Meghan Schwend- Jensen Article Review

Derrick Jensen Article on Hope and Environmental Concerns

By Meghan Schwend

I found Jensen’s article on hope and the environment to be very attention-grabbing, because of the unique approach to motivate the public to take interest in the environment.. Even the first sentence of the article demands attention, The most common words I hear spoken by any environmentalists anywhere are, We’re fucked .” Jensen soon moves on to the seemingly opposite subject of Hope. Hope is usually portrayed as a good human quality, but in this article it is given a negative light. Jensen argues how hope makes people passive about their lives and the environment, because it makes them feel that they are out of control of their outcome.

I see that simply hoping for something good to happen will not affect the outcome in anyway. In fact, it does quite the opposite, it prevents people from making a difference. It takes the responsibility from the peoples’ hands and places it onto a savior that doesn’t actually exist. When talking about the environment, its important to understand that each person needs to take charge of their contributions to the environment so that we don’t need to hope for a better future. Each person needs to look at their lifestyle (maybe take a carbon footprint quiz) and take actions to improve their impact on the environment.