Why Bother By Michael Pollan Summary

In “Why Bother?” Michael Pollan describes how underwhelmed he was by Al Gore’s request at the end of, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Pollan was almost insulted at the fact that all he was being asked to do the after watching the film was to change a light bulb. He feels that after the film “scared the hell” out of him that there is a lot more he could be doing to help avoid climate change. Pollan goes on to argue though that even if he does go trough all the trouble of lowering his carbon emissions, and “turn his life upside down”, that everything he did would just be negated by someone in China. He would have nothing to show for all his trouble other than a false sense of virtue. Even if someone does make the decision to drastically change their lives, Pollan explains, there is currently no way of knowing if the decisions they are making are actually lowering their carbon footprint. He briefly acknowledges the fact that slowing down climate change will take laws and money, but that the real solution is to “make profound changes …show more content…
China is a country whose population is over three times as big as the United Sates. This means that for anyone here in the United Sates willing to lower their carbon emissions there are countless people in China who are going to offset their actions. Another thing to take into account is that China is a communist country, a country in which the Government controls everything the people can or cannot do. However, Pollan still argues against Michael Specters statement “Personal choices, no matter how virtuous, cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money.” He naively states that it is no less right to say that laws and money cannot do enough