How Each One of Us Can Solve Environmental Issues

Oftentimes environmentally caring people are discouraged from action due to the sheer magnitude of the problems at hand. Pollution, species extinction, soil erosion, rising global temperatures to name a few, all seem too far gone or too far removed from our own sphere of influence.

It is time to turn this thinking on it’s head. Let’s examine in a practical manner how we got here in the first place.

Humans are greedy; we want it all and we want it now, always have always will. I don’t understand why this tendency has been vilified for so long! I propose we work with what we are, understanding our own nature, and then use that for a more harmonious state of affairs.

Let’s therefore examine the now, the it, and the how.

Now has always been as soon as possible, it does not matter if you live today or if you lived a long time ago.  Now is the fastest means of getting the it. Examples, if not already obvious: having one’s existence documented went from the written word, to having a painter make your portrait, to photographs taken by someone else and put in an album, to selfies posted on social networks.

In my opinion there is nothing wrong with now neither as a speed nor as an impetus for change. Environmentally caring people certainly want change now.

It is more interesting; wanting it is a pursuit for individual benefit. Again I don’t understand why this aspect of humanity has been so vilified. In my opinion, the it is not only where each one of us has the most individual control, it has tremendous potential for major change including environmental change.

How did we get to environmental issues in the first place? Too many individual its? I think it’s too many in-common its with non-environmental foci.

Each one of us contributes to environmental issues via our seemingly unimportant daily actions. This should not ensue dread, but make each of us feel powerful.

If our daily individual actions have collectively made these environmental problems, our daily individual actions are the answer to these very problems. Don’t discount the power of your individual it and the fact you want it now. After all, 25 million individual its makes the whole of Australia.

The only thing that remains to discuss is how. How is dependent on each and every one of our individual situations, only you can custom make the how which will allow you to modify your current daily actions towards consistent, improved environmental outcomes.

I suggest the following approach:

If a system is not satisfactory, reflect on what aspects are not suited to your environmental pursuits and modify the system accordingly.

By systems I do not mean big things like the political system but small things like the system you follow to wash your dishes, or the system through which you clean your house, or the system you employ to sort your rubbish. Amending a system in you life should prove rather easy because you are in control.

Know how much you really want a particular environmental it.

You don’t need to communicate this to anyone else, you don’t need to align yourself with any environmental movement, and you certainly do not need to meet anyone’s expectations but your own.

Be truly and deeply frank with yourself, it’s ok to admit to yourself that you feel drawn to a cause but you are not sufficiently vested to take action with the urgency of now; no one will judge you or think any lesser of you because this is all an internal dialogue. Once you find the environmental it that matters to you most, you will also realise you will pursue this it for much longer and with relative ease.

If after introspecting you come to realise that environmental issues are just not your type of it, that’s great progress too.

You are being true to yourself and you have empowered yourself to pursue other its with as much zeal as environmentally caring people pursue environmental its.

You will know you have chosen your it successfully when, faced with environmental issues, a reassuring calm washes over you because you know you are doing your thing to better the world (be that environmental or not).

I will start the process by telling you my it and how I am persevering to seek solutions to environmental issues now.

I would love to hear from you, so leave me a comment or send me a private email if that is your thing.

Without further a-do, my it is: translate scientific knowledge of environmental issues into practicable advice for the people (for the meaning of the people see my post on Why Scientist Need Artists).

I have a real fascination for how things work – I am someone who likes to pull concepts apart, study them, and then put them back together. Any claim put to me is received with curiosity, and a deep need to understand through my own everyday experience of the world.

It is because of this need to understand that I prefer to read non-fiction technical information which when combined with architecture, allows me to digest scientific knowledge and apply it in practicable manners to every day, real life urban environments.

My it is why this blog exists; my it is why I teach in the Environmental Architecture stream at the School of Design, University of Western Australia; my it is why I am completing a PhD that combines built environment, environmental toxicants, and hydro-ecological engineering; my it is why I am making my skills available to you.

It is through all of the above that when confronted with environmental issues, my outlook is calm in the knowledge that I am doing the best I can in being part of the solution.  I wish the very same to all of you.