For my Paradigm Shift projects, I’m interested in talking about the shift from a society based on mass production and consumer culture to the idea of sustainability and environmentalism.
While the shift didn’t happen instantaneously, there is undoubtedly a big difference from the mass consumption of the 1950s to the focus on reusable and recyclable products today.
A TV Dinner advertisement from the 1950s (Source: CooksInfo)
This modern-day microwaveable meal advertises a bowl made out of plant fiber. (Source: EatingWell)
However, this shift is still occurring. Not everyone is taking part in the sustainability movement, and I’d like to further explore the reasons why some groups are less concerned about this topic than others (for instance, I’ve noticed Penn State and college students seem to focus more on environmental activism/responsibility than older people). In addition, I would like to examine the environmentalism movement of the 1970s and explore how grassroots activism + government policies paved the way for a societal focus on being “green.”
Why is this specific shift significant enough to merit your close investigation and the attention of your audiences? Why does this shift need to be explored and understood?
Overall, I’d like to investigate this topic because I think we hear a lot in the news about how a climate crisis is inevitable unless we suddenly become perfect consumers overnight, and while it is true that there is a far ways to go, I’d also like to focus on the positive changes we as a society have made in order to try to slow our ecological destruction.
I completely agree that this topic is important to be understood because climate change and global warming are such pressing issues today. Only recently have we recognized the urgency of this problem and decided to act upon it. I think it will be interesting to see how previous generations have failed to address this issue and how the effects of the industrial or even technological revolution has contributed to this ideology.
It is extremely important to take care of our planet, and while talking about the negative effects and the inevitable disaster that we’re right in the face of can be effective to some extent, I believe that if you talk about the positive changes we have made within the last decade or so, we will be more effective in making people care about the climate a little. There is only so much fear mongering that someone could engage in regarding this before the people are too tired to talk about this issue and start to become apathetic about it.
This is an awesome topic to talk about. I think that our use of single use plastics is even more of a dire threat than our carbon footprints. The fact that there is an island the size of Texas floating in the Pacific made of plastic and other waste is terrible. I think that more people would get on board with using recyclable or reusable goods rather than throw always because the effects of this pollution can actually be seen.