Why I chose environmental practice instead of environmental activism

Why I chose environmental practice instead of environmental activism

By James Kniskern

It started innocently enough. I began reading about the average American family using more resources than any other family in the world. I was intrigued. I had heard that even poor Americans were richer in material wealth than a large percentage of the world population.

I had visited a website that describes how many earth's worth of resources would be required if ALL of the populations of the world lived as the average American did. I took the quiz and found that we would need 3.5 earths of resources to support ALL of the population of the planet if everyone lived as I did. That was an eye opener. Some friends around me did better, some much worse!

Environmental action has always been of interest to me. Even when the U.S. Government banned DDT due to the loss of eagles, and other birds, I thought it was a good thing.

My voice was silent at that time due to my age. I watched from the sidelines as those labeled "Tree Huggers", "Hippies", and with a sneer of the right wing, "environmentalists" stood in the way of logging, land development, watershed destruction, dam building, and parking lot construction. I remained quiet, but respectful of those souls who acted on what they believed, even to the detriment of American jobs. I mean, saving snail darter fish, and spotted owls can't be more important that putting a few thousand people to work, can it? Yes it can, and it does actually make for a better life for all Americans, even if a few have hardships for a period of time.

During the last few years, as I moved around the world, noticed traffic affects on forests, urban sprawl heating up cities, wildfires raging in the west (some in Arizona while I was there,) ice sheets shrinking, glaciers receding, warm weather during the winters, hurricanes killing more and causing billions in damage, I had to take stock in what could the underlying answer be to all of this? Human use of resources and lack of putting things back where we found them, I think.

So I began to learn how I could make a difference.

I also took it upon myself to try to do things that would make it less hypocritical for me to speak on. I advocate for doing lots of small stepts in my environmental changes, because I've take many small steps myself. I can and do make a difference by making these lifestyle choices. Will it make a difference in the long run if I'm the only one that makes these changes? No. But here is the rub: Since I've made these changes, I know how easy it is, and can lead the way for others to make similar choices.

I don't want to force people to use greywater, or composting toilets, or sawdust toilets, or become vegetarians, or plant vegetable gardens, or anything else. But if the world doesn't begin to change its ways, we really are mortgaging our descendants futures.