Summary of Michael Pollan's "Why Bother?"

"Why Bother?" is the question that many people ask when confronted with ideas of making small living choices to reduce their carbon footprint.  In the world today, too many people believe that their individual impact on the national carbon footprint is too minute that nothing they can do or change in their daily lives will have any effect whatsoever on climate change.  However, according to Pollan, this perspective is what is making us so dependent and causing time to pass without any real changes being made.

Wendell Berry was a farmer and writer from Kentucky, who, thirty years ago, diagnosed the problems of industrial civilization as being too much "specialization." We are far too dependent on companies and other individuals to sustain us.  While specialization is a positive concept, in many ways, in the case of climate change, it is a major problem.  Climate change is the result of cheap energy, which makes it seemingly impossible to conquer climate change in our own individual lives.

The reality is, we have to bother in order to make progress in our communities and, eventually, in our nation.  By "bothering," you are setting an example for others, which can start a chain reaction that will lead to the majority of the community suddenly "bothering."  This sort of chain reaction requires viral social change, which is uncontrollable once an individual sets an example and starts a pattern.  The key is to start small: give up meat, observe the Sabbath, or, best of all, plant a garden.  Pollan believes that growing some of your own food is the single most powerful thing that each individual can do.  By planting a garden and producing some of our own food, we are changing our ways from being dependent and divided to being independent and self-sustainable.  There is an abundance of benefits of planting a garden, including food that is local, very fresh, very tasty, and very nutritious.  When you are working in the garden, you are burning calories without even knowing it, which is an added bonus of being your own producer.  "During World War II, victory gardens supplied as much as 40 percent of the produce that Americans ate."(p. 94)  If we are entering a time when, as predicted, we need to learn how to provide for ourselves, what better way to start than by simply planting a garden.

The fact is, planting a garden is the first step to real climate change.  It will cause us to reestablish ourselves as not only consumers, but also producers and citizens.  We will get to know our neighbors better and lose the sense of helplessness that so many people have acquired by depending so much on others to provide for their needs.  "As long as the sun still shines and people can still plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world."(p.94)