On this millennial Earth Day, awareness of our depleting natural resources isat an all-time high, and yet, so is their destruction. A new field of research hopes to explain why we continue to damage the environment even as we think we're protecting it--and how we ca stop.
In November, nearly 80,000 people flocked to Seattle, Washington, to protest the disregard of the World Trade Organization (WTO) for environmental concerns. Impassioned demonstrators from San Diego to France inundated the streets of downtown Seattle for days, railing against the toll that free trade often exacts on endangered wildlife.
Unfortunately, the protestors' admirable pilgrimage to save the environment actually hurt it more than they knew. Consider how many well-intentioned individuals who normally would have stayed home flew across the country, sapping tons of energy and releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. According to the U.K.'s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, aircraft emissions of carbon dioxide could triple over the next 50 years, highly exacerbating global warming. This is just one of the ways we destroy the environment even as we're trying to protect it--a tragic irony that is one of the major themes of environmental psychology.
Many people, based perhaps on well-publicized disasters like the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, believe that environmental problems are most often caused--and best solved--by government or big business. Most environmental damage, however, begins not with government or large companies, but with the cumulative actions of individuals. If there is a solution to this global crisis, it is to understand--and remedy--the decision-making of individual consumers of energy before nature pays the price.
In November, nearly 80,000 people flocked to Seattle, Washington, to protest the disregard of the World Trade Organization (WTO) for environmental concerns. Impassioned demonstrators from San Diego to France inundated the streets of downtown Seattle for days, railing against the toll that free trade often exacts on endangered wildlife.
Unfortunately, the protestors' admirable pilgrimage to save the environment actually hurt it more than they knew. Consider how many well-intentioned individuals who normally would have stayed home flew across the country, sapping tons of energy and releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. According to the U.K.'s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, aircraft emissions of carbon dioxide could triple over the next 50 years, highly exacerbating global warming. This is just one of the ways we destroy the environment even as we're trying to protect it--a tragic irony that is one of the major themes of environmental psychology.
Many people, based perhaps on well-publicized disasters like the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, believe that environmental problems are most often caused--and best solved--by government or big business. Most environmental damage, however, begins not with government or large companies, but with the cumulative actions of individuals. If there is a solution to this global crisis, it is to understand--and remedy--the decision-making of individual consumers of energy before nature pays the price.
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