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March 23, 2007
An Inconvenient Truth and Trendy Environmentalism?
I was reading this NY Times article about a family experimenting in a low-impact lifestyle that includes using no paper- even toilet paper. It reminded me of the headlining article in the UTC Echo this week, which was on the favorable response towards the possibility of a $10 fee that would help fun cleaning up UTC's pollution and increase cleanliness suggested by campus environmental group Campus EDGE. Not three years ago I tried to draft and distribute a survey in conjuncton with whatever group was EDGE's predecessor on a similar topic. Sadly, my survey on retrofitting buildings and instituting programs to improve campus sustainability never made it past the huge batch of e-mails I sent to professors and other univeristy admin requesting the distribution of the survey to their classes. A friend happened to pick up one of the papers while I was standing next to the news stand today, and I told him about how EDGE has finally succeeded where I failed, and I asked, "I wonder what's changed in the past three years to make this possible." He responded, "An Inconvenient Truth."
It seems that between the Bush administration's blunders and Al Gore's timely concern people are starting to think about the planet again. Even Oscar competitor Jesus Camp made some mention of how environmentalism fits into today's culture-- the topic of conservation was brought up to one of the Evangelicals the film was following, and the subject responded with something about how God put the Earth's resources here for us to use, and they'll last until the second coming/rapture/apocalypse, etc.
I sure hope this trend lasts longer than the Earth Day fuss in the 80s...
| By Spike | 01:05 AM