Some may ask, if I change my personal behavior and become a good environmental citizen, what difference does it make in such a huge system as the planet we live on? This is equivalent to saying ``Why should I bother to vote? I've never heard of an election that was decided by one vote.'' This thinking is deeply flawed. If everyone thought this way with respect to elections, there would be no democracy in America.
The same reasoning applies to the environment. The best way to make this clear is by example. Consider household trash disposal. Twenty-five years ago, no one recycled household trash, and our dumps and landfills were filling to overflowing, and finding new suitable sites was a constant problem (both environmental and ``not in my backyard''). Now, recycling is common practice, and while not a panacea, as I will discuss later, it is helping the environment and helping with our solid waste disposal problem. How did this happen? A few committed people got it going, and gradually, the word spread. People recycling were observed by extended family, children, neighbors, friends. It caught on and spread exponentially. Exponentials (and peer pressure) are powerful things. And this is a good example of one the mantras of the environmental movement: ``Think Globally, Act Locally''. It may sound like a slogan, but there is an awful lot of wisdom in this statement. Big problems can be solved by committed individual action.
How can we become good environmental citizens without much personal sacrifice, as I promised earlier? The answer is simple: begin to think about the environmental consequences of your actions; weigh the costs of your actions to the environment against the benefits to you8. Simply focusing on the effects of what you are doing using cost/benefit criteria will push you in the direction of making better choices. Frequently, those better choices are as good as the bad ones in terms of personal comfort and convenience and frequently they save you money. And don't worry if your contribution seems small in the grand scheme of things; it's bigger than you think.
Example: you need to drive to the store to pick up a few items, or to the post office to mail a few letters. Upon arrival, you get out of your car, leaving the engine running, to run inside ``for just a few minutes''. Does this makes sense? Let's think about it. That running engine is harming the environment (consuming gasoline and producing exhaust emissions), and it is costing you money. Both costs are small, but they are there. What about benefits? Perhaps some would think it saves wear and tear on the car, by avoiding a restart. The number of times this situation will occur is a tiny fraction of the number of restarts the car will make during its normal life. That fraction can be considered to be vanishingly small or zero for practical purposes. Thus, you are not going to materially reduce the life of the starter motor or battery by restarting your car in this situation. Small costs vs. virtually zero benefit. Leaving the engine running doesn't make sense, but it is done all the time. Sum this small cost across the entire population of the world over many years, and this seemingly trivial example adds up to significant waste of gasoline and tons of unnecessary pollution for no benefit.
Now we're going build on the idea of cost/benefit reasoning to look at some specific ideas for better environmental citizenship.