On this millennial Earth Day, awareness of our depleting natural
resources isat an all-time high, and yet, so is their destruction. A new
field of research hopes to explain why we continue to damage the
environment even as we think we're protecting it--and how we ca
stop.
In November, nearly 80,000 people flocked to Seattle, Washington,
to protest the disregard of the World Trade Organization (WTO) for
environmental concerns. Impassioned demonstrators from San Diego to
France inundated the streets of downtown Seattle for days, railing
against the toll that free trade often exacts on endangered
wildlife.
Unfortunately, the protestors' admirable pilgrimage to save the
environment actually hurt it more than they knew. Consider how many
well-intentioned individuals who normally would have stayed home flew
across the country, sapping tons of energy and releasing vast amounts of
carbon dioxide into the air. According to the U.K.'s Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution, aircraft emissions of carbon dioxide could
triple over the next 50 years, highly exacerbating global warming. This
is just one of the ways we destroy the environment even as we're trying
to protect it--a tragic irony that is one of the major themes of
environmental psychology.
Many people, based perhaps on well-publicized disasters like the
1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, believe that environmental problems are most
often caused--and best solved--by government or big business. Most
environmental damage, however, begins not with government or large
companies, but with the cumulative actions of individuals. If there is a
solution to this global crisis, it is to understand--and remedy--the
decision-making of individual consumers of energy before nature pays the
price.
For about 30 years, environmental psychologists have struggled to
understand the way we treat our surroundings, which ultimately harms our
own well-being, since environmental assault can wreak havoc on our
health, even leading to illnesses such as cancer. Over 100 studies
conducted in the last two decades have examined the ways individuals
influence the environment--from deciding to have another child to turning
on the air conditioner--and why they make such decisions. We know that
some people do refrain from overusing nonrenewable resources, from
forests and fish to less tangible resources such as clean air and
physical space. Environmental psychologists are now examining the
mind-set of such individuals, hoping eventually to encourage others to
consider our resources in the same way.
More and more people are environmentally aware these days--curbside
recycling, insulated homes and Woodsy Owl's slogan "Give a hoot, don't
pollute" are now ingrained in our cultural consciousness. You might think
that awareness would lead to environmentally friendly behavior, but it
does not: Well-educated, middle-class North Americans, the people most
likely to have high environmental awareness, use far more energy than
Third World residents--and other North Americans too.
Why the discrepancy between words and deeds? So far, scientists
have identified at least 30 different personal, social or structural
influences that affect whether a given person uses natural resources
wisely or takes more than their share. There are four overriding ways
that people, mostly unconsciously, hurt the environment every day:
o Energy use. Perhaps our biggest priority is to curb our heavy use
of fossil fuel energy sources, like oil. Burning these fuels produces
greenhouse gases and ground-level pollutants, leading to global warming,
a planetary danger no longer questioned by experts. A 1998 study in the
journal Bioscience showed that 40% of deaths worldwide are caused by
pollution and other environmental factors. Furthermore, energy use is
growing: Dutch researcher Linda Steg, Ph.D., reports that in the
Netherlands, a region typical of developed nations, consumers now use 25%
more energy than they did just 14 years ago.
o Convenience. Taking a plane is several times less fuel-efficient
even than driving, but we often choose to fly to save time. In a typical
recent year, U.S. commercial airliners carried 60 million passengers 158
billion miles, using 21 billion gallons of jet fuel in the process.
Similarly, cars afford us speed and comfort compared to cycling or
walking. But a Dutch study found that about 20% of car trips are for
journeys of less than one mile. Is this truly necessary?
o Overpopulation. In a classic 1968 article, biologist Garrett
Hardin, Ph.D., theorized that environmental destruction stemmed from the
fact that there are just too many mouths to feed, even with great
agricultural improvements. The Population Reference Bureau reports that
the 20th century began with 1.6 billion people on the planet and likely
ended with 6 billion. This is the end result of every parent's personal
decision to have a child, whether they realize it or not.
o Ignorance. Robyn Dawes, Ph.D., a professor at Carnegie Mellon
University, blames "limited processing": People simply don't place their
daily behaviors in an environmental context; their decisions are
literally thoughtless. Some progress has been made since Dawes' initial
research (witness the growth of recycling), but how many people consider
the environment when they flip a light switch or use an electric
toothbrush?
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