Are you aware of the average trash a family generates in the United States?
Now comes one of those blogs that I don’t expect anyone to read or really take into consideration. Why? Because most of you will take a look at the length of words that I’ve managed to figuratively scribble and pass it off as one of my long winded rants. That’s fine. I’ve been known to do that on occasion as well. However the topic that I write about now I can safely say that I’m genuinely passionate about. Along with the other reasons, mainly so that you can learn more about me and to sharpen my dull marginal writing skills, I blog to write about things I enjoy. So with that said, despite knowing that people rarely read this, I invite you to take a few, even participate by commenting, and just read my rant about awareness and the environment.
As some of you may know, I’ve been becoming quite the mild environmentalist. It all began with that one environmental science course I took in college. That was the point, and more fittingly the talking point I want to make, where I became aware. Aware - mindful: bearing in mind; attentive to. I became aware of the amount of fossil fuel the US consumes, the effect of urbanization has on ecosystems, why ecosystems are so important, what the effect population has, how our Earth’s resources are being allocated etc. I can go on but for the sake of trying to grasp your already fleeting attention, i’ll stop. Naturally I wanted to tell my friends what I’ve learned, and I did; I told my good friend Erick. He rolled his eyes at me. You see the problem with students and not just necessarily my friend Erick is that they feel stuff they learn in the classroom setting is just something they have to dredge through; it is something they have to get through to reach that inevitable goal of finding the job they want. I was shocked at the amount of students who do this at the University, the last bastion of really sincere free speech, free thinking, and shared learning. There alot of people out there who get it, who have that true learning spirit. Sadly though many aren’t aware and take many things for granted. It seems like such a common sense thing to say but classes can be used to teach awareness as well. It seems like these days it takes a Michael Moore film to teach awareness.
There is another reason why my friend Erick rolled his eyes at me. He in a sense thought I was being preached to. Or to put it in a more blunt fashion, he thought I might have been brainwashed. Now I know he’d think right now if he were reading this that my choice putting it may be wrong but let me try, for the sake of argument, to put into words what he as trying to say. Erick, my good friend, correct me if I am wrong. Erick thought that my professor was trying to teach me lifestyle change or guilt. Maybe he thought my professor was a preacher preaching to me the words of environmentalism. That is certainly not the case! My lifestyle changes and guilt were a result of listening to empirical data. I looked at growing trends, charts, relative data. I listened to sound arguments! My lifestyle changes and guilt were not taught to me. I came to those conclusions on my fruition!
So you’ve come to the end of my blog and I thank you for hanging in there. If there is anything I’d like for you to take from reading my blog its this paragraph. If you didn’t read anything else I wouldn’t mind. I just want people to be aware. Once people are aware then the choices people make have more meaning. Whether people change or just stay the same after they are aware is irrelevant. I am one of those people who believe that people are inherently alturistic and will do the right thing under normal conditions, but thats a whole different blog and perhaps a bit naive. To tie everything all together I leave you with a couple questions. Are you aware that the United States, a relatively insignificant country in regards to population, uses 1/4 of the worlds oil? Does that sound fair to you? Who knows? That is for you to decide. Look at this picture. Are you aware of our relative consumption to the rest of the world? Is that fair? Again that’s for you to decide.
What personally worries me is China and India - especially China because they are being very aggressive with modernizing…they are trying to do it the exact same way we did. Can the world support 1/3rd of the world’s population (Ie- China + India) living the exact same way we do? For some cities -like chongqing to be full with highways that makes LA look like child’s play? I’m thinking not (unless we go to war and someone loses - I used to talk about how primitive people were when we went to war for resources…then again I didn’t realize what we’v been doing all alone) - of course at the same time they can say “you live like that, how can you deny us that life style you hippocrit!”…I would hope we have to make changes ourselves.
I remember when the seg way first came out - the inventor lukemarly said “yeah we could make a billion dollars sellign to the post office”
but then he later continued to show how he was interested in changing this world and thought (obviously paraphrasing him) “what if china instead adopoted a policy not that of urban sprawl, but that of planned urban planning where people would use seg ways as the basic means of transportation instead of cars…how much would we save!”
Considering how Beijing average highway traffic goes at 9mph (although that is still better than the 91…) and they are rushing to build more and more cars, I’ll take a stab in the dark and say that his idea was not very convincing to their government.
I would say try to avoid “preaching” at all , and try to lead by example as it is probably the most effective over the long run. If i see a friend doing something I had not considered in the past that I knew was ultimately a better choice- I’m much more likely to emulate it than if they talked to me all day long about what I should be doing.
Ammar
August 23rd, 2007
here is a good test of just how much of a consumer oriented society we are…what is the total value of anything on your body right now (exclude the cost of a car tied to your keys , but count cell phons, etc. etc.)? Of course this doesn’t work if you just woke up and only sleep in boxers…but its pretty scary how much we actually wear!
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=38&threadid=2087529&enterthread=y
Ammar
August 23rd, 2007
Re: The point of his entry was to show that, in general, people are not and most importantly will not be aware of their ecological impact without someone telling them, and even then, it will not be well received – hence, “preaching”. Let’s be realistic - how many people take time to acknowledge the effects of energy consumption and waste production on the environment? Suppose they do recycle and conserve, and we assume that this is somewhat of a sign of their awareness. What are their reasons for doing so, aside from money? Because it’s a good thing to do? How far does their motivation beyond a guilty conscience extend? Probably not much more than “I was taught it was bad to waste food and litter, so I won’t.” Beyond that, they are not really aware, as they cannot appreciate the magnitude of the consequences of human impact on the environment. The obvious solution here is to tell them about it, but again, who will listen without interpreting it as “preaching”? And can someone fully realize the extent of energy consumption and waste production simply by example alone?
Any person can hear what another person is saying, but it takes an open mind to actually listen.
Re: AJ. If you think this is bad, then I would suggest you stay away from politics.
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August 26th, 2007