Alda Yuan
Professor Alexandratos
MHC 200
Week 6 Response
In my opinion, the comparison between the environmental problems and civil rights issues is actually very apt. The biggest barrier in both situations is a change in thinking. All other barriers, both economic, structural and legislative, stem from attitudes. While the people of the nation believed the races to be unequal, no amount of legislation, though of course it would never be enacted without some sort of intellectual shift anyway, could change the situation. Similarly, while the general public remains unconvinced about the severity and urgency of environmental issues, the problem will seem insurmountable.
Of course, the problem then becomes how you get the message across to individuals and “John Q. Public.” The average American certainly does not spend their days scouring scientific journals for the latest studies. A segment of the population might even consider such behavior elitist. In any case, reports issued by scientific organizations or by the UN as in their 1987 call for immediate action toward sustainability, usually have an immediate effect only on the small portion of the population that keeps abreast of such news. With the advent of the internet, information of this sort can be disseminated with much more speed and in pithier, easier to digest ways. In fact, at this point, much of the information available to the people in the field are available on the internet, either through actual copies of the studies done on environmental issues as well as editorialized explanations of the results. But equal access to information neither implies that individuals will go to the extra trouble of seeking it out or that they will accept the conclusions given therein.
A substantial portion of the public has an unfortunate mistrust of science, as the reoccurring movements against the teaching of evolution and global warning can attest to. Perhaps this is partially a failure of our education system in not providing the average citizen with enough scientific know to at least separate science from junk science. Perhaps also, it is a function of our habit of shying away from undesirable facts and realities as if ignoring the problem will mean that it disappears altogether. This is an aspect of our culture and maybe even an aspect of human nature. But that does not mean this unfortunate situation cannot be altered.
Perhaps the key is indeed in spurring emotional engagement. Dry facts and figures, no matter how shocking and significant, seem unlikely to move large amounts of people unless they are couched in emotional terms. At the same time I think it is important to being able to take advantage of emotion while remaining true to the scientific basis by not abandoning empirical data and analysis. Encouraging emotional engagement is how many humanitarian efforts and major social movements take off and gain public attention and nearly as important, funding. The space race for instance was fueled in a large part by the desire of average Americans to beat the Soviets to the moon and fear that the communists would use any advances in technology to wipe the country off the face of the earth. Ideally, the emotional appeal involved with the environmental movement will aim itself at more virtuous sentiments and base itself on more solid data. Recently, there have been a slew of films and shows with environmental themes and at least an underlying emotional appeal, focusing for instance, on the plight of the polar bears or the beauty of planet earth. These received attention and acclaim but have not yet brought about enough emotional engagement in the general population.
