by Gary Bell\/gettyimages.ca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<div id=\"details-body\" class=\"details-body clearfix\" data-words=\"737\">\n<p>When people do things they shouldn\u2019t, they often try to distract attention from their actions. Guardian writer George Monbiot notes that many corporations fuelling the planet\u2019s destruction spend significant resources to shift attention away from themselves and onto us.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe deliberate effort to stop us seeing the bigger picture began in 1953 with a campaign called Keep America Beautiful. It was founded by packaging manufacturers, motivated by the profits they could make by replacing reusable containers with disposable plastic,\u201d he writes. \u201cIn 2004, the advertising company Ogilvy &amp; Mather, working for the oil giant BP, took this blame-shifting a step further by inventing the personal carbon footprint. It was a useful innovation, but it also had the effect of diverting political pressure from the producers of fossil fuels to consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGreenwashing\u201d is another way corporations divert attention from their true ecological impacts. As British psychology professor Steven Reicher points out, \u201cOne recent McDonald\u2019s spot boasts of the way the company is recycling cooking oil into truck fuel, coffee cups into greetings cards, and plastic toys into children\u2019s playgrounds. The problem is that it makes no mention of the fact that McDonald\u2019s beef footprint alone constitutes 22m metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Facing the real issues often leaves us feeling anger, anxiety and despair. While these are reasonable responses to the environmental crises engulfing us, the multi-billion-dollar self-help industry has profited enormously by convincing us that fixing ourselves is the priority.<\/p>\n<p>How do we balance the need for personal change with systemic change, when both are necessary?<\/p>\n<p>Personal actions can create consumer demand for sustainably made products, model greener behaviours and foster empowerment. But focusing on the personal runs the risk of eclipsing our responsibility to also marshal systemic change.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rest is good, but resolving global crises means not looking away Photo by Gary Bell\/gettyimages.ca When people do things they shouldn\u2019t, they often try to distract attention from their actions. Guardian writer George Monbiot notes that many corporations fuelling the planet\u2019s destruction spend significant resources to shift attention away from themselves and onto us. \u201cThe [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[180,1080,32518],"class_list":["post-61568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-crises","tag-david-suzuki","tag-pique-news-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61569,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61568\/revisions\/61569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}