Is the American society a responsible one?
I won’t give you “because we are better than everyone else” reasoning because it ain’t necessarily so. I think Americans as individuals and on the whole are one of the most generous groups of people on the planet. Whenever there’s a tsunami, an earthquake, a drought or a flood, Americans are right there with checkbooks out and volunteers organized to try to bring order out of chaos. We’re good that way, and I think it’s something to be proud of. But I think we suffer from a short attention span, and aren’t very prepared to suffer much personal inconvenience where responsible actions are concerned. As an example, let’s consider the interrelated subjects of transportation, greenhouse gas emissions and the use of fossil fuels. In America, despite everything we know about the dangers of greenhouse gasses and global warming, greenhouse gas emissions rose 16% between 1990 and 2005. Most of this was CO2, and the leading culprit was the automobile. In 1970, there were 200 million cars in the w
