Scarcity vs. Abundance
“Trashing one egg wastes 55 gallons of water.” “40% of all food in America is wasted.”
The advertisements are posted on buses, on billboards, on vehicles. Whenever I see an ad like this, I feel myself tense up and involuntarily recall the times I contributed to food waste, even if it was only on an extremely small scale. These messages work effectively by triggering cognitive dissonance, the uncomfortable feeling you get when your beliefs don’t match up with your actions. People deal with cognitive dissonance by either changing their actions or changing their beliefs. When faced with the prospect of making major lifestyle changes or finding reasonable justifications for the behavior, it’s much more convenient to choose with the second option.
It’s especially easy to make justifications for environmental issues because there are so many barriers to becoming more sustainable. Organic and Fair Trade products are expensive, public transit isn’t always accessible, and it’s hard to feel that one person can make a difference. With the increasingly globalized economy, many foods and product components are sourced from other countries. This occurs because of technological advances, free trade agreements, and multinational companies using their “comparative advantage” to produce goods in countries where costs are lower due to fewer environmental regulations and often below-poverty wages for workers. This makes it almost impossible to avoid contributing to processes involving deforestation, child labor, biodiversity loss, etc.
I have begun trying to make choices in my own life to minimize my own impact, such as buying from thrift stores and becoming vegetarian. But the pattern of unsustainability is inescapable. The computer I am typing this on contains rare earth metals that were obtained in a process that is long and destructive for humans and the earth. Even the T-shirt I am wearing required 500 gallons of water to produce. Sometimes I can’t help but think, “if every person on Earth shared my lifestyle, what would the environment and society be like?”
This never really provides any positive benefits and instead just makes me feel guilty and stressed. With so many massive global issues occurring, becoming overwhelmed is easy. This has made me think about the ways that environmental issues are communicated. What is the boundary between raising awareness and causing a person to feel anxiety and hopelessness? When trying to spread awareness of environmental issues, the tone in communication can make all the difference. Blaming people for having unsustainable habits is not the right approach. Feeling threatened causes many people to react defensively and find ways to justify their current behavior. When someone has deeply held beliefs because of their upbringing or cultural traditions, is there a way to respect their values while trying to influence them to make changes in their lifestyle?
Different approaches to communicating about the environment are needed for different audiences. I have been fortunate to grow up in a place with abundant options for outdoor activities and exploration, but what about people who live in a city with a poor park system, or a place where the environment is too degraded for recreation? How would those people have a different view of the environment than I do? What would be the underlying similarities between the two views?
For me, the key to reducing environmental anxiety is to realize that I am only one person. I can’t change everything myself. I just need to do the best I can on the scale of my own life, from making sustainable choices on a day-to-day basis to advocating for change in the wider world. If I internalize all the issues of the world, I won’t have the focus or mental energy to work on solutions. Finding a balance between thinking about the problems of the world while also keeping my own life in perspective is key. I have found it helpful to focus on the individual things that I can do to make a difference that has positive impacts on a larger scale.
In my HECUA Environmental Sustainability class, one of the topics we have covered in class is permaculture, a regenerative approach to agriculture and land use that emphasizes a paradigm of abundance rather than scarcity. When faced with seemingly endless reports of dwindling and degrading resources, learning about the countless ways that we can sustainably harness nature’s energies and resources to improve ecosystem resilience is energizing. Permaculture principles can be used in any amount of space, on whatever scale you choose. The psychological benefit of this ancient practice is a feeling of creating tangible, long-lasting changes that work with the earth’s natural ecosystems.
To learn more about permaculture, here’s a list of resources: https://permaculturenews.org/resources/links/.
Permaculture principles can be applied in any space and on any scale, which makes it a really accessible way to make an impact.
I am also working as an intern at Climate Generation, an organization that encourages people to share their personal experiences with climate change and empowers them to create solutions within their own lives and communities. The effectiveness of the program lies in the combination between spreading awareness of the devastating impacts of climate change with an emphasis on how people are becoming more resilient to these impacts and working within their own communities for change. Storytelling is a key tool to motivate people to act on the science, which helps me overcome the urge to change my beliefs to justify my inaction. Think about how your experiences within the environment have shaped your worldview, and share your story with others. Personal connections are the best way to motivate change, and everyone has credibility to speak about their own experiences.
In terms of environmental education and communication, a balance is needed between acknowledging the serious issues we are facing on earth while also emphasizing the powerful ways that people are using traditional knowledge and currently developing technologies to work towards more equitable solutions for all. I have began to shift from fear about disappearing resources to hope about the vast diversity of abilities and knowledge possessed by people around the planet. By engaging each person’s unique skills, solutions to these issues will become a reality. Emphasizing the abundance of resources, both human and ecological, that are available to us is the key to reducing the cognitive dissonance created by climate change and motivating people to use their individual talents to build collective solutions to the issues that affect us all.
