You have a new follower, I am looking forward to checking out the rest of what you have to say!

Thanks for writing.

~Ross

Great post!
Dayne

@Kristin: Yeah, Seattle seemed to be doing very well in terms of keeping things clean. There’s a gal here in BA who’s from Toronto that assures me that the same is true in her home city. There are so great examples out there, and now the rest just need to fall into step behind them!

@Grant: Thanks a lot, Grant! Glad to hear that you’re helping to keep the streets clean! It’s true that all it usually takes is a little social pressure to get people to be more aware of what they’re doing. In general I don’t think they’re even actively thinking ‘time to throw this on the ground,’ the problem is that they AREN’T thinking and that’s why it’s so difficult to stop…it’s a habit.

@Greg: Thanks Greg! I haven’t seen that particular show, but I’ll have to check it out. It’s true that people do have other concerns that come first before the environment. Think of it like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, except in this case people care about self first, them family, and all the way at the top comes environment. So many people are impoverished or stuck in situations they can’t stand that they’ll never make it up to that top rung and start really caring. We need to be solving these other issues in tandem with the environmental issue, otherwise none of them will be taken care of fully.

@Meandering Bohemian: Thanks! Sounds very ‘Atlas Shrugged’ the way you describe it, but it’s true that all it takes is a little concentrated pressure from the bottom to radically shift the way we live. If everyone is conscious of this, we’ll be more likely to hit the right point at the right time.

@Ton: Yes, it’s very very sad to see these kinds of things. Just to put yourself in their place mentally kind of brings it home. This is 2009…we should have solved these problems by now! Maybe next year…?

@Audrey: Definitely true, these attitudes do start early. In the US most people at least know that it’s wrong (even if they still litter and pollute like crazy…maybe the guilt will make them stop eventually), but in many places it’s taken in with the mother’s milk, as they say, and that makes the habits very hard to break.

@Jill: Three cheers for elephant poo! But seriously, it is important to fix that pane of glass, and to continue fixing it when it’s broken. Then maybe one day we can stop because it won’t get broken anymore.

@Nate: Yeah, a little self-control would go a long way almost everywhere in the world, I think.

@Brian: So sorry, Brian! I imagineer it was a lovely piece of epic poetry (in blog response form).

@Amber: Yeesh, yeah, it is definitely worse in some place than others. Unfortunately it would seem that in the places where it is the worse, there is also the most economic disparity; a few making a lot of money and being well educated, while most are poor, barely surviving and unable to attain a decent level of education. I think this is a big part of the problem, because how do you build up the strength of an area’s ecological policy when there is not a strong economic foundation upon which to build it, and few educated people to put it together? This is a problem our generation is going to have to solve, because clearly the solutions of the past simply aren’t working.

@Graham: Drives me crazy. At the same time, I do realize that the people who are digging through the trash are doing it for a reason; they’re starving. I can imagine that if I was starving I wouldn’t put too much effort into cleaning up after myself…wouldn’t want to waste the energy that I could spend on trying to make enough money to feed myself and my family. This is why I say I think both economic and ecological problems will have to be solved in tandem if we really want to achieve either one. Hopefully someday they won’t have to do what they’re doing anymore.

@John: You raise a really good point in saying that we are going to have to be the ones to change things since we’ve been hearing about it for a lot longer than our parents. Further, we will be (and in some cases, already are) the people with the wealth and the power in the near-future, so it will be up to us to be responsible and do what we can to instigate positive change.

@Alex: Haha, I imagine I wouldn’t make too many friends doing as you suggest, but it probably would be effective (now if I can only learn to say it in Spanish…). Thanks for the kind words, and I appreciate your contribution to the conversation!

Thanks everyone for commenting! You guys always flesh out the posts a whole lot more than I could do on my own, and for that I’m very thankful.

man. candy wrapper thirty year old loser. best thing ever is just pick it up, go up to him and say, “oi. you dropped this. here. take my number. just give me a call any time you want me to pick up your trash, no problem”.

ah. broken windows. i used to do street art. not graffitti but installation type street art with a view to inspiring people and improving their day. all too familiar with broken window theory

and i agree with it. def. but just thought about applying it to personal dev. each negative thought contributing to an overall decline in well-being leading to destructive selfish limitation thinking – the kind that makes you throw cans on the street and fvck up our planet.

awwwwsomeness.

really like your site mate. solid design and great read.

keep well and in touch
alex – unleash reality

In countries like Japan, the government owns a 50% stake in Japan Tobacco, so they are decades behind in anti-smoking policies.They just started a few years ago with anti-garbage ads.

I think most countries will have to go through that process and it will take decades. Changing adults is hopeless, so the only way is to reach children.

I still remember when I was in school and was first told about global warming, littering, smoking,etc. Those messages worked and it was the children who convinced their parents to change.

I am hopeful for the future, we just have to invest in children. You have to be rich to care about the environment, when we take care of poverty and inequality, then these issues will start to solve themselves.