Thinking about Green Education Kits
Speaking of all the people I know who (a) don't believe in global climate change, (b) think somebody bright and probably funded by the government will figure out how to fix it for us all, (c) are in total denial and living relatively plush lifestyles at the expense of others (whom these people don't know about, don't care to know about, or both)...
What sorts of materials could a person put together to help open their eyes? This is a tricky question, especially when some of the people in that group watch Fox News. For instance, do you include An Inconvenient Truth? Or, is Al Gore too much of a celebrity tree-hugger? How do you slip past that highly-developed Fox New reality guard, and keep them from tuning out during such an education? Certainly, books like Field Notes from a Catastrophe, Natural Capitalism, Cradle to Cradle, and The Omnivore's Dilemma contain jarring messages. These books - and Al Gore's presentation, which I caught on DVD - have been enough to keep me in a state of mild terror for some time now.
The really interesting thing about it is, I think I'm becoming a tad shrill on the subject, probably because I've finally been infected with the sense of urgency that these works bring with them. But it's also more than that; it's reading that scientists are now actually measuring the slow-down in the oceanic conveyor system that I heard about so long ago as heralding Really Bad Things. It's reading about the New Jersey-sized dead zone just off the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, near where my extended family lives, which is the result of over-fertilization and manure ponds in the midwest...and remembering how I couldn't drink the water at the hunting cabin we used to use in central Kansas when I was a kid, because of the nitrate concentrations. It's hearing that armadillos are plentiful around Burlington, KS now, when they used to be rare even in southern Missouri. People are starting to wince when I start talking about this stuff, I think...but once I've seen and read all these things, how can I do anything but talk about it, as loudly and often as I can?
Clearly, I'm not the kind of person who can convert the Fox News crowd. I'm no longer moderate enough. So, how can I get the right information into these people's hands? How can I get them to wake up and stop believing that global warming will mean cheap freight (because the Arctic will be ice-free in a few decades) and plentiful tree cover (because, you know, plants breathe in CO2)?
I'm open to ideas. Seriously. I'm headed back home for four days this Christmas, and I'd love to have a care package I could leave with them.
For what it's worth, I do believe that we can head this off before the worst happens. I don't believe we can save the polar bears, but it can be so much worse than just their extinction. However, if we will have any hope of stopping this process, we have to convert the Fox News crowd.