Gristmill is one of my favorite blogs, even though I had been out of the loop on environmental issues for quite some time. The tone is generally witty and insightful, but without taking a know-it-all stance.
This article on individual choices versus systems change made me smile:
A humane, sustainable human society is not an individual undertaking. It cannot succeed solely through individual willpower. Already our culture works to atomize us, to make us feel like islands of consumer desire whose sole function is to accumulate as much as possible. It discourages us from thinking of ourselves as involved in communities that impose obligations and responsibilities. But if it is to mean anything substantial, a new ethic of sustainability must be collective. It's going to be about community, about our mutual bonds and mutual care.
Whether or not you recycle your plastic makes not one tiny iota of difference in the grand scheme of things -- really, it doesn't. If our society's survival rests on individuals' ability to refrain from easily-available ecological sins, we are screwed. It's the infrastructure that matters: the laws, the economic relationships, the physical structures we inhabit. [...] We have to establish a system in which it's easy and natural for people to live sustainably.
I don't know how to accomplish that cultural transformation, but I do know that for me, it has never been enough to make my own choices. Everything I do affects the world, and I feel a deep responsibility to contribute to changing the systems.
I don't know why it has taken me so long to realize that electoral politics are one part of that responsibility. Maybe it's just the next step in my evolution - from direct social services, to social services policy, to working on the leadership that makes the policy.