Michael Pollan Summary: Blog Post

    Pollan begins his article with the same predictable arguments many of us use to fabricate excuses for ourselves for why we advocate for change but sit back and do absolutely nothing about the way we live. At first he ironically comments on Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth’” as he points out that switching our light bulbs seemed a miniscule cure to a gigantic world issue. I found myself agreeing with this statement and then quickly overturning that thought. As Pollan argues, our passive way of fixing things will not work out satisfactorily in this urgent situation. He includes that everyone seems to think what they personally do doesn’t matter because in another part of the world their “carbon foot-print doppelganger” is rapidly replacing every last bit of CO2 that they struggle to prohibit themselves from emitting. At first his view is unclear but it quickly becomes evident that Pollan does support these small changes, because they trigger our neighbors and friends to become motivated to change their lives too, and eventually we will influence others to carry on our “green” habits. However, Pollan states that rather than taking initiative, we feed ourselves the lie that we must depend on technology to come up with smarter ways to conserve and believe that “ethanol and nuclear power–new liquids and electrons to power the same old cars and houses and lives.” We come to have faith in our own “cheap-energy mind” and as we do so, we ask “why bother?” hence the intriguing name of Pollan’s article. Pollan is assertive when he says we should bother, because living in the dark is what has gotten us up to this point. He is an advocate for planting a garden of our own, because it is just the start of a self-subsisting and rewarding life. He reasons that by planting this garden we begin to “heal the split about what you think and what you do” and that not only will it benefit the environment but it will strengthen relationships with friends and neighbors as we borrow “tools” from them.  Pollan ends with the thought that our “relationship” with the planet need not for the sole benefit of one and not another, because as long as we are capable of planting, and the sun still exists, there is always a better way to do things for ourselves without harming and “diminishing the world we live in” a truly symbiotic relationship with our surroundings.


Work Cited


Pollan, Michael. "Why Bother?" New York TImes Magazine 20 Apr. 2008:
19+. Rpt. in The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing. John D.
Ramage, John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 6th ed. New York:
Pearson, 2012. 88-94. Print.