While polar ice caps continue to melt and the overall global temperature continues to rise, politically motivated opinions regarding climate change ironically endure to solidify.
With a healthy shift in perspective, however, I argue that it can be seen that conservation is neither an inherently liberal or conservative ideal. Counterfactual though it may seem, a number of conservative principles are supported by environmentally sustainable practices.
Consider the praise of the Oxford School District recounted by the Associated Press on Tuesday. In support of the district’s decision to implement energy efficient fixtures in the building of the recently completed Oxford High School, the Tennessee Valley Authority awarded over $44,000 to the district.
A decision to reduce energy costs and promote efficiency in facilities has not only allowed the district to protect its funding, but also promotes sustainable practice overall.
In celebration of Green Week, the university recently installed a cube of recyclable items that had been discarded in any number of the university’s trash bins next to the Lyceum. Compelling though the piece may be, provoking an immediate reaction of either wondering why time was put into organizing literal garbage or bemoaning the reality that we inadequately recycle as a community does nothing to affect change.
A number of individuals, not surprisingly, find the display trite.
In the sentiment of the late David Foster Wallace, I ask that we collectively reconsider our “default settings.”
Even when prioritizing our own health and wellbeing, efforts undertaken to improve an individual’s overall sustainability benefits communities as a whole.
Do we all not want clear water? Clean air? Fertile ground?
Tendencies to conserve and the occasional necessary willingness to constrain and illustrate thought rather than an inherent morality in individuals. That is, the relative size of one’s carbon footprint hardly speaks to my interpretation of a person’s character.
Did you remember to turn the air conditioner off before leaving home today?
I probably forgot, and I am no more compelled to think that I am a bad person for needing to make a change than I would have been yesterday.
I digress.
I spent some of the best times in my life at summer camp over the last ten years. Among the uniquely pastoral sentiments shared with me as a camper in order to make me more aware of my closeness to the earth was a lesson in perspective. In response to each request I made, I was asked to consider the implication of the same being asked by 100 people, 1,000 and on. While I sometimes found the exercise frustrating, I know there is a small price asked of each of us as I look upon a cube of our campus’s trash.
One hundred, 1,000, all of us could pause to reconsider that change is easy to affect — place plastics in one bin and separate metals and paper into their respective others.
Done.
I know the question of environmental ethics is complicated, and I write not to diminish these concerns but rather to illustrate how progress begins in small steps.
We need no longer argue about whether or how or why the earth is or is not changing. It simply makes sense to choose to save our vital resources.
Earth Day does not have to become a focal point of your calendar to become a better person nor does it have to be complicated. Simply, small steps to do better help us all do our part.
Grant Beebe is a sophomore business administration major from Jackson.
