Submitted by: Alan Lewis
Having read Kelly Bowers’ April 1 column, “Environmentalism is turning hypocritical,” I must remark on the strong frustration toward hypocrisies of certain people immersed in the movement.
Yes, the message can be pervasive and turn inward at times, especially when we’re talking about Al Gore’s private jet.
Why should we believe people who make bold statements about the way the world should be and ignore the example they preach?
Environmentalism, sustainability, “going green” or whatever you might call it is by every means a worldwide solidarity movement.
It is a calling to be more aware of our individual actions and, multiplied several hundred million times, how they affect the rest of us. It is a battle against excess but moreover a fight against misunderstanding and ignorance.
Some might see it as a fad, but the reasons are far from fiscal. There are always ways to turn a profit from hype ““ remember Y2K? But one must be careful to not become hardened to the truth hiding behind the scare. Certain environmental catastrophe will happen by tipping the balance too far in any direction. The reasons for taking necessary precautions and conserving resources are invoked by the natural sciences.
In thermodynamics, entropy is a measure of the amount of disorder in a system. Take your warm cup of coffee: Give it an hour and it will be room temperature. The heat your coffee lost cannot spontaneously come back and warm it up again.
Such was the message of J. Willard Gibbs, a professor at Yale whose life’s work was studying the concept of free energy. What modern physicists now call “Gibbs free energy” is the measure of “useful” work derived from a process that can be reversed.
Rechargeable batteries, for instance, can be used over and over again to power your MP3 player or laptop.
There are also reactions that are reversible but by no means useful for doing work. For instance, your computer heats up while you use it. Eventually it cools down, but sooner or later it will heat up again. The difference here is that this version of “hot” cannot be effectively harnessed and redirected to power a lamp on your desk. On a grander scale, the ocean heats up and cools down every day. This energy is effectively waste energy because we have no practical means for harnessing it.
Last quarter, my thermodynamics class heard a story about Willard Gibbs. Gibbs was an imaginative man gifted with incredible foresight. In the early 1870s ““ even before the light bulb ““ he realized that many of our energy sources, namely oil, coal and gas, were finite. Even today, these are still our most potent sources in terms of energy per unit of fuel, even with solar panels and wind turbines. Eventually, all of those resources will become scarce and it will be harder to extract them. This question of “when” could determine how much time we have to come up with alternatives. If we don’t make the transition to alternative sources of energy, we’ll be stuck with more problems than just the nuisance of a dark, stuffy dorm room.
Environmentalism does not call us to live a more simple life. We are not asking one another to do without our computers and technology ““ far from it.
We are called to live more thoughtfully in our daily lives, to be more aware of our actions and consumptive habits, especially with the small things.
Those who take up the cross, so to speak, do not and should not set out as crusaders, but as informers, teaching by example. Turn the lights off in your dorm room while you step out for dinner. Don’t use more toilet paper than you need. Don’t leave the shower running while shampooing your hair.
And of course, there’s always turning off the tap while brushing your teeth.
Environmentalism will have hypocrites like just about any other “-ism,” but that does not make the practice itself hypocritical. Gore’s endless campaign to spread his message about climate change does not absolve him of using a jet to transport fewer than a dozen people. One thing is certain: we had better spend less energy judging and instead channel it into positive energy for doing.
Lewis is a fourth-year civil engineering student.