The New Environmentlist

This year in my marine and environmental science classes I have encountered a high level of anti-environmental rhetoric from some of my "conservative" students and I have been struggling with how to deal with this.  Teenagers are being fed a lot of hate rhetoric by the Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck types, where they are taught that liberals are actually bad, inferior people; that environmentalists are dangerous anti-American, anti-business radicals.  So it is hard for my students to deal with me.  They call me a liberal, but they know that I am not particularly so, I am a fiscal conservative, and I am definitely an environmentalist.  My lesson to them this year has been one of mostly tolerant discussion, of free flow of ideas, where we acknowledge that we are all good people, but we see things from a different point of view.  We all have the same basic wants and desires, security, health, happiness, freedom, a safe world for our children, and a chance to work hard and succeed.  These are our common ground core values, we need to debate not denegrate.

       As I watch the BP oil spill unfold with a morose mix of horror and glee, I think about the new environmentalists being born in the Gulf and all around the world, thanks BP.  I feel very guilty about how each new wave of bad news gets me excited about this tragedy.  I hope that it will be catastrophic and then go away.  This is a terrible thing to say, but we need to realize that it is a dangerous game we are playing with oil, it has a big payoff, but the risks are there, they are real and this is where we are now.  There are real alternatives to oil, we just need a big catalyst to push us into a new track, a new paradigm.  

     I hope if you are out there, you will take some time to teach a kid how to discuss issues in an enlightened, intellectual manner, to respect their opponent and realize their humanity as well as your own.  I hope you will teach them about the value of nature, and the impact of the choices that we make affects more than just our pocketbook.  Have a great day, I am going to work in my garden.