![\"derrick](\"http:\/\/radyananda.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/06\/derrick-jensen1.jpg\")
If you’re a politically progressive minded person like me, you are conscious of your footprint on the planet. Maybe you drive a hybrid car, carry your own canvas tote bags to the grocery store, have traded plastic disposable water bottles for a reusable metal one. Maybe you shower in 5 minutes or less, patronize your local farmers market, use only energy-efficient light bulbs, and eat organic. Perhaps you grow your own vegetables and compost your scraps. Or even shop exclusively at used clothing stores, and recycle gray water in your yard, hoping that if everyone modified their own behavior, we could save this planet ravaged as it is by green house gases and chemical pollution. That’s the standard mantra of many individuals and groups who quote Mahatma Gandhi: “Be the Change you wish to see in the world.” It’s a comforting thought, but an entirely ineffective way to save the planet according to writer Derrick Jensen. In his new essay Jensen asserts that “[c]onsumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance.” Further Jensen makes the provocative claim that “simple living as a political act is suicide.”<\/p>\n