our bad habits

Everyone has bad habits right? Biting your nails, popping your fingers, whatever it may be, most people have some habit they wish they could stop but just can’t seem to stop doing; it’s an addiction they can’t break. These normal every day bad habits may not cause much harm in the long run but many of our more serious bad habits, bad habits that seem to be present in a majority of human beings are the root of many of the climate problems we are facing right now.

Some of the bad habits that humans have are driving cars way too often, and using far too much electricity, among other things. These are things that would be simple to fix, yet people don’t seem to do it. The question is why? Why don’t we fix a problem when we know how? I think part of the problem is that many people have a very individualistic viewpoint. They see a big problem and believe they can’t do anything to fix it on their own, and that the small change they would be able to make wouldn’t make any difference at all, so they just do nothing. The problem is that a lot of people think this way, so we end up with a lot of people knowing what they need to do but not doing anything. If people would just readjust the idea that by themselves they can’t do anything, to the belief that by themselves they can make a small change, we may end up with a bunch of people making a small change each, but all those small changes add up to one big change that has a real effect on the problem we are facing.

This all ties back to my last post, where I talked about our problems with change, how we are afraid of change so we back down when it comes time to actually face them. And how we often try to push the problem into someone else’s hands rather than dealing with it our self. This ties together because many people recognize their bad habits, but have the mindset that their bad habits don’t make a difference, especially if everyone else fixes it, then they don’t have to. The problem is no one fixes it, because everyone thinks someone else is fixing it. So instead of having a bunch of small changes adding up to a big change that makes a difference we are faced with a bunch of seemingly small bad habits that are adding up to a lot of big problems for our society.

So what can you actually do? There are a lot of minor changes you can make in your lifestyle that can make a difference. The crazy thing is you may not even notice these changes at all. For example, you can switch to using more energy efficient light bulbs, or unplug your charges when you aren’t using them, or carpool, walk or ride a bike more often. Your first instinct may be to think well even if I did that it’s not going to make a difference, I’m only one person, one person out of 7 billion. But, if everyone considering making a change thought this way and then didn’t make a change where would we be? People have to realize that change comes in all sizes and big or small it is still a change and big or small it is still making a difference.

Rising carbon dioxide levels are the reason ocean acidification is even something we have to worry about. It’s just a small change in the ocean pH that creates a big problem for many species and the sad thing is the species that are being directly affected didn’t play any part in ocean acidification or rising carbon dioxide levels, and they don’t get a chance to make a change that moves toward fixing this problem. We are the only ones who can do that. We caused the problem and it is our job to make the changes necessary to fix it. So even though the change you can make, personally, may be small, it is still necessary and will still be helpful. The change in the ocean’s pH is only .1, a seemingly small change that has already had drastic impacts on some marine species, this fact just goes to show that small changes really can have big impacts, the same can happen with the small changes you make in your life, they can end up making a big change even if it did not seem that way at first.