Even though the 1960s were notoriously hedonistic and many hippies were as much concerned with drugs as they were with stopping the war effort, they still acknowledged that there were larger, interwoven capitalistic forces working against them. They advocated both a do-it-yourself, live-your-morals ethic, but they also understood that changing the world involved not just lifestyle change but direct confrontation to the military, industrial and economical forces that were tearing the world apart.

This is almost completely lacking from current social movements and their rhetoric. In a way, the environmental and socialist movements are fragmented; our attention is misdirected toward an obsession with personal, small-scale change and on our own self-created identity of the eco-friendly farmers-market goer who recycles her glass bottles and never takes showers over five minutes long. The language of the environmental movement tells us that we are going to prevent the worst effects of global warming through self-improvement methods that focus on the quick and the easy: Ride your bike to work. Don’t buy bottled water.

On one hand, this is practical: It is easy to get people to buy lower-voltage light bulbs, especially if it saves them money in the long run; however, it misses a big part of the picture. Most of the harm to the planet is being carried out by large corporations at home and abroad, all of which are part of an over-arching turbo-capitalist economy that values market growth above plants and people. Less than 25 percent of the carbon released into the atmosphere can be attributed to individual acts: Most of it is the fault of massive, coal-burning industrial plants, the gears of which are being turned by hands way above any one individual’s head.

While changing our individual lifestyles is good, it is not enough to recycle our bottles and be satisfied that we are doing our parts to help the planet, while in the meantime we participate in an economy that is chucking boatloads of carbon into the atmosphere every day. For every buck spent on biodegradable toilet paper, 30 more are given to other industries that work in the exact opposite direction and do far more damage than we can undo with our non-consumerism.

I’m still a big believer in personal change and recycling. I think that all of those smaller movements help people feel connected to their world, and it undoubtedly makes a difference, especially within the local community. (If more commuters biked than drove, there would be less pollution, fewer accidents and sexier people.)

However, it simply is not enough. We need to be working to chip away at the capitalist-industrial complex that is doing the most damage. We need to go through avenues of political change within the system, such as voting, lobbying and writing letters to congresspeople. We need to use methods of social change outside the system, such as demonstrations and subversive media.

The 1960s recognized the cobweb of complexes that needed to be brought down before real change was possible. It is time that we, in our current era of social madness and environmental distress, do the same.

Roberta Singer is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences.