Imagine this scenario: every time we use a non-renewable or threatened resource, or contribute to climate change, a puff of red gas blasts out of our noses.

The gas smells putrid. Wet and opaque, it blocks our vision until condensing into particles, staining everything a tenacious crimson. Whether the resource is near or far—water drawn from Dane County’s Mt. Simon aquifer or Venezuelan oil powering the ship bringing our coffee from Costa Rica—the impact of our consumption has a tangible effect on us. We can see, feel, smell, and hear the red gas in proportion to the impact we create. Do the earth a big bad deed? Big bad choke-inducing blast. Milder infraction? A lighter crimson mist.

Driving produces a car-filling cloud. Put on the goggles and roll down the windows or we won’t be able to see! Plug in a refrigerator and the red fog, or lack thereof, will tell whether the electricity comes from a coal-fired power plant or relies on renewable resources. Taking a shower, reading a paper, or eating a sandwich—each creates its proportional red fog.

If our contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and to depletion of resources were quantified in such a tangible way, would we continue our un-sustainable ways? I’d like to think something so blatant would be a catalyst for change, but if not, what would it take? What will it take for us as a society to shift from denial or disinterest to responding with the urgency and intensity sufficient to the crisis at hand?

Whether tangible or not, our impact on the planet is enormous. The human race has exceeded the capacity of the planet’s natural regenerative systems. Using up the world’s resources at a rate estimated to be 25% faster than nature can replenish them, we are eating up the capital of the planet instead of living on her interest alone. With population growth and the increasing imitation of America’s consumption patterns, the quantity of the figurative red gas is climbing worldwide.

Perhaps we need discomfort in order to change. Since we cannot see the greenhouse gases we produce, since we don’t see deforestation in our backyards, it is easier to deny or disregard their existence. Climate change and resource over-exploitation are not simple processes. The threats they pose are due to complicated changes in the complex system that is our planet. At best they seem abstract. If economist John Kenneth Galbraith was correct and the factors that most contribute to conventional wisdom are the ease with which an idea may be understood and the degree to which it affects our personal well-being, it is easy to see why many may not fully embrace the call to change. This is complicated stuff and, as far as I know, no one emits a red gas as an impact indicator. If discomfort and/or ease of understanding are necessary impetuses for action, we will likely be way too late in the process to make effective change.

Using this scenario can be a useful way to look at our impacts. Imagining the red cloud we create with just one hour of activity can be a shocking experiment, whether it causes us to realize we don’t know enough to make informed choices about our behaviors or we see how harmful they really are. We may realize there are many things we do without question.

The ways we do things may need to become more like those of our grandparents or great-grandparents. Keeping vegetable gardens and having smaller homes may become the norm. But this isn’t a call to revert to a previous way of living. In many ways we will need to turn the clock forward to create innovative technological advances to help us become sustainable.

We are changing the climate and our planet, and with those changes, the futures of all living things. Greed and selfishness appear to be winning at the moment. But never before in human history has our responsibility to one another been more clear. Enlightened self-interest and altruism need to break through the red fog and help us see a path toward a sustainable future.