Dean Gus Speth on the Environmental Citizen

Description: Dean Gus Speth on the Environmental Citizen.

Question: What does an environmental citizen look like?

Transcript:  Well, I think we have to make personal statements ourselves.  In my case, we bought two hybrids.  We bought a solar affordable tank unit, a three kilowatt unit for our electricity.  We have tried to recycle, we go on the internet and offset our carbon emissions, and that's all good.  And I wish everyone would.  But the truth is that my wife and I have two decent salaries which we spend most of, and have a very large environmental footprint, regardless of-- among other things, we eat out a lot.  It turns out that restaurants and eating out are a real problem environmentally in terms of their impact.  Food is a big issue for anybody who is concerned about the environment.  For example, it takes 1,300 gallons of water to make a hamburger.  If you look at the whole agriculture food chain on average today, that's what's going on, and maybe 90 gallons of water to make a cup of coffee.  A kilogram of beef has the environmental impact in terms of pollution, including greenhouse gas pollution, of driving an average car for three hours while you leave all the lights in your house on for those three hours.  So, you know, there's huge impacts even after we clean up our acts individually, okay, which is another way of saying that, yes, it's important that we do the right things personally.  It'll save our souls and help the environment at the same time, but it's also very important that we become engaged politically to make these changes.  So, if I were a young person today for example, I would, you know, rather than go directly into the environmental movement itself or the environmental community itself, personally, this is a very personal preference, I think I'd start working on political reform issues.  Because I don't think we're going to solve any of these problems with today's politics.  It's just incapable, it's so under the thumb of powerful interest and is so screwed up in term of the process from electing the president right on down, that until it's changed, we won't make the big changes that we need to make.  And there's an additional issue here.  The studies are showing that this split in the country between the rich and the poor is also being translated into additional excess in power on the part of the rich in the political process.  So, the very democratic process that is suppose to help equal things out in society is being eroded and you get this vicious cycle where, you know, we're losing ground socially, but that social inequality is affecting the political inequality.  And the political inequality then cannot correct the social inequality.  And we have a problem with an erosion of democratic governance and popular control in our country. 

Question: How does one get involved?

Transcript:  Well, there are a lot of groups working at the local level now, and there are a lot of experiments going on across the landscape to do different things.  So I would definitely, you know, start locally and see what's going on in your community.  Then some really interesting efforts, particularly for young people to hook into things that are going on on the climate issue both nationally and internationally.  One Sky is one such effort, Power Shift, Green For All, and Bill McKibben has now launched a international effort that's trying to-- called the 350 which is trying to get the idea-- get people mobilized to realize that the buildup of greenhouse gases should have capped at 350 parts per million in the atmosphere.  So there are a lot of things going on.  Religious organizations are turning to these issues and that's probably the biggest way for people to get involved, is to get their churches to get involved and their synagogues, mosques, and also, you know, civic organizations of all types can begin to take these issues up.  Schools are not in good shape.  Even some of the very fancy prep schools in our country with lots and lots of money and facilities aren't dealing with these issues well.  So I think there's a sort of citizen's agenda that involves us as parents, as voters, as investors, as members, there's a lot that we need to do. 

Recorded on: 3/23/08