In the past few weeks, I’ve been impressed by the passion and care displayed by the recent string of environmental Wespeaks in The Argus. However, I’ve noticed subtle—yet serious—problems in them as well, most importantly apathy and inertia.
In Alexa Jay’s ’08 Wespeak, “Missing the forest for the trees” (March 4 2008, Volume CXLIII, Number 34), I was moved by the questions that she asked the University’s environmentalists. Jay wonders, “is socially responsible beer pong” going to make a real difference? Can “harassing that one friend who drives distances of two blocks around campus” have a sufficient impact? And, most importantly, is our new culture in which green is cool actually changing the way we relate to global environmental challenges? I couldn’t agree more with the need to ask these questions. So often I get caught up in “being an environmentalist,” doing the small things “environmentalists” should do (buy local, recycle, use CFLs, etc.), that I lose track of the bigger picture of what is actually needed to save our planet. Embedded in an environmentalist culture, as many of us are here at Wes, I forget to question the norms and values of that culture itself.
While I strongly support Jay’s critiques, there is a degree of apathy in her Wespeak that is limiting and destructive. Take a look at this sentence: “I’m all for working for change…not that I’ve done anything so far, but I will support you in (some) of your endeavors, just as long as I don’t have to hear about them.” At Wes, we critique our society’s problems almost everyday, but are we willing to implicate ourselves enough to actually solve them? Are we really committed to changing the world? Or, do we just make excuses, wait for someone else to take care of it and say that we’ve done enough work for today? I fail on these counts at least a couple of times per hour.
Most of the environmental Wespeaks that I have read lack the more visible apathy of the March 4 piece. Nevertheless, her critiques are poignant. Asia Neupane’s ’09 Wespeak, “Little changes have big impact on climate” (March 28 2008, Volume CXLIII, Number 35), is a good example of the narrow focus and inertia of much of environmentalism. Asia says, “you can contribute to the ’big time change’ by…not buying that plastic bottle or not driving that two blocks.” I don’t deny that these actions will contribute to change, and I absolutely believe that everyone should do them. Unfortunately, to say that they constitute the “big time change” we desperately need is not correct. These isolated, personal actions are simply not enough. Our situation is so dire that we need a complete restructuring of the way our economy and society work. And maybe spending all that time emphasizing the importance of washing Solo cups (as we do after Outhouse parties) distracts us from the real changes that need to happen.
What I find really interesting is that, until recently, I had never seriously questioned the environmental positions that I take. I’ve always tried to expand environmentalism, not to rethink it. I’m now beginning to see that there is a profound ideological inertia within environmentalism. Environmentalism’s present beliefs are often put ahead of the actual goal of saving our planet. This is not good.
I personally am beginning to move towards the Bright Green movement in environmentalism (a great summary can be found at http://www.wie.org/j38/bright-green.asp). This philosophy advocates innovation, marketability and technology (and sometimes even commercialism!) as the means for fixing our global catastrophe. Rather than looking to the past’s idealized simplicity for the fix to our modern problems, Bright Green seeks pioneering new technologies that are creative and sustainable. It makes the hippie in me writhe but inspires me more than when I first became a vegetarian and stopped using deodorant. It is not the details of this movement that are important to me, but the passion and progressivism that drive it.
It is truly awesome to see the recent flurry of environmental Wespeaks in The Argus. While I am criticizing certain aspects of them, that is not why I wrote this; I am writing to the motivation that inspired these Wespeaks. That pure motivation to make things better, when removed from the apathy and inertia that often surrounds it, is what has the power to change this world of ours—as long as we are willing to work to cultivate it.
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