Education
for Sustainable Living, Environmental Respect, and Celebrating the Quality of
Life.
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Reducing Impacts There is a old Chinese proverb "If we don't change our course, we'll end up where we are headed". Such is the tone for this section of the course. After introducing our students to some of the global big-picture issues of concern, we discuss ways that we can reduce our impact on the environment. In this session, we draw heavily from this source: Brower, M. and W. Leon. 1999. The consumers guide to effective environmental choices: practical advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Three Rivers Press, NY. Recognizing the Difficulty Involved One might think that reducing our environmental impact should be easy, but in reality it is quite hard. The reasons are many: 1) we have a strong basic desire for comfort; 2) most of us were taught that being successful meant having a big house, big cars, and stuff (lots of stuff); 3) business sales strategies are designed to get you to buy as much fo their products possible; 4) media and clever advertising agencies design their ad programs to appeal to all your basic needs; and 5) even in the face of a real American tragedy, our president's answer was to go shopping. So, given this momentum, it is difficult to get people to change. But with consistent educational efforts about the risk of an ever growing economy, higher energy costs, people are starting to reconsider ways to reduce their impact on the environment. Progress ... what is it really? As a born and raised Southerner, I listened to many people talk about progress in terms of improved comfort. Instead of huge attic fans pulling in warm humid air up and through our homes, we now had central air conditioning to keep us cool and cut the humidity ... progress. After my mother convinced me that standing in front of an open refrigerator door to cool myself off was not a thermodynamically positive move, I began to wonder if millions of homes with central air conditioners and refrigerator compressors pumping out hot air might not warm the environment. What was the impact of hundreds of thousands of automobiles being driven to and from work everyday from the ever expanding suburbs of town. Memphis was once a model city with trolley service all across downtown. Slowly but surely these were ripped out to make way for everyone to drive their cars. This was progress because it was more comfortable and easy to jump into and drive their cars than to wait for the trolley.
How to Change? In subsequent pages, we will discuss the some of the impacts and look for specific ways to change. This course is all about teaching people about the connections between personal health and environmental health and between personal health and economic stability. By making efforts to reduce our impact on the environment, we will do all of these. We will improve our overall health and well being, spend less on fuel, improving our economic future and we'll save resources for the next generation. The key is to learn what are the highest impact activities and processes that we create as humans create, and how to reduce our impact from these activities.
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Fortunately, some trolley service has returned to the city. But, for the
most part, we have become completely dependent on automobiles for travel.
It seems that over my 45 years of living, this extra heat and greenhouse gases
being thrown into the air are now having an impact. Our comfort is having
an impact. It is really difficult to convince people who have become
comfortable to try being less comfortable. Maybe (as the blues musician
Keb Mo says) "We are just victims of comfort". Yet, after
spending the summer of 2003 in Italy (likely the hottest on record), I learned a
lot about people's capacity to tolerate heat without relying on artificial
cooling. This helped encourage me to believe we can change.