There is a pedestrian cross walk near my house. It goes across a busy street and cars have to stop when a pedestrian starts crossing the street. Problem is, 5% of the cars don’t stop. Some of them I’m sure don’t know they should be stopping, but most of the ones that don’t stop know you are there, they choose to speed up and try to slip by. As long as they don’t actually hit anyone, it isn’t a problem is it.
A couple of people are walking down the street. They are eating a pack of chips and when they finish the pack one throws the empty pack on the ground as he continues to walk. He doesn’t even seem to think twice about it. There is lots of other garbage around, so one more pack of chips makes no difference really.
At a penguin sanctuary the signs clearly say not to use your flash when taking pictures because the flash disturbs the penguins. You see one flash go off and you say, well, one more flash isn’t going to destroy the penguins (and like that I get a good picture to go home with), so you too take the picture.
Once can’t possibly be bad, even twice, but it doesn’t stop there. It keeps going, it spreads.
Maybe the challenge with making sustainability to become the norm is not so much getting people interested in what it all means and can mean. Perhaps it is simply to get people to take notice of what is around them, to see things again.
Perhaps if we start caring the rest will come. Good things spread too.
