OU profs say: For Earth Day, fight despair with action
By Morgan Hoover
April 24, 2008
Ohio University faculty environmentalists offered information and advice for saving the environment on Earth Day.
Earth Day 2008 was Tuesday, and with it came new challenges, according to Geoffrey Buckley, associate professor of geography at OU.
“I think we need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that Earth Day comes around once a year,” he said. “In 1970, we began to recognize as a society that there were some major problems on the horizon. Although there are a lot of battles that have been won from an environmental perspective, environmentalists are losing the war. Back then we had the luxury of time on our side, and today we don’t. We need to make sure that every day is Earth Day.”
Buckley is working on a book due out next year called “The Conservation Impulse,” in which he describes the history of professional forestry in Maryland.
“Baltimore is trying to double its tree canopy in the next 30 years,” Buckley said. “A lot of cities are trying to do this, not for beautification, but for energy savings. When you’ve got shade on the streets, the temperature is lowered, and it helps counter the effects of the Urban Heat Island Effect.”
The latter is the name applied to the fact that cities are warmer than surrounding areas because where vegetation ordinarily would be, there is asphalt or other unnatural materials.
Although the current environmental situation appears desperate, there are steps that individuals can take, according to Greg Kremer, chair of OU’s Mechanical Engineering Department. “We must re-establish that connection with the earth so that we love it and are entitled to save it,” he asserted.
Individual commitment and action are imperative, according to Kremer.
He has maintained his connection to the earth by powering his home with solar and wind energy. “For the past three years, I’ve been selling electricity back to AEP,” he said.
Kim Brown, assistant professor of environmental and plant biology, suggests that individuals calculate their carbon footprints online as a way to take action.
“Most Web sites that calculate that will then provide you with a number of solutions, and I think of those as a buffet. Some people refuse to stop eating meat so they might choose instead to live in a smaller dwelling,” Brown explained. “People need to take personal ownership of the issue and not expect that an institution or the government will make it better.”
The solution might be in a larger societal shift in attitude, according to Buckley. “We need to move away from an economy and lifestyle that is just built around consuming material things,” he said. He added, in reference to OU students, that “you buy something at Shively Grab ‘N’ Go, and they encase it in plastic, and you throw it out in five seconds. We need to rethink the way we live.”
Kremer also feels that society as a whole is adding to the crisis.
“In our modern society where we keep building things, looking at the earth mostly for what it can do for us, and using up space, we have lost that connection with the earth and the food we eat,” he said.
A growing reaction to the problems facing the environment is eco-anxiety, a condition that sprouts from an over-concern about environmental strife. Eco-therapy is a growing profession, and Harvard Medical School is just one example of a school that now has a program for it.
“I have experienced (eco-anxiety),” admitted Buckley. “For me it’s a sense that there are not many places left in the world that aren’t contaminated, and it’s depressing.”
But there are methods to solving this anxiety while simultaneously aiding the environment, according to Kremer and Buckley.
“Even though the problem could be immense,” said Kremer, “any solution starts with individual action: making the decision that you’re going to conserve more or recycle more — positive steps in the right direction.”
Buckley suggested, “I think the best way to tackle it is to be proactive and do something, whether it’s joining an organization or changing a lifestyle.
“When you feel powerless, that’s when the anxiety sets in. But when you feel like you’re doing something, you can make changes.”
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