It has been a weekend of thinking about the environment. Saturday a bunch of us watched ‘Everything is Cool’ a documentary on global warming. I was most impressed with how politics has prevented the scientific knowledge about climate change from impacting societal understanding and action. The constant debate about whether global warming is actually happening has kept people from feeling the seriousness of the issue and changing their behavior. The other interesting point they made was that environmentalism has a PR problem. We are tried of hearing how we are killing our planet and our doomed. Instead the challenge is to make being good stewards of the world economically beneficial. Money is such a motivator- when gas prices go up- so do the sales of hybrid cars.
Sunday night we had a conversation with a representative from the Sierra Club who showed us a clip from the movie Kilowatt Ours: A Plan to Re-Energize America. Almost all the energy in the US comes from coal. Our use of electricity is directly tied to mountain top removal, childhood asthma and global warming. We were left with a big question- as residents of Baltimore City our electricity comes from BGE whose energy comes from coal- is there a way for us to avoid using electricity that is linked to coal? Solar energy? Wind energy?
We have agreed to take some individual steps as well as talk about something we can do as a community. Personally I am going to write the city and thank them for stream-lining recycling in Baltimore. I am so grateful they have made it so easy. Even still I am amazed at how little others on our street put out on recycling day. We have made a point to have a smaller trash can and a larger recycling bin. Every other week isn’t quite enough for us but we aren’t complaining. Thank you Baltimore City!
What are others hoping to do this week?
I am so impressed with all that we are already doing- let’s keep up the good work.
We also wanted to make sure you can catch some of the Green Week Events beginning this weekend, with an Eco Festival at Druid Hill Park on Saturday, April 26. Check out the full program at Baltimore Green Week.
