Environmental Hope

Global environmental issues can be extraordinarily daunting. We are constantly inundated by news about the latest oil spill, horrific natural disasters caused by changing global weather patterns, declining biodiversity and other environmental quality issues. It is easy to be consumed by the doom and gloom; however motivation is more easily found in the progress we, as a global society, are working toward to change the way we interact with the Earth. There have been several studies showing that positive reinforcement is much more psychologically motivating than negative campaigns. Psychological persuasion may have one of the largest impacts on how we can begin to change our behaviors to more ecologically sound ones. As pointed out by Dr. McKenzie-Mohr, a noted psychologist working to incorporate scientific knowledge on behavior change into the design and development of community programs, “psychology has a central role to play in this transition, for the cornerstone of sustainability is behavior change.” Hope is where our answers lie to creating a new, more stable and resilient world.  

This first article is about a man, who 30 years ago, as the age of 17, began to plant a forest in an area where it was not thought possible to do so. Today, this forest in India is almost 300 acres. This man is just one person who has helped to offer us a glimmer of hope.

Indian man plants forest single-handedly.

Energy is one of the main concerns of the global community. There is yet to be one solid solution, but as we learned from Joan Chan, resilience may require several concerted efforts in order to maintain sustainability. With all these efforts, there will clearly be waste though. Here is a great article about wind turbines and what to do with them when they finally do break down.

Re-purposing wind turbines for playgrounds.

Another energy related field to feel good about is solar technology. Here are two articles about learning from nature's evolution and how we can apply that towards energy technology. The first article is about taking inspiration from butterfly wings to capture solar energy, while the second article is about the efficiency of sunflowers ability to capture that energy.

 Butterflies inspire solar technology.

  

 Sunflowers inspires solar technology.

All of these articles have a common theme: hope. We as mankind are very adaptable and can overcome the environmental issues we are faced with by focusing on the positive solutions. Forget the negative stuff, its all just clutter anyway.