“There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.”
Love it. The speech by Paul Hawken that we read this week was a very passionate and inspiring three pages. Even though I’m writing about it first, it ended up, by some trick of fate, being the last of the readings I read this week, and it was a great way to reach the finish line. Hawken’s views on our generation’s fascination with getting rich versus being rich, and with the television versus the stars, stuck out to me as being reminiscent of things we all talked about earlier this term with a lack of participation from our younger peers in all things civic and social – and that’s really a bummer. At the very end of the speech Hawken pointed out that the generations before us have failed, and truly it’s sink or swim for us now. I think herein lies the most important point, which is that not only do we need to learn how to reorient ourselves to environment, but we need to teach the same things to our kids. I am a practicing vegan for largely environmental reasons, and I take a deep satisfaction out of sharing my diet with others. I hope we all can find something similar that we love about the environment and pass it on to our kids someday, because I really think that’s going to be the key to our success.
Speaking of success, the nonprofits listed as “Anti-Environmental Groups with Deceptive Names/Mission Statements” in A Guide to Environmental Non-Profits definitely can claim success in fooling me about their real causes via their names. Knowing when this article was written would have helped, but I was really surprised that the U.S. House Committee on Resources was on that list, and that its website apparently was proudly displaying what I would deem anti-environmental news stories. Accordingly, I decided to do some investigating; below are two screen shots of the second and third stories to come up on the Committee's home page.
The articles are about ways to cut down Federal spending on environmental regulations and keeping Obama's political actions transparent, respectively; pretty ridiculous, right? Enjoy: http://naturalresources.house.gov/default.aspx
Another article we read was about Al Gore's choice to utilize other avenues besides the nonprofit sector for his environmental work was interesting. I thought this quote summed things up nicely: "The point is not to become enmeshed in the details of the examples. The point is to appreciate the degree to which the common social good of environment, accompanied by emerging financial innovation, has become a vibrant marketplace where assets have monetary value and private investment and individual gain maintain the common good." The fact that for-profit environmental technologies is 100 times the size of philanthropic environmental work is astounding, and I think Al Gore made a very innovative decision to utilize the public market as a way of defending a very public good.
It is still shocking to me that people are denying global warming. It blows my mind that anti-environmental groups even exist. We all call earth home, how can someone be opposed to preserving it? And if you are going to be anti-earth, then the least you can do is be upfront about it. It feels like they can dish it out but want to hide behind their name in order to avoid flack. I think that more money needs to be allocated to environmental issues since it is something that affects every living thing in the world. These people are nuts!!!
ReplyDeleteAs I read through everyone's reaction to the Al Gore article I start to understand it a little better. Your take on it reminded me that Al Gore is first and foremost a business man. He sits on the board of directors for Apple Inc. It makes sense that he would look toward the for profit sector, he's probably more knowledgeable, connected and comfortable with it. I personally think we are fooling ourselves by trusting the same corporations that are responsible for the pollution to solve the problem. Environmental nonprofits don't have the same interests that for profits do and for that I think they would do a better job.
ReplyDeleteI like what you had to say about the Al Gore article, it was one that was a little tough for me to get through. I was hard to see how he was connected other than being mentioned at the beginning. I liked the fact that this article showed the upside of using for0profit business to make a difference too. It seems that there can be true benefits from utilizing all possible resources.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the website. I found Chairman Hastings, a Republican from Washington, to be yet another Republican that has gone off the deep end. "the President has signed an Executive Order establishing a new National Ocean Policy and Council that could severely restrict recreational and commercial use of our oceans." In his speech he is basically saying that Obama's protection of the environment is ruining the economy because of job loss. He is not addressing the need to protect the environment, thus the reason for these policies being put into place. Without protecting the earth, how can we even guarantee that it will be here for that guy's grandchildren to even worry about jobs.
ReplyDeleteThe website was really interesting. Being from a Republican household, I definitely understand why some people believe this way, BUT it's ridiculous. Protecting our environment should be a high priority no matter what our economy is like, it's flat out important. Who cares about jobs when we don't have enough air to breath or water to drink?
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