The world today is plagued with
environment injustices, from the destruction of ecosystems across the globe to
the poisoning of the very water and air we depend on for survival. Yet, most Americans live their lives without
ever doing anything to help the environment.
They move on and focus on their own lives in their own little bubbles,
allowing environmental problems to worsen as the economy grows and businesses
take advantage of the relaxed regulation that governs them. Some people are unaware of the environmental
problems. Others do not care, do not
have time to help, or do not know how to help. The fact of the matter is, more people need to
care and need to help if we are going to save the planet before it is radically
destroyed, even more so than it is today.
This week in class we watched the
move Climate Change Disruption, which
mainly focused on the events leading up to the People’s Climate March in New
York City. The march was meant to show
support and show that climate change is an issue that needs to be
addressed. One of the strongest things that
I took from the video is the need for emotional appeal to get people to become
active. The video explained that people
have a rational, analytical side of the brain that helps to understand the
problem, as well as an emotional, intuitive side that is very reactive. In order to get people to become active, you
must make them care and make them emotionally charged up.
Environmentalists have been using emotions
in their campaigns for a while, but their scope is usually too thin. Environmental activists usually focus on the environmental
effects of climate change, which many times seem too gradual to really convince
anyone to do anything. As the movie Climate Change Disruption states, people
have a finite pool of worry that usually prioritizes more immediate worries
first. People are so overwhelmed with
their everyday struggles that they usually cannot be bothered by apocalyptic
views of climate change twenty years down the road.
So how do you make people care? You must explain how the environmental
degradation impacts them directly. You
must make them care and make them see it on an everyday level. You must make them feel like they are part of
the environment and that it impacts them directly. The organizers of the People’s Climate March
did this well and really proved this point.
They discussed that the poor get hit first with environmental problems,
and rallied them around this point. The
organizers talked about public health and protecting jobs. These are things that directly affect people
and that people worry about on a daily basis.
These are the things that will bring the average person to care about
climate change. The community of people
fighting climate change needs to be expanded from solely environmentalists to
all groups affected by climate change.
One of the most interesting groups I
heard about in the video was called the Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS). This is a group that wants to work with
unions to fight climate change and lead to a more sustainable future. They recognize that people are dependent on the
environment and that if the climate worsens a lot, jobs will be lost. Additionally, the LNS sees the green and
sustainable jobs as a market that they would like to enter into. Sustainability’s roots are in social and
economic equities, so they have similarities to labor unions as well. The LNS believes the best way to do this is
to come up with a shared future plan with environmentalists and union workers
so that both groups can fully work together towards a common goal (About 1-3). The LNS is just one great example of the
different groups that can be rallied behind an environmental issue. Environmental issues impact most people in
some way; it is up to the organizer to figure out which impacts will motivate
people to take action the most. People
need to take action, in order to have a better future for all of humanity.
Works Cited
"About." Labor Network for
Sustainability. N.p., n.d. Web.
22 Sept. 2014. <http://www.labor4sustainability.org/about/>.
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