Good Things Don't Come Easy

'Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. 

It's when you know you're licked before you begin 

but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. 

You rarely win, but sometimes you do.'

-Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mocking Bird

The question of whether we have a responsibility to protect this planet is undeniable. We are this planet, thus we have a responsibility to ourselves to protect what we are.

Many People have retreated from addressing the climate problems of the present and future, as the extent of the problem of climate change is overwhelming. It means we must not only change our technological direction, our patterns of consumption and our focus on economic growth but it means we must change our entire mentality. It is evident that much of humanity is not taking climate change seriously. I believe this is because of the fundamental changes we need to make to our most basic values. We must first change our priorities and our definition of happiness. As David Suzuki says, 

we must prioritize our air and waterways over our economy. In order to do this we need to re-define the source of our happiness; we must re-condition the human race to prioritize the economy second to the atmosphere. This means we must return to the very basics that outline our existence. We must acknowledge our larger environment as the only true source of our being, and stop living in the name of our own images; in our projections of what we are to others through products. Further, we must recognize our actions as being detrimental for the future of our children. Christopher Lanch, author of 

‘A Culture of Narcissism’ writes:

'To live for the moment is the prevailing passion – to live for yourself, not your predecessors or posterity. We are fast losing the sense of historical continuity, the sense of belonging to a succession of generation’s originating in the past and stretching into the future.'

It is our Corporations that capitalize on this ever-dying sense of not belonging to  a succession of generation's, of not belonging to our larger environment or community. They provide us with a sedative, an immediate answer for our disillusion surrounding the dilemma of our dying planet. “Buy this!” They say. “You’ll feel better! not about the world, but about yourself.” 
I saw a target add recently for children’s clothing that closed with the slogan, “Target: the road to happiness.” Corporations have diminished our true sources of happiness in order to stimulate consumerism and the individual’s investment in products as a source of happiness and a sense of self. Evidently, we must act now to save our finite planet but we must also reinstate the true sources of happiness within the next generation in order to successfully change our priorities and influence our survival, hence education is key. 
What are the true sources of happiness? I think everybody knows intuitively. Obviously it varies somewhat from person to person but the fundamentals are as follows: clean air, water, love, intimacy, community, family, food, health, shelter, and music and art, which is the result of humanities inbuilt need for meaning. This is inline with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, (see below). 

Conclusively, the pathway to changing our values and re-instating the importance foremost, of our basic needs, is a long, hard road. The future of our happiness and our survival as a spices depends on how we act now; and although a consumerist culture may deny it, the truth remains that good things don’t come easy.