What about the environment?
Abigail Braun
sophomore
My friends often make fun of me because I take newspapers out of the trash and put them instead in a recycling bin. And while I know that I am not environmentally friendly at all times, I often wonder why it is so difficult for some people to walk those few extra steps in order to recycle. Why, even at a university particularly concerned with social issues, do students fail to show strong concern for the environment? I could probably count on two hands the number of Viewpoint articles addressing environmental issues in this year's Observers. Why is there this lack of dialogue about these matters that so clearly affect us?
Perhaps the reason is that there is no problem with our current ecosystem. Maybe our environment is doing just fine, and there is no need to talk about it. This is simply not true. Environmental experts have made strong cases that our planet presently faces some serious problems. Pollution levels are rising, global warming is increasing, energy shortages are looming on the horizon and population rates are becoming ever more threatening. The list goes on. All of these issues prove to affect the quality of our lives and the lives of future generations.
Another possible cause for this seeming lack of interest in environmental issues is that students here just don't know about them. Again, I would say this is false. Notre Dame is a distinguished university made up of intellectual students. Thus, as students of this fine institution, we are expected to have a general level of knowledge about the world, including our environment. And so although not everyone knows every detailed issue, most students here probably know of the broad environmental problems.
If there is a problem, and most of us know of it, why this void of dialogue? Perhaps some would say that students here don't really care. But I think the real problem is that we fail to see these environmental issues as a priority because our attention is focused elsewhere. We currently are engaged in a devastating war that affects each of us; our nation is dealing with many other issues of terrorism and poverty. It is understandable that as students, we neglect to see the environment as still important in light of all this.
However, we cannot keep setting aside environmental issues because we fail to see them as immediate problems. To do so is to endanger the quality of our lives, for we desperately rely on the safety and preservation of our ecosystem. If we are fighting a war on terror and poverty to preserve the well being of our society, we too must fight a war to save the environment. The problems of our ecosystem may seem unsolvable at our level, but we can make a difference with the small things: reading and engaging in dialogue about current environmental issues, writing to government agencies and even recycling.
We are told time and again that as students of the University of Notre Dame, we are the future leaders of the world. As such, we must take an interest in our ecosystem. We make the choices about the air we will breathe and the water we will swim in the future. We decide whether we will visit national parks or live in crowded smog-ridden cities in our retirement. So make the effort, do a little trash picking and start talking about the environment today.
All Viewpoint Stories for Thursday, April 10, 2003
