25 April 2007

Earth Day and the governor's Hummer

I've been thinking a bit about The Environment lately. Granted, I'm always thinking about the little 'e' environment because ... well, that's what I do for my day job. But it seems recently like The Environment has suddenly gotten trendy, and I have pretty mixed feelings about that.

Last Sunday marked yet another Earth Day. I had intended to post a Happy Earth Day blog, but the fact is that I had trouble motivating. I've been pretty cynical about the concept of Earth Day ever since I saw the huge piles of trash generated by Cal's Earth Day celebration during one of my first years here. If, as the saying goes, "Earth Day is everyday," I'm not sure about the need to commemorate it once a year. After all, ecology has taught as that the earth is impacted by long-term and cumulative effects of human actions, not the fact that we rode our bikes to the Earth Day concert instead of driving. It's kind of like Christians who only go to church on Christmas and Easter. But I digress....

So The Environment is suddenly the issue that's on everybody's mind, and after decades of research and publicity, people are finally waking up to the reality that humans are major drivers of climate change. So why am I so cynical now that public acceptance of one of the political issues that's most important to me has reached critical mass? For starters, public opinion polls have consistently shown that people do care about the environment, and it bothers me that suddenly The Environment has been given legitimacy because the major media have started reporting on it slightly more intelligently. (For which I think Al Gore is rightfully given praise. Say what you will about him, he's persistent.)

But let's accept for a moment that environmentalism has, in fact, recently achieved greater mainstream support. Why should I have reservations about this? I think in part it's analogous to that feeling you get when your favorite, underground band gets discovered. It somehow cheapens the experience of listening to their music knowing that a lot of other people are now, too. But that's a pretty silly reason to stop liking a band that you enjoy listening to, and it's even sillier when it's about caring for the environment, an issue everyone should care about. I'd like to think I'm mature enough not to hate on people who just recently started caring about the environment, but to push the music analogy a little further, I'm concerned there's something deeper that's going on: When your favorite, underground band gets popular, is it because they sold out? That's what I worry is happening with the environmental movement.

Our own governator was on the cover of Newsweek a couple weeks ago touting the environment. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy when politicians embrace the environment as an issue, and even happier when it's a Republican. (After all, the conservation movement is all about being conservative.) What I've heard of his argument seems to be that we can have our cake and eat it, too. To brutally paraphrase his latest talking points about the environment, he argues that the environmental movement is too negative and proscriptive (true) and that we need to look for more positive ways to adjust our lives to protect the environment (true again). But his positive adjustments seem to involve not changing the way we live our lives but just doing the same things with better products. He pimped his ride into a "green" Hummer, and now he's saving the planet, too. I think it relies a bit too much on technology and too little on changing human behavior.

Maybe he has a point, though. If he's proven nothing else in the past couple years, he's proven to me that he's a much more astute politician than I gave him credit for. And he knows that technological innovation will always outpace changes to human nature. If the old argument was that we had to each cut our consumption in half, not a lot of people would get on board. And those who did were probably living in a tree somewhere, anyway, so their contribution might be negligible. But if he says we can save the planet by only reducing our consumption by 10% each, maybe a lot more people will change their habits a little, and the net result is a happier planet. That's certainly my hope, even if I do worry that it cheapens the message a bit. (If you're interested in a slightly more rigorous examination of consumption and the environment than my back-of-the-envelope math, I encourage you to calculate your ecological footprint. It's fun and educational.)

So, maybe my favorite underground band has blown up. As long as those of us responsible for educating the next generation of environmental stewards can keep the movement from selling out, maybe there's a bit of hope yet. Happy Earth Day.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Matt Bracken said...

But Uncle Mark, isn't it okay for the gubernator to own four Hummers, only two of which are powered by alternative fuels sources? After all, he believes in global warming.

4/26/2007 9:23 AM

 

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