Archive for the ‘Environmental Issues’ Category

Mayor Bloomberg just announced a green initiative for New York City. The program includes pedestrian access, tree planting, and hybrid taxis - to name a few. That’s quite an eclectic mix of green elements.

You can read more about the announcement at The Big Green Apple.

It’s been a few days since I’ve posted and I’ve been feeling the need to write a post… especially as Earth Day approaches.

Unfortunately, many would consider me to have a bad attitude about Earth Day. Why? Because I don’t see a point in making symbolic gestures.

I would much rather see someone make a small improvement about how they care for their environment rather than make lots of feel good comments and actions that are really only symbolic.

I read a great article at ScouseVeg that echoed my thoughts. Here is an excerpt from it.

Here’s part of the comment I left in response to the article.

Let’s do this. Let’s teach our children to walk to school instead of drive. Let’s teach our children to turn off the lights. Let’s teach our children to not leave the water running, to put on a sweater, to close the windows, to not litter, to buy local organic produce…

… and maybe we’ll learn to do the same.

You can read the complete article at Earth Day 2009 - An Opinion.

If you read my posts regularly you will know that I’m a proponent of conserving energy. For instance, I make it no secret that I believe conserving energy is more important than finding alternative sources of energy.

By conserving energy we reduce our pollution in so many areas. Pollution can be caused during the energy generation process, during the energy consumption process, during the creation of the generator itself, etc. The less energy we produce and consume, the less pollution we create.

That all being said, I nearly choked when I read this article about an environmentalists who wants to draw a connection between drinking and driving and wasting energy. His thought process is that drinking and driving is considered anti-social behavior, and that’s the way we should consider wasting energy.

I’m sorry, wasting energy may be antisocial, but I see little connection to the two.

Drinking and driving creates a critically dangerous situation. Wasting energy destroys our environment, yes, but it is not something we need to treat with nearly the same urgency.

In addition, I suspect that trying to “shame” people into conserving energy is not going to change their behavior. Many still fail to recognize the damage that they are causing. If they are challenged in such an in your face manner, they may become obstinate and defend their behavior rather than changing.

I would suggest showing them the benefits that conserving energy will bring to not just our society, but to them personally.

In the article Dr Dixon says

I would agree that being able to afford to waste energy should not be the key factor in whether people decide to do so or not (obviously I want them to choose not). I’m just not sure he’s going to motivate people to change.

Am I out to lunch? Is he correct in his approach or am I? Let me know what you think.

You can read the full article at Fox News.