J500 Media and the Environment

Moving to Sustainability in a Consumer Society by hollyee

Sustainability is critical to giving our children an Earth worth inheriting. I came of age as an environmental junkie in the Reagan era of materialism. It was hard to eat yogurt with chopsticks when your friends were working on their stock portfolios. Today, the triple bottom line is what companies are told to strive to achieve.

I see sustainability as living a life that makes conscious choices about the use of resources. Whenever possible, I hope people think like the Native Americans did and use everything, not thinking of anything as expendable. This includes people.

On a recent visit to California, I saw some California condors at the San Diego Zoo. I had seen one of the few still living in the wild in 1977. It took a tremendous effort to rescue the condor from the brink of extinction to the 300 birds living today.

What do the condors have to do with sustainability? They have lived in California since the dawn of time. We led them to their fate and we can lead them out. Maybe we are learning that we can’t put toxic chemicals into the food chain, poison our water supplies and alter ecosystems.

Most green messages have gone mainstream, and corporate America is taking notice. It takes money and/or regulations for businesses to change. It is heartening to me to see people looking at recycling beyond the curbside into programs like Freecycle.

Where we haven’t done too well is understanding that people are a resource, too. I have a disabled son, and society still thinks warehousing people like him and the elderly is the way to go. Despite our laws and supposed “awareness,” few days go by when someone doesn’t shun my son or ask when I will place him in a home. My son says he wants to work with trucks when he grows up. Hopefully by the time he grows up, the world will know what he already does, that the world is better with him actively involved.
Holly E.