Visualize this: a mother, new born baby at her breast, two young children clinging to her dress and four more children playing by her side. All of them hers and all living in a small village in a developing country.
Now visualize this: a mother with three children, ages four, seven and ten, all playing in the backyard on the swingset somewhere in middle America. I ask you, which family has more impact on the environment? No doubt about it, the first one, right? Wrong.
In this editorial, I am going to take a moment of your time and explain something that everyone in Environmental Studies 2 learns and what Russell Peterson briefly explained last week at his lecture "Together We Can Save the Earth." I feel I need to elaborate on this because a) most of you haven't taken ENVS 2, b) few of you attended Peterson's lecture and c) the coverage the lecture did get focused more on how Peterson thinks all Republicans are evil and that abortion is a way to family plan -- rather than on how we can save the world.
Following a straight-forward formula, human impact on the environment is equal to the size of the population multiplied by the affluence of that population multiplied by the effects of the technology that the population uses. Concisely, Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology.
To analyze this equation one must first acknowledge that humans really do have an impact on our environment -- that air pollution, water pollution and resource depletion are actually occurring and that people, animals and plants are dying because of it. For those of you still in denial, just recall the last time you inhaled a big cloud of black smoke that spewed out of a tractor trailer, or better yet, take a trip to Houston or New Delhi to get the full effect.
As Peterson noted in his speech, during his lifetime, the earth's population has tripled from two to six billion. Another three billion are (conservatively) estimated as being added during our lives. And while you may be thinking that this isn't a problem in the US., but only in those 'backward' developing countries -- think again.
The reality of environmental impact is that population, affluence and technology all play a part, and thus, because Americans consume so much, having one child in the US. is equivalent to having anywhere from 35 to 100 children in various other (developing) countries. So we're as guilty as those in countries that we're so quick to blame. Just as it is encouraged in other cultures to have many children, it is encouraged in our culture to consume huge amounts of resources and energy. In fact, we're not just encouraged to consume extravagantly, but we're ostracized if we don't. No one wants to be known as a "cheapskate" or a "penny pincher," and we all want to "keep up with the Jones'." Why settle for a VCR when a DVD player offers so much more?
Don't get me wrong. I am no more immune to these social influences than the next American, but as Peterson makes clear, it is up to us to restructure our society to replace values that encourage rampant over-consumption with more sustainable, healthier values.
We, as the highly educated, young 'elite', have the power and position to make tremendous positive (or negative) changes in the world. Through civic action, socially-driven investing, and through inventing and transferring to greener technologies (and discontinuing the production of polluting technologies), we have the potential to change the world for the better. This, summarized, was Peterson's message.
Collectively, we have finally realized that we are currently destroying our habitat, but that we can potentially live in harmony with that habitat -- and we are currently at the crossroads of these two choices. We, the young leaders of one of the most powerful nations in the world, must choose which road to go down -- the very short, dusty road paved with styrofoam bricks and shaded by plastic trees or the long, lush road naturally cooled by tall elms and flowering maples. But we must actively choose, for if we don't, we'll naturally just keep plowing down Status Quo Avenue instead of crossing to the more serene Sustainable Lane.