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I agree that it is problematic if environmentalists, including ethicists, emphasize blame for environmental degradation above all else. Doing so is a limited approach to environmental ethics and can be quite discouraging. A positive ethic in the sense of being both prescriptive and uplifting, or at least offering some hope, can be quite helpful in motivating behavioral change. However, examining only positive moral emotions will also lead to an impoverished ethic, as it will ignore an important part of human experience, a potential source of ethics, and/or potential hindrance to ethical life. I am interested in ethics for an imperfect world, which requires us to grapple with how to do ethics given our finitude and failings, not just our possibilities.

— Environmental Guilt and Shame by Sarah E. Fredericks (Page 112)

I want us all to be mechanics because none of us should be shut out from the workings of technology and capital; instead we should all be empowered to get under the hood and tinker with the machines, as well as take apart and (re) build the machines for our own purposes.

— Mechanic and the Luddite by Jathan Sadowski

The mechanic knows how a machine operates, how it is put together, and how it can be repaired or reengineered. The Luddite knows why the machine was built, whose pur poses it serves, and when it should be disassembled or des troyed. By becoming mechanics and Luddites, we get to the heart of how these systems work, who they work for, and what we can do to change them. Together these models provide us with the tools necessary for rejecting the systems thrust on us by others and, in their place, making our own future.

— Mechanic and the Luddite by Jathan Sadowski