Activism (cont.)
Connected to the world from your own home court
(continued from February 27, 2010 post)
One commenter brought up her 3 sheets of quarter-folded paper and a jar full of what she claimed was tap water from her sink or a nearby river. Imagine dunking your glass into the bottom of the Charles or Los Angeles River. What you would see is separated layers of gunk, mud, and colloidal light brown water as a purposely imperfect natural specimen from their home town. Voice cracking from a mixture of anger and fear, the woman pointed to the glass jar and asked the CEO, “Would you drink that?”
Now as many of you know, I am concerned about the environment and what impact us humans have on it, in the past and in the future. But by no means would I ever consider myself an activist or environmentalist, per se. And these activists just turn me off that path even more. Certainly, I wanted to know what the real impacts of the natural gas drilling are on local populations, but they were just so rude and obnoxious to the presenter and to the rest of the audience that they seemed entirely unapproachable. Observing them protest and represent something they really care about is admirable for sure, but it also helped me understand why so many upper-ups just want to ignore them and shove them aside. They lacked a sense of common decency in that presentation that many people develop when they are in elementary school.
If, by some random chance of a Google search, one of those activists reads this blogpost, they may call me a snobbish intellectual college student. They may even dare me to come and see their homes and the devastation that they claim the company has caused them. But you know what? I accept that challenge. I am not trying to de-fuse or de-rail your protesting nor do I think you’re all ludicrous for thinking that natural gas isn’t the way of the future. I don’t work for the company, and I have no personal investment in a particular technology. As a future environmental scientist and researcher, I want to make a point of not losing sight of the local implications. What is so amazing about the environment is the unifying power it has because we all share it, even though I experienced the divisiveness first-hand that day. Each person’s connection to the environment is not in carbon emissions or average number of degrees warmer; it’s the local effects that change a person’s pre-existing way of life. That is what the climate change really is at its core. It’s not about protecting some abstract notion of “the people’s” global environment, although to many that is the only way to understand environmentalism. It’s about preserving the values of each community on its own terms. We can only achieve the positive universal effects of environmental science if each of us can better connect with our own neighborhoods, but there is a fine line to represent ourselves respectfully. Yea, sometimes, you have to be loud and obnoxious to get noticed. Sometimes you have to be a little irrational to fight the powers above. But impoliteness and rudeness does not equate to getting more attention. In the short term, maybe…but in the long term, it’s simply counter-productive. Activism takes many forms, just look through the posts we’ve written recently. Look in the news, think back in your own memory: Which movements come to mind first? Which have been the most effective? Why?
So who am I siding with, exactly? Powerful natural gas? Or grassroots voices of protest? I guess I haven’t really decided, but I also don’t think I should come down on only one side of that equation. There are ways to make effective compromises that benefit both sides without settling for a less-than-optimal decision. I just have to remind myself as I continue my scientific studies that not everyone will accept the typically universalist understanding of science that we have all been taught since middle school…but that does not mean that they are ignorant or un-educated about their own environment. I haven’t lived there, I haven’t experienced it. It’s important to humble myself and realize that I’m the ignorant and uneducated one about nearly everyone else’s environment. So much more to learn!
~Sam Go~
