Have you ever seriously considered environmental problems on our planet? If you are the one who thinks that we cannot put off the job of saving our natural environment any longer for its seriousness, you might face a barrier in sharing your thought with people who do not take it as seriously as you do. Environmental activists and scientists may have had the same concerns as you in gathering public attention to the environmental problems. However, it seems people are not interested in this emergency at all. Some of them do not even think of this as an emergency. According to the article “Are Human Beings Hard–Wiredto Ignore the Threat of Catastrophic Climate Change?,” scientists advised people to act for environment after USA today reported, Debate is Over: Global is Warming but there was no noticeable outcome. The important actions that environmentalists have called for are not made. Here, the question is rising from the impatient feeling of people who care about the environment. They would say, What prevents you from practicing pro-environmental behavior? Our current environmental condition gets worse and worse even if we enjoy more and more comforts in an advanced world. As our world develops, this condition might deepen still further. We should give more serious response to the issue that threatens the earth. Then, what has the power to make people stand for our environment?
First of all, In the article “Are Human Beings Hard–Wiredto Ignore the Threat of Catastrophic Climate Change?” Bennett says that psychological wire and social conditions make people ill-suited to respond to the ambiguous and remote threat posed by global warming. This maybe applies to other environmental issues as well that are seemingly far from us.
Second, knowing that there is a problem to be solved is an essential step to the following actions, but knowledge does not always bring actual behavior. In the film “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore did a good job of explaining how climate change affects our environment negatively and letting the public see that we are already experiencing the result of a contaminated nature. In “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore points out that global warming caused by the greenhouse gas affects us in many negative ways, especially by threatening lives on the earth, including people and animal habitats. He points out that temperature increasing due to global warming was not only the cause of an exceptional massive heatwave in Europe that killed 35000 people, but also it has strengthened storms by heating the oceans. The storms have taken a lot of lives already; there was the Hurricane Katrina that killed thousands of people in Louisiana in 2005. Moreover, not only are the manmade disasters, but also many icebergs have started melting and water from the melting ice caused a landslide along with spoiling numerous lives natural. About the natural calamities include these examples; Gore indicates that today we are having extreme natural disasters from last 14 years that have no parallel in the earth’s history. The film definitely increased the awareness of the public by bringing a worldwide sensation, but did such a truth really make you think that you should start pro-environmental behavior? Such information does make people feel anxious. However, according to the journal “Mind and Gap: why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior?,” many environmental Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) believe that more knowledge will lead to more educated behavior. However, it is proven to be wrong that more knowledge brings pro-environmental behavior. The author supports this idea by emphasizing how it is hard to change one’s habits even if she knows that changing habits will bring advantages.
Then, what is needed more than providing information that says something is wrong? The answer lies behind the lack of people’s interest in environmental issues. First of all, people generally do not really put their attention on environmental problems because these problems seem overwhelming. Secondly, even if they care, many of them think they are too small to play a major role in making changes. According to the theory from “Model of Responsible Environmental Behavior,” locus of control is suggested by the authors as motive of pro-environmental behavior. The locus of control associates with people’s responsibility for environmental issues. This is what people think whether they have the ability to make change from putting pro-environmental behavior into practice. Overwhelming issues that seem impossible to conquer reduces people’s willingness to act for the issues by making them feel powerless. Therefore, instead of saying that something serious is going on, providing possible solutions that they can do, and their efficacy, will lead them to try even a little thing like turning off switch in their home. The problem is that people do not know where to start their pro-environmental behavior because these outcomes seem too overwhelming. In the article, “’Environmental Conscience’ Urges Canadians to Tread Softly” Dr. Suzuki says that the campaign “Think Global, Act Local” is not as effective as he once thought because people feel helpless when they think globally. Therefore, now he urges people to do small activities at the individual level like not eating meat for one day a week and using lawn products with no toxins. Also, in the website “The Story of Stuff” (www.storyofstuff.com), Annie Leonard suggests that we use fewer automobiles, save energy by taking out plugs, shop less to waste less, recycle and spread these messages to other people. The solutions she says sound common but people do not put these into practice because they think themselves weak.
According to the article “Lesson from Lost World” by Jared Diamond, interestingly but shockingly, many past societies that disappeared had similar environmental problems to ours including weather change, water pollution and loss of forest. This analysis tells us that our world can also be on the road to collapse if we do not solve the problems we have. His idea that claims environmental contamination is a common point of the societies that vanished is also evidence for the idea that humans are a part of nature because preserving the health of nature is essential to maintain our society. Diane Ackerman believes that humans are coexisting with environment in her article “We Are All a Part of Nature.” It means that saving our environment is the same as saving ourselves and destroying our environment is the same as destroying our future. Combining the ideas of Diamond and Ackerman, we can assume that the people in the collapsed worlds failed to solve their environmental problems which had very close connection to their future. I agree with this idea with my experience of raising tadpoles when I was little. This ended up with experiencing the first death in my life for forgetting to change the water for them. Their habitat was just made of plastic bottle with some sand in it but that was connected directly to the survival of them because it was the world they lived in.
On many occasions, economists talk about the environment, global warming and its immense potential to cause major conflicts including a world war, the attitude taken by many s that they are simply overrating the problem. The case of the drying Lake Lanier brought to the spotlight this grave reality within the American soil. The drying lake showcased the interconnectivity of nature, water availability and quality and economics.
The Lake helps supply water to the city of Atlanta which is above 72 kilometers away. This has build contempt among communities living next to the lake. They believe that the drying of the lake was a result of a disproportionately big share of the water being pumped into the town and other industries. The 2007 drought saw the drop of rainfall in Atlanta from a normal of 39.1 inches to 23.5 inches of rainfall. True, experts dismiss the argument that the lake could dry up. But the storm raised by the resource within the American soil cannot be ignored.
The Georgian governor went to the extent of declaring a state of emergency and appealing for help from the white house in helping people hit by water shortage. He went ahead to instigate a lawsuit in an attempt to push the corps managing the lake to curtail the volumes of water from the lake sent to the City in a day. With these propositions, the debate got wild.
Charlie, the governor of Florida argued that the attempt to reduce the water flow would jeopardize the close to $200 million in the fishing industry in its jurisdiction. Bob Riley, the governor of Alabama argued that the lesser flow of water would definitely affect the cooling process at the Farley nuclear plant in his jurisdiction. This would potentially cause loss of electricity for over 800,000 homes in three states. Again, the argument put across by the Georgian governor was that the drying up lake was taking away over 1120 kilometers of shoreline as well as some 10000 docks for private boats.
Critically looking at the above arguments, everyone seems to have a point in terms of the losses to be incurred in the case of loss of the flow of the water. The tag of War Between the States has a lot to do with who owns the water in the river. Bearing in mind that these states are under one central government, one would expect to find a situation where the states have an easy time agreeing on how to manage the waters of the lake. The central government seems unable to bring up a concrete solution to the reliance of the region on the lake’s waters.
The political fights witnessed set a very dangerous precedent as far as environmental issues are concerned. Resources are known to be the most important cause of conflicts all over the world. Has anybody asked him/herself if this could change? The effects of the climate change cannot be over-emphasized. As everyone continues to engage in greedy exploitation of the resources without any regard to environmental considerations, the situation is bound to get worse.
The most powerful future areas of confrontation are expected to be based on environmental grounds. This is now worrying. When the third world countries cannot feed themselves as there is no adequate rainfall; When the Asian countries encounter environmental disasters one after the other: When the American states will be overwhelmed by the hurricanes and floods. The world will not be the relatively good place is today. Riots of the starving will rock every part of the world. The blame will squarely be on the west for not taking adequate action in protecting the environment (Diamond and Jared, Par5).
It may be true that significant investments are being applied towards environmental issues. However, the magnitude is highly underestimated. Green energy, protection of natural habitats and managing industrial outputs are good moves towards controlling global warming. However it is probably one very important factor that derails the movement towards directing enough energy on approaching environmental issues and this is “politics”. Whereas every one of us understands the impact of continued depletion of the natural ecosystem the full implications of any attempts to cessations will bring about a high level of discontent and emotions into play. The most important reason being the fact that life is only possible through utilizing the environment. On this note any attempt to reduce our utilization o the environment will always b opposed as it involves upsetting the status quo (Hungerford and Volk, p9).
A government that seeks to curtail the utilization of resources is more often than not trying to commit suicide. Political leaders can b very willing to curb environmental degradation as witnessed by the many good intended treaties signed by national governments. The implementation of the agreements is always the problem. Back home the vibrancy of opposition scares them! The good environmental plans eventually abort.
The main remaining venue to avert extreme levels of environmental degradation is science. True, research in science has been very successful in protecting the environment but one fact still remains: the rate of resource use is higher than the rate of regeneration of these resources. This poses one fundamental challenge to us all. We have to take drastic action in reducing consumption of some products we hold dearly. Unless that decision is made research alone will not fully solve the issues. From a realistic point of view, research can only support other more powerful actions already taken to reverse the environmental degradation (Hungerford and Volk, p11).
Are we able to do this? Yes and No. Yes in the sense that it only requires a universal understanding and commitment to undertaking the task of protecting the environment. No because of the following two main reasons. First is because of the fact that we are all in a race to outdo each other. One person cannot be contented with the one small car he/she drives because the neighbor has a bigger and better car. Such a person cannot be bound by environmental concerns. On the same note, nations seen as poorer than others are aiming to attain higher economic standing. This race is bound to affect the efforts adversely. Secondly despite the extensive research on environmental issues her still does not seem to have a single common middle ground on which environmental issues are most urgent to address. Our focus then must b geared towards addressing this obstacle before tackling the environment as they will accelerate the rate of response.
In conclusion, humans and nature are not separated as many people still think. Studying correct and trustable references about current environmental situation will help them to realize that our planet is venerable enough to be destroyed by us. The good news is if we can destroy the earth, it means we can also stop destroying it. We can even solve the problems by choosing another action. As Al Gore quotes Mark Twain in the film “An Inconvenient Truth,” “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t true,” now we know that the natural resource and condition are easily trashed by us. We also know that we are strong enough to lead our world to the end by ignoring the seriousness of the environmental pressure. Our future depends on the condition of our environment. Let’s use our power differently. Choose to save the earth by joining the movement that creates big changes from small changes. If it is not now, when would it be?
References
Film, “Inconvenient Truth” 2006.
Ackerman, Diane. “We are All a Part of Nature” Remix: Reading and Composing Culture, 2006.
Cornelia Dean “’Environmental Conscience’ Urges Canadians to Tread Softly” New York Times, 2005.
Diamond, Jared. “Lesson from Lost World” Time, 2002.
Kollmuss, Anja, Julian Agyeman. “Mind the Gap: Why Do People Act Environmentally and What Are the Barriers to Pro-environmental Behavior?.” Environmental Education Research, 8.3 (2002): 239-260.
Hungerford H.R. and T. Volk “Model of Responsible Environmental Behavior” Journal of EnvironmentalEducation, 21 (1990): 8-21.
Website “The story of stuff“. Web.